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Born to Win's Daily Radio Broadcast and Weekly Sermon. A production of Christian Educational Ministries.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

2 Timothy 3:1 KJV

There are two things that need attention in this statement: This know also connects what he is saying with what he has just said—and we will need to talk about that. The word perilous, though, is not exactly what Paul said. Other translations render the Greek word here as terrible or difficult. Actually, it comes from a Greek root that means to weaken. It is certainly true that what Paul describes here is a perilous time for men of faith, but it is perilous because the times are weakening—that is, they are debilitating, they tend to take us down.

For Paul to caution Timothy as he did is suggestive that, for all he knew, they might be living in the last days. Paul didn’t know, of course. Jesus made it plain that no man knew the day or the hour. But that didn’t keep him from looking at the signs of the times. But then he when on to explain to Timothy, at some length, what it was he was driving at. We’ll see this as we continue in 2 Timothy, chapter 3.

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And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll, and to loose the seals thereof?

Revelation 5:1–2 KJ2000

And he looked all over heaven, and he looked all over earth, and he couldn’t find anyone that was qualified or worthy to open this book and break the seals, to look inside of it. It was only when the slain Lamb came on the scene that one was able to open it, and to break the seals.

This book, this strange book, is the story of the end of the world. That’s a sobering thought. I remember the first time I ever heard that expression. I was just a boy growing up and living in the northwestern part of Arkansas. It was in the early years of World War II, and everybody was worried a lot back in those days. They watched the news daily, they listened to the radio, they read the papers, and it didn’t look good. These were pre-television and pre-air-conditioning days. On a hot summer evening when supper was over we didn’t set around inside the house you went outside and sat on the porch. You maybe swung back and forth in a porch swing or a rocking chair or if you were like us kids, we used to like sit on the cool concrete of the porch and think about this, or play with that, yet in our ears we were hearing what our elders were talking about. And I remember them saying that one of the signs of the end of the world was wars, and rumors of wars; and boy there was plenty of that in 1942 and 1943. I worried a lot about those things in those days. I remember, in fact, there was a light in the sky one night and I thought, This is it, This is it. The Lord is coming back, the end of the world is coming. I think it must have just been the Auroras borealis, but it sure sobered me up a lot.

Well, only the Lamb of God who is identified in the pages of Revelation as Jesus Christ was found worthy to break the seals and to look on the book, and the only reason he was found worthy was because he was slain. He is the one that was killed, died for our sins, and the sins of the world, and he’s the one who’s qualified. And it’s not really a matter folks of looking into the book, but the breaking of the seal opens up the events. It’s actually, perhaps the start of the countdown toward what people are fond of calling the end of the world. It’s spooky to think about, isn’t it? The seven seals on this books are the seven steps up to the end of the world. I’ll bet you’d like to know what those seven steps are, wouldn’t you?

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.

Revelation 5:1 KJ2000

Now, this book was probably a scroll, and scrolls were usually written only on one side. You would write on the inside of a paper and you would roll up the writing on the inside. This one was written within and on the outside and was sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the scroll, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the scroll, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the scroll, neither to look thereon.

Revelation 5:2–4 KJ2000

We’re reading from chapter five of the great Book of Revelation. John is in vision, and John doesn’t even know what’s in this book and he was weeping uncontrollably because no one is found worthy to open it—not one of the elders, not one of the cherubim, not even, apparently, the one who is sitting on the throne and holding the book. Now, if you caught the earlier broadcast, you’ll know that the one sitting on that throne is none other than God the Father: the one who is, and who was, and who is to come—the eternal, the great God. He is holding it. And they’re weeping and looking around saying, Who can open this book? What is this book, who can open it, and what is its significance?

After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up here, and I will show you things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the spirit; and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a carnelian stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in appearance like unto an emerald. And round about the throne were four and twenty thrones: and upon the thrones I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white clothing; and they had on their heads crowns of gold. And out of the throne proceeded lightning and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.

Revelation 1–5 KJ2000

Now, if you’ve ever wondered what it looks like where God is, you just heard an eyewitness account. A man named John was caught up in vision to where the very throne of God is, and was shown what things are like there. And, to the best of his efforts, he sat down and wrote it all down for us. We’ll find in the fourth chapter of the Book of Revelation.

And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things says he that is holy, he that is true, he that has the key of David, he that opens, and no man shuts; and shuts, and no man opens[.]

Revelation 3:7 KJ2000

Thus begins the sixth of the seven letters to the seven churches in Asia in the mysterious Book of Revelation. If you haven’t got any background in this, these are found in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation. And what many do not understand is—they’re used to the epistles of the apostle Paul and the epistles of Peter and the epistle of James, and not many realize is that of all the epistles in the New Testament, one of them is the Book of Revelation. It’s a letter. It’s a long letter. And within the long letter are seven letters written to seven churches—real churches on the ground in Asia Minor in the first century. Someone took this letter from John and went to each of these churches, stood before the group and read the letter aloud for them to hear. And John says:

Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

Revelation 1:3 KJ2000

And so it is that this letter, penned by John, contains within it seven letters to seven churches. And they are sent around to be read, not just one letter in each church, but all the letters to each of the churches with special emphases to each one of them.

I’ll never forget the first time I stood on the Mount of Olives and looked out over the old city of Jerusalem, and I wondered why on earth someone would ever fight over the place. I wonder if so much blood has ever been shed over any comparable piece of real estate. Because it has gone on for so long, and so often. It was on that same hill where Jesus spoke further about what Jerusalem could expect.

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

Matthew 24:3–8 KJ2000

I marvel over that, because so many people think that these are signs of the end. But Jesus said, the end is not yet. Nevertheless, I expect you have heard of something called Armageddon. It is a word that has entered our language. It means the site or time of a final and conclusive battle between the forces of good and evil, or the battle taking place at Armageddon. I have been there and stood on the hill of Meggido and looked out across the valley. The place called Armageddon. And, just like with Jerusalem, I wondered, Why here? What for? There are no natural resources to fight over. Not even a strategic location. So I looked in the Bible to see what I could find. Let’s begin in Revelation, chapter 16…

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write, These things saith he that has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works that you have a name that you live, and are dead.

Revelation 3:1

This is from the great Book of Revelation. The speaker, the one who has the seven spirits of God, and holds the seven stars in his right hand is nobody else but the risen Christ. The letter is the fifth of seven letters written to seven churches in Asia Minor, that place you and I call Turkey, late in the first century. They are a part of a vision given to the apostle John who was told to write down everything he saw and heard, and to send this writing, this letter, to these seven churches. They were real churches in real time. They were composed of real people with real problems. They had real lives, they had real names, they knew one another. So if the name of a person was mentioned in a letter, you could kind of look at that person and they would be there right in church with you on this day. But these seven churches were also symbolic of something else.

And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass[.]

Revelation 2:18 KJV

The letter is from Christ, it is addressed to each of them, and has some very important things to say. We’re in the Book of Revelation. These letters are written to real churches, in real time. They’re staffed with real people, who live in real cities, commit real sins, and do real good works. But that’s not all they are. There are seven of them. Seven is the number of completeness in the Bible. It represents the whole. And the Book of Revelation is a book about the day of the Lord. It’s about the end time.

John was in the Isle of Patmos, a prisoner for the word of God for the faith he had professed. And in that time he was transported, in vision, into the day of the Lord; and he saw things which he was told to record and was given these seven letters to write to each of these seven churches. These seven churches are a model of the entire church at the end time.

So, when we read this letter to Thyatira we can see what one first-century church was like, and we can wonder at the state of our church as we approach the return of Christ. The letter continues in Revelation 2, and verse 19…

God doesn’t speak to man very often, so when he does, it pays to listen. This is one of those occasions. John was a prisoner on the island of Patmos. He was in jail, I suppose. He was a political prisoner because of the faith of Jesus Christ for the witness and the testimony he had given. And he was transported in vision, and he heard in vision a great voice behind him and he turned around and saw someone who was so awesome in his appearance that John fell on the ground like a dead man as a result of seeing him. And this one that he saw reached down and picked him up and said, Fear not, I am the first and the last, I am he that lives, and was dead, and, behold, I am alive forever more, and I have the keys of hell and death. Now, if you’re going to know someone with a set of keys, the one who has the keys to hell—that is, the grave—and death is the one to know because he can get you out.

And he continued to say, Write the things which you have seen, and the things that are, and the things which shall be hereafter. All this is in the mysterious Book of Revelation, the first chapter, verses 17 through 19. And this last statement in verse 19, is one of the keys to understanding the Book of Revelation.

I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying, Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.

Revelation 1:9–11 NASB

Thus begins that mysterious book: the Book of Revelation. The one that we look at and wonder, what does all this mean? what are the signs? what are the symbols? how do we understand it? Actually, its relatively simple in places because all it is, is a letter. A letter to seven churches. And the seven churches are named. These are really quite specific in their address. They go to seven and only seven, and one might ask, Why only seven? And, Why these seven? For in truth, there were a number of other churches in Asia at the time this epistle was written. It was written to these churches by name and to no other. Why?

I have to read a lot in preparation for the Born to Win radio program, but most of what I’m finding to read these days is about politics. I have a feeling that we’re all, you and me, getting a politics overload. I would like to walk away from it, but I don’t think I should. There are some important things we need to think about regarding these people who are asking for our votes. We could very easily fall victim to the law of unintended consequences, and we could wind up with something we really don’t want to have.

No offense, but we don’t want someone like you or me running the country. So let’s make a note of this for starters: None of the people we are watching in the political arena are normal folks like you and me. They are people who are obsessed with power; and by virtue of the fact that they are running for the highest office in the land, they are seeking more power. It was Lord Acton who said it, and it’s become true again and again and again: Power corrupts; and everybody knows that the greater the power, the greater the potential (almost the greater the certainty) of corruption.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you and I can afford to walk away and ignore the whole process—wash our hands and say, It is too corrupt, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, because sometimes we are required to vote for the lesser of two evils. I’m even prepared to say that’s what we have to do all the time. I know that doesn’t seem quite right. Christian folk would like to vote for the good, and we’re tempted to think, Well, if I can’t decide for the good. I just won’t decide at all. But you have to decide. You can’t just walk away from it; and more often than not, refusing to decide is the worst decision of all.

The Book of Revelation is a book with a very specific purpose. John who wrote it tells us it is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly come to pass. But, why bother? Why show them things which should shortly come to pass? Well, the logical answer is because he expects you to do something about it. He thinks that If I tell my servants things that are shortly to come to pass, they can be prepared, they can change their lives, they can clean up their act, they can straighten up and fly right.

You know, it’s not a bad idea if God is about to do something drastic to society because things are not going the way they ought to go, and he let you know so you can get yourself straightened up. I think that is something we all could appreciate. So, John wrote all this stuff down that he went through and he wrote a letter to some people about it. And he said that he bore testimony of all the things he saw. And I guess because it was a vision, and it had to do with things he saw, the imagery of the Book of Revelation is highly visual. What John saw was a nightmare. What we want to know about that nightmare is: What does it all mean?

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass[.]

Revelation 1:1 KJ2000

Thus begins the mysterious Book of Revelation. Though, why it should be mysterious remains an open question. After all, it is a revelation. It is expressly given to reveal information about certain things that are going to happen. How would you feel if you received a letter from a friend that said, I’m going to reveal some things in this letter. But when you’ve finished the letter, you really don’t know what he’s talking about.

Why is this Book of Revelation so mysterious?

Well, there are reasons for it. One is that the book is 2,000 years old. It’s written in another language. It’s out of a foreign culture. It’s an account of another man’s visions and dreams. When you think about all those things, why shouldn’t we have some trouble with it, even though it was intended to be clear enough to the people who had first got the book?

Was Jesus a liberal or a conservative? Looking around the political landscape today, you would sort of think that he must have been one or the other because there are people out there who are Christians who would take very strong positions on the political left or right. Since they’re Christians and they’re supposed to be following Jesus, then one of those groups must be wrong about something. Jesus can’t be both places, can he? Now, I feel fairly sure that the words liberal and conservative did not mean the same thing when Jesus was carrying out his earthly ministry as it does today. In fact, today both terms are basically pejorative. I mean, you say somebody’s a liberal, you’re insulting them. If you say he’s a conservative, well that’s putting him down. Well, what do they mean, even today in the political climate? If you go to the dictionary and look them up, you get one definition. If you listen in on the talk shows and pundits, you might get something else.

A conservative defined is supposed to be someone who is disposed to preserve existing conditions and institutions, or to restore traditional ones, or to limit change. Now, when you look at the political landscape, I’m surprised anyone wants to accept the label of conservative—especially Christians. Oh sure, we want to preserve or restore traditional values and institutions. We think traditional morality is a good thing. We think the family is a wonderful thing and we want to preserve and restore those things. But surely we don’t want to preserve the status quo. Nor do we wish to limit change. Surely, not Christians. Conservative is a useless label, frankly, unless we understand what it is we are trying to conserve. You don’t understand what I’m saying? Well, how long has abortion been the law of the land? It’s been that way for a long time now. Now, since that is the status quo, aren’t the people that are fighting to preserve abortion conservative? They are trying to conserve what is, they are trying to conserve this institution of abortion which is now the status quo, the law of the land, what’s expected.

You know, there are a lot of good people in this country that are Democrats and a lot who are Republicans, and Christians, in my opinion, are making a big mistake by sticking out a Christian political position—a position on the political right or the political left. Dedicated Christians are—by nature or in the nature of things—ideologues and, consequently, we just don’t have the pragmatism to work effectively in the political arena. There’s a lot of lying that goes on in there. The people who go in to the political arena and try to tell the truth are very likely to turn themselves into victims. Christians can turn up at the meetings of both political parties. And if they did turn up in both places they might be able to heal some of the terrible political divisions in the country. But the problem is: if you take a look at us Christians in the world, we have to be about the worst peacemakers around. We can’t make peace among one another, why in the world should anyone think that we could ever make peace among political parties? But nevertheless, Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. And if you’re really serious about abortion, the place to deal with it is at the intellectual level in both parties. You will never get anything done about abortion one way or another by making it a party issue. I would think that would be clear by now, but I don’t see any signs of it starting to dawn on anyone.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I am independent politically, as a disciple of Jesus—an evangelist, as it were—as a preacher of Christian values. I don’t feel it’s my job to be in one political party or the other. Now, liberals and conservatives in this world are defined by political values. If you are Republican you are conservative and if you’re a Democrat you’re a liberal, supposedly. But that brings me back to my original question. And this is why I’m not a Republican or a Democrat. What about Jesus? Was Jesus a liberal or a conservative? In the Sermon on the Mount, which has to be the most fundamental of Jesus’ teachings, He had this to say…

What in the world is God doing? I suspect there are those who would say, Not very much. The world looks like God wound it up, started it spinning, and then walked away from it.

And if you should ask, How is the Gospel doing in the world, someone might reply, Not very well. After all, most of the world is not Christian, and never has been. All those dead people who never heard of Jesus in their lifetime—where are they?

Now I realize I am making some people uncomfortable with these questions, but they are honest questions that deserve an honest answer. Paul gives us some insight with his words to Timothy.

One of the most persistent, nagging questions that dogs the Christian faith is called theodicy—the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil. If God is good and all-powerful, how is it possible that he would allow the existence of evil in his world?

You can explain it to people again and again, but somehow the explanations just don’t stick. I think it is because they still cling to the God of their imagination instead of the God they find in the Bible. Oddly, the answer to the question of theodicy is stated in the simplest possible terms in the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Those are two of the most awful words in our language: Liberty and Justice. They are the inseparable twins that define the foundations of man’s relationship with God. Men have liberty, and that means they have the liberty to hurt one another. If they are not free to do evil to one another, then they are not free at all. But liberty can be only destructive if there is no justice. Let’s examine how this is shown in the dialogue between God and Jeremiah, in chapter 19.

I am sitting here reading a document that is 2,600 years old. It reads like the memoirs of man who had an ongoing dialogue with God. Chances are, you have a copy of this same document right there in your home—it is the Book of Jeremiah in your Bible.

God first spoke to Jeremiah when he was just a boy, and he sent him down to the gate of the city to speak to the people who came there to conduct business. The Gate of the city was something like our county courthouse is today. You made your contracts there, transferred property, held trials, and carried out all the legal business of the community. And it was there that Jeremiah had to go and speak In the name of Yehovah. (By the way, I am not a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah is an English rendering of the name of God—Yahweh, in Hebrew, or something close to that.)

It was a very rocky course for Jeremiah, and as he grew in influence, his enemies list grew proportionately. The prophecies were spoken to the men of that generation, but they were written down for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come to quote the Apostle Paul. And in fact, some of Jeremiah’s prophecies seem to be singularly directed at the last days of man on earth. For example, we’ll find an enduring sign between God and his people in Jeremiah, chapter 17.

Sometimes I understand why people don’t like to read the Old Testament prophets. They have an internal image of God as a kind of Grandfather in the sky. It is very comforting to them. And then they read a prophet like Jeremiah, and they come up against a God who is rather unlike the God they imagine.

But it occurs to me that believing in the God of your imagination could be risky business. The God of the Bible does not make impossible demands, but he does make demands. The God of the Bible is gentle, comforting, kind, protective—but he isn’t that way to everyone, all the time.

Let me put it to you this way. God has created the best of all possible worlds. He has placed man in this world and given man the liberty to do what he chooses to do. The problem is that some men choose to do evil to other men, and that is the simple answer to a very difficult question about God’s world. Bad things happen to good people because bad men make bad choices. So where does God enter the picture?

It is a small national conceit that Freedom is an American idea. Nor does Freedom owe its origins to the Greeks, either. Freedom is a singular Christian idea. I can say Christian because the roots of Christianity reach far back into the lives of the patriarchs of the Bible. And the idea of freedom, that lies deep in the desires of every man, was the will of God for mankind.

The Declaration of Independence, the founding document of these United States, acknowledged that the idea of Freedom originated with the Creator. We do hold these truths to be self evident: That all men were created equal and were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

What may dawn on us as we think our way through this is that freedom creates democracy. It is not the other way around. But can you have freedom without democracy? That's what I need to explain next...

As I read through Jeremiah, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m reading his memoirs. Yes, there are things that he has said, speeches he has spoken. Yes, there are the things that God has directed him to tell the people of Jerusalem. But he’s writing it up (after the fact, I think) for the generations that are to come.

I can see the prophet Jeremiah, sitting, alone in his room, perhaps kneeling, and praying. Day after day, he has been going down to the gate of the city. (In our world today, it’s like going down to the courthouse steps.) There he has gone to speak to all the notables and officials who have come to do business—official and unofficial. Time after time, he has told these people what the Lord says…but no one can tell any difference. And as he considers praying for the people one more time, God speaks to him with a different idea.

Then said the Lord to me, Pray not for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and an oblation, I will not accept them: but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.

Jeremiah 14:11–12 AKJV

Would you like to be prophet? The prophets of old had to do some really strange things from time to time. It wasn’t enough for them to just speak the words, sometimes they had to act things out. Ezekiel had a strange job when he had to lie on his side with his face against a model city of Jerusalem one day for every year of Israel’s iniquity (and then lie on the other side for Judah). It was a sign of what was to come. Finally, Ezekiel lost his wife. She died as a sign of what was to come. Do you still think you would like to be a prophet? Because there’s no telling what God may require you to do if you were.

So why did the prophets do those things? Well, part of it was to drive home the point. To give a visual image so people might be more responsive and might remember it longer. We tend to remember something more if we can visualize it. And these were not a literate people. Many could not read, and so the visual image became all the more important to them.

As I read through Jeremiah, I have the growing conviction that we are actually reading here is a series of short summaries of the sermons he preached at the city gates. He had already spoken it to his generation, but it needed to be written down for generations to come. The first episode we find in Jeremiah 13 is based on the image of an ornamental linen sash and the point that God would make with it.

Can God feel disappointment? I know, many believe in the impassibility of God. They believe that God is, by definition of the word, impassable—incapable of suffering or of experiencing pain. You can read the prophets for yourselves, and come to your own conclusions about this. But the story runs something like this: God had, among all the men down here, a friend. He made a deal with that friend that included certain promises and obligations. Those promises were fulfilled when he delivered Israel out of Egypt, put them in a land that flowed with milk and honey, and made them rich and powerful. They were supposed to stand as a beacon to the world around them of a better way of life. They were supposed to be a blessing to the nations around them, not only by good works, but by suppressing evil and offering help—a real gem in the world, an example of God’s generosity and kindness.

At the height of their wealth and power, the hegemony of Israel in the ancient world really was a blessing. And at the height of their wealth and power, they began to forget God. But this didn’t play out as you might think it did. I think some people think that, although the worship of God continued at the temple, there were just shrines erected to other gods here and there around the country. Some people worshiped God, and some worshiped Baal, or Moloch, or Dagon. It was worse than that. They brought the worship of other Gods right into the temple of God. (Go back and look in 2 Kings 23 to see just how bad it became.)

Now, we can imagine a God who is aloof from all this—who, although he punishes for it, is not himself disappointed with it. But that postulates a God very unlike the God who spoke to the prophets. It postulates an impersonal God who cannot be touched. So if you could ask God how he feels about this sort of thing, how do you think he would answer? We don’t have to guess. We know how he felt by the answer he gave one of his prophets in Jeremiah, chapter 11.

Is it really possible for a man to know God? Can a man understand God, or is it just really too high for us? To be sure, there are things about God that are a little tough for us. How can the finite comprehend the infinite? How can you grapple with a God who can just say the word and, out of nothing, create a universe that is 15 Billion light years in every direction?

Men have hung a lot of labels on God that really don’t help very much. They say that God is omnipresent. That is, he is in every tree, every blade of Grass. There is no place where God is not, they tell us. They say he is omnipotent. That there is nothing too great for God. He is powerful beyond anything we can grasp. The say he is omniscient, that is that he knows everything there is to know and maybe some things that aren’t there to know.

But there is something that tends to get lost in all of these omnis: while God is infinite, he is also personal. That while God is or can be wherever he wishes to be, there is a place where God is. And it is the idea of a personal God that has gotten lost in some modern theology. Francis Schaeffer calls him the God who is there. And God said something very important to Jeremiah about this subject— something that gives us a lot of hope and encouragement. I don’t where I would personally be without this short passage and what it tells me. We’ll find in Jeremiah, chapter nine.

In the normal course of things, if a man falls down, he gets back up. If he runs down a wrong track, he will normally retrace his steps and try to find a better way. So what is it that causes men to behave abnormally—to charge on straight ahead in the face of disaster, to be unwilling, having fallen, to get up again? Through Jeremiah, God spoke to Israel and asked the same question.

Say to them, This is what the Lord says: When people fall down, do they not get up? When someone turns away, do they not return? Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? […]

Jeremiah 8:4–5 NIV

Why, indeed? What is the mechanism that locks people into a way that leads them to certain disaster? Well, concluding verse five, God gives an answer: They cling to deceit; they refuse to return. Of course, said I, slapping my forehead. They have lied to themselves about where they are.

I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, What have I done? Each pursues their own course like a horse charging into battle. Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord. How can you say, We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord, when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?

Jeremiah 8:6–8 NIV

What is especially important to know about this passage is that it isn’t good enough to merely be religious. This isn’t talking to an irreligious people. They had the law of God and considered themselves wise in it. And the term scribe is not a reference to copyists. This is a term applied to the Jewish sages—their wise men who interpret the law. If you want to understand what Jeremiah is talking about, perhaps the best place to go is an encounter Jesus had with another generation of these sages. We’ll find it in Matthew, chapter 15.

I used to think that the What Would Jesus Do? movement was a good thing for young people. And it does have merit in helping kids stop and think about the moral issues they face every day. But really, isn’t WWJD? the wrong question? After all, we live in a different world and the best we can do is subjectively guess what Jesus might do living in our culture. A better question might be, What did Jesus say we should do? We know what he said—we don’t have to speculate. Our only problem is whether we are ready to do what he said. If we can just do what Jesus said we should do, we will be a long way down the road on living right.

But WWJD? has merit for kids if, for no other reason, it tells them that what they do makes a difference. I know, you think that should be obvious, but there is a healthy slice of Christianity that doesn’t seem to think so. That is, if the way they live their lives is any indication. You tell me. Are there or are there not, people who claim to be Christian—even go to church regularly—who don’t live the life? You know there are.

Now, anyone should know that outward form of religion is not good enough, but you can’t tell it by the way people live. The form of our religion is important for what it teaches—it gives us shape; it gives us continuity—but it is not enough if the teachings aren’t carried into life. It is a persistent stupidity on the part of men that they rely on place and form for their religion, and forget that the faith of God is about the way we live our lives. I say persistent, because it is one of the recurring and enduring themes of the Old Testament prophets. One day, the word of the Lord came to young man named Jeremiah and he told him to go up to the temple, stand in the gate where the elders would have been gathered, and give them a message. We’ll find it in Jeremiah, chapter 7.

One thing to watch as we approach the end of history is the city of Jerusalem. Notice that I said the end of history, not the end of the world. When I was a kid I used to hear people talk about the end of the world, and I did not like the sound of that one little bit. The expression the end of the world entered our language from a mistake in the King James version of the Bible.

In Matthew 24, Jesus’ disciples ask him about the sign of his coming and of the end of the world. The mistake is the word world. The Greek says that Jesus’ disciples asked him about the end of the age. The return of Christ does not bring the end of the world unless you mean the world as we know it. It mark the end of the age of the kingdoms of this world and the beginning of the age of the Kingdom of God. Also in that chapter is something Jesus told his disciples to watch for—and it is of singular interest:

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

Matthew 24:15–18 KJV

Here we have a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem and a warning to flee the city. That brings us back again to Jeremiah—this time, chapter 6.

There is a very disturbing theme that runs through the Old Testament prophets. It speaks of a complete loss of leadership in a nation. I may groan a lot over the moral decay that afflicts our countries, but I don’t believe we have fallen as far into the abyss as Old Israel had fallen. It would be a mistake to pat ourselves on the back, though, because we are headed pell-mell in the same direction. Jeremiah, chapter 5, begins with this theme:

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in its broad places, if you can find a man, if there is any that executes justice, that seeks the truth; and I will pardon it. And though they say, The Lord lives; surely they swear falsely.

Jeremiah 5:1–2 KJ2000

Just find me one man, says God, one man who wants to do the right thing. All we needed was one man. Perhaps not among the grassroots of society, but particularly among those who are influential—the leaders, the elders. They come into court, raise their right hand, and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…and then they lie through their teeth.

Make no mistake about it, there are people who believe that their holding power is so important, that anything they do is justified to hold on to it. They are the people. They have the right policies. They know what is best for all the rest of us. And they will lie, cheat, and steal to stay in power so they can do good. Day after day, we are shown over and over again the truth of the old saying: Power corrupts.

One of the truly pivotal events of the New Testament church was a conference that took place some 18 years or so after the church began on the Day of Pentecost. It is often referred to as the Jerusalem Conference, and it seems odd in a way that it took this long for it to occur. By most accounts, the year was ad 49.

What was at stake (and it is astonishing to say it) was whether the gospel could continue to go to the gentiles. Think about it. Jesus had said to Go and make disciples of all nations, and yet, for some reason, some people in the church didn't think that should happen. Paul defined the issue in his letter to the church in Galatia. He said that, some 14 years after his conversion, he went up to this conference, along with Barnabas and Titus. All this had to be done because some false brothers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves. Strong words, these, and Paul went on to say, To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

And that defines the issue: whether or not the gospel was intended for Gentiles at all. It seems incredible to us today to imagine that anyone could think that way, but indeed some did. The events that led up to this day started, actually, in the second chapter of Acts…

If you will return, O Israel, says the Lord, return unto me: and if you will put away your abominations out of my sight, then shall you not be moved.

Jeremiah 4:1 KJ2000

If God had a message for this country today, I think this is what he might say. There are a lot of good people in this country who are trying to live a godly life, but they are losing the battle. We just don’t recognize the determination of the anti-God forces in our society. There is a war going on for the minds and spirit of our children, and we are losing battle after battle. The kids may recognize that better than the rest of us do. They are taking steps on their own to maintain prayer and an awareness of God in their lives, and they are sometimes doing so right on the grounds of the very schools that don’t allow prayer.

The social structure of Israel was starting to break down. The nation, so dedicated to God in the beginning, was drifting away. There was a direction for their return. It was to the God who is there, to borrow Francis Shaeffer’s phrase. It was a return to a personal God who cares what we do and don’t do. And the situation was not hopeless. If they would return and get rid of all the idolatrous symbols they had gathered, all would be well. This is what King Josiah was all about—rooting out idolatrous worship, even from the Temple of God—finding the way back to God. And the way back to God is never long, but it is quite specific.

There is an odd thing about the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry. Not only was he very young (he describes himself as only a child) when he was called by God, but the King he served was very young, as well. King Josiah came to the throne at age 8, and Jeremiah began to prophesy when Josiah was 21.

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.

2 Kings 22:1–2 AKJV

It’s talking, at this point, about his overall reign—and overall it was it good one. Josiah had a long reign even though he died young, at age 39. But when he was 26 years old, he embarked on a major restoration of the Temple. Jeremiah’s ministry had started 5 years earlier, and may conceivably have had some influence on Josiah.

He told his men to do an accounting of the money brought to the temple and turn it over the contractors who were doing the refurbishing of the building. While they were doing the work, they made an astonishing discovery. And this discovery caused Josiah see the depths to which the state of religious affairs in Judah had sunk. We’ll find this in 2 Kings, chapter 22.

In all the many years of human civilization, basic human nature hasn’t changed at all. Technology has changed the way we live, but the basics remain the same—and they are remarkably the same across all cultures and all people. Also, down through all the ages of time, God has not changed. So, we human beings go through the same stuff over and over again, never seeming to learn the lessons. This is why history repeats itself. It is why prophecies are fulfilled more than once. It isn’t that God hasn’t told us. He has sent prophet after prophet, but people don’t listen to prophets.

We would like to think that we would listen. But would we? I think one of the reasons people miss the point on prophecy is because they are trying to determine what will happen and when. The prophets are mostly concerned with what is happening and why. There is a genre of literature called apocalyptic which concerns itself with what the future holds. The difference between apocalyptic literature and prophecy is that prophecy is loaded with moral teaching, which is almost entirely absent from apocalyptic literature. In my experience, most people are really interested in apocalyptic and give short shrift to prophecy. Perhaps because the powerful morality of the prophets makes them uncomfortable. It may be that the necessary moral tone of the prophets is why God picks them very young and brings them up the way he wants them. To Jeremiah, God said this:

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.

Jeremiah 1:5–7

If God were going to send us a prophet today, what sort of man would he be? Would he be, perhaps, a rough-hewn, mountain-man type like Elijah—dressed in leather and rising into town on a Harley? Or would he be a smooth, educated orator like Isaiah? Or maybe he would be a man like Jeremiah who gives his name to the Jeremiad, which is defined as a prolonged lamentation or complaint.

Well, if God has sent a prophet today, he is awfully well disguised. And, of course, it is also possible that if we ask God, Where is the prophet? that God might say, I have already sent you prophets. Listen to them. After all, the Old Testament prophets spoke to their own generation about what was going on right then, but then they wrote the prophecies down. Why’d they do that? Well, they wrote them down because history repeats itself and, consequently, so does prophecy, History repeats itself because man doesn’t change and because God doesn’t change. One of the prophets—Isaiah—told us how it works.

Present your case, says the Lord. Set forth your arguments, says Jacob’s King. Bring in your idols to tell us what is going to happen. Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come, tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods.

Isaiah 41:21–23 NIV

I honestly don’t know what the founders of this nation believed about God. But I do have their words to go by. They signed their names—and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor—to a document that began this way:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We have been given and guaranteed certain things by a creator. As King David wrote, we are fearfully and wonderfully made[.]

The human body is a great starting point for coming to understand this creator (it is closest to us, after all). What can we learn about God just by taking a closer inspection of things like our sense of sight? Beyond this, what does God reveal to us through a common tree or a starry, night sky?

Is God really there? Or are we just an accident in the universe, a product of blind chance? Is there no design other than that which natural law provides?

Stalactites and stalagmites grow in caves by the natural process of water seeping through rock and depositing calcium carbonate. They can create some fascinating, even eerie, forms. In one cave, a collection of these in a corner looks enough like a pipe organ that someone gave the formation that name. Although those things may look roughly like a pipe organ in church, it is still only calcium carbonate, formed over time by dripping water (and it makes no music).

A real organ is designed. It is a work of art and craft absolutely unique among Man's inventions. It has a purpose. It follows the laws of nature, but was not created by the laws of nature. But more than that, the organ is a creation designed for creating. It allows for creation to flow from the mind of a Man through his fingers. No one would ever argue that such a beautifully-designed instrument was created by the laws of nature. Nor would anyone ever try to create an organ that did not obey the laws of nature. It would be pointless, because it would allow nothing to be created that was worthwhile.

But Man thinks nothing of arguing that he himself was created by the laws of nature. Nor of arguing that he need not obey the laws of nature. So Man argues that everything, from the universe to the amoeba to Man, evolved over time following the laws of nature. The argument is that the laws of nature are merely properties of matter. And whence cometh the matter…? Well, the matter just is. It originated out of nothing with a big bang.

Now if you can believe all that, don't let me disturb you; because the alternative to that line of thought contains an idea that will boggle the mind. The alternative is that the whole thing—from the universe to the amoeba to Man—was designed by an intelligence that had the power to make it happen. The idea that Man is an accident of the universe, somehow brought into being by blind chance or natural law through evolution, is hateful because it would mean that life has no meaning at all. And I am reasonably sure that the persistent teaching of evolution down through the years has so eroded the morality of our people that they are completely lost. A kind of advanced utilitarianism now guides the thinking of so very many people. Utilitarianism is a seven syllable word that simply asks the question, Is it useful. You know the word: Utility. The SUV—sports utility vehicle—is a byword in our society today; and the word utility simply means, fitness for some purpose, or worth to some end. Philosophy has elevated utility to a religion, by adding an -ism and calling it Utilitarianism.

Professor Lawrence Hinman, in a series of lectures, lists what he calls the three basic insights of Utilitarianism: The purpose of morality is to make the world a better place. Morality is about producing good consequences, not having good intentions. We should do whatever will bring the most benefit to all of humanity. He then lays out the purpose of morality: The utilitarian has a very simple answer to the question of why morality exists at all. The purpose of morality is to guide people's actions in such a way as to produce a better world. Consequently, the emphasis in utilitarianism is on consequences, not intentions.

Now you don't have to have a PhD to realize that philosophy is offering you an alternative to religion, an alternative to God. Do you see any problems with this idea as presented? It is the absence of an answer to the question, Why? Why should I concern myself with what brings the most benefit to humanity if it costs me more than I want to pay? Why can't I just do what benefits me the most, what works for me? Sure, I need to be concerned about consequences to me, but why should I care about the consequences to Africa except as they might later affect me? And further, what may be the biggest what if question of all...

Many years ago, in the middle of a theological argument about what is required for the saving of a man's soul, I formulated another of what I call Dart's Laws. This one is, simply stated: Disillusionment Is Necessary for Redemption.

I have little doubt that many of you have experienced disillusionment at one time or another in your life. The mentor relationship is a classic example, as the protégée thinks his mentor has the answer to everything. A careless mentor may allow this sort of error to grow if he doesn't make it clear that he is not infallible. Sometimes, when the protégée comes to realize that his mentor has feet of clay, he enters what some call The BOOM years: in other words, becoming one's own man.

Two other classic examples of religious gurus come to mind. They occurred right around the same time. Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, both got caught in compromising situations and were branded as hypocrites. A lot of people got disillusioned about that time. One wonders about the followers of Jim Jones in Guyana who woke up suddenly to realize that the man was a suicidal maniac. For some of them, there was no time for the redemption that can follow disillusionment. There are more examples in politics than I have time to enumerate.

There is one more thing you should know about illusions. I learned this the hard way, and I am giving it to you free. You have no one but yourself to blame. We accept illusions because they give us something we want, need, or think we need. Usually without paying for it. And this may explain why disillusionment comes so hard. People will fight for their illusions. They will defend them to the bitter end. Let's take a look at what God told Jeremiah to tell ancient Israel when they were desperately clinging to their own illusions.

If God in his wisdom were to send a prophet to us today—to stand on the courthouse steps and preach to us like Jeremiah did to the ancient Israelites—what do you suppose that prophet would have to say? What would his message be?

In the first place, the mere presence of a prophet is reason to become apprehensive. God does not usually send a prophet to tell us how well we are doing. He figures that when we do things right, we aren’t really earning any points. We are just doing the best thing for ourselves. There is no reason to send someone to pat us on the head. So, when the prophet shows up and begins to speak, it is time for us to take notice.

I think God might tell that prophet to begin by telling us something like this…

Jesus Christ was no fortune-teller. He didn't go around giving people the answers to future Trivial Pursuit questions. Like all real prophets, he gave knowledge of the future for two reasons. One: so you could do something about it. If you know something is coming, you can dodge, you can change your life. Two: so you can understand what is happening to you when it happens. Life would have meaning.

But Jesus emphasized one side of the prophet's work above the other. The primary object, really, of the prophet's message is our salvation. In old times, it might have been to save yourself from being bottled up in a besieged city; that's the idea behind Jesus' warnings in Matthew 24. Or it may have been to save your life, save you some pain, save you some suffering. That's generally the point of the prophet's message—tell you what's going to happen so you can change it—or, put another way, repent so you can live.

Now, I am going to tell you something that's a little hard to understand. And it's hard to understand, to some degree, by the way the Bible is written. Prophecy is not so much what God is going to do to us because of our sins (which it the way a lot of prophecy reads) but about what our sins are going to do to us.

If you’ve ever settled down to read the Old Testament prophets, and as you read you haven’t found anything that affects the way you live your life, you’re reading the prophets all wrong. I have said that there are only two reasons why God would ever tell us anything about the future. (Why should he? What right do we have to know what is going to happen tomorrow?) But he does tell us. One reason is so we can do something about it. We can change our lives, or maybe run for our lives if need be. Maybe we can even change the outcome. Secondly, so we can understand events as they happen and see God’s hand in history. He has a point whenever he send a prophet along.

Real prophets don’t make comfortable reading. In fact, they can be depressing at times. But there’s a short passage in Ecclesiastes where wise old Solomon said:

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

Ecclesiastes 7:2–3 KJ2000

And in one of his proverbs he said:

Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.

Proverbs 4:23 KJ2000

There’s a lot of tragedy in the prophets, and a lot of death and destruction, a lot of fear—people hiding out in rocks and caves. But, you know, in spite of all the tragedy, it is a place where the heart is made better. I feel sorry for those who spend all their time in the prophets trying to outline the future—to chart the course of future events—because when they are preoccupied with prediction, they are missing the life-changing message of the prophecy. You can do a lot of work, put together charts, line it all out—documented and footnoted in every detail—and then…everything can be changed.

When you sit down to read an Old Testament prophet—like Isaiah or Jeremiah; Hosea or Amos—and as you read along you get a distinct impression that, Hey, this guy is writing about the end time, and it sounds an awful lot like the time I’m living in! When you get that feeling, how do you know where the prophecy is directed? In other words, who is he talking about? Does it apply to you, your nation, your people? Is there some way of identifying people in the modern world as they might be spoken about by, say, Hosea?

Well, there are four basic ways that people are identified in the Old Testament prophets. The first two we will look at are ancestry (that is, their ethnic roots) and geography (the land they occupy). The second of these is simple enough—land itself doesn’t move around much—but people do migrate, and at times it is not easy to determine where these people went. Take, for example, a much-quoted prophecy from Daniel 11:

And at the time of the end shall the king of the south attack him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass through. He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and most of the children of Ammon. He shall stretch forth his hand also against the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

Daniel 11:40–42

Real prophets are not always bad news. Oh, they have the unpleasant task of telling it like it is, telling us where we're wrong, calling upon us to change, and telling us what is going to happen when we don't. But at the end of the day, for a real prophet, there's hope. Last time, I pointed out some benchmarks to look for when you're reading the Old Testament prophets–how you can see in the day of the Lord and great tribulation and heavenly signs the things that give you clues to the things this real prophet is talking about. But I left out the best benchmark of all.

There are times when I feel like Elijah in his cave. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about—it’s a really important story, and there’s some things about it you may not understand.

Elijah was a man of very few words. He made one prophecy of disaster, composed of a mere 25 words or less, and then disappeared. That’s all we hear from him up to this point. He’s gone. There was, it turns out, no point in saying a word more. The people, from the king to the man in the street, were not capable of absorbing an intellectual argument. The only thing they would be able to understand was an object lesson. They got one. It came in two parts.

First, there was a terrible drought. No rain, not even dew on the grass for 42 months. They were searching for Elijah high and low because he said there would not be dew nor rain these years except by my word. The stress this put on society was profound, and it weakened the power of the king who, though he could do a lot of things, couldn’t make it rain. I can’t help drawing a comparison with the government today, that promises to do everything for us. And I think they believe they can do it. That they are delusional doesn’t matter. They will try, but there will be no rain. Then, at the end of 3 and a half years, Elijah returned to the scene, met the king, and proposed a test.

Read the article Ron quotes from, Does Ideology Trump Facts? Studies Say It Often Does by Jonathan M. Gitlin, here.

How can you tell when an Old Testament prophet is writing about the end time? You know, there’s so much stuff in those prophecies, as you read through them, and a lot of it seems really old and out of date—dealing with another time and another place and another kind of people. Actually, much of the time these prophets are writing about the end time. But I do think that, in many cases, they didn’t know it. And their prophecies are couched in more contemporary terms, subjects, and circumstances. But it forms a pattern that then somehow makes a transition; and suddenly, without even realizing it, you’re talking about the end time.

But the problems for the serious reader of the Old Testament prophets are: How do know where you are, where to draw the lines, what it past, and what is future? Well, there are some benchmarks that sometimes help us; there are little places in prophecy that stand out; there are times and seasons and occasions and events that are unmistakable. Jesus mentioned one of these benchmarks in his Olivet Prophecy in Matthew 24 and 25. This was the day his disciples had marveled at the buildings of the Temple. When Jesus responded that not one stone of them that would not be thrown down, his disturbed disciples asked him for signs of his coming and the end of the age. In his answer, he gave them some things to think about. One of them is in verse 15:

When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoever reads, let him understand:) Then let them who are in Judea flee into the mountains: Let him who is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: Neither let him who is in the field return back to take his clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that nurse a child in those days! But pray you that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.

Matthew 24:15–21 KJ2000

This had already happened once, before Jesus gave the prophecy. He made it very clear that was going to happen yet one more time. And then suddenly, when you’re reading along, you realize that he isn’t just talking about something happening in AD 70—he’s talking about the end time. He is talking about a time that will be unique in history—there will never have been a time like it before and it will never be repeated again. It is a benchmark. And when you see the Old Testament prophets start to talk about this same time, you have a clue as to where they are coming from and (perhaps more importantly) where they are going.

Real prophets are not always nice people. As I read the Bible, I sometimes think that the prophets are like tools in God’s toolbox—when he wants a hammer, he picks up a prophet that’s sort of like a hammer; when he wants a wrench he picks a tool that is most like a wrench. Now, tools are not naturally beautiful—they have a utilitarian beauty, but they are not works of art. And I would have to confess, neither were the prophets works of art.

Elijah was a hairy man who wore leather. He was blunt to the point of rudeness. And one suspects that God chose him because his appearance and his manner fit the message he intended to send. He had no desire to send along Mr. Nice Guy, he wanted the whole package—appearance, voice, sound, manner, style of presentation, and dress—to all go together with the message. It’s hard to imagine a prophet riding up on a motorcycle, looking like a Hell’s Angel; but you put Elijah in the clothes, and set him on a Harley Davidson, and he would probably look like one of the gang (minus the tattoos). Elijah was probably an intimidating personality. (Now that I think about it, if he was living today he might even have had the tattoos.)

When you understand this, it is just as hard to imagine a prophet in a tailor-made suit, smelling of manly cologne. They’re human and they fit what God wants them to do. Real prophets are not always strong people. Whatever strength they have comes from God, and when he is not there they can be just as frightened as anybody else. Elijah called down fire from heaven. But a few days after that, he was fleeing for his life from a woman named Jezebel. He had absolute faith that God would answer his request for fire, but later was so discouraged that he asked God to take away his life.

Real prophets can also make a mess of things—they can sin; they can set a bad example. It’s important to remember that prophets are not leaders, they are messengers. And there’s another thing: they are usually not insiders. If fact, one of the very early prophets was not even an Israelite. His name was Balaam, and he is a curious case. We’ll begin his story in Numbers, chapter 22.

They say that history repeats itself; and I’ll have to admit it seems to be true. Actually, there are two perfectly good reasons why history would repeat. Number one: human nature doesn’t change. Number two: God doesn’t change. So in spite of all the changes in technology, man still has the same needs, the same hopes, the same fears, the same lusts. So, we make the same mistakes, over and over again. And God responds to those mistakes the same way, over and over again. But before God does respond, he always sends a prophet—a real prophet, not a fortune-teller, not someone with a lot of guesswork. He actually talks with someone, gives them a messages, and says, Go tell them. There’s an interesting little passage in Amos that goes this way:

Surely the Lord God will do nothing, unless he reveals his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion has roared, who will not fear? the Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy?

Amos 3:7–8 KJ2000

Once God speaks to you, says Amos, you have to prophesy. But, really, until God speaks to him, a prophet—a real prophet—has nothing to say. So, why would God bother, then, to speak to a prophet? Why does he tell a prophet what is going to happen? It’s certainly not for our entertainment. It’s not for us to sit around a table, like with fortune cookies, and joke and laugh about them. The reason why God reveals the future will be a surprise, I think, to a lot of people. You may want to listen to this carefully. God reveals the future to give us a chance to change the future. If you can read the Old Testament prophecies with this principle in mind, you’ll have gone a long way to understanding what the Bible is all about.

Real prophets do not read tea leaves. They do not tell the future by looking at your palm. And you’ll never catch a real prophet studying astrological charts for insight. Well, then, how do they do see the future? The answer is simple: they don’t. A real prophet just minds his own business until God speaks to him. And when God speaks to him, it is a transforming experience. There’s a classic example of this in one of the truly great writing prophets; his name is Isaiah.

There’s a distinction, you know, between the oral prophets and the writing prophets. Elijah, as far as we know, wrote nothing. His prophecies were for the time and the people who were at hand. But there’s a group of prophets who not only spoke to their generation, they wrote the prophecies down. And when you realize the significance of that fact, you begin to see that these were written for posterity—for succeeding generations—because they had a message, they had something to say to the generations that were to come. Isaiah wrote down his experiences for us, and his first encounter with God is found in Isaiah, chapter 6. Isaiah was in the temple when it happened.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?

And I said, Here am I. Send me!

Isaiah 6:1–8 NIV

Do you suppose it’s possible that we would ever have a real prophet show up in our country? You know, like Elijah, Isaiah, or Jeremiah—one of those guys. Someone who would tell us the truth about what we are doing, where we are going wrong, and where it would finally take us? If a prophet really came, would we pay him any mind?

I don’t mean will the politicians in Washington pay him any mind. What about you and me? Of course, for a man to be a genuine prophet, he has to have a reputation as a prophet. He has to be recognizable. He has to be believable. People who claim to be a prophet are a dime a dozen. How can you know for sure? Well, it can’t be a matter of guesswork. It has to be based on something real.

Take Elijah, for example. Why should anyone have paid attention to Elijah? It certainly wasn’t his appearance. He was a hairy man and wore a leather girdle. I expect he would have looked right at home on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. And it wasn’t elegance of speech. It is hard to imagine a preacher with fewer words. But what words they were. Let’s hear his message to King Ahab in 1 Kings 17.

I suspect the months leading up to the year 2000 saw more prophecies than any comparable period since, well, the last time they moved into a new millennium. But they weren’t really prophecies; they were just predictions. What’s the difference, you may ask? Well, predictions are not expected to be perfect—they are made on scientific data, like weather predictions or stock market predictions—and they can be wrong. Prophecy (at least, by real prophets) is made under divine inspiration—they speak on behalf of God. They are supposed to be infallible.

Now, how are you supposed to tell if a prophet is telling you the truth or not? How can you tell if he’s a real prophet or just a false prophet, or a predictor, astrologer, or whatever else it may be? Well, if you’re talking about God, then the place to go is the Bible, obviously. There are two interesting statements in the Bible (in the Law of God, specifically) dealing with how you answer this question I just asked: How do you know if a prophet is telling the truth or not? With all the modern-day prophecies we are hearing, these could be useful bits of information. The first one is found in the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy. Here, Moses speaking on behalf of God warns:

But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.

Deuteronomy 18:20–22 KJV

We were eating in a Chinese restaurant some time ago, and I noticed something funny about my fortune cookie. On the back of the fortune (which, I think, said I was going to have a good year) it had a series of numbers. It was only the second or third time I saw those numbers there that I realized what they were. There were six, two-digit numbers—lottery numbers. How exciting! Here, within my fortune cookie, are the winning numbers for this week’s lottery. And I’ll bet a lot of people actually go out and buy a lottery ticket based on those numbers, given to them by a cookie. There were eight people at my table that night, and all eight of us had different numbers. All 80 people in the restaurant probably had different numbers. I can’t think of anything, really, that better illustrates the stupidity of fortune-telling.

You know, somewhere, someday, by the sheer weight of probability, someone is going to get a winning set of numbers out of a fortune cookie—and they will forever believe that they won because the fortune cookie told them what was going to be. They’ll tell their friends. It may never occur to them that the cookies were wrong five million times and right once. The people who make fortune cookies know that they are nothing but entertainment. We’ll get a laugh out them and pass them around to fit a fortune with a person—but they usually fit everyone in some way. All around the country, you’ll find astrology columns in the newspapers. Try to pin down the truth from any astrologist and they’ll tell you it is all for entertainment, as well. None of you really take it seriously, do you?

The hunger to know the future is so strong that people make real-life decisions based on the star charts and readings of astrologers, and based upon the predictions of psychics and others. Do you remember when Orange County, California—one of the richest counties in America—went bankrupt? You may or may not have heard what happened: the man who was investing their money was consulting a mail-order astrologist and a psychic for interest rate predictions—losing $1.6 billion of public money. He was not alone in wanting to know the future; we all want to know it sometimes. Last year, Americans spent over $300 million calling psychic hotlines. But there is one thing that is very important for you to know about the future. And if you know it, it will save you a lot of money, heartache, and frustration—and probably from making some bad mistakes based upon other people’s advice.

Is God a time traveler? How does God know the future? I know the question sounds a little silly. After all, God is God and he knows everything, right? But hold on a second; let’s develop that question a little bit. It may not be as silly as it sounds. In fact, this question is one of the most important questions you can ask about the future. Is God a time traveler? Does he run forward in time and see all the things that are there and then return and tell us mortals what there are? Or does he merely see the future on something like a cosmic television set. Someone once said that prophecy is history written in advance. Is that true? Well, let me see if I can explain the problem connected with it: if God is a time traveler, or if he merely sees the future, or if prophecy is history written in advance, that means that the future already exists; the timeline is all written out. Otherwise, how could it possible be known?

So the future is all there and written out. Every one of your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren are already known. Isn’t that interesting? It sounds good, doesn’t it? However, along with that is the fact that one of your grandchildren will get drunk one night, load five of his friends into his car, and then drive head-on into an 18-wheeler…well, that’s all written down, too. And there’s not a thing in the world that you can do to stop it—if the future already exists. The fact that the Nazis would create death camps in Eastern Europe and then gas millions of Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and mental defectives was all written in advance—and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

When you think about it this way, it’s really a small wonder that some people become angry and disillusioned with God. They want to know why God wrote the future that way when he could have written it another way. It’s just another way of saying, Why did God let it happen? And if prophecy is history written in advance, then what’s the point of all this? Don’t you think it gets a little boring for God knowing exactly what’s going to happen? And since it is already written out, well, there’s nothing he can do about it—nothing we can do about it. And why should we worry about the decisions we make? If we make a bad one, it wasn’t our fault—it was written in advance. The whole idea of divine forgiveness becomes a mockery: it was written that we should sin, and if it wasn’t our fault why would we need forgiveness? But what if it is not that way? What if the future does not exist? What if the future is being written, one day at a time, by the choices that human beings make?

Unless you have just recently arrived from outer space, you have probably heard of Nostradamus. The odds are you don’t know very much about him; you may have heard that he made a lot of predictions or prophecies and that some of them have come true. And the presumption is that those that haven’t come true—well, those must be somewhere out in the future and have yet to take place. Let me see if I can get you into the picture on Nostradamus.

He was born in France, of Jewish parents, in 1503. In his lifetime, the Inquisition was active and very hard on Jews. The approach to trying to convert the Jews in those days was fairly simple: you brought them in, showed them the instruments of torture, threatened to burn them at the stakes, and gave them the choice to accept Catholicism or die. It’s a very effective technique of evangelism; the Muslims used it throughout the known world, in their day. And so, Nostradamus’ Jewish parents converted to Catholicism when he was nine. He became a highly intelligent, well-educated man and a physician. In the process, he also became an astrologer and a clairvoyant. He’s been called a prophet by some writers, but that’s an inexcusable bit of ignorance on their part. There is a wide gulf between a prophet on the one hand and an astrologer or clairvoyant on the other. Nostradamus will serve us well as an example of the latter two.

His work exists in collections of ten sets, each containing 100 four-line poems. His predictions are written in highly symbolic language. They are also in archaic French, with a number of other old languages mixed in—so they are very difficult to translate and just as difficult to interpret. With all the peculiar metaphors, figures of speech, and even unknown terms that are in them, the interpreters have a lot of latitude in expounding one of Nostradamus’ quatrains. For example, the following could have any number of possible meanings:

The sloping park, great calamity,
Through Hesperia and Lombardy;
The fire in the ship, plague and captivity,
Mercury in Sagittarius, Saturn fading.

So, through sometimes rather creative interpretation, some of Nostradamus’ predictions have come to pass. So is he a prophet? What are we to make of astrologers, clairvoyants, and the like? Well, not much. First, let’s consider Dart’s First Law of Prediction…

Years ago, in watching the three memorial services for Ronald Reagan, and all the formality that went with them, I found myself strangely touched. There were several moments when I had a lump in my throat. I thought it was altogether fitting and right to have such a memorial for one of the great presidents of the greatest and most powerful nations the world has ever seen.

People will argue about Reagan’s place in history. Frankly, I think it is folly to try to rank all the presidents. Washington and Lincoln had to face utterly unique situations, and so they were utterly unique presidents. But what I’m talking about in my message today is not about the presidents. It is about the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in history. I know, in their own days, Greece and Rome were great and powerful. And the British Empire at its peak was indeed a great empire on which the sun never set. These were nations that created empires.

There is no American Empire, however, because Americans have never wanted one. In our history, Americans have mainly wanted to be left alone. Left alone to build families and businesses. Left alone to live and enjoy life. Fortunately (or unfortunately) history has not left us alone. And, as I watched the greatest nation bury one of her greatest presidents, I was overwhelmed with an awareness of how great and powerful this nation has become. And some questions grew in my mind: To what do we owe our greatness as a people? Are there any obligations that go with that greatness, that power?

We have two sources of information about God. First, we have his revelation of himself in the Bible. Second, we have God’s revelation of himself in the creation. From those two witnesses we have a glimpse into the entirety of God’s plan—from now all the way back to the beginning.

Let’s think the unthinkable for a moment. The first words of the Gospel of John tell us that in the beginning, the Word already was. It did not come into existence in the beginning, it just simply was. What I want us to think about today, though, is the time before the beginning. (I warned you that I wanted us to think the unthinkable.)

So, is there anything from these two witnesses that we can use to better understand what happened before the beginning?

In any age, and under all conditions, men and women of God have serious responsibilities. In sickness or in health, in poverty or in wealth, we have a job to do. Perhaps you don’t think of yourself that way—as a man of God. But if you take his name upon you—if you are a Christian or a Jew—you are his man, his woman, and you are where you are for his purpose. Jesus, in his first recorded sermon, told his listeners:

You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost its savor, how shall it be salted? it is thereafter good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under a bushel, but on a lamp stand; and it gives light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

Matthew 5:13–16 KJ2000

I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but this is a serious responsibility he has laid upon us. We’re not just here for ourselves. We’re not just going through this exercise for ourselves. We’re going through it for him and for the light we shine toward other people. I would think that our age is far from the most challenging that men of God have ever faced, but it may be more pivotal than we might think. I think we are standing on the cusp of history—a knife edge between two worlds. What, then, must we do?

Sometimes, when I am studying the Bible, I find myself faced with a mystery. What on earth was God saying or doing on this occasion and what does it mean? Someone once complained about this wondering why God hid things from us. Why, he wanted to know, doesn’t God come right out and tell us plainly so we don’t have to guess? I have two things to say about that:

One: How plain does God have to be? What part of Thou shalt not steal do we not understand? The truth is, the Ten Commandments are a plain, unambiguous statement of how we should live our lives. Two: When you have found your own way to an answer to a difficult question, you are far more likely to remember it. And I could add a third: God loves a mystery.

We should understand that well enough. There are people who take great pleasure in designing crossword puzzles that drive us crazy. But there may be a more serious side to this. There is a rather difficult passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans that reveals something unexpected. Here, Paul is trying to sort his way through a vexing problem. Let’s take a look beginning in Romans, the 11th chapter.

Like every American I have read and heard the Gettysburg Address more times than I can recall. I had the singular misfortune not to be required to memorize it when I was in school, because U.S. News was right when they featured a brand new book about the Gettysburg Address and called it the greatest speech in American history. And, in one of the truly great ironies of speeches, it was only two 272 words. Seven sentences—the greatest speech in American history. The book U.S. News was featuring is titled The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech that Nobody Knows, by Gabor Boritt. The title is another irony. How can the Gettysburg Address be the Lincoln speech that nobody knows?

Sometime ago I watched the movie Gettysburg and was riveted by the story, the battle, how it was fought and I was sickened at the tragic loss of life. Why, I wondered, do these march in straight lines across an open field with no cover, under Union cannon fire. It made no sense. And then when they came within rifle range, the Union soldiers were cutting them down like wheat and they just kept on coming until finally a few of them got through. I didn’t learn until I watched the extras that came with the DVD I was watching, that I was witnessing an effect that is now understood by military planners: tactics and strategy (that is the way you go about war and fighting the battles) always lag behind technology. The South was following a tried-and-true tactic for advancing against musket fire. You know, a musket was a smooth-bored gun. The bullets came out of there, not spinning, but just static in terms of that and it buffeted as it went out into the air. The result of this was that you could hardly have any idea of where the thing was going to strike when it finally did strike. Well, maybe a little bit, but not much. And, of course, it would not have had the impact. But the Union soldiers were using guns with rifled barrels. That meant it gave the ball a spin coming out of the barrel which extended both the range, the accuracy, and the impact of the ball when it got where it was going. So, the South was marching out with musket tactics against rifles.

But I still had very little feeling for what really happened on that day. I could see it in a movie; it was sickening in the movie. But Boritt begins his book, not with the battle, but with the aftermath in the town of Gettysburg.

When the framers of our American constitution first gathered, they faced a fundamental question. The question was not merely, Can we create a free republic? The question was, Can we create a free republic that will remain free? Those men knew their history, and they knew that history was against them. The first step in gaining freedom was past—it was the American Revolution. They had step two before them—writing a constitution. But the biggest challenge lay beyond their horizon—sustaining freedom. And law is not enough to sustain it.

We believe in the rule of law in this country. It is carefully drawn as a distinction from the rule of a king. What we haven’t really considered is that the law can become just as tyrannical as a king. How does it happen? Well, just look at how the courts are interpreting the law nowadays. We are no longer being governed by all the people, but by the law as interpreted by a few judges. And what is guiding the judges—the constitution, or the customs of the time? According to Os Guinness:

[The framers] knew their history in a way many modern political leaders to their shame don’t. If you have a corruption of customs […] the Constitution itself will be subverted. People will follow the same laws, but with a different rationale, and you’ll see a steady decline. What was the Framers’ solution to this? Many people think it’s the Constitution and law. It isn’t. That’s only half the answer. The other half is quite clear and incredibly overlooked today, even among scholars. It’s what I call the Little Triangle of Assumptions.

Os Guinness - Speech at the Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC

I remember first seeing the movie The Ten Commandments in the theater over 50 years ago. One of the things I remember from the film was the stentorian voice pronouncing: proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. I recall thinking how awkward the King James English was in the picture at that point.

I knew it was a citation from the Bible. What I did not know at the time was that the sentence was engraved on the Liberty Bell, cast in 1753. But I think those writing the script of the movie knew it well enough—and the connection was deliberate. The dominant theme of the movie was liberty.

And, while one might not pick up on it at first, it is plain enough: You can’t just free the slaves and guarantee liberty for them. It was the Ten Commandments that formed the foundation and pillar stones of liberty for those newly freed. That’s why James writes this in the New Testament…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights[.]

Declaration of Independence

The founding fathers stated in the first official document of our nation that our rights and our freedoms are granted, not by men, but by God. And we laid the foundation of the laws of this nation on those rights. In a way, we made a covenant with God in our founding.

Through the years of our history, we have become the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And unlike the great empires of the past, our nation has a commitment to freedom and the rights of man—rights we declared were given by God.

We need to consider the obligations that fall to us with the wealth and the power we have in our hands. When you have the power, the means in your hand to do something about the freedom of a people, how can you withhold your hand from giving it?

What’s really going on in the world? And what is this War on Terror really about. When you get to the basics, what people call terrorism is actually a war against the spread of freedom. The war is being waged by the enemies of freedom. Their motive? They are mortally afraid. What are they afraid of? Well, freedom of course.

They think we are the problem, and that’s why they struck the World Trade Center. They want us to stop the invasion of what they call western values into their world. But we can’t stop it. We aren’t the cause of it, merely the harbinger. We are no more the cause of freedom than the first robin on your lawn is the cause of spring. We aren’t the cause of Freedom—God is. And their own people are beginning to demand freedom and the enemies of freedom are deathly afraid.

The criminals who are behind all the death and destruction in the name of Allah are afraid of liberty in the same way, and for the same reason, that the Jewish establishment feared Jesus. Here was a man who could step up to a man born blind and make him see; a man who could heal a withered arm, could heal a woman of a flow of blood that no one else could stop, could even bring back to life a man who had lain dead for four days; a gentle man, soft spoken, harmless. And the Jerusalem establishment wanted to kill him. Why?

If power corrupts (and we know it does) and absolute power corrupts absolutely, how is it that God has not been corrupted? This is one of the old and popular challenges that unbelievers like to toss out to Christians. Actually, it is a perfectly legitimate question, and the answer to it opens the door to understanding and resolving a wide range of issues relative to God and the Bible.

It was Lord Acton who coined the statement about power, and I am beginning to understand why it is so. And perhaps why the founders of this country were so dedicated to the balance of powers, and preventing the centralization of power. There is now, and long has been, a struggle between power and freedom. I think it is fair to say that there is enmity between power and freedom. Freedom is a threat to power, and power is a threat to freedom. It has always been so.

Why, then, does God not become corrupted by power? The answer is relatively simple, but for some reason, people don’t see it. God has a goal in mind that requires freedom for all concerned. Surely we can all understand how having an over riding objective tends to diminish every other consideration. So what is that objective? Before I answer that question, I want to talk about the issue of freedom. It has been very much on my mind of late, because I fear a considerable loss of freedom is in the works for mankind—if present trends continue. To explain this, at the risk of boring you, I have to go back to the beginning.

As I watch the way our government is changing, I can’t help thinking back to a time when man enjoyed maximum freedom under God. The story is in the Bible, of all places, and it describes, of all things, a theocracy. Many nowadays worry that Christians want to establish a theocracy in this country, but they needn’t worry. You can’t establish a theocracy in a country that doesn’t recognize God. In the Bible, the story of the theocracy (and its end) is told through the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel.

It began, ironically, with another freeing of slaves—in that case, the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. If you think about it very long, you’ll know that you can’t just grant men Liberty by setting them free. Merely freeing the slaves leads only to anarchy. To really be free requires an internal commitment to the rule of law, and the only law that can guarantee Liberty is the Law of God.

So, God brought Israel out of Egypt and 50 days later, spoke to them all from the slopes of Mount Sinai. What did he have to say? He gave them what the Bible calls his testimony—Ten Commandments. The people were frightened beyond measure at the display of power, but they agreed to the words of the Ten Commandments and voluntarily entered covenant with God as their king. It was this law, and God, that guaranteed their liberty, and that is why James, in the New Testament, calls it the Law of Liberty. It is a long and difficult story through the conquest of Canaan and the establishment of the nation. But fundamental to the nation and the economy were the same principles that guided the fathers of this country.

Is there such a thing as the unpardonable sin? It’s a disturbing idea—that there might be something I could do that could never be forgiven. And, since I have had the question in last day or so, I thought I might tell you what I know about it. It is, I think, rather more complicated than a set of a few proof texts commonly quoted and explained. Let me start with what God is really like.

The images people carry around in their heads about God often bear little resemblance to the real God of creation and the Bible. To some, God is a kind of grandfather in the sky. Not really a Father, because a father is more immediate and judgmental. No, a grandfather is better, because they let you get away with more stuff. I might despair of really understanding God if it weren’t for some revealing statements in the Bible. Take this quote from Jeremiah, for instance.

Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.

Jeremiah 9:23–24 KJV

The conscience is the inner sense of what is right and what is wrong in our conduct and our motives. It’s supposed to be that guiding light that says, You should feel good about this act. You should feel awful about that one. It’s that sense which impels us towards the right kind of actions. It’s that complex of moral and ethical principles that controls or inhibits our actions and thoughts. And, when that’s gone or corrupted, how are you going to live your live? It is possible that we’ve brought up a generation of kids with no conscience, no shame?

Let’s talk about this for a minute. A generation with no conscience will be governed by what? Well, it won’t be governed by any sense of right and wrong. What’s left is that they will be governed by what they can get away with. If nobody will find out about what we have done, it isn’t necessarily wrong. If it doesn’t hurt me, cause me any problems, or get me in trouble than it isn’t something I have to be concerned about.

All rules are then external. If we can get around them, to our benefit and without getting caught or punished, it’s okay for us to do that. Right and wrong conduct, then, will be directed by the odds of getting caught against the possible gain from the crime—a simple punishment/reward ratio. Is that what we’ve come to? No conscience—just a question of what works and what doesn’t.

In doing research for a book I was writing, I came across something that was new to me, and likely new to you as well—unless perhaps you are an observant Jew. I was browsing the book titled Judaism when Christianity Began by Jacob Neusner, and the chapter that dealt with the coming of the Messiah naturally caught my eye. In it, I found that the Jews believe something I didn’t know they believe.

(Before I discuss it, I should note that Neusner is writing about Rabbinic Judaism, with the full awareness that there are other sects of Judaism. It is almost as risky to say that Jews believe something as it is to say that Christians believe a given dogma.) That caution considered, here is one sentence that stopped me in my tracks. It is the first sentence in a section titled, The Messiah. Neusner wrote this: When Israel really wants the Messiah to come, he will come.

It is a stunning idea. Here we are as Christians, looking for the second coming of the Messiah (and the Jews are out there waiting for the first) and the suggestion is offered that it hasn’t happened because we really don’t want it badly enough. And, you know, there is a part of me that tends to agree with that. Remember what Jesus told his disciples on that occasion when they asked him to teach them to pray? Here is how to pray, he said:

[…] Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Matthew 6:9–10 KJ2000

It is the first request in the Lord’s prayer: Thy kingdom come. But if you adopt one aspect of a Christian point of view, the prayer seems pointless. Let me explain what I mean.

What do you do when you cut loose from God? How do you live, what guides your decisions? How can you tell right from wrong? And when you think about it, who consciously cuts loose from God. Does anyone say, I don’t care about God, I’m going to dump him? Maybe, but those are generally out on the fringe somewhere. Let me show you a more pertinent example of how it might happen. It’s from Moses’ last sermon to Israel:

See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people." What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Deuteronomy 4:5–9 NIV

Do you have any idea of how this very idea played out in the founding of this country? We were to be a nation of laws, under the rule of law, not of a king. And don’t kid yourself. The law of Moses underlay everything we built in this country, we just didn’t say so. We have forgotten, and we have not instilled this love of law into our children. If that’s the case, what is the alternative to the rule of law?

You can read the First Things article referenced in this program, A Campaign of Narratives, here.
You can read Jonathan Roseblum’s piece, Repentance for a Misspent Youth, here.

An article recently showed up in my email about the state of Christianity in China. I almost didn’t read it. I have heard about Chinese Christians before, but nothing to make me think they could do any more than struggle along against the various obstacles in that country. But I began to read it. And when I got started, I couldn’t stop.

Something important is happening in China that runs so counter to what one might expect that it sounds like, well, a miracle. And the miracle is remarkably similar to the one that turned the Roman world upside—down in the days of Paul and Barnabas.

But there is no Chinese Paul. There isn’t even a Chinese Billy Graham or Rick Warren. Christianity is not on television or radio, as far as I know. But there are now some 70 million Christians in China. How on earth did that happen?

This weekend marks one of the most important occasions in the history of the Christian Church. It is the day of Pentecost, and you may not know that it is actually a lot older than the church. Considering what happened on that day, I am surprised that there are so many Christians who know so little about it and what it signifies. Consider one statement from the Book of Acts to explain what I mean:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they [the disciples of Jesus] were all with one accord in one place.

Acts 2:1 KJV

Now, that the disciples were there observing the festival is beyond dispute. They were all Israelites, they had observed this festival all their lives, and there was absolutely nothing in all the teachings of Jesus up to this point to suggest any change in that practice.

In fact, there were three pilgrimage festivals—that is, feasts where they were expected to come to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. They were Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. So they were there. (Jesus had told them to wait in the city and not return home.) There is one curious thing about this feast. The other two occur on specific dates. But no date is specified for Pentecost. So, how do you know when it has fully come and finally arrived? Well, you have to count. We’ll find out how in Leviticus, chapter 23.

I had a call recently from a lady who was very complimentary of one of my programs. It seemed what she appreciated most was my honesty with the scriptures. Now, I was flattered by that, but I couldn’t help wondering if honesty with the scriptures was all that unusual. I don’t want to sit in judgment of anyone, but if there is any cause to be less than honest with the Bible, it probably grows out of church or denominational affiliation.

I don’t intend any criticism of any church membership or affiliation, but when a church publishes a creed—a statement of beliefs, a doctrinal statement—there is a serious need to defend that creed. And since these creeds are not word-for-word from the Bible, there is almost certainly going to be a problem with some passages of scripture that, at first blush, don’t seem to fit. They may not fit at second blush either, and there may be no small amount of explaining to do which some unsophisticated soul may declare to be less than honest with the scriptures.

This was, I think, the problem the lady had who called me. When she had asked about a given passage, she was given the denomination’s pat answer. What she heard on my program was, to her thinking, more honest. What I think it really was, though, was more independent. I don’t work for or head up a denomination, church, or organization, so I have no brief to explain the Bible according to this or that creedal confession.

I know I am not always right, because I can look back over my path and see mistakes there and things I’ve needed to correct. But because I don’t insist that you see things my way, I don’t think I am doing a lot of harm in teaching the way I do. What I want to do is to present the evidence, and see if I can find a way to get you to take a fresh look at it and consider what you think about the scripture.

You have to let the Bible say what it says…even when you don’t like what it says. (And if you are honest, there are going to be times when you really don’t like what it says.) You also have to be honest about your own response to it. At a crisis in his own life, King David came painfully to understand this:

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

Psalms 51:6 KJV

When the last words of the Ten Commandments had rolled down Mount Sinai, and the last echoes had faded away amid the hills and valleys, the people standing at the foot of the mountain were a total wreck. They were shattered. The earth had moved beneath their feet, the mountain had smoked, the air had been split by lightning and peals of thunder, and the words—preceded by an ear-splitting trumpet blast—were strong enough to move your chest.

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they moved, and stood far off. And they said unto Moses, Speak you with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.

Exodus 20:18–19 KJ2000

You and I probably think that we would really like God to speak to us. I would like him to tell me, Ron, here’s what I want you to do. But, you know, I’m just not sure that I would survive the experience.

Of all the Ten Commandments, there’s one that can be called the “Peace of Mind Commandment”, or if you prefer, the “Mental Health Commandment”. It is the Tenth Commandment, “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's house. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbors” (Exodus 20:17).

At the bottom of the scale, “We are not to covet our neighbor’s ass.” That says it all, doesn’t it? What is there to want or covet about a donkey? Would you covet the pretty ones? You know, if you see one jackass then you have seen them all. So why covet those things?

You know covetousness, all by itself, would seem to be a harmless fault. It wouldn't seem like a very big deal, merely to sit and wish you had something that you don't have, it doesn’t seem to amount to much. But in another way, it’s a sickness, and perhaps from this sickness much of the violation of the other nine commandments arises. To begin, there are a couple of really important concepts regarding covetousness that we can learn from from a aphorism of Solomon found in Proverbs 21:25.

The very foundation of our legal system is truth. If people can come into court, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and then lie through their teeth, justice flies right out the window. No one can get judgment. No one can get justice. It's over! The Old Testament system was a little different from ours, but it was based on the same principle. Actually, I think in some ways it was a better system than we have.

Leviticus 5, verse 1 says this:

If a person sins because he does not speak up when he hears a public charge to testify, regarding something he has seen or learned about, he will be held responsible.

Now, in our court system, we have to go out and find the witnesses. We have to bring them into court. We have to swear them in and question them. And they have all sorts of ways, it seems like, to avoid getting into court and being held there, to have to answer these questions. It is at that moment of swearing, in court, you get them there, you make them stand up, raise their right-hand, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it is at that moment that creates the crime of perjury if they lie. Once you cross that line, you swear and then you lie, you go to jail.

Now, in the Biblical system, when the public charge to testify is proclaimed, you are guilty if you know something, and fail to speak up, saying, Well, the prosecutor didn't ask me that. That will not work in the Biblical system, nor with the careful parsing of words and phrases to avoid telling the truth, it wouldn't work in the Biblical system. There is an interesting illustration of this in the New Testament. Jesus had been arrested, He had been brought before the high priest, and His accusers were there, trying to find witnesses to get Jesus put to death. You will find this in Matthew 26 beginning in verse 59.

The last six of the Ten Commandments are said to be summarized by the statement You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And that’s well enough, but I want to take another look at them from the community standpoint. Now we come to commandment number eight. And as I was preparing for this program, for some reason, it really struck me how important these laws are to society.

The Fifth Commandment is the one that establishes and maintains family ties. It is a fundamental need of any society that families take care of their own. It’s the fragmentation of the family that leaves people sleeping on grates in the wintertime in the cities. The Sixth Commandment establishes a right to life. Thou shalt not kill, says God, and that includes manslaughter and any other unlawful or immoral destruction of human life. Any society that diminishes the right to life has set itself on the road to the trash heap of history. The Seventh Commandment establishes the sanctity of marriage and who has the rights to somebody else’s love, time and attention. It is to tie the family together for the sake of the children and, of course, the children in turn are to tie themselves to the parents—taking care of them if they have to be taken care of.

Then there is the Eighth Commandment, Thou shalt not steal. This fundamental building block acknowledges the right to private property. We need to know the difference between what is ours and what is not ours. And it’s in this fundamental principle that one of the building blocks of a stable society is established. One of the biggest problems that exists in many nations around this world is that they do not properly acknowledge the right to private property and they do not protect the right to private property. They don’t protect the rights to your intellectual property: the things that you have created out of your mind and your creativity. They don’t protect your rights to the land that you live on and care for—and so on it goes. This is a fundamental building block of society. For some important groundwork on this, let’s begin in the 50th Psalm.

When Israel settled into the promised land, they enjoyed a time of freedom like few people have ever enjoyed in the history of the world. But I don’t think very many people understand or appreciate the foundation of that freedom and what it took to maintain it.

It wasn’t just a matter of God handing them everything on a silver platter. They had to fight for the land, to fight for their freedom, and to work like the devil for their prosperity.

But none of that would have worked without the foundation of freedom. Israel was given a law, and a system of worship designed to maintain that law, to implant the law in their national memory, and to shape the national conscience. Moses, in one of his speeches, made some statements on this point that I think are worth remembering. We’ll find them in Deuteronomy, chapter 4.

Did God create sexually-transmitted diseases as a trap for man? Is it a kind of punishment to man for having too much fun? Is that the whole idea—that God created man, and then in a mischievous moment, He said, Let’s put some venereal diseases in the population so that if men sin, we can get them? I don’t think so. That doesn’t sound like the God you read about in the Bible.

I think STDs are an example of what can happen when viral and bacteriological strains are given an indefinite life in which to mutate and change. I’m not an expert in this area at all, but your body is teaming with bacteria, right now. Try not to panic, most of them are harmless and some of them are even good for you. When we have sex with another person, we trade some bacteria with our partner every time and bacteria mutate in the lifetime of a man or a woman and they may change a bit, but the strains we exchange between one man and one woman won’t survive us. We will never hurt another human being because they won’t go beyond our family, and the chances are that if we started off clean, in the end, there still will not be a problem because the bacteria will not have had time to change beyond certain limits.

However, if we add additional people to the mix and we give those strains of bacteria indefinite life, immortal life as it were, they can go on and on for 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 years or longer. If we allow the bacteria that kind of time to change and to mutate, all bets are off. Now I can’t tell you that’s how STDs originated, just take it as an analogy to what might have happened, in a realization that God didn’t create these things. Man, by his sins, created these things. Think about this, if we could somehow manage worldwide monogamy for a generation or two, we could wipe out all STDs, including AIDS. They would be gone, over, finished, disappeared. Now does that give us a message or not? So why blame God for it? It’s our problem. We created it. God told us how to avoid it. So why did God say, then, Thou shall not commit adultery?

The defendant is 20 years old, but he looks more like 16. He is wearing blue jeans and a sweater and his hair is neatly cut. He looks for all the world like he should have books under his arm and be headed to class, but the district attorney says, He’s a cold-blooded killer. It seems he held up a convenience store late one night. The clerk offered no resistance, gave him all the money in the cash register, and had his hands up. But as he scooped up the money and stuffed it into his pockets, this thief calmly raised his pistol and shot the clerk squarely between the eyes—just to leave no witnesses. Now, the district attorney wants you, the jury, to find him guilty and sentence him to death.

How do you feel about that? Mind you now, he’s guilty. There’s no doubt whatsoever, much less a reasonable doubt. We have pictures of him on a security camera. Clearly he’s the guy who shot the clerk. We even have more evidence than that. Some of you would sentenced him to death in a heartbeat. Others would say, Well, wait a minute. If we kill him, we’re no better than he is. Of course, if you didn’t believe in the death penalty, you wouldn’t even be on this hypothetical jury, but the underlying question still remains, the Sixth Commandment is, Thou shalt not kill. Shall we, or shall we not, kill this boy for his crime?

Where do we look for guidance on the question of the right and the wrong of killing someone? Can you appeal to social norms? Well, our society says that what the young man did was wrong and that he should die for it. The will of society is expressed in the law of the land. The problem with that is that the law of the land—the social norms in some nations—calls for the death of innocent people because of their race or their religion. Now, are we really prepared to say that society is the authority on this issue? Can we let society call this issue without guidance from someplace? You do understand, don’t you, that letting society call the shots is a prescription for genocide. I’ve heard people appeal to the fact that human life is sacred. But tell me, how can a high-school teacher explain that to kids saying that human life is sacred, when sacredness is a religious concept; it has to do with something that is holy?

You may have heard of the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments have to do with man’s relationship with God. The last six commandments have to do with man’s relationship with man, and the first commandment in that series (and it should be the first commandment in that series) is this: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord has given you. Honor your father and your mother. Now this is a concept that is not that well understood. Honor your father and your mother is not merely a prescription for living a long life. It’s a prescription for an enduring society.

Let me read this to you again and think carefully about what it is saying: Honor your father and your mother. This is spoken from Mount Sinai, with the sound rolling down the mountainside for the whole nation of Israel to hear. God says to all of them, Honor your father and your mother, that your days, as a people, may be long in the land which the Lord your God is going to give you.

I want to digress for just a moment because I want to establish and clarify this phrase, That your days may be long upon the land. The law of God is a long list of prescriptions of different things that these people were supposed to do. They are not arbitrary—based on or determined by individual preference. They are not just things that God dreamed up because man needed a set of laws to live by. They were laws to enable a society to function, to prosper, and to endure. A society that fails to establish the rights of parents, and the rights of children, the rights of the family, is not going to continue. It will not be long upon the land, and that is what the Fifth Commandment is all about. Take, for example, this warning in Deuteronomy, chapter 4.

If you were to take a survey among Christian people you would find that most of them believe in the Ten Commandments. After all, the Ten Commandments are the basis of all morality and the basis for the worship of God. Why is it, then, that the vast majority of Christian people outright ignore one of those commandments? No I don’t mean Thou shalt not commit adultery. Christian people sin, but they know adultery is wrong. It is not so much that they’re ignoring the commandment, they are simply breaking it, and in many cases they will repent later of breaking it. I am talking about a commandment that is ignored altogether—that is violated without even a sense of guilt. Now, which commandment might that be?

You’ll find the Ten Commandments in the 20th chapter of Exodus and you’ll find this commandment beginning in verse eight:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, your son, nor your daughter, your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Exodus 20:8–11

Now I don’t know what could be clearer than this. Work six days and rest one. The odd thing is, there was a time when many, if not most, Christian people honored the Sabbath day on Sunday. Sunday was a Christian Sabbath and Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but never mind that difference for the moment. Just consider the thing in principle. Why did the Christian church forsake even nominal observance of the Sabbath Day? Because they did. You can see the progression clearly in modern history—it’s inescapable.

When you were a kid, did anyone ever make fun of your name? Chances are pretty good they did. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes it hurt. Of course, it hurts to be made fun of if your nose is too big, your ears look like someone left the doors open on a Chevy pickup. But there is something about your name that makes it a special target. Your name is who you are. And after you have lived on this earth for a while, your name is you. When someone uses your name, you and you alone are the sum total what they are talking about. You are the meaning of your name.

So when God says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” Perhaps we should take it seriously. God’s name is not a playground joke. I hadn’t noticed until Dr. Laura Schlesinger pointed it out in her book on the Ten Commandments, but of all the Ten Commandments, giving God a bad name is the only one with a threat of immediate punishment.

I expect to the poor trembling Israelites at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the words of the Third Commandment went deep: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” But what does that mean?

By the time God finished thundering the First Commandment down from Mount Sinai, I expect most of the people waiting below were shattered. The experience of God, first-hand, was more than they could bear. There was thunder and lighting on the mountain, and the sound of a trumpet that was so loud it nearly broke the rocks, and then the voice of God rolling down the mountainside. All this was enough to loosen the bowels of a man. Many people probably fainted dead away, and we haven’t even gotten to the Second Commandment yet.

The Creator God speaks from the top of Mount Sinai with the mountain smoking in His presence. With thunder and lightning everywhere, and with some grown, strong men fainting dead away at the foot of the mountain from the sound of His voice, He says:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make unto yourself any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Exodus 20:3–6 KJ2000

There it is, the Second Commandment! Now, what is so important about graven images? What’s the big deal?

The southern end of the Sinai Peninsula has to be one of the most desolate spots on the globe. Beautiful? Hardly. We’re not talking about the Swiss Alps, here. And when you look at a map, you have to wonder what led God to bring these people here to give them the Ten Commandments. The journey was long, hard, and hot—it would have been nearly June on our calendar. They had already given Moses a lot of misery about a lack of food and water, and now he brought them to this desolate place, and a lot of them probably wondered, Why here? Why couldn’t we be somewhere else?

The desolation, though, was probably part of the point. God was going to reveal himself to a chosen people. It would be a spectacular revelation. He was going to enter into a covenant with them and no one else. And so he brought them to the only place they could have gone on foot where he could be alone be a few hundred thousand people. It was not a place with green grass, trees, and brooks of water; it was dry, dusty, hot, and uncomfortable. But, if you’ve read the Bible very much you’ll realize that God is not very concerned with our material comfort; he’s after something a little more important than that.

When these people finally made camp at Mount Sinai, the air must have been electric with anticipation. They had no way of knowing what was going to happen, but they knew they had come here to meet God. Moses went up the mountain for a preliminary meeting with God, and he came back with this message.

The road out of Egypt is not a pleasant drive. It boggles my mind to think about walking it with a million refugees. I set out one morning in a borrowed Volkswagen to drive from Cairo to the Suez Canal. My wife was with me, as was a lady we intended to baptize in, of all places, the Red Sea. It is a desolate wilderness across there. Once you leave the Nile Valley, there is, well, nothing. The only thing we passed on the road was a downed Russian aircraft in the desert.

According to the book of Exodus, 600,000 men (plus women and children) set out across that desert to freedom led by Charlton Hes…excuse me…I mean, led by Moses. You don’t have to be very perceptive to realize that this gaggle of refugees, under the best of conditions, would be nothing but trouble. And these were not the best of conditions. But they were free, and it is hard for us to imagine what that meant to them. It is just that they had no idea yet what it was going to mean.

At any point in history, men have to make decisions about what freedom is worth. Again and again in history, men have given up freedom for safety and comfort. And the road to slavery is not always seen for what it is. The road from slavery has its own share of difficulties, as well. We begin following the children of Israel along that road in Exodus, chapter 12.

The story of the Exodus is a tremendous story: a wonderful story of liberty, freedom, and an end to slavery for an entire people. It is a story of triumph—and it is also a story of great tragedy. Yes, it involves the birth of a great nation, but it also involves the destruction of a great nation and of one of the world’s most powerful rulers.

And because the Bible is such a big story, people often see only part of it at one time and fail to realize the implications of what they read. Some people see only the joy of freedom for the Israelites. Others see the destruction of the Egyptian economy and society and the killing of the firstborn children of all the Egyptian families. It was one of the greatest crises in all of history—and not necessarily the best understood.

I knew a fellow once who just couldn’t accept the Passover story. How can we celebrate the death of Egypt’s firstborn children?, he wondered. But the part of the story that is not so often told is the brutal subjugation of the Israelites by the Egyptians (all of the Egyptians were involved) and the killing of a whole generation of Israelite babies by the Egyptians—all of the Egyptians. If you think of God as just, how could God not take some form of justice on the Egyptians for their cruelty? We begin the story of this fateful night in Exodus, chapter 12.

Nearly everyone knows the story of the Exodus. Between Charlton Heston playing Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments and the animated Prince of Egypt the story has been thoroughly told to the masses. But there is an aspect of it that continues to trouble a lot of people who read the Bible. Pharaoh had no choice. God hardened his heart again and again. It would be one thing if Pharaoh were Hitler: a thoroughly bad man who himself was hard-hearted, started hard-hearted, and stayed that way. But the scriptures don’t say that. There is little doubt Pharaoh was a bad actor, but the Scriptures say categorically that God hardened his heart so he would not let Israel go.

I can still remember the first time that I ever encountered this idea. It was in Paul’s writings, and I was just a teenager. I read in Romans 19, verse 17:

For the scripture says unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore has he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardens. You will say then unto me, Why does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus? Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction[.]

Romans 19:17–22 KJ2000

Now, that’s a clear reference to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. But I’ll tell you, it was chilling to me as a young man reading the Bible to consider the possibility, however remote, that I might be a vessel of wrath: someone actually created to dishonor. And there is no question about it when you read the story in Exodus–God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. But there is an aspect of that story that rarely gets told. Nothing I have ever seen in the movies about this event accurately portrays what the Egyptians did to the Israelites, and over what period of time they did it.

There was a time when we knew what terrorists wanted. When they blew up something, they identified themselves and made their demands. We knew what they wanted and why they wanted it. All that has changed. Now terrorists don't identify their cause, nor do they make demands. What do they want? At the time, I concluded that what they wanted was Americans dead, in large numbers.

On the surface, this is a religious war. But like a deadly iceberg, there is a lot more below the surface than above it. Europe's great religious wars ended 350 years ago. That's plenty of time for us to forget that it is possible for people to slaughter one another over a matter of religious faith.

It is frightening, isn't it? And we do well to be frightened. There is great evil afoot in the world. What makes the perpetrators of this evil dangerous is that they don't care who they kill, and they don't care if they die in the process. And it is only natural to wonder if we are approaching some of the terrible events of the end time described in the Book of Revelation.

It's possible, but let me introduce you to one of the players in the Book of Revelation: The Destroyer…

We need to talk about Haiti. I know you’ve probably had more Haiti on your television than you’d like to see for some time; you’ve had enough. My question, though, is, “What more could Christians have done for that poor land?”

Haiti is actually a largely Christian country, with Roman Catholicism professed by 80% of the Haitians. Protestants made up about 16% of the population. And then there’s Haitian Voodoo, which is practiced by roughly half of the population. Now it’s in that demographic that you get a hint of the problem, don’t you? Did you see it?

How can you have a population that is 96% Christian and 50% practitioners of Voodoo? Something is not quite right in Haiti, and it’s a hard thing to say. Is there anything that we Christians might have done that we left undone?

Several years ago, I read a book entitled White Man’s Grave. It was the story of the search for a missing son in Sierra Leone, Africa. The title was the name given to Sierra Leone by slavers who used to call there. I don’t even remember what the purpose of the book was. I was so overwhelmed by the descriptions of tribal life, and the religion and superstitions of those people that I was left feeling hopeless. How on Earth, I wondered, could the Christian faith penetrate that darkness?

After some years, I began to see it in the chain that led to the tragic spread of AIDS in Africa. Being a Bible teacher (and in my career I’ve taught all of it, front to back), I came to see in the theories of the development of the disease in Africa a chain of broken laws. Laws the African people never knew because, in many cases, even the Christian missionaries didn’t bother to tell them. The law that would have prevented AIDS from becoming epidemic in Africa, I concluded, was the Law of Moses.

If memory serves, in a previous program I did (“A Covenant for AIDS”), I found a sequence of about seven laws; any one of which, faithfully observed throughout Africa, would have prevented AIDS from ever getting a foothold in that continent.

Now, while I musing about the wretchedness of Haiti, an article arrived on my desk by Mary Eberstadt. I think she has coined a new term for the Christian failure that’s been much on my mind, and I never got a title on it. Her article (which appeared in the January 2010 edition of First Things) was titled Christianity Lite…

Does anyone know where we went wrong? It is impossible to deny that we have gone wrong somewhere. I hear voices on every side telling the government what to do, but I am left with the sinking feeling that no one knows what to do. We have been sailing happily on our way, looking for all the world like the richest nation the anyone has ever seen. And then we find that it is all debt, all borrowed money. And when we found out there was no collateral for all that stuff, everything comes unglued.

If we had a prophet show up in our streets, the day after tomorrow, what would he say was the root of our problem? I am not sure God would even speak to us, but if a Jeremiah showed up somewhere and laid it on the line from God, what would he say? Jeremiah went day after day to the most public place he could find. I don't think he would even speak to the proximate causes or our financial mess. He would go deeper than that. Because you can't cure a disease by merely treating the symptoms.

So, if we had a real prophet show up, what would he say? Well, here's something God said through a prophet to nation very much like us.

Years ago a friend told me what I was. Most of us have had that experience at one time or another. (If not who we are, at least where we can go.) My friend told me that I was an apologist. I would have been flattered if I’d known what that meant. It was somewhat later I encountered one of the greatest of Christian apologists, C. S. Lewis. And then recently I came across a quotation from C. S. Lewis that explained a vague disquiet that follows me around. Apologists can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments into the reality—from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. Lewis was remarkable in this regard. He was an intelligent, highly educated, well-read man who also had the good sense to doubt himself, to examine himself, which one cannot do without self-doubt. Lewis understood the spiritual dangers of vanity and he also understood what a thin web is woven by a good argument. He said, No doctrine is dimmer to the eye of faith than that which a man has just successfully defended. Now, doctrine and apologetics are essential otherwise you would never know where you are, you would never know what you should do next. But there is also a temptation to vanity. This was never more clear to me than when I read that quotation from the dean of apologists.

There’s a fairly well-known denomination that believes no one is going to be saved except members of their own church. I remember there was a time in my past—I had been baptized by a Baptist church and I was struggling at that time with certain things—and I remember distinctly having a picnic with some friends of ours who are members of this other denomination which shall remain unnamed. Once they realized that I was a little bit at loose ends, they became very urgent about getting me baptized into their church. They wanted to take me down to their church that day, that hour, and get me under the water. They were very concerned that if didn’t get baptized and something happened to me, I would go to hell. I would go straight to hell. think those people will be profoundly surprised when they find me standing right next to them on the sea of glass before the Lamb of God in the resurrection. In fact, I might be as surprised as they are.

I’ve been too far down that road myself. Now think about this just for a moment. Imagine that you have made it, you’ve been raised from the dead, you’re standing there before him—the judge of all the earth—you can see him as he is, and there standing along side of you are two figures you recognize immediately who come from differently separate religious backgrounds. They are Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II. Now if you know very much about Catholic and Baptist doctrine, you have to ask yourself, Now how on earth can that be possible? Well, I think I finally understand. They will not owe their presence there to the fact that they had a correct set of doctrines. They will not be there because they kept this or that law, or followed that particular rite or ritual. But, then you see, you won’t be there for that reason either. What makes it possible for you or anyone else to stand before God is the grace of God. And that grace, if it can’t transcend our doctrinal differences, if it can’t transcend our little picky arguments, doesn’t amount to much. And what makes that grace possible is Christ himself. Let’s take a look at an illustration of this in John, chapter 13.

I don’t suppose there has ever been a man on the face of the earth who had the power at his beck and call that Jesus had. But there was never a time when he abused it. He tried to make this lesson clear at the last supper when he got up, took a towel, laid aside his outer garment, got a basin of water, and began to wash his disciples feet. He said, If I have washed your feet, you should wash one another’s feet. The whole idea is that we are all servants. We’re not emperors, lords, nothing of the kind; we are not masters, we are servants.

It seems odd to me when I think about it, but of all the things that Jesus might have said, of all the instructions he might have left us, these are his only words about church governance. He forbade his men from exercising dominion over, or authority upon, the people. It’s that simple. And Jesus, it seems, also taught that he is governed best who is govern least—that old principle still applies. And if you trace the grief that has befallen the church down through the ages, an awful lot of it has come straight from ignoring these words and letting some person become the big boss, the governor, the leader of all the people. I think this lies somewhere near the source of what God told Malachi to tell the priests in his own time:

For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi," says the Lord Almighty. So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.

Malachi 2:7–9 NIV

It seems like it’s very hard for the servants of God to keep their act together. The worst thing that can happen to us is good times. For the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem from exile, the times had indeed been very hard for a while. They had started rebuilding the temple, then they had to stop because of political pressure. Then, under the prompting of the prophets, and with God’s protection and blessing, they set to work again and finished it. Two men played a major role in all of this: Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor. They were good men and they wanted to get the job done, they had prophets along that were stirring everybody, up and the work got done.

But there is another danger all of us face. When God has blessed us, we assume we have his approval in more areas than are really justified. In other words, we think that since we built the temple—we got it done—we are really good people. There is yet another danger when any long-term goal is finally realized. After all this striving is past, once you have arrived at your goal, you can find yourself at loose ends. You may think, “Well, I have accomplished this. I deserve a break.” And maybe you do; but it’s a serious mistake to presume it.

So here’s the picture for the Israelites: the second temple has been finished, many aspects of their lives were now much better, the ongoing service of God in the temple was continuing on a day-by-day basis, and everything was going on like it was suppose to. Another generation, though, has entered the priesthood and public life, and there is the inevitable let-down that take place—the loss of focus, the loss of awareness, and that’s the picture that prevails when a prophet name Malachi comes on the scene with a message from God.

When you begin pondering the last days (as the Bible presents them) and you read what the prophets have to say about that time, you’re inevitably drawn to the Book of Revelation. And what I find fascinating is how commonly the Old Testament prophets are cited in Revelation. If you have one of those Bibles that have marginal references in it you can easily find where so many things that are said in Revelation originally come from. It shouldn’t be surprising, in a way, because all the prophets had a sense of a judgment day—a time when God would tie up all the loose ends and bring history to an end.

I don’t know that they could have looked at the world and have imagined how things would end, but they knew all too well that God had a special place in his heart for Israel. They knew the history of the things he had done to judge those who had afflicted Israel, along with Pharaoh and others. And knowing God’s love of judgment, his love of mercy, his forgiveness, they were not entirely surprised by many of the things that God revealed to them. They must have known, in some element, that a lot of what they were writing down, while it might have some fulfillment in their own days, was actually aimed at the very last days of history.

All this, coupled with the logic of history, told them that time could not go on forever. Thus there was a natural curiosity about how it all would end. They knew that God would win and that his balancing of the books was inevitable. They just didn’t know how it all would come about. And the way the end-time events were revealed to them, strangely, was not really a lot of help. Events beyond comprehension—even beyond their imaginations—had to be disclosed in terms they could understand. And that presents us with some difficult problems as we don’t have the frame of reference those ancient people had. To them, many of the icons and images you read, said something to them that they no longer do to us. So we have to study them, ponder them, and realize we will only really come to understand some of these events when they actually come to pass. But here’s the kicker: unless you do study them, unless you do ponder them, unless you do internalize them, you won’t understand them when they come to pass. In Zechariah, we’ve now come to that time of God’s judgment. And it’s described in terms that show no fulfillment to this day. Some of these things have simply never happened.

There is really no question that when you read an Old Testament prophet you should ask how he was understood at the time, and how the prophecy would apply in his own lifetime. But if you stop there you may miss something very important. What a prophet like Zechariah was seeing and hearing from God would tend to repeat in successive generations; like a standing wave repeats—they come they go, it ebbs and it flows. There may be any number of reasons for this, but two basic principals need to be taken into account:

Human nature never changes.
The divine nature doesn’t change, either.

Therefore, history naturally tends to repeat itself. But then another question follows closely, What was God really aiming at in that prophecy? Was it an earlier wave of history, or was the earlier used only as an example—a type of what was ultimately to come and what God was really aiming at? What makes me wonder is the way a prophet like Zechariah will move so easily from something that can only apply in his own day into something that obviously has limited or even no application in his own day.

Some friends and I were recently discussing the ideal temple that is found in the closing chapters of Ezekiel. That’s long been a curious section of prophecy because the temple you find there doesn’t fit any historical model at all. However, it has been pointed that it has similarities to things in closing chapters of the Book of Revelation: the New Jerusalem, the rivers of water and life, and the tree of life. What begins to emerge, only darkly at the moment, is an awareness that both prophecies are actually concerned with the same time, the same events, and the same outcomes. But that then leads to the conclusion that there is meaning behind the vision (that is, the prophecy) that transcends history.

That fact of the matter is there’s something that’s going to happen in the future of this world that people would not understand if you explained it to them. We have no frame of reference for it so what the prophets tended to do was in the terms of their own day in the things people in their own time would understand. To idealize and to draw a picture, to create a painting as it were in the mind of what God is going to do that we can deal with. If you keep in mind that a vision is symbolic that reality will not look the same at all then you can compare something like the last of Ezekiel and the last of Revelation and see these are both aiming at something over the horizon that we can’t see yet. With that in mind, look at where we have come in Zechariah.

Two things came my way yesterday which, at first blush, seem unrelated. But, in fact, they have a common, underlying philosophy which needs to be challenged every time it raises its ugly head. It may even be called a hidden agenda, because it is an agenda, and no one ever talks about it. The first was an editorial in one of the popular news magazines, written by a scientist, arguing that scientists should stick to science and theologians to theology. What he was exercised about was that scientists should not allow Intelligent Design into the classroom. My immediate thought was, Okay, they want to stick to unintelligent design, but that was too easy.

The second thing that came my way was an email taking me to task for using my broadcast to talk about politics. In particular, he was upset about what he perceived as support for President Bush and the war in Iraq in some of my past programs, which only demonstrated that he hadn’t been paying attention. Now, how exactly are these two things related, and why does it matter?

Well, there is afoot in this country right now—and it has been growing and developing for some time—a philosophy that we should all keep our religious lives and our secular lives carefully apart. Society doesn’t mind if we are religious on Sunday, they just don’t want us bringing our religion out in the wrong places at the wrong times. They don’t seem to think we should apply our religion to the issues in the public square.

Today’s program is not about intelligent design or evolution or politics. It is about society’s efforts to keep us all in our place. It is perfectly all right for us to have a religion, as long as it is kept in its place. We are expected to maintain our secular and religious lives apart. As long as we do that, society seems to be satisfied. We divide our lives into an upper story of religion, and a lower story of reality. Society is happy as long as we have an upper-story, lower-case god, but not at all happy when we carry our God with us to, say, a high school football game. Not allowed. The truth is that society is afraid of Christians who integrate their faith with their whole lives. And it is not because they are afraid we would become tyrants or would do them violence. No, they are afraid of what we have to say as Christians.

When you are reading the Old Testament prophets, there’s a particular challenge you run into again and again: What time period is the prophecy aimed at? Now, I have long since explained that in order to understand a prophet you need to know where he was and how his prophecy would be understood by the people who heard it. Some of the prophecies are purely historical, others are set in the near future, and still others are way off—beyond the prophet’s horizon, and sometimes even our own.

The prophet Zechariah is really an interesting case in point. He was writing in a clear, historical context and uses names of real people, dates, and places. His prophecies were delivered to real people who were affected by those prophecies. But every so often his prophecies, what shall I say, they fall off the table historically and suddenly you find they’ve joined up with the Book of Revelation—which is looking down to a time that is almost universally understood as the last days. In some cases it’s type and anti-type: there’s a historical fulfillment that’s reflected and an end-time fulfillment. In some cases there is nothing in history that matches it at all and we are forced to look ahead to see what in the world was this prophet seeing and what it meant.

You can easily see how understanding what was going on around Zechariah can help in understanding what he’s on about. For one thing, he uses so many icons much symbolic imagery that you have to ask, What did his first readers think he meant by the things he wrote down. In chapter six the prophecy turns back to the time of Zechariah and of the building of the temple. They had actually laid a foundation, but political circumstances have forced the abandonment of the project. Yet here comes a prophet saying, Hey, here’s the word of the Lord, Get back to work on this temple. And now he has something more to add.

I find myself constantly fascinated at the way the prophets in the Bible interlace with one another. You wouldn’t know this on a single read. You wouldn’t know it by reading a chapter here a chapter there or by reading somebody’s argument that has proof-texts drawn in from everywhere. You have to read the Bible—all of it—again and again and sooner or later the relationships begin to emerge. If you never read the Bible for yourself all the way through, get a copy of The One Year Bible. It’s easy to read and is laid out to help you complete the whole book in about 15 minutes a day, over one year. Make the Bible a part of your life and you will always be glad you did. All the bad stuff you heard about religion will fade into obscurity when you know what the Bible really says. And you won’t be suckered by some slick-talking preacher either, trust me.

Every time I read back through the prophecy of Zechariah 1 see something there I have not seen before. Zechariah is complicated. For example, his vision beginning in chapter four, verse one:

And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep, and said unto me, What see you? And I said, I have looked, and behold a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and its seven lamps on it, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon its top[.]

Zechariah 4:1–2 KJ2000

We are a long way short of candles at this point in history—this is not a candlestick, it is a lamp-stand. It is fueled by olive oil that runs down through pipes for each of the bowls, which have wicks in them to burn the olive oil. When you go back and look at how they were made, each of the seven lamps is fashioned like an almond blossom (the almond tree was the first tree to bloom in spring). In Hebrew, this lamp-stand is the menorah; you have probably heard of that. It was the only light in the Holy of Holies. Spring time, of course, is Passover time, and this whole thing is suggestive of Christ, our Passover, who is the light of the world. God only knows what other meaning are hidden within this particular type of lamp-stand that he was looking at. It’s worth your time to grab a concordance and make your way through the Bible looking up all the places where it occurs, because it is both an interesting thing and has become the symbol of Judaism—that seven-branched menorah.

It seems odd, in a way, that Satan is not mention more than he is in the Old Testament—at least by name. There may be other references, but the word Satan appears only once in all the historical books of the Bible, once in the Psalms, 11 times mentioned in the book of Job (but he’s a major player there in the whole drama), and in all of the prophets the only prophet that ever refers to Satan is Zechariah.

When you read Zechariah, it’s useful to know where you are in the history of the Old Testament. Israel is beginning to drift back into Judah and Jerusalem after their long exile in Babylon. According to Ezra, two men—Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest—rebuilt the altar and laid the foundation of the temple and began to build. Their work was stopped by opposition—according to some, by persons who remained in Palestine during the exile and did not actually go captive. Why they stopped it isn’t exactly clear, but Darius granted permission for the Jews to continue rebuilding the temple and they did under the urging of Haggai, later by Zechariah. Zerubbabel, who’s now the governor, and Joshua the high priest get to work on it and finally complete the temple in 515 BC. The second chapter of Zechariah’s prophecy ends on a remarkable note really, a high note:

Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord. And many nations shall be joined to the Lord in that day, and shall be my people: and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the Lord of hosts hath sent me unto thee. And the Lord shall inherit Judah his portion in the holy land, and shall choose Jerusalem again.

Zechariah 2:10–12 KJV

The next-to-the-last book in the Old Testament—the next-to-the-last of the Minor Prophets—is a man named Zechariah.

In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.

Zechariah 1:1–3

Now, if you are just reading this to yourself you may not pick up on this. But if you were reading it aloud, with this repetition of sayeth the Lord of Hosts, you begin to understand that this is a poetic structure. So many of these prophecies, like the Psalms, are musical and may actually have been intended for performance. They are, in a way, the protest songs of their generation. A significant clue to this arises in an incident many years before this involving the prophet Elisha. We find it in 2 Kings 3.

Several years ago, I was driving through an area the weekend after a tragic mass shooting had occurred there. I listened on the radio to the people who lived nearby as they responded to being put in a goldfish bowl for the whole country to watch. I couldn’t help but reflect along with them about how unfair the whole thing was.

Every special interest group had their spokesman on television telling us all why this tragedy had taken place. It was guns, of course. Someone noted that crime in the cities was going down while crime in rural areas was going up. He blamed the availability of guns for the problem. The poor fellow obviously has never lived in the rural south. I grew up in northern Arkansas, and I can tell you that guns are not a new arrival there. As a boy, I don’t think I knew a family—especially a rural family—that didn’t have guns and that didn’t teach their kids to hunt. We grew up playing war around the barns, pretending to shoot one another, and faking a fall out of the loft into a stack of hay below. None of us ever killed anyone. As far as I can tell, none of us even thought about it. Some other TV talking head blamed drugs. Another blamed the schools, another blamed the movies, and yet another blamed television violence.

It’s true enough that everything that happens is the world is caused by something. But the causes are often so complex that specific prediction is impossible. However, general prediction is not at all impossible. There was no way to predict that those two boys would do what they did. But you can be certain that some boys (or girls) will kill again. It may be Elmira, New York. It may be Fairfax, Virginia. It may be your hometown. I can’t predict where it will happen, but I can predict that it will happen. And so can you. What we can’t be quite so sure is why it will happen. That’s what I want to talk about.

Most readers of the Bible are a little vague about the time of the later prophets. They may know that Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed in 586 BC. More likely, though, they will have little idea of the timeline. They may know from Daniel and Jeremiah that there was to be a 70-year exile, and indeed the second temple was completed 70 years later. Meanwhile, Daniel and Ezekiel did their work in Babylon among the exiled Israelites.

It may be less clear that those Jews who rebuilt the temple faced serious opposition from the Samaritans and others in the process, even bringing the process to a halt some five years after it was begun. So they were working on the temple five years and then the political opposition stopped it. Ten years later, the temple is still unfinished, still in ruins, and two prophets come on the scene.

One is named Haggai, the other Zechariah. And, of course, I’ve said this before, I’ll say this again: If you see a prophet coming down the road toward your house, it’s bad news. God never sends a prophet to tell you how well you are doing. Well, Haggai starts his prophecy by giving us the date. Here’s what he said.

It’s no picnic being a prophet. Of all the jobs God hands down to men, the job of the prophet may be the toughest of the lot. And it may come as a surprise to learn that some of them (maybe even most of them) were poets and musicians. I guess there’s something about that which, maybe, suits prophecy better. I feel sorry for the many self-appointed prophets you see around nowadays who claim to have the word from the Lord. The reason I feel sorry for them is because they have taken a hand to speak for God when he didn’t tell them to do it. He may have them carry the burden and the pain of the office without any hope of a prophet’s reward.

When you come to a real prophet in the pages of the Bible, and you read them as they are intended to be read, you can sometimes feel the pain that has come to this man with the message. For some reason, I was particularly touched last night by a prophet named Habakkuk. He’s different from the others. He’s certainly a poet, and I suspect he sang his prophecies to the people who assembled to hear him. If not, he at least composed them for a singer.

Habakkuk was a contemporary of Jeremiah, and it would not surprise me in the least to learn that Habakkuk sang and Jeremiah preached on the same day in the same place. In your imagination, place yourself among a crowd of people who have assembled at the temple gate. Jeremiah has been speaking and has just roundly condemned the justice system in one of the strongest sermons you have ever heard. Now, another man steps forward with a lyre in his hand—his name is Habakkuk—and introduces the song he’s going to sing.

The Old Testament book of Obadiah is the shortest of all the Minor Prophets and, strangely, it doesn’t really seem to say a lot to modern man. I can understand why people reading the Bible kind of brush by it. But as I have said before, trying to understand the biblical prophets solely in terms of events in the far-distant future or solely in terms of events in the far-distant past, it’s kind of pointless. I got the clue from something Isaiah said long ago. It was a challenge to idol worshipers. Here’s what he said:

Present your case, says the Lord. Set forth your arguments, says Jacob’s King. Tell us, you idols, what is going to happen. [This is the real test, God says, if your idol are all that great tell us what is going to happen.] Tell us what the former things were, so that we may consider them and know their final outcome. Or declare to us the things to come, tell us what the future holds, so we may know that you are gods.

Isaiah 41:21–23 NIV

Now, it’s disappointing that so few people really study the history presented in the Old Testament. Because if we don’t understand what happened before, we have no hope of understanding what the Bible says about our own future. The Book of Obadiah just might be a case in point. It’s only one chapter and it’s all about a nation called Edom. Now who on earth are they? Where are they and why do they matter so much? Well, the enmity between Israel and Edom can be traced back to an story that begins in the 25th chapter of Genesis.

There is a terrible irony in the prophet Zephaniah. Actually, he did his prophecy in the days of Josiah; and Josiah was one of the best of the kings of Judah but the prophecy that came down in his days were among the most dire ever handed down by any prophet. Here is how Zephaniah starts:

The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cushi, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Amariah, the son of Hizkiah, in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah. I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the Lord. I will consume man and beast; I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea, and the stumblingblocks with the wicked; and I will cut off man from off the land, saith the Lord.

Zephaniah 1:1–3 KJV

Now, what on earth can account for such terrible consequences? Well, to tell that story we have to go back in time. I’ve long held that you can’t understand the prophets unless you understand the history of the times in which they worked. When he came on the scene, the house of Judah was in one of the late stages of their decline when a man named Amon ben Manasseh came to the throne. He was 22 years old.

What do you do when God decides to take down his own work? What do you do when things you have believed in, trusted, committed yourself to, worked like the devil for, sacrificed everything for, are completely shattered—not by the Devil, but by God himself? No, I am not talking about this or that church splitting or falling apart. Nor am I dealing in speculation. I am dealing in known events that are well documented and well understood.

Walk back with me to another place and time. It is late in the seventh century bc. The place is the equivalent of our courthouse steps today. It is the gate of the Temple—where cases in law were heard, where contracts were finalized and witnessed, where news was announced, and even sermons delivered.

There is a very young man standing there to speak, and over his shoulder we can look up and see the most famous building in the world—the Temple of the Lord, built by Solomon, with no effort spared to glorify God. Solomon's Temple was legendary, not only in its beauty but in the events that marked its history. You could ask any of the old men seated near the gate and hear the whole story—how David had the concept, how Solomon inherited the job, all the material that went into the building, all the years it was under construction. They could tell you about the incredible events of its dedication. They all knew the story by heart. God himself actually entered this building and filled it with smoke. That had never happened before anywhere in the world, and it would never happen again.

This great Temple had hosted over 330 years of the Passover. For all those years, it had been the hub for millions of camping pilgrims at the Feast of Tabernacles. It had been the center of the worship of Jehovah for generation after generation. It stood there looking as permanent as the mountains around it. It was the very heart of their faith, the symbol of their God, the rock around which all Israel gathered. It was the very work of God, God's own house…and it was doomed.

When you read the Old Testament prophets, a pattern begins to emerge. And if you know what to look for it begins to clear the air somewhat in trying to understand what they’re about. As long as society is behaving itself—people are living good lives, they’re being moral, they don’t start trouble—you don’t even hear from the prophets. God never sends a prophet to tell you what a good boy you are. So, consequently, the first phase of the pattern of a prophet in the Bible is that things in society have gone terribly wrong.

Living as we do in an age of plenty, it’s hard for us to understand famine. What we do know about it is a long way off and kind of unreal. We see picture of mothers with little babies with their bellies distended and being told they’re starving to death. You would believe it looking at those little twiggy limbs. We might even sit down and write a check for famine relief. Modern science and technology has not wiped out famine, but it sure has shoved it out of the center of most people’s lives. We don’t deal with it; we don’t think about it; we don’t have any experience about how it feels to be in the middle of one and to be helpless.

Not many of us know what it means to face starvation. And so, when you pick up an Old Testament prophet like Joel, it’s apt to be just words on paper to us. Now, I can assure you that it was more than just words to those who heard those words the first time Joel spoke them. For one thing, famine was a periodic and a well-known fact of life in that world. It was something people lived with. There was no giant government to move stuff back and forth. There were no great trucks and airplanes and boats and ships that could move tons of grain from one place to another. Nothing like that existed. And people knew that either they prepared or they could die.

The prophet Joel begins his work with a terrifying picture of a locust-induced famine. What we don’t know is whether to take this literally or as a metaphor or something even worse. I’ll tell you what he said, and then we can consider the implications.

Once upon a time there was a man named Jonah. I am sure you heard of him. He was the son of a man named Amittai and we know he was an active prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel. In those years Israel was riding high—at their height in prosperity and in military power. But so was Assyria in the east with its great city, Nineveh.

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.

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.

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 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?

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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 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.

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.

“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?”

When you read those books of the Bible that contain the history of Israel, the lessons come at you one after the other. There is a man in the Book of Kings named Jeroboam, for example, who will embody several of them. Jeroboam is described as a mighty man of valor. Now, what that means in biblical-speak is that he was a fighter, and very good at it. He was a good man, an able man, and King Solomon promoted him and placed him over all the affairs of the house of Joseph. That made him the head man in the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh in the north. But he had a higher endorsement than that of Solomon, with whom God was, by this time, thoroughly disappointed.

And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and the two were alone in the field: And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and tore it in twelve pieces: And he said to Jeroboam, Take you ten pieces: for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to you: (But he shall have one tribe for my servant David’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel:)

1 Kings 11:29–32 KJ2000

Why was this being done? The prophet answered:

Because they have forsaken me, and have worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in my eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father.

1 Kings 11:33 KJ2000

This verse often stops serious readers who realize what a bounder David had been at times in his life. But there is a serious difference between Solomon and David. When David sinned, he repented—and perhaps most importantly, he never, ever, served another God. And it was that faithfulness to God that made his repentance possible. That is a lesson worth remembering. You may go a long way down the wrong road, but if you never allow yourself to forget who your God is, the way back is still open. It may be a hard road, but it’s open.

When you are reading the history in the Bible, you have to resist the temptation to see things in terms familiar to the modern reader. Take the idea of cities, for example. Solomon has finished the Temple, and somewhere along the way, he has married the daughter of Pharaoh.

Well, Pharaoh wants to give his daughter a present, so he goes up along the coastal plain and takes a city named Gezer. He slew the Canaanites who live there, burnt the place with fire, and then gave it to his daughter as a present. What kind of a present is that! Gezer probably wasn’t much of a town to start with. Now his daughter gets, as a present from her dad, a lot of burnt-out houses, and a few hundred corpses of Canaanites. What is this?

What you need to take away from the account is that it wasn’t the houses that were important, it was the real estate. Gezer might have controlled a few hundred square miles of good agricultural land. And it may also have provided a prime location for an outpost—a fortress, if you will. In fact, a lot of these fortified cities were not so much towns as forts from which the approaches and surrounding areas could be dominated—there were still a lot of outlaws and marauders around. So, as the ruler of an enriched and emerging power, Solomon embarked an a great program of construction and development—walled cities, storage cities, stables, and more—as we’ll see beginning in 1 Kings, chapter 9.

One of the most incredible museums that the world has ever known was also one that hardly anyone ever got to visit; it was the temple that King Solomon built. When the construction of the Temple was finally complete, Solomon brought in the things that King David had dedicated—silver, gold, furnishings—and placed them in the Temple’s treasuries. What a museum it must have made…but the general population never got to go in. Nevertheless, the grand opening still made for quite an enjoyable party. You’ll find the story of this celebration, and the dedication speech that accompanied it, in 1 Kings, chapter 8.

1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chiefs of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.
2 And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month [This is the month of the Feast of Tabernacles].
3 And all the elders of Israel came, and the priests took up the ark.
4 And they brought up the ark of the Lord, and the tabernacle of meeting, and all the holy vessels that were in the tabernacle, even those did the priests and the Levites bring up.
5 And king Solomon, and all the congregation of Israel, that were assembled unto him, were with him before the ark, sacrificing sheep and oxen, that could not be counted nor numbered for multitude.
6 And the priests brought in the ark of the covenant of the Lord unto its place, into the inner sanctuary of the house, to the most holy place, even under the wings of the cherubim.
7 For the cherubim spread forth their two wings over the place of the ark, and the cherubim covered the ark and its poles above.
8 And they drew out the poles, so that the ends of the poles were seen out in the holy place before the inner sanctuary, and they were not seen outside: and there they are unto this day.

1 Kings 8:1–8 KJ2000

Excuse me for asking, but what’s wrong with you people? Why on earth would you dress up your children like witches, or hobgoblins, ghosts, demons, dead men’s bones and then send out to commit extortion on your neighbors by demanding treats and threatening tricks if the neighbors don’t come across? What could you possibly be thinking and why allow your children to go to the door of a house of a total stranger and accept gifts of candy? I thought we didn’t want our children accepting candy from strangers. And anyway, it’s gotten to the place where you have to take the candy and the apples and stuff down to the hospital to have them x-rayed to be sure there isn’t a razor blade embedded in it somewhere. My, can’t we afford to go out and buy some candy for our kids? Do we have to send them around the neighbor’s house begging for it?

They call it Halloween because it falls on the eve of All Hallows or All Saints Day. This is the day when the church honors all the great Christians of years gone by, people who’ve lived good lives and sometimes sacrificial lives in their service to other Christians and other peoples. Considering that, I’ve got a question. Since this day, All Hallows Eve, is all about people who have lived their lives doing good works, why don’t we dress our kids up in costumes representing these good people and take them out on All Hallows Eve to do good works? Couldn’t that have gone either way? Couldn’t we have made that choice? I mean, do we have to go to dead men’s bones and all that stuff, or couldn’t we have gone out and done good works instead of tricks or treats? Why don’t we put together packages of candy and gifts and take our little angels to a nursing home somewhere and go around giving gifts to the elderly and the infirm? Why don’t we teach our little angels to sing songs for the old codgers that would bring tears to their eyes? Why wouldn’t we have, let’s say, one of these cute little girls crawl up in the lap of an elderly lady and give her a big hug? Do you have any idea what a difference that would make in the life of an old person who hardly ever gets to see her own grandchildren because nobody will bring them in? Why is it that we don’t teach our children how good it feels to do nice things for other people, instead of teaching them greed and extortion? Again, I say, I don’t get it. If we had a choice of doing one or the other, who in the world made the choice of taking it one way instead of the other?

What you are allowing your kids to do by the way, on Halloween, has nothing to do with All Saints. It’s the old Druid New Year Samhain, the night in which the doors of the abyss, the underworld with all their evil spirits, are released out into the world. I was rummaging around on the Internet trying to find something about Halloween and I came across one of these Internet magazines called Samhain, of all things. I found this little item in there and I thought you might find it of interest. It says this…

Sometimes, in the Bible, you come across descriptions, details, and lists that can be a little hard to follow. One example of this is the description in 1 Kings 6 of the construction of Solomon’s temple. It’s not too easy to work your way through it, and there are just too many details missing to get an accurate picture. You can find artists’ conceptions of it in publications and on the internet, but they are all different. Still, when you read through it you get a general impression of the size, the shape, the importance of the building.

And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord. As for the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.

1 Kings 6:1–2 KJ2000

There is some question about the precise length of a cubit, but the ratio of the building is clear enough. It was not particularly large—about 90 feet long by 30 feet wide, and 45 feet in height. You can visualize the distance from the 30-yard line on a football field to the goal line, then 10 yards wide, and half again tall as it is wide. The importance of the building, however, is out of all proportion to its size. And these are just the measurements of the building proper. There was a lot more construction around the building itself. Let’s examine these blueprints a little more closely, as we continue in the Book of Kings.

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, You have shown unto your servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before you in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with you; and you have kept for him this great kindness, that you have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this your so great a people?

1 Kings 3:5–9 KJ2000

As far as I can tell, by this time Solomon was grown. But this is the way that he looked at himself—as a naïf, as a person who had no special knowledge of the world or the world’s ways. He felt totally inadequate to the task before him. There’s a humility in this, of a man who recognizes that the job is just a little bit too big for him.

And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him, Because you have asked this thing, and have not asked for yourself long life; neither have asked riches for yourself, nor have asked the life of your enemies; but have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice; Behold, I have done according to your words: lo, I have given you a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like you before you, neither after you shall any arise like unto you. And I have also given you that which you have not asked, both riches, and honor: so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto you all your days. And if you will walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as your father David did walk, then I will lengthen your days.

1 Kings 3:10–14 KJ2000

Nothing is ever easy in the Middle East, and the transition from the man who was Israel’s greatest fighting king to her greatest peacetime king was stormy. It wasn’t that there was a problem between David and Solomon. The problem was another son (probably David’s oldest) who decided to usurp the kingdom while David was, he thought, too weak to do anything about it.

His name was Adonijah and, ironically, he was the brother of Absalom. He had the same mother, and his father David had doted on him as he had on Absalom. David, it seems, was a great judge of men except when it came to his own children. Even so, it wasn’t his will that Adonijah succeed him. He had made a promise to appoint Solomon as king.

Adonijah made a very strong power move. You could call it an attempted coup, but I think he thought of it as merely establishing himself in his rightful position. He also had Joab and Abiathar (the leading general of the army and a well-known priest, respectively) with him. They had a big coronation feast underway but, meanwhile, Nathan the prophet got wind of what was happening. He went to Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, and arranged with her help to head this off.

When David understood the situation, he called three key people: Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the general. He immediately took steps he probably should have taken earlier. In the past, he had probably just assumed that he had time to do it. But now, time was not on David’s side.

Abraham, the father of the faithful, is obviously the greatest figure in the Old Testament. But the greatest man in the history of Israel has to be King David. He was not only a king, he was a prophet. David was not a priest, and he never attempted to usurp the office of the priesthood as Saul did, but he was a man after God’s own heart. He was a man’s man, who men could admire and follow. He was also in the direct line of the Messiah to come. He was, simply put, a type of Christ.

The last chapters of 2 Samuel appear to contain appendices to David’s life and career. They are in no special order, but seem to have been copied onto the end of the scroll before it was finally considered finished. In 2 Samuel 23, we have what are said to be the last words of David. We’ll hear from him after this, but this seems to be what David wanted to record as a kind of legacy.

Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel, said, The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spoke to me, He that rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun rises, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain.

2 Samuel 23:1–4 KJ2000

What a clean and beautiful statement of what God expects of a man who leads a people. You can fell yourself yearning for that kind of leadership. Yet one wonders that, if we had it, if we would kill him. David, for his part, was painfully aware of his shortcomings, though, and he added this:

Although my house be not so with God; yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure: for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he makes it not to grow.

2 Samuel 23:5 KJ2000

The story of Elijah would make a great movie, but DeMille is long gone and so is Charlton Heston for the title role. The drama of the story lies in how Elijah had the big win at Mt. Carmel, and days later was fleeing for his life from a woman. After 3 1/2 years of drought, strictly according to Elijah’s word, he returned from exile, called down fire from heaven, gave the people rain, and slaughtered the prophets of Baal. It was this last that infuriated one Jezebel, who shortly had her minions out looking for Elijah with instructions to take off his head.

He ended up, thoroughly discouraged, in a cave on Mt. Horeb. The Word of the Lord came to him and asked, What are you doing here, Elijah? By this time the great prophet was feeling sorry for himself, and he replied: I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.

1 Kings 19:10 NIV

The reply to Elijah’s complaint was a blunt: Get back to work.

He even told him to appoint a successor (a unique idea for a prophet) but the most interesting thing comes almost as a by the way. Elijah was not the last faithful man.

Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, said the Lord, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

Elijah did not know, and never would, who most of these were.

In the first chapter of the Book of Daniel, a rather interesting event takes place that I have often thought of and considered with some fascination. Daniel and his three friends were among a number of young men who were being prepared to become part of the king’s staff of wise men. They ultimately showed themselves to be perceptive men—men of much wisdom—and ended up working right next to the king. In fact, by all indications Daniel was the #1 man on Nebuchadnezzar’s staff—the man who did most of the advising for this gentile king.

This is an early example of a Jew finding himself next to the seat of power in a nation that was not Israelite. From that time until today, this pattern has been shown to repeat again and again. Besides this, the Jewish people have often been successful in business, highly placed in educational institutions, and prominent in creative fields. Partially due to this fact, they have also often been envied, feared, and persecuted.

Does the pattern of Jews in or near positions of power exist because they, as a people, are simply more capable and intelligent than mankind as a whole? Is it due to chicanery and tricks? Or is there a particular tradition, found in the pages of our Bible, that can help explain it?

Join Ron Dart in answering these questions and others while examining Wisdom—what it is, how we can attain it…and how it can be lost.

I have a message from God. Don't get me wrong, I haven't had any visions or heard voices in my ear. The message comes straight from the Bible, and all I am doing is applying it to our generation.

I think there is a crying out inside this country for someone who will just tell us the truth. But then, they tell us truth, it gets blown up out of all measure, and we reject the guys who told us the truth. So if we can't forgive politicians for lying to us, at least we can understand why they do. We want someone to tell us what we want to hear.

And in spite of the fact that we know all the jokes about politicians' promises, we keep on electing them on the basis of those promises. There is a good case to be made that we really get the kind of leadership we deserve. And God, looking down on us from above, is fully justified in thinking we are getting the leadership we want. I said I have a message from God. What would God have to say about a nation like ours?

I had a friend once who allowed that human beings were, to God, like fish eggs. We were sitting in the sun on a bass boat trying unsuccessfully to catch something and he was trying to make sense of the world. A fishing boat is a great place for philosophizing. I know, he said, that there is only one way of salvation, and that is by the name of Jesus Christ. But I also know that the vast majority of the people who have ever lived have never heard that name.

My friend speculated that God, in order to bring a few sons to his kingdom, had to put billions of us here on the earth to allow for wastage. I had to admit that the idea had a perverse logic to it. But what did it say about the kind of being who would create a system like that for man? For we are not fish, we are human. We suffer. We hope, we love, we create.

Is the God we read about in the Bible the sort of person who would waste people in their billions to achieve his objectives? It is one thing for God to give man the freedom to accept or reject life with God, but another thing altogether to subject man to the kind of suffering we see in this world without giving the man hope of something better.

The apostle Paul was concerned about the wastage of people. It was unlike God, he thought, to just throw people away, to cast them to the wolves. There is a long passage in Romans where Paul agonizes over the question of the Jews. We would like to think that men like Paul had all the answers, but it is apparent that is not the case. Paul struggled with this, thinking out loud in his letter to the Christians in Rome. He tried to take what he knew about God and his plan, to create an explanation for his lack of success in taking the Gospel to the Jews. In city after city where Paul went, the Jews rejected the Gospel while Gentiles flocked to it. It didn't make sense to Paul. You can read the entire section beginning with Romans 9. For now, I want to focus on Romans 11.

Many years ago, before I learned better about arguing religion, I was engaged in a discussion focused on people who never even heard the name of Jesus anytime in their lives. How could it be right for God to torture these people forever? Tell me he is just going to leave them dead and we have one picture. Tell me he has arranged for their eternal torment and we have another altogether.

And then, there are the children. Are all these people, including countless children, who had never had a chance to be saved going to burn for all eternity?

Perhaps you say, Well, I believe that God will make a way. Well, then you and I would be in agreement. But I think it would be strange indeed if in all the pages of the Bible, we couldn’t find so much as a hint as to what that way is.

I hesitate to tell you this, because when you find out what I want to talk about, you are liable to punch the button on your radio, click a button in your browser, and head off into other pursuits. I have given this a lot of thought and study, and I have come to the conclusion that, sooner or later, one way or another, we are all going to die. See, I knew you would want to buzz off, but stay with me a minute.

I take my vitamins in hope of getting rid of some of the creaks, and I follow my doctor’s instructions. But every once in a while, I stop and laugh at myself because I know I am fighting a losing battle. The battle is worth fighting, because we have a lot of work to do, but I know, and you know, that in the end, we all die.

A man known to us as the Apostle Paul faced up to the same questions of mortality and suffering for different reasons (He faced death in more ways than we ever will.) and he used an interesting metaphor for the human body: a tent.

It seems to me that we of the Christian faith have lost touch with our roots in some very important ways. We are so comfortable in the modern world, so at home in it, so “in touch”, that some of our old hymns really don’t mean much to us any longer.

“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wistful eye, To Canaan’s fair and happy land where my possessions lie”, or “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through. If heaven’s not my home, O Lord what shall I do?”

What do Jordan and Canaan have to do with the Christian faith? Christians of an earlier generation found much in the history and practice of Israel that they could identify with. One of the most fundamental Christian beliefs is that we are not at home here. We are strangers and pilgrims, and we look for a better world to come.

If you have read much of the Bible at all, or if you have gone to church very long, you know that somewhere, out there in the future, there is a day of judgement coming. Now, there have been a lot of fanciful notions about judgement day. Somehow, in my youth, in listening to various preachers, I got the impression of God, sitting behind the bench in a courtroom like setting with a lot of books open before him, judging my life. One preacher I recall envisioned God playing our sins back for us on a giant movie screen for everyone to see. Another envisioned God having a big lever by his throne, and when we come there for judgement, some go to heaven but for others, he pulls the lever and a trapdoor opens and sends them screaming down to hell.

Most of what you hear about the judgment day owes more to the imagination of man than to the Bible. Then there are all the jokes about St. Peter and the pearly gates. But I will spare you those. But I do have to tell you, there is a judgment day. But this judgment day is nothing like the traditional depictions of it, and there is one very surprising thing about it which I will come to later.

But the first thing to know about it is that the writer of the book of Hebrews connects the judgement day to the Day of Atonement—Yom Kippur—a day usually dismissed by Christians as a Jewish Holiday. But in this series of programs, I have been making the case that these are not merely Jewish Holidays, but Christian holidays as well. Why so? Because every one of them is about the life, work, plan and ministry of Jesus Christ. So, what do we know about the judgement day?

Born condemned. That doesn't sound entirely fair, does it? Shouldn't we all have a chance to live before we are judged and condemned? I was taken aback by a letter I once received taking me to task for a statement I made (which actually came from the Apostle Paul). I had noted that, speaking of the Jews, Paul said that God had shut them up in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all. It reads like a contradiction in terms. He shuts them up in unbelief, what most Christian teachers would call a lost condition, so he can have mercy on them. What this means to me (and I said so) is that God, for a time, closed the door on the Jews so he could have mercy on them at a later time. I thought that was rather gracious of God.

The fellow who wrote the letter was telling me how wrong I was, and the major heading, in large letters and emphasized, was All are condemned. That set me back on my heels. While I can't say for sure what he meant by that, there are people who believe that the whole wide world is condemned except for their own narrow segment of the faith. And the implications of this belief are that man is damned; that he is headed for hell. This fellow might have been of the school who believe that we are born into the world condemned by Adam's sin.

Let explain something here. The Bible is not one book, but a collection of books and letters. These books and letters include the testimony of men who had close encounters with God. They were inspired of God to write down their testimony, and their witness is authoritative. But there is a problem: They wrote in languages very different from our own which places us at the mercy of translators.

I think the translators have done their best, but if you look solely at one or two narrow passages, you can come away with a wrong impression. This can happen even if the translators do a good job. We misunderstand one another all the time, so it's not hard to see how we could misunderstand Jesus or Paul or Peter. When we misunderstand one another, we can ask for clarification. In a sense, we can do the same thing with the Bible. We have to read contextually, and come to understand as we develop the big picture. At one level, the Bible is really quite easy to understand, and the Gospel of Jesus is simple enough. What makes it difficult is the preconception a person brings to the book. If you listen to enough preachers, you can end up totally confused. (I hope my fellow ministers will forgive me for saying that, but in their hearts, they know it is true.) I want to look at the two Greek expressions translated condemned to explain what I am driving at, so bear with me.

In the autumn of every year, the Jews celebrate their most solemn festival—Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Would it surprise you to learn that Yom Kippur is a Christian holiday as well? That the New Testament church observed the day, only with a different sense of meaning?

Very few Christians take any note of the day at all, and that is surprising, since the day is all about the ministry of Christ. They cheerfully observe Easter which is not in the Bible at all, and ignore the Day of Atonement which is not only biblical; it lies right at the heart of the meaning of the Christian Faith.

Maybe it is because observing the Day of Atonement requires a fast, but it is probably because no one ever thinks of it. So, how can I say that Yom Kippur is a Christian holiday as well as a Jewish holiday? It would be best, I think, to look at the Christian significance of the day.

Doesn't the government have an obligation to help the poor? More important to what I am driving at is whether helping the poor is a Christian value. Well, of course it is, but how does the government figure into the picture?

In the last program, I talked about two opposing views of government: Collectivism and Individualism. The United States has never conformed to the extreme of either these positions, but has leaned more to the individualist position than to the collective.

Now, I can hear someone saying, Wait, didn't the first Christians live in a collectivist society? Well, yes and no. The question arises from the story in Acts 2 of the days following the day of Pentecost; when the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples in power, and they baptized 3000 people in one day. Here is the story...

Click here for Fairness and the Christian #1.

Fairness is a good old American value, and it is a basic Christian value as well. But what kind of a society should we have? In the broadest possible terms, should it be collectivist or individualist? Collectivism is defined as the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the people collectively; socialism. Individualism is the doctrine that individual freedom in economic enterprise should not be restricted by governmental or social regulation; laissez faire. the doctrine that the state exists for the individual and not the individual for the state.

At the extreme, these are the directions defined by the terms Left and Right. A Leftist leans toward collectivism. A person on the right leans toward individualism. The United States has never conformed to either of these extreme positions, but has leaned more to the individualist position than to the collective. Both our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are at some pains to emphasize and protect individual rights.

My question is how a person who holds a biblical worldview should look at left and right political issues. Surely, as godly people, we should be in favor of fairness. But then the question naturally arises: What is fair? If I am to judge what God wants man to do about fairness, I can only think of one authority to appeal to: the Bible. So, how is fairness demonstrated in the Bible?

Click here for Fairness and the Christian #2.

Sitting here, watching an impending moral collapse, one is led to wonder what’s going on—what is the proximate cause of all this? I can tell you where I think we went wrong; but to do so, I need something to stand on. And I always try to stand on the Bible to look at issues like this. That’s my worldview. And when you come to an issue like this from a biblical worldview, you find precisely where the responsibility can be laid. When this social pattern was repeated before, a prophet named Jeremiah laid the blame right where it belonged.

Woe be unto the shepherds that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel against the shepherds that feed my people; You have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:1–2 KJ2000

I will tell you that this chapter has made me shudder from time to time. These are the shepherds of his people that God is talking about, and that is a term reserved for the priests, the prophets, the teachers of the law. So I wouldn’t look to the secular progressives as the cause of the problem. Rather they are the symptoms of the moral disease. Jeremiah now decides to speak on his own:

My heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome, because of the Lord, and because of the words of his holiness. For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourns; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their might is not right. For both prophet and priest are profane; yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:9–11 KJ2000

In Hebrew usage, the prophet is the preacher and the priest is the judiciary—in our society, that might include congress. There is no question that the blame for this deplorable collapse of morals is laid at the feet of the preachers and the civil leaders. But how on earth can that be? When people speak for God, how can they be blamed for a moral collapse? Ravi Zacharias, in a piece on the Tower of Babel, made an important point:

But that was millennia ago. Now, for the first time the whole world speaks the same language. Yet it is not propositional; rather, it is pictorial, literally focused on flesh and blood. As a result, the whole process militates against reason because images have become the sum and substance of truth, and the written word is no longer user-friendly. For all practical purposes, truth has been relegated to technology, beauty has been subjugated to the beholder, and goodness is mocked night after night as millions are idiotized before a box. We have been left as expendable entities in a disposable world, and our experiences have become fragmented quantities in a disjointed world. Yet, the fearful symmetry remains, for at such a time as this we are called to proclaim, It is written.… Is the written Word the best method for an infinite God to have chosen to reveal Himself? Yes! Indeed, an emphatic yes!

Ravi Zacharias - Biblical Authority and Cultural Relativism

I’m not sure I follow him all the way through this; he is speaking figuratively, I think. But his point will be that the written word is the way God has chosen to reveal himself, and with this I absolutely agree. I take that to mean that if you don’t stand on the Bible, the Word, you are in danger of idolatry—the use of images, which are of little value in reasoning. And the results of the gradual abandonment of the word, even in religious contexts, is what follows in Jeremiah’s prophecy.

Biblical Authority and Cultural Relativism - Ravi Zacharias

Even if you are not Jewish, you are probably aware of the two main Jewish holidays in the autumn of every year: the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur. But you may not be aware that these are also Christian holidays. Around the end of the first century, there was a lot of persecution of the Jews in and around Rome, and the church began to differentiate themselves from the Jews in every way they could. A lot of practices that were very common in the early church disappeared in the smoke of an oppression of the Jews. But why would the early church have paid any attention to what we know as Jewish holidays?

For one thing, Christians and Jews shared the same God. In its earliest years, Christianity was viewed by the world, not as a separate religion, but as a sect of Judaism. The earliest Christians were Jewish, and they had no consciousness of starting a new religion. Rather they saw what they were doing as a restoration of a purer faith. Judaism, in the Christian view, had gone astray and they were going to put it right. There is nothing strange about that; nearly every new sect of religion sees itself as a restorer of lost paths.

And so the first Christians, who were Jewish, continued to observe the holidays they had observed all their lives, and they taught the Gentile converts to do the same. But it was inevitable that they should begin to see new significance in these days that transcended the Jewish/historical meaning of the days. To put it simply, the early Christians saw Christ in the Jewish holidays. And now, 2,000 years later, you and I come along and wonder, What did they see?

One would presume that Christian people would like to know more about God. And yet there is a treasure trove in the Bible of which most Christian folk are blissfully unaware. In the first place, we don’t read our Bibles enough, and in the second place we dismiss parts of the Bible for one reason or another. Now I submit that, on the face of it, dismissing any part of the Bible is not a smart thing to do—for the Bible is the true record of the revelation of God to man. And if you want to know and understand God, the Bible is where you would expect to begin, right?

And in the Bible there is a thread that has been all but dismissed by most Christian people and it has been so for a very long time. That thread is a set of days that the Bible calls the appointed times of Jehovah. You may know these as the Jewish holidays but the premise of this series of programs is that they are much more than that. They are the holidays of God and therefore are Christian holidays, because they speak of Christ and his work, and they have just as much meaning for Christians as they ever had for Jews.

Of all these days, the one with the least obvious connection is the day the Jews call Rosh Hoshana and the public calls, The Jewish New Year. There is a complete list of all these days in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus and this holiday is summarized:

And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no regular work on it: but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.

Leviticus 23:23–25 KJ2000

Like any religious holiday, you take a day off from work and you go to church, that is you assemble before God—that is what a holy convocation is. That part is simple enough, but after that it becomes a little more difficult. For example, the day is a memorial, but a memorial of what? And you may have noticed that this is the first day of the seventh month, not the first month. How then can it be the new year?

Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1 Corinthians 15 51–52 KJV

There is no idea more central to the Christian faith than the resurrection of the dead. And yet, in these early days of Christianity, it had been called into question. It is in the great 15th chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that Paul wrestles with a group that claimed there was no resurrection from the dead.

I presume they still held a doctrine of the Kingdom of God, but for them, it was a physical kingdom—something a lot of Jews believed and expected. But Paul made it plain that they had it wrong.

I bought a CD course on the Old Testament once, because I was considering teaching an online course myself. I hadn’t got very deep into the first disc before the teacher said flatly that King David did not actually exist. She was assuming that the stories about David were a Hebrew myth. I went no further. The teacher was revealing a radical position on the Old Testament that was of no value to me.

Even from a non-believer’s point of view, David is one of most real characters in the Bible. He is larger than life, but that makes him no less real. He is a flawed human being, but that makes him still more real. He doted on a useless son, but that made him a real parent. Now, if you read through the books of Samuel, you encounter real people. They are just living in a different culture and speaking a different language, but they are just as real as you are.

The Books of Samuel, though, are not in strict chronological order, which tends to confuse some readers. The Ryrie Study Bible suggests that the section beginning with 2 Samuel 21 is something of a non-chronological appendix to David’s reign, recounting events that occurred earlier. We are used to having our history served up in a familiar order, but the ancients worked differently. They would sometimes relate events in an order that appealed to them, perhaps because it helped make sense of what happened. Maybe because that is the order they came to mind. This in no way undermines the historicity of the documents, but it does give seminarians something to write theses about.

So we don’t know exactly when in David’s reign these events occurred…but they were serious. Let’s begin in chapter 21, as we conclude our look at the Second Book of Samuel.

Even victory can be bitter. How can there ever be a clear victory when there is war between a father and a son? To be sure, it was a short war—only one battle—and David’s son…well, no one can know for sure, but a suspicion lingers that David may have been willing to give up the kingdom rather than see his son Absalom killed. When he told the men going out to battle to preserve Absalom, I can’t imagine what he thought he might do with the treacherous young man.

Absalom and his army were put to flight. And as Absalom rode through a wooded area, his hair got caught in the branches (he had a very full head of hair) and he hung there, alive, between the tree and the ground. No one else would do it, so Joab, David’s general, drove three lances through Absalom, cut him down, and his guard finished the job. Word of the battle came to David. And while he was grateful for the victory, his was stricken in his soul for the loss of his son.

33 And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for you, O Absalom, my son, my son!
1 And it was told Joab, Behold, the king weeps and mourns for Absalom.
2 And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people: for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son.
3 And the people stole back that day into the city, as people being ashamed steal away when they flee in battle.
4 But the king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!
5 And Joab came into the house to the king, and said, You have shamed this day the faces of all your servants, who this day have saved your life, and the lives of your sons and of your daughters, and the lives of your wives, and the lives of your concubines;
6 In that you love your enemies, and hate your friends. For you have declared this day, that you regard neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it would have pleased you well.

2 Samuel 18:33–19:6 KJ2000

Joab spoke the truth, every word—and David could not deny it.

When a palace coup takes place, any influential person is going to have walk very carefully. It may, in fact, be impossible to sit this one out. You may wish you could retreat into the wilderness and come back when the battle is over, but everyone knows who you are and what your loyalties have been. You are forced to choose sides no matter how much you would rather not. Sometimes the side is chosen for you in spite of all your protestations to the contrary. This can happen even in a large church organization, but they usually don’t kill you over it.

When Absalom engineered a palace coup and ousted his father David, It threw all kinds of people into crisis. Some went with David, some with Absalom, some ended up being spies in the enemy camp, and nearly everyone had their lives on the line. Such a man was Hushai the Archite, a man whose name is likely not familiar even to a lot of Bible readers. He started to go with David into the desert, but David sent him back with a view of defeating the counsel of another important player who had stayed with Absalom, figuring he was backing a winner. His name was Ahithophel, and you probably have not heard of him either. But he had been a key advisor to David and was now to Absalom; a man of singular wisdom and insight. And when David heard he was with Absalom, it was worrisome.

And the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counseled in those days, was as if a man had inquired at the oracle of God: so was all the counsel of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom.

2 Samuel 16:23 KJ2000

So when the coup had apparently succeeded, and everyone was standing there wondering what to do next, Ahithophel realized there was a very important piece of unfinished business. He said to Absalom:

[…] Let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night: And I will come upon him while he is weary and weak handed, and will make him afraid: and all the people that are with him shall flee; and I will strike the king only: And I will bring back all the people unto you: only the man whom you seek will be struck: so all the people shall be in peace.

2 Samuel 17:1–3 KJ2000

The objective of Ahithophel was to remove David from the picture without a lot of bloodshed and reunite the kingdom under Absalom. It might well have worked, and history written differently, if the plan had been followed. But David had prayed that God would defeat the counsel of Ahithophel. He feared the wisdom of that man in the wrong place. We’ll find out how that prayer was answered, and what that would mean for both Absalom and David, as we continue in the Second Book of Samuel.

Sometimes, there is no explaining love. It just is. The love of God for King David of Israel knew no bounds, and that love persisted through some terrible times and some terrible acts on David’s part. Maybe, in a vague sort of way, it can be explained by the fact that David himself was a man of great emotion; he was himself a man of love. I think that may explain his bonding with Jonathan, son of Saul. It may explain David’s love for King Saul that transcended every evil thing Saul tried to do to him. And it may explain, in some small way, his love for his son Absalom. Oh yes, I know that Fathers love their sons, but the love of David for Absalom is a little harder to explain. And it is a good example of what I said: Sometimes there is no explaining love. It just is.

Absalom was an altogether beautiful man. To call him handsome wouldn’t quite reach it. He was a determined man as well. When his step-brother raped his sister, it took two years, but finally Absalom took his revenge by killing Amnon. It was some three years after that he had to live in exile because of it. And even when Joab convinced David to bring him home, he was not allowed to come into David’s presence. After all, he had killed another of David’s sons. But finally, Absalom had enough and demanded reconciliation. So Joab, the king’s chief of staff, came to Absalom’s house and said to him:

[…] Why have your servants set my field on fire? [Absalom had ordered a field of Joab’s set on fire to encourage Joab’s coming.] And Absalom answered Joab, Behold, I sent unto you, saying, Come here, that I may send you to the king, to say, Why am I come from Geshur? it had been good for me to have been there still: now therefore let me see the king’s face; and if there be any iniquity in me, let him kill me. So Joab came to the king, and told him: and when he had called for Absalom, he came to the king, and bowed himself on his face to the ground before the king: and the king kissed Absalom.

2 Samuel 14:31–33 KJ2000

Reconciliation is a good thing, and it warms the heart. At least, it would if I didn’t know the rest of the story. Absalom is now free to act like the prince he is…and he plots revolution against David. I can only think that the years of exile had taken a toll on Absalom. He had killed his brother. Now he was prepared to dispose of his father as well. We’ll continue this sad story in 2 Samuel, chapter 15.

George Washington, in his farewell speech to his troops said this: the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality. Private morality has something to do with public life? Washington thought so. Once private morality has gone, public morality will not be far behind. In his farewell address from the presidency, George Washington closed by thanking the country for allowing him the privilege of acting with honor.

He implies that if the American people had been difference somehow—if they had been willing to let him (or force him) in another direction—he might not have had the privilege of always acting with honor. He gave a certain credit to the American people; and in doing so he laid a certain burden on them, as well.

Could it be that we are complicit in not allowing our leaders to act with honor? For I don't think many of us believe that duty, honor, and country are the dominant considerations for men in politics these days. What is?

It is hard to think of a family situation worse than one created by a man named Amnon, the son of David. It was event of sexual violence, ultimately leading to bloodshed. But considering what David had done with Bathsheba, and the wretched example it set, it is just as hard to think this event was not connected, somehow. But there is a lesson or two to be learned here.

The first is that the biblical account says that Amnon loved Tamar—his half-sister. I’m afraid the Bible here uses the word love in broadest possible sense. Because his behavior in this case was nothing at all like true love. He was a completely self-centered, self-indulgent, weak young man—spoiled rotten, no doubt, as is too often the case with royalty—and he had the presumption of royalty, perverted by his father’s own example. I can’t help pondering what young people can learn from this incident.

Under a pretext, Amnon managed to get the girl alone. The ensuing dialogue showed that she did not consider him repulsive. She was willing to be his wife. But he didn’t want her as a wife. He just wanted her.

However he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.

2 Samuel 13:14–15 KJ2000

Is there a lesson here for young men and women? It’s important to understand that there is a yawning chasm between the sexual desire and true love. A lot of young men think they are in love when they are only in heat. That, in itself, is nothing special. What makes it dangerous is that young women can’t tell the difference at that early stage. So how does one tell the difference? I’m no expert, but is seems plain enough: with time and distance.

Love is open and honest. Love perseveres. Love does not harm or hurt. Love is patient, kind, considerate. Love is well-behaved. Love is not self-indulgent. Love is not hot-tempered. Love is optimistic. Love does not go away. Now, how on earth can a young woman know these things about a man who claims to love her? Well, you can’t learn it in a week, or a month—not even a year. It takes time and distance. (By distance, I mean a space between you that is not violated while you get to know one another.) There is a line which must not be crossed.

So, when all was said and done, how did this encounter turn out? Well, when he had simply used her, he simply told her to get out. The purpose of Amnon’s plan had been accomplished. What he did not plan on, however, was how his actions would affect another one of Tamar’s brothers—Absalom. We’ll find the story in 2 Samuel, chapter 13.

It is always painful to see a good man fall. And in the affair of David and Bathsheba, that is pretty much what happened. It happened to a good woman at the same time. Who knows, maybe this was somewhere in the back of King Solomon’s mind when he wrote:

Dead flies cause the ointment of the perfumer to send forth a foul odor: so does a little folly to him that is respected for wisdom and honor.

Ecclesiastes 10:1 KJ2000

And he had a classic example in his own mother and father. This affair is loaded with lessons to be learned and questions to be answered. Someone said, Power corrupts. At the time this happened, David was at the peak of his power, his influence, and his popularity. There seems to be a sense of invincibility that comes over powerful men at times. They come to think they are above the law—that they can get away with things ordinary men can’t. After all, they are not ordinary.

But in David’s case, this is singularly stupid. He had a covey of wives. And if they had not been enough, there was the entire flower of Judean womanhood before him. He didn’t have to take another man’s woman. Girls would have lined up to be David’s concubines, and he could have taken his pick. So why did he take another man’s wife? What on earth was he thinking? The answer is easy: He wasn’t thinking. He saw, he wanted, he took. And if it hadn’t been for one small problem, he might have gotten away with it.

And it came to pass after this, that the king of the children of Ammon died, and Hanun his son reigned in his stead. Then said David, I will show kindness unto Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father showed kindness unto me. And David sent to comfort him by the hand of his servants for his father. And David’s servants came into the land of the children of Ammon.

2 Samuel 10:1–2 KJ2000

Here is the picture: the king of Ammon dies and David sends mourners on a state visit, for a state funeral. Unfortunately, the king’s son was an idiot. Israel had good relations with Ammon up to this point, but this young man and his companions decided to exert themselves. Normally, the servants of David would have diplomatic immunity (just as in the modern world). But when they arrived:

3 [T]he princes of the children of Ammon said unto Hanun their lord, Think you that David does honor your father, that he has sent comforters unto you? Has not David rather sent his servants unto you, to search the city, and to spy it out, and to overthrow it?
4 Therefore Hanun took David’s servants, and shaved off one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away.
5 When they told it unto David, he sent to meet them, because the men were greatly ashamed: and the king said, Tarry at Jericho until your beards are grown, and then return.
6 And when the children of Ammon saw that they had become repulsive before David, the children of Ammon sent and hired the Syrians of Beth-rehob, and the Syrians of Zoba, twenty thousand footmen, and of king Maacah a thousand men, and of Ish-tob twelve thousand men.

2 Samuel 10:3–6 KJ2000

Now mind you, David was at peace with Ammon; he had made a peaceful gesture; he had sent diplomats to a funeral. In return, he gets an insult from these people and now they are putting together an army for war. The resulting battle, with so much loss of life, was totally unnecessary. It grew up around a young upstart king who didn’t know when he was well off. Had he himself treated David’s emissaries peacefully, none of this need have happened. The arrogance of youth would cost the lives of thousands of men—and oddly, it indirectly led to one of the more disgraceful episodes in David’s life. We’ll find it in 2 Samuel, chapter 11.

It isn’t always easy to understand why God does some of the things he does. It isn’t always certain, even, that God does everything attributed to him. In our generation, for example, we use the expression, an act of God, for all kinds of things I really don’t think God is directly involved in. An earthquake, for example—insurance people would call that an act of God. And in the broad sense that God is creator of all things, and therefore everything that happens in nature is an act of God, even when God is not the proximate cause of the event, I guess we could call it that. In other words, a great tsunami is a result of the properties of matter. Since God created the matter, I guess we could say that the tsunami is an act of God…but it’s not a deliberate attack on some group of people. So an act of God can be an idiom, not a literal attribution.

There was an incident early in the reign of David where I can’t help wondering exactly what it was that went wrong. I’m sure you know what the Ark of the Covenant was. It was the absolute ground zero of Israelite worship—the heart, the core. It was a wooden box, covered in gold, in which the Ten Commandments were kept. Whatever you may have heard about the wonders of the Temple, it was built to house this little box.

It had been captured by the Philistines, but there was a power about the box that led them to send it home—urgently. It seemed that when people treated the Ark with all due respect, all went well. When the didn’t, things went very badly, indeed. The Ark had been kept in a man’s house for some time, and King David, in one of his first acts as king over all of Israel, determined to bring it home. We’ll find this story in 2 Samuel, chapter 6.

In all of the Bible, who is the greatest example of leadership (apart from Jesus, of course)? Without a doubt, it’s David. When you speak of David in a Biblical context, the name needs no modifier. You don’t have to call him King David for a Bible reader to know exactly who you are talking about. His name occurs more than 1,000 times in the Old Testament alone.

A curious fact: No one else in the Bible was ever named David. This is, I think, very unusual given the very human proclivity for naming kids after famous people. Yet, with David, it didn’t happen. It is almost as though God intended for David to be, and always be, one of a kind. Names in Hebrew mean something, and until recently, I had never looked at the meaning of David’s name, nor had I ever thought much about the characteristics of this man that made him such a great leader.

He is easily the most influential and dominant figure in the Old Testament. He was the youngest of eight sons. His brothers thought he was arrogant. The key story of his life is familiar, but I want to extract from the story the elements of leadership in David that emerge from it. We’ll begin in 1 Samuel, chapter 17.

It is fascinating, when you’re reading history, to see how much people are the same—in every age and every time. Cultures change, standards change, technology changes, but human nature—at its base—changes very little, if at all. Petty politics, palace intrigue, deal making, trivial and great jealousies: They make us feel right at home even in strange times and places. It is one of the reasons Shakespeare remains so relevant. His plots have been stolen over and over again by playwrights and movie-makers. (When Solomon said, There is nothing new under the sun, he could have been talking about Hollywood.) For all I know, Shakespeare stole some of his stuff from the Bible.

But when you read along in the history of Israel, you feel right at home, even in these days of modern, political assassination. When Saul died in battle against the Philistines, anyone reading the story, or even remotely familiar with subsequent history, would have assumed that David would have assumed the throne over all of Israel. After all, Samuel himself had anointed David king at God’s own command and choice. But if that were your assumption, you would have been wrong. The men of Judah accepted him immediately, because David was one of them. But Saul’s chief of the military, a man named Abner, installed Saul’s son as king over the rest of Israel.

Now there was long war between the house of Saul and the house of David: but David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker.

2 Samuel 3:1 KJ2000

None of this could possibly have been lost on a man like Abner. He was a military man, a fighter—tough as nails—and he was very aware. He had his attitudes toward David who had, on one occasion, really showed him up and then rubbed it in front of everyone, as Saul was chasing David from cave to cave. But Abner was no fool, and he well understood the levers of power in his own time. So we can’t be surprised at the outcome of a confrontation between Abner and the new king, Saul’s son Ishbosheth. We’ll find this turning point in 2 Samuel, chapter 3.

War makes strange bedfellows sometimes. It’s possible that David might well have been an ally of the Philistines when they went to war against Israel and Saul. It’s hard to imagine David at war with Israel, but it was on its way to happening…except for one thing—the lords of the Philistines didn’t trust him and wouldn’t bring him into combat. After all, David had killed more than a few Philistines in his time, and they just didn’t much like the man. But bad things were going on while David was gone.

He had been given a town called Ziklag, where all his camp followers were. When David’s men returned after their exclusion from the Philistine war party, they found that the Amalekites—those dread Amalekites that should have been killed off a long time ago, but weren’t—had come to Ziklag before them.

And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire; And had taken the women captives, that were therein: they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way. So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.

1 Samuel 30:1–4

It was such a terrible disaster that had befallen all of them in one fell swoop. David’s two wives had been taken, and David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him. They were grieved and thought, Why weren’t we here! But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech’s son, I pray you, bring me here the ephod. And Abiathar brought there the ephod to David. And David inquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for you shall surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

1 Samuel 30:7–8

The long pursuit of David by King Saul, would make for a great movie. It has all the elements. Danger, treachery, romance, suspense, the chase. And the characters are all fascinating and any actor would love the roles. There was King Saul, who was a depressive paranoid, and yet a big handsome fellow; David, of course, red-headed, small, good looking, and very well built; Abigail, the intelligent, beautiful woman who became his second wife; Nabal, her brutish husband who died; Doeg the snitch; the Ziphites who ratted David out to Saul…twice.

No producer could ask for a better story. And there is more to come. I feel quite sure the story has been transposed into other times, places and characters, because it is so human. It was not easy for David to stay hidden from Saul, because every time he showed himself anywhere, and he had to do so to get supplies, he was seen by a friend or an enemy. Not very many were neutral, and even without cell phones, word traveled fast. And so the Ziphites ratted David out the second time, and gave Saul the coordinates of David’s location.

Then Saul arose, and went down to the wilderness of Ziph, having three thousand chosen men of Israel with him, to seek David in the wilderness of Ziph. And Saul pitched in the hill of Hachilah, which is before Jeshimon, by the way. But David stayed in the wilderness, and he saw that Saul came after him into the wilderness. David therefore sent out spies, and understood that Saul was come in very deed.

1 Samuel 26:2–4 AKJV

But this time, he didn’t run. When his scouts located Saul’s camp, David eased up into an observation point and noted carefully the layout of the camp and who was bedding down where. He took particular note of where a man named Abner—Saul’s military commander, a great fighting man with all the qualities that went with it in an age of danger —lay down. He was tough, strong, and very aware. He was dangerous. David took note of where Saul would be sleeping, right in the middle of the camp. David then hatched a very daring plan, and recruited a volunteer to go with him.

And it came to pass, when Saul was returned from following the Philistines, that it was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi. Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men on the rocks of the wild goats. And he came to the sheepcotes by the way, where was a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet: and David and his men remained in the sides of the cave.

1 Samuel 24:1–3 AKJV

As Saul approached the cave:

[…T]he men of David said to him, Behold the day of which the Lord said to you, Behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand, that you may do to him as it shall seem good to you. Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe privately.

1 Samuel 24:4 AKJV

David could easily have struck Saul down at that moment. But he simply cut of the hem of Saul’s robe.

And it came to pass afterward, that David’s heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul’s skirt. And he said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch forth my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. So David stayed his servants with these words, and suffered them not to rise against Saul. But Saul rose up out of the cave, and went on his way.

1 Samuel 24:5–7 AKJV

So King Saul went on his way…but not before David followed him on his knees, begging for reconciliation. We’ll read his pleas as we continue in 1 Samuel.

In my time, I have followed a lot of election campaigns. I remember sitting in a car, in the rain, in England listening to the Democratic National Convention on the BBC when Lyndon Johnson was nominated. But in all my years of following elections, I have never seen anything quite like this election season. The political process has always been a little crazy, but this one is really strange—and I find myself wondering every time it rolls around, Is this the best we can do?

As a nation, we probably expect too much of our leaders and too little of ourselves. Like everyone else, I marvel at the weakness of people running for office, and I sometimes forget that they are merely a reflection of ourselves. I recall those famous lines from Abraham Lincoln about government of the people, by the people, and for the people and I don’t see how we can escape responsibility for what our leaders do and don’t do. We can’t sidestep that issue. If there are no strong leaders before us, it is our fault.

I would like to take you back to another time and place, to a nation surprisingly like us. They were like us in spite of changes in technology and an explosion of knowledge and information. They still were like us. The place is Jerusalem; the time is the days of Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah was quite young when he had his first vision and volunteered to be a prophet. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for. And in chapter three of his book, he touches on what bothers me most about the political climate we are looking at.

After the win over Goliath, David went on to show himself a true fighting man. He apparently fought without fear, believing with all his heart that he was in the right and that God would fight alongside him. He chalked up some great victories, and the people loved him and honored him to such an extent that it generated great jealousy on the part of King Saul. Saul had promised his daughter’s hand to the man who slew Goliath. Knowing this, wheels began to turn in the king’s mind, that he might find a way he might be rid of David.

And Michal Saul’s daughter loved David: and they told Saul, and the thing pleased him. And Saul said, I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him. Therefore Saul said to David a second time, you shall this day be my son-in-law. And Saul commanded his servants, saying, Talk with David secretly, and say, Behold, the king has delight in you, and all his servants love you: now therefore be the king’s son-in-law. And Saul’s servants spoke those words in the ears of David. And David said, Does it seem to you a light thing to be a king’s son-in-law, seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?

1 Samuel 18:20-23 KJ2000

It is an interesting response coming from David. He did not realize how much power he really had. He knew he was poor and he had no idea how the public thought of him. Being poor was significant, because he needed a gift, a dowry, to give to her father.

And the servants of Saul told him, saying, In this manner spoke David. And Saul said, Thus shall you say to David, The king desires not any dowry, but a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son-in-law: and the appointed days were not expired.

1 Samuel 18:24-26 KJ2000

It’s funny, but you can almost hear David say, Oh, is that all? I can do that. No problem.

Therefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full number to the king, that he might be the king’s son-in-law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter as his wife. And Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal Saul’s daughter loved him.

1 Samuel 18:27-28 KJ2000

Nothing worked, and even his daughter fell in love with David.

And Saul was yet the more afraid of David; and Saul became David’s enemy continually.

1 Samuel 18:29 KJ2000

One of the truly great ironies of the Bible followed on the heels of the failure of Israel’s first king: Saul, the son of Kish. From the moment of Saul’s rejection by God and the anointing of David as King in his place, the Spirit of God departed from Saul and went to David. The result for Saul was tragic. Because in the beginning, God gave him every chance. He had all the physical assets of a king and, in addition, God gave Saul his spirit and changed him into another man. He was converted. Then, when he disobeyed, he lost it all. Samuel told him flatly:

And Samuel said, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king.

1 Samuel 15:22–23 KJ2000

Later, When Samuel was sent to find another king among the Sons of Jesse:

And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all your children? And he said, There remains yet the youngest, and, behold, he keeps the sheep. And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and bring him: for we will not sit down till he comes here. And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance, and handsome. And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him: for this is he. Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah. But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.

1 Samuel 16:11–14 KJ2000

And to be sure, the latter state of Saul was indeed worse than the first. And it is out of this tragic state of affairs that one of the great ironies of biblical history occurs. It turns out that the only man in all the world who could give Saul relief from the black dog of depression was none other than the man anointed to replace him. Only when David played on a musical instrument in Saul’s presence did he find any relief at all.

And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly; and he became his armorbearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray you, stand before me; for he has found favor in my sight. And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

1 Samuel 16:21–23 KJ2000

The first king of Israel was exactly what the people envisioned for a king—tall, handsome, athletic. And God gave him the gifts he would need as king. He had a chance to become great and to have his dynasty established forever. It was a real chance, too—not something extended and then taken away. But it was as true then as it is today that power corrupts, and early on Saul displayed an impulsiveness and a headstrong approach that nearly led him to kill his own son.

The first thing he did wrong was to assume the office of priest when Samuel was later than Saul thought he ought to be. And then (trying to be religious, I suppose) on the day of a major battle with the Philistines, he commanded that everyone fast. His son did not hear his father’s command and ate some honey. Only then did someone tell him what his father had commanded.

Then answered one of the people, and said, your father strictly charged the people with an oath, saying, Cursed be the man that eats any food this day. And the people were faint. Then said Jonathan, My father has troubled the land: see, I ask you, how my eyes have been brightened, because I tasted a little of this honey. How much better, if the people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies which they found? for would there not been now a much greater slaughter among the Philistines? And they struck down the Philistines that day from Michmash to Aijalon: and the people were very faint.

1 Samuel 14:28–31 KJ2000

The decision by Israel to change their government from a theocracy to a monarchy was a disastrous decision. It was surely not God’s will for them, because they had lived in freedom for so long. But freedom includes heavy burdens for a people, and they just got tired. Sadly, I see signs of the same fatigue among our own people today. But the fact that the decision was not God’s will for them, he cannot be accused of giving them an inferior king.

The kings in those days had to lead people into battle, and the first king of Israel was well endowed for that. He was head and shoulders taller than any other man. He was handsome and possessed of the necessary charisma to lead. He was humble—that is to say, he was little in his own eyes. And God changed him into another man by filling him with the Spirit. It was not long before Saul’s leadership and his resolve were tested. Terrorism is not new to the Middle East, and what is threatened here is terrorism of the worst sort.

1 Then Nahash the Ammonite came up, and encamped against Jabeshgilead: and all the men of Jabesh said unto Nahash, Make a covenant with us, and we will serve you.
2 And Nahash the Ammonite answered them, On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes, and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.
3 And the elders of Jabesh said unto him, Give us seven days’ respite, that we may send messengers unto all the territory of Israel: and then, if there be no man to save us, we will come out to you.
4 Then came the messengers to Gibeah of Saul, and told the tidings in the ears of the people: and all the people lifted up their voices, and wept.
5 And, behold, Saul came after the herd out of the field; and Saul said, What ails the people that they weep? And they told him the tidings of the men of Jabesh.
6 And the spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard those tidings, and his anger was kindled greatly.

1 Samuel 11:1–4 KJ2000

What would a Biblical economic system look like? Some people worry that Christians would like to turn the good, old USA into a theocracy. They worry without a cause. It will never happen—not even close. We have a constitution and, strange as it may sound, Christian folks are happy with the Constitution. Here’s an irony for you: The Constitution of the United States, if honored, would allow us all to live a lot closer to a Biblical economic system than we currently do.

Now, what would such a system look like? There are some fundamentals that lay the groundwork for this. The first principle of Biblical economics is freedom. Imagine for a moment that God decided to establish a nation under a theocracy. He would be their God, their king. He did, you know. It was the nation of Israel in the period of the Judges before they decided they had to have a king. God was King. Every man was free. It’s summed up in Judges 21:25 “In those days there was no King in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Alright, we’re free. We can do what we think is right. I’ve heard this applied in anegative sense - that Israel really needed a centralized government because they were doingwhat was right in their own eyes and they were going down the wrong road. But thestatement you read in Judges, is neither positive nor negative. It is simply a fact. It waswhat God wanted for them, except that he wanted them to have God as their king. Let's take a further look at some of the fundamentals of Biblical economics...

Freedom is a terrible burden to bear, and it is a sad fact of life that men are all too willing to lay down that burden in the name of security or some other combination of social goods that are promised by political leaders. We need to think about this, because the result of laying down the burden of freedom is the laying down of freedom itself.

One of the times of the greatest freedom a people could ever have enjoyed was the period of time described in the Bible in the Book of Judges. It was a stormy time, and Israel was terrorized by the enemies from time to time. It happened to them when they let down on the most fundamental principles of divine law, an essential to any free people. They lived under a true theocracy. That is to say, God was their only king. Problem was, God was out of sight for the most part and they were free to do as they pleased. Which is all well and good as long as you are the doer. It is not so good when you are the one being done to.

In the course of time, the Israelites got weary of carrying the burden themselves and wanted to make a change of government. Now consider this carefully. They wanted to give up a theocracy. Why would they want to give up so much freedom? Why would they not want to continue under the kingship of God, who gave them all but free reign as long as they remained true to him?

If you saw the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, you will have been introduced to the idea that the Ark of God is a source of great power. Power that could be used, theoretically, as a weapon of war. Anyone remotely familiar with the Bible should know that while the Ark had great symbolic power, and was an object of great holiness, whatever power that was there was not mindless. It was the power of God, and God was highly unlikely to use that power in the projects and wars of the murdering band of thugs we call the Third Reich.

Nevertheless, the scene in the movie where the Ark is opened and men look into it is a riveting piece of movie-making—and it is not entirely without biblical foundation. There was an occasion where 50 men died because they looked into the Ark. It was this idea of the ark as a source of power that led the men of Israel to carry it into battle with them, and that myth was demolished when the Philistines not only whipped their army, they captured the ark itself.

Now to the Philistines, the Ark was just another religious artifact, so they took it home and placed it in the same room with their God, Dagon. God was not amused. When they entered the room the next morning, the statue of Dagon was face down on the floor before the Ark. They set the thing back up. Next morning, it was down again, but this time it had fallen across the threshold of the door and its head and hands were broken off. I have heard this incident, and the associated events, cited as an example to show that God has a sense of humor. If so, it is a fairly grim sense of humor, and pretty earthy at the same time. Because while all this was going on, the Philistines were starting to have trouble sitting down.

There aren’t very many things you can do that are worse than making people dread the worship of God. I know, you can kill people, you can maim them, you can cut off their heads. All these things and a lot more have been done to Christians in history. But when you begin to undermine the joy of worship, when you take away the comfort that people feel in coming to appear before God and walking through the prescribed ceremonies, you take the first steps in destroying the relationship with God.

And this is singularly cruel, because it is that blessed hope in God that gives life meaning. When you destroy the relationship with God, you take away the meaning of a man’s life. This happens in many ways, and it has happened all too often in the history of the faith. And it isn’t the outsiders who are the greatest danger. Sometimes the greatest danger can come from those who are supposed to be the custodians of the faith.

Such were two men named Hophni and Phineas, priests at the Tabernacle of God who themselves were not even believers. They bullied people, they took things that they had no right to, and used the power of their office to seduce the women who came there to worship. Their Father Eli, the high priest at the time, tried to talk to them, but they would not listen. And he was too weak to do what should have been done. They should have been thrown out of the priesthood and banished at the very least. God does not take severe steps without a warning first. And so, a man of God—perhaps a prophet—was sent to tell Eli what was coming.

There is not a hint that Eli responded to this warning at all. And in later history, we come to understand clearly that even at this late date, If Eli had repented, God would have taken note and relented. If he had rent his garments, cast dust upon his head, banished his two sons, God might well have removed the curse at least for the time. He actually did that in the case of Ahab the King in later years. I’ll talk about Ahab another day, but never assume that when God sends a warning like this that it is pointless to repent. It is never pointless to repent.

What follows on this, after Eli’s failure to respond, is one of the more remarkable instances in the Bible.

It has been said repeatedly that those who cannot learn the lesson of history are condemned to repeat it. I can only conclude that not many people believe that statement, because so few have any interest whatsoever in history. Eyes glaze over when it is mentioned. You may even have started to reach for the button on your radio when I mentioned it. But if you are still listening, consider this: It is entirely the fault of your teachers that you never acquired a taste for history. I will confess that I came to my interest in history late in life. I blame my teachers for that. History is a set of fascinating stories, and who doesn’t like a good story? And more than that. These excellent stories go a long way toward explaining what’s going on around us.

Great leaders always are students of history. If they weren’t they would find themselves utterly lost in understanding the world around them. They are able to lead people because they understand what is happening, and their decisions are based on a knowledge that those who never hit the books can never understand. Notice also that I called them students of history. The teachers of history rarely attain to leadership roles, and that is just as well. If you happen to be a history teacher, and you take exception to what I am saying, I would be more than happy to hear from you. And if you are really good at your profession, I can only say I am sorry I didn’t meet you sooner.

So, why am I on a tear about history today? Because I am about to launch on a new series of programs looking at one of the most pivotal times in all of history.

If you are a Christian, and a thoughtful person, somewhere along the way, you have probably wondered about the relationship of the Jewish people to God. You know that there is no salvation in any other name than Jesus, and yet you also know that God made a covenant with Israel, and that he is not through with them yet.

Their very survival would seem to suggest that since, against all odds, and against great opposition, the nation of Israel was established in the land of Israel after WWII. It seems the most unlikely of events given the opposition of the entire Arab world. If you have never seen the movie Exodus, you owe it to yourself. It is a relatively painless way of experiencing what those days were like. Better yet, read the novel by Leon Uris on which the movie was based. But whatever you do, familiarize yourself with this moment in time. It has profound implications for what is going on the Middle East right now.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. In that He says, a new covenant, He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Hebrews 8:10 13 NKJV

There is rather a large gap between vanishing, and being ready to vanish. But there is something of considerable importance that is commonly overlooked. This is not the covenant that Jesus made with his disciples at the last supper. That covenant was new, but it was not this new covenant. This one is made with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, not with everyone.

And this underlines something very important about what we call the Old Covenant. It was a collective covenant, made with a people, not a person. Abraham’s covenant was personal and had to do with his descendants. The Israelite Covenant, called in Hebrews the Old Covenant, was made with and for a people living in the land of Israel and conducting their affairs as a community. The persistence of the Jews as a people in spite of all attempts to destroy them, stands as a witness that God has not finally washed his hands of them. The incredible hatred of the Jews by forces of evil in the world is also a witness.

Click here for Israel & the Covenant #1.

Jews and Christians have been conflicted about one another for a very long time. After all, they worship the same God, and the Jewish Bible forms the largest part of the Christian Bible. But the difference runs deeper than that between, say, Protestants and Catholics. The dialogue seems to run deeper between Roman Catholics and Jews, probably because they have a longer history of tension between them. A lot of progress has been made since WWII in relations between the two religions. A progress that probably would never happen between either religion and Islam. At the heart of it has been rather a lot of thought by Catholic theologians, rethinking historic positions of the church.

An interesting article appeared in First Things some years ago, and I overlooked it until recently. By Avery Cardinal Dulles, it is titled The Covenant with Israel. Here is what he said. The question of the present status of God’s covenant with Israel has been extensively discussed in Jewish Christian dialogues since the Shoah. Catholics look for an approach that fits in the framework of Catholic doctrine, much of which has been summarized by the Second Vatican Council. But Cardinal Dulles doesn’t shy away from a central issue.

The Second Vatican Council, while providing a solid and traditional framework for discussing Jewish-Christian relations, did not attempt to settle all questions. In particular, it left open the question whether the Old Covenant remains in force today. Are there two covenants, one for Jews and one for Christians? If so, are the two related as phases of a single developing covenant, a single saving plan of God? May Jews who embrace Christianity continue to adhere to Jewish covenantal practices?

Cardinal Dulles thought that a place to start was with the term Old Covenant. As he notes, the term is solidly in place, but I don’t think it is well-understood. The term is used only once—in one of Paul’s letters. Curious for a term so solidly in place. That said, when you speak of New Covenant, you imply the old, so let’s see where that usage started—with the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 31.

Click here for Israel & the Covenant #2.

Does God get angry? We know he does—everyone has heard about the wrath of God—but, you know, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people don’t see what God has to be angry about. When they read scriptures about the wrath of God, they shiver a little, but they really don’t understand. They either think of God as an irascible tyrant, or they just don’t believe he is really all that angry.

Between the movies The Ten Commandments and Prince of Egypt, everyone knows how the death of the firstborn in Egypt was the means God used to finally force Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. But someone asked me recently why God had to kill the firstborn of Egypt just to get the Israelites out of there? After all, he is God, isn’t he? Couldn’t he have found a better way to do that? The kids hadn’t done anything, had they? No, they hadn’t. And so it might be important to understand what actually happened—to understand what the basis of the anger of God might be. The movie-makers were troubled by it. It’s obvious by the way they tried, in their own way, to make sense of it—by having Pharaoh pronounce judgement upon himself…which really doesn’t match the Bible. So why don’t we try to understand what’s going on here.

7 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.
9 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we:
10 Come, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there come upon us any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so escape out of the land.
11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.
12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.
13 And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor:
14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, in which they made them serve, was with rigor.

Exodus 1:7–14 KJ2000

For us, this is just so many words on paper. I am sorry, I lack the powers of description to impress upon your mind what this was like. To get a grip on it, read a book like Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel. It is a description of the Nazi’s use of slave labor in WWII. And the Egyptians did not make the Israelites slaves for a few years, like the Nazis. They held them generation after generation. We live so well, even the poorest of us, that we cannot grasp the degradation and death that is inseparable from this kind of slavery. We have little idea of the dehumanizing effect of it, not only on the slaves, but also on the masters. It turns the slaves into animals and the masters into monsters. But as we continue in the Book of Exodus, we’ll see that the diminution of human life was about to become even worse.

Would you agree that Jesus was a good man? I doubt that we could find anyone who would argue to the contrary. Would you then agree that Jesus was a righteous man? I am reasonably sure you would. But what exactly does that mean?

I have asked the question: If you only had a short time to tell someone about God, what would you want to be sure and tell them. Each of us might have our own list, but God gave us his in Jeremiah 9. [T]hat they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight[.]

The last thing on God’s list of things he wants us to know and understand about him is that he exercises righteousness in the earth. And since Jesus is God in the flesh, we would surely expect him to be an example of righteousness. But again, I have to ask, what does that mean?

If you sit down to read the Old Testament, you’re very likely to come across some events that are profoundly disturbing. There are instances where God commands Israel to wipe out whole cities—men, women, children, and animals. And it is not easy to reconcile these events with what we otherwise know about the nature of God.

People make two big mistakes when they tackle this issue. They try to justify God or they condemn God for allowing bad things to happen. As to the first error, God is sovereign and can do as he wishes. My task is not to justify God, but to understand and know him. As to the second error, this arises from the human desire to have our cake and eat it too. We want to be free to live our lives as we choose without anything bad happening to us.

But the freedom to live our lives as we choose means that we each have the freedom to harm one another—which we often do. The presence of evil in the world is relatively easy to understand. Man is free. Man commits sin. When we commit sin, bad things happen. And if God is just, then he cannot let evil deeds go unpunished. What can we know of God’s sense of judgement and justice?

We know from God’s own testimony that it possible, not only to know God, but to understand him. But to really know and understand God at a personal level, one has to know Jesus. On the night of the last supper, Jesus had a rather long dialogue with his disciples. He said something quite remarkable and puzzling, recorded in John 14. It almost sounds as if Jesus is saying that he is the Father. But that can’t quite be true. Jesus is on earth and the Father is in heaven, and they talk to each other.

The Gospel of John is very strong on this point. He even starts out with it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now this poses a logical problem. How can the Word be God and be with God at the same time? What was Jesus explaining in this passage?

Christian theologians have wrestled with this down through time and have come up with the idea that God is a Trinity—three persons in one. The precise nature of the Trinity is said to be a mystery, so we can’t expect to comprehend it fully. But if we bear in mind one simple principle, we can understand all we need to know about God. We’ll find it in Deuteronomy 29.

When you have a limited time to tell someone about God, what are the important things for a person to know? For a person who knows nothing about God, I would be hard-pressed to start anywhere except with the simple concept of God as creator.

What is interesting is that this is precisely the place the founding fathers of our country started in laying out their case for independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The very guarantor of our most fundamental rights is, according the founding fathers, the Creator.

The founding fathers concluded some very important things from the idea of God as creator. They saw logically the same thing that Paul outlines in Romans 1—that the creation is a self-evident fact. Something that is self-evident needs no proof. It is there and its self is evidence. Let’s look at how this simple concept—of God as creator—has far-reaching implications.

The worship of God is not as easy as some might think. It is easy enough to pretend to worship. All the forms are well known: raised hands, bowed head, bent knees. The jargon of praise is easily learned. Songs are easy enough if you can carry a tune. But something should tell us that it is not that easy. Not really. Not in truth.

Now, I have been in a service where the leader tried to lead a cheer for Jesus. We were called upon to shout aloud in praise of God, and we did. But there was to me something false about it. It was not at all like the shout that goes up when a football team scores. It wasn't even as good as Give me an E with cheerleaders leading us at the game.

Even bowing down and kneeling—is it an expression of great reverence or mere religious form? Of course, we have to face the fact that our hearts have been hardened to such things. But the cure is not pretense. Consider an act of great worship we find in the Book of Revelation, chapter 4...

Speaking to the young prophet named Jeremiah, God had this to say about himself:

But let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, says the Lord.

Jeremiah 9:24 KJ2000

Now I would be the first to admit that there is a problem with this, at least on the surface. There is a tension between a God who exercises loving-kindness on the one hand and judgement on the other. Take Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. It isn’t immediately apparent that Sodom is an example of the loving-kindness of God.

The tension between the first two aspects of God”s character, loving-kindness and judgement, is resolved in the third aspect of his character—righteousness. In Hebrew, it comes from a root that means straight. Some of the instructions of God don’t become clear until much time has passed—or, when ignoring them, after much harm has been done. We have to depend on God to be straight with us.

Have you ever heard of the Wicked Bible? No, I am not making a joke. Back in the very earliest days of printing with movable type, someone made a mistake in setting the words of the seventh commandment, and out came a Bible which read, Thou shalt commit adultery.

And as ridiculous as it sounds, I have a legitimate question: Why not? There are those who argue for the abolition of divine law, but for that to be possible, the law itself must be arbitrary. That is, God could just have easily said Thou shalt steal as to say Thou shalt not steal.

Now I’ll guess that you intuitively know that is not the case. God said Thou shalt not steal because it is intrinsically wrong. And it is intrinsically wrong because it is harmful. Now, what does that tell us about the nature of God?

Some people are fond of speaking of God as omnipresent, everywhere at once, present in every blade of grass, existing throughout the entire universe. But they never seem to consider that in the process they depersonalize God and that they are advocating a kind of pantheism.

Yet the Bible reveals a God is a person and acting in time and space. You can think of God presenting himself as standing alongside a road talking to a man named Abraham about his plan. This aspect of God is revealed in the pages of your Bible.

Now if God is a person, then it is logical that he has a personality and character. In fact, that is precisely what the Bible reveals to us. So the question naturally follows: What kind of person is he? What is he like? God himself tells us what we must know about him. Let’s begin by reading his words to Jeremiah.

If you only had a short time to tell someone about God, what would you tell them? What is the most important thing to know about God? In a way, we may think we don’t know much about God—that God is some great mystical being of whom we only have the faintest idea.

But if we think very long about this, we are liable to find that some of the things we know about God are contradictory. This suggests that we may have taken a wrong turn somewhere and that leads to an important principle found in Deuteronomy:

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Deuteronomy 29:29 KJ2000

So there are things we can know about God and things that are unknowable for us. The curious thing about man is that we become quite sure of things about God that we really can’t know, while we are doubtful about the things we can know. So instead of busying ourselves with the secret things, creating dogma around those ideas, and using them to decide who is a Christian and who is not, let’s embrace a little humility and try to better know God.

Once upon a time, there was a people who had returned to their homeland after a generation in exile. They had been tasked by God with repairing the Temple and restoring worship. It wasn’t that God dwelt in houses made with hands; the Temple was symbolic, a center of worship, a reminder of who God is—really—and of what is really important about life.

But life wasn’t working very well for them. They were in the middle of an economic failure—a position not unlike where we often find ourselves. They had been told by the prophets, from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Ezekiel, why they were going into exile before it actually happened; so they just might listen to a prophet this time. Well, God sent one.

Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways: You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a bag with holes in it.

This is what the Lord Almighty says: Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored, says the Lord. You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the Lord Almighty. Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.

Haggai 1:3–9 NIV

Ouch! Do you suppose there is a lesson in here that might speak to where we are today? That theme, You earn wages, only to put them in a bag with holes in it, sure sounds familiar. Too many times we have run smack up against economic failure, and we have no idea how bad it will be or how long it will last. And if we think our government has a clue what to do about it, we are dreaming. But maybe we could learn from Haggai the prophet, to give careful thought to our ways.

It is always refreshing when science catches up with common sense. For a long time, specialists of one stripe or another argued that what makes us who we are happened as a result of heredity. Or they argued that it is all a matter of environment, of learned behavior. At the same time, I think most of us intuitively believed that it was a matter of heredity, environment and experience that shaped our character. Now, with the human genome project making enormous progress, we are learning that common sense evaluation was pretty much on the mark.

Matt Ridley, writing in Time magazine summarizes the emerging story and it is a fascinating tale indeed.

This is a new understanding of the fundamental building blocks of life based on the discovery that genes are not immutable things handed down from our parents like Moses’ stone tablets, but are active participants in our lives, designed to take their cues from everything that happens to us from the moment of our conception.

Time Magazine - What Makes You Who You Are

I can almost hear someone saying, So? And I understand the reaction. But what this can mean to parents, educators, and healthcare workers may turn out to be as profound as Matt Ridley thinks it is.

The Bible says the first man was made out of dirt. Scientists says life might have originated out of green slime. That's close enough to agreement for the moment. The point being that somewhere between dirt or green slime, and the man we see standing before us, something had to be done.

Not just something. A lot of stuff had to be done, and when you really look at it the implications are awesome. For example, I have to see my eye doctor three times a year, and I am always left waiting in his examination room. The walls there are covered with pictures and diagrams of the human eye. I often gaze at these pictures with something approaching religious awe. The eyes that I see all around the walls were designed. It seems impossible to me that anyone could fail to see that. It was one particular diagram that started me thinking...

Then the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Genesis 3:4–5 NKJV

It must have been a hard decision for God to make. I don’t mean to suggest that anything is really hard for God, but the decision had consequences that even God could not have treated lightly. The decision to put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden had consequences for all of history. By putting that tree there, God effectively created a gate out of the Garden of Eden. He gave man a choice about the kind of a world that he would live in. If Paradise became boring for man, he had an alternative.

God (1) told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree, but (2) left them free to eat it anyway. Much is contained in these two simple facts. But there was more. In order for God to achieve his objective, it was necessary that man be free. But that idea has terrible consequences. If man is not free to do evil, for example, he is not free. If he is not free to hurt other people, he’s not free. If man is not free to suffer, then he’s not free. If the innocent are not free to suffer at the hands of evil men, then they are not free.

Liberty has consequences. Man wants freedom, and at the same time he wants to be free from the consequences of his actions. These two wants simply cannot be reconciled.

Why is evil allowed in God’s good world if God is good? The answer is utterly simple: God is good, man is free. And if you’re not free to do evil, you’re not free at all.

There is a great fascination with the lost tribes of Israel. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, taught that the American Indians were among the lost tribes, and there was a television special not long ago that tracked down people in Asia and Africa who believed they were remnants of these forgotten bloodlines.

But there is, in the Bible, a prophecy about all the tribes of Israel at the end time. It is found in Genesis 49: And Jacob called unto his sons, and said, Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days. If old Jacob is really talking about the last days, then the distinct tribes of Israel should all exist as political entities at the very end of days.

So let’s proceed on that assumption. The descendants of Abraham were supposed to become as the sands of the seashore in number. And they were supposed to be a blessing to the rest of the world. All this implies a coherent people. And the prophecies of old Israel also imply a coherent people at the end time. So what exactly did he have to say?

I like World Magazine. It is a fine Christian news magazine that is much more hip than some staid, old periodicals. But I was jarred a little when I saw one cover photo.

Speaking before a congregation, a pastor was leaning on a pedestal, with one hand in the pocket of his faded jeans that, while clean enough, hadn’t seen an iron in a very long time, and which partially covered bare feet in sandals. His shirt was short-sleeved and apparently wash-and-wear because it hadn’t been ironed either. And the shirt tail was not tucked in.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, because it represents a major departure from the traditional look of a pastor and made the cover of a major Christian magazine. In our culture, we are always in the process of changing our style—style of dress, of worship, of music.

Since that’s the case, does it matter what the preacher wears? What’s the big deal about what we wear to church? God doesn’t care what we look like, does he? I’m not so sure. Take a parable of Jesus that we'll find in Matthew, chapter 22.

You have probably heard someone say that God works in mysterious ways. That’s true enough, and sometimes the mystery doesn’t become clear until the story has completely played out. But that’s just like any good Agatha Christie mystery. Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple always got everyone together to explain the mystery and expose the murderer. But that little meeting at the end of the story is a very uncomfortable affair for the guilty.

So it must have been for the brothers of Joseph. Joseph’s brothers, all heirs of a wealthy and powerful dynasty are jealous of him and plot to murder him, but instead sell him into slavery. After a time in prison, Joseph rises to great power in Egypt and rescues the whole nation and region from a time of famine.

The famine drives the guilty brothers into Egypt for food. Joseph recognizes them but they don’t recognize him. So Joseph plays a deep game to get the whole family into Egypt, and allows the brothers’ own fear and guilt to grow as he invites them to dine in his own home. Finally, in Genesis 45, he reveals himself to his brothers—and part of the plan of God is revealed to us.

What in the world is God doing? Did he just start all this going and go off and leave it? Or is he sitting in a heavenly recliner watching all this like a great, sweeping soap opera? Or is it possible that God has a plan and that he is implementing that plan?

There is reason to believe that most of the time, in most of the world, God just lets things run. But there are individuals and circumstances that he seems to steer from time to time. He knows people’s hearts and needs merely to tweak a few things to get the results he is looking for. But once in a while, he finds it necessary to communicate directly.

And so it was that the Egyptian Pharaoh had two haunting dreams. I gather these were not some of those dreams that come about from going to bed on a full stomach. Somehow, Pharaoh knew that these dreams were different and important—but why? And what did they mean?

What in the world is God doing? Where is he going with all this? So often the Bible reads like children’s stories or a prime-time soap opera. Is it all written down just for our titillation, or is there a point to it?

One of the odd things in the Bible is the way God takes a special interest in some individuals and seems to shepherd them through the dangers and tribulations of life. In Genesis, there is a thread running within a certain family where God seems to move forward with a purpose in mind. And it seems there is no way we can understand what he is doing without following that thread.

Imagine the intrigue in a wealthy and powerful family where there are twelve strong sons from the same father, but four different mothers. Add to this explosive mixture the fact that one son is the father’s fair-haired boy who gets special treatment at every turn. You don’t have to be a detective to think that someone is going to get killed. And it nearly came to that for Joseph, beginning in Genesis 37.

If you ever needed an outline for a soap opera, you could find it in the Book of Genesis. Maybe you need a movie with a great sweep of characters and action. Genesis has everything. There are great dynasties, wealthy and powerful men, murder, sex, and intrigue. In fact, everything you could hope to find in a modern, prime-time drama is right there.

Some fools look at it and shudder thinking, Is this what the God of the Old Testament was like. Of course not—this is what people are like. For his own reasons, God has decided to work with man toward his own goals. And that brings us to the reason for this series of programs. What in the world is God doing?

God has a long term plan for man, and the outlines of it are barely evident in Genesis, but they are there. Someone once called Genesis the story of one man’s family—the one man being Abraham. And with his grandson Jacob—and Jacob’s sons, the patriarchs of the storied twelve tribes of Israel—God took a major step in his plan.

God so often disappoints us. No, let’s not kid ourselves; we place our hopes in God and those hopes are all too often disappointed. The fault, though, is not with God. The fault is with our expectations, and with the God of our imagination (who is somewhat different from the real thing, let’s face it).

Someone recently reminded me of a sermon I gave a long time ago. He didn’t remember it perfectly, but it had made a profound impression on him. He recalled that I had said, God does not call us to save us, but to spend us. In context, what I had originally said was that God’s objective in calling us is not merely to save our miserable hides, but to spend us in his service. I had said in another place, God is not in the business of the preservation and perpetuation of human flesh. And I think it is in this error that we are so often disappointed. We think our aches and pains are as important to God as they are to us. They may be, but it will not be for the same reason at all. I want to illustrate this with a letter from the apostle Paul, that he wrote to the Corinthians.

For this thing I sought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

2 Corinthians 12:8–10 AKJV

I must confess I am not there yet. I can’t take pleasure in my infirmities. Sometimes they hurt terribly. But I can understand what Paul means when he says, when I am weak, then I am strong. Paul knew that he could not do what he did—that he could not know what he knew, go where he had gone, understand what he understood—and be whole in the flesh at the same time.

I think I can guarantee that most perceptions of the Patriarchs of the Bible are all wrong. I don’t know what you visualize when you think of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but I know what is portrayed in most Christian art. They are solitary figures, robed shepherds, and tent-dwellers. Yet, in fact, they represent one of the most remarkable dynasties in the ancient world.

Abraham and Isaac were powers in the region, respected in all quarters—and feared in some. They had so many people in their employ, that they could field a private army when necessary. And Jacob may have been the most formidable of the three. He went into his father’s homeland looking for a bride without a penny in his pocket and he returned with a self-built empire, two wives, two concubines, eleven sons, and a herd of cattle that stretched out of sight.

He was a very shrewd dealer. He bargained Esau out of his birthright and then conned him out of his blessing. He made his father-in-law a rich man—and himself much, much richer and more powerful. But in Genesis 32, we find him on his way home, with an irate father-in-law behind him and an angry brother—who wants his head on a platter—in front of him.

When you were young and in love, what would you have paid for your spouse? What do I mean by that? Well, do you really expect a good wife to come free? Of course you do. One of the curses of the modern world is that we think love is free. A marriage may cost the father of the bride a few thousand dollars, but the bridegroom doesn’t have to bring any great wealth to the table.

In ancient times, it didn’t work that way. To a father, a daughter was an asset. But even more, he wanted to be sure that the man who married his daughter was substantial—that he could take care of his daughter, give her a home, and support their children. They didn’t stand for the kind of things we tolerate so easily today.

One of the great men of the Bible had to work for 14 years to get the woman he wanted. That man was Jacob, grandson of Abraham. He had gone to his father’s homeland to find a wife, and he found a beauty; and a fine woman to boot. But there was a problem. Jacob arrived in the country penniless. We begin this story of love and determination in Genesis, chapter 29.

I think most people are puzzled by the intractable and irrational nature of the Middle East conflict. They want to know why the struggling nations in the Middle East can’t just get along. You would think, after so many generations of conflict, they would eventually get tired of it all and make peace.

The problem is though, that the conflicts in the Middle East are irrational. And they aren’t going to yield to rational solutions. These conflicts are so old that the people who hate one another have long since forgotten why they hate one another. The troubles in the Middle East are as old as the sons and grandsons of a man named Abraham.

It was true of Jacob and Esau, grandsons of Abraham. These two boys were twins, but a long way from identical. And they were struggling with each other even in the womb. We begin their story in Genesis, chapter 25.

If you have ever been to Jerusalem there is a natural question that comes to mind. Why should anyone care very much about this particular piece of real estate? Jerusalem is not a port. It is not on a river. It is not on a trade route. It doesn’t sit on top of oil reserves or a gold mine. The hills and fields are rocky and a lot of work has to be done to even grow crops. Of all the places in the world I have visited, Jerusalem is not on my list of the places I would care to live.

So why have people wanted the city so much they were willing to kill and risk their lives over it? And why has there been failure after failure in the efforts to attain peace in that troubled region? Will we see peace there anytime soon?

It all started when God gave a little piece of land to a man named Abraham. Most of us are aware of what can happen when a great man dies and his heirs begin to squabble over his estate. And we realize that the greater the stakes, the greater the hatred that can be built between brothers and sisters. We’ll find out more about the sons of Abraham and their inheritances beginning in Genesis, chapter 25.

Is God everywhere? Is he in every leaf of every tree? Does he permeate the cosmos with his being? Is he in every blade of grass? Well, yes and no. God is in every blade of grass in the same way I am in a transceiver I built years ago and later sold. You might even find some of my DNA in that radio, because I got a little careless with my tools. But I am not there. I am here. God is in every blade of grass in the same way my wife is in the little painting she did years ago when we were playing with oils. But if you think you can put your foot on God when you walk across the grass, you are badly mistaken.

It may be a new Deism. God created all this, but left immediately and has no further interest in what he made. It is a silly idea on its face, but what lies behind it? I think there is a simple fear of acknowledging the reality of a personal God. Because a personal God will have ideas. He will have preferences. He may even have demands. He may expect things of us that we don't want to do. He may have standards we don't want to live up to. But hiding your face from God won't make him go away.

God knew that we would then invent a god for ourselves who is an impersonal, cosmic force—a God who is everywhere and nowhere at the same time; because an impersonal god would not make any demands on how we live our lives. Knowing this would happen, God took steps to ensure that men could know that he is personal.

How would you feel about having someone else arrange your marriage? Judging by the way people make decisions nowadays, it might not be a bad idea. Half of the marriages people are arranging for themselves are headed for divorce. Maybe we should reconsider?

Maybe not, but in the ancient world of the Bible, marriage was, in the main, arranged by the fathers of the bride and groom. I suppose the reasoning behind it was that young people were too frivolous to be making such an important decision. They needed wise, old heads and savvy minds to make those choices for them.

Of course, age is relative. Isaac, the son of Abraham, was 40 years old when his father arranged his marriage. In spite of that, it really is a romantic story. Abraham was an old man when Isaac was born, and he was much older than that when he took it in hand to find a wife for his son. He also entrusted the task of actually searching for the woman to an older man, as well. We find the story of this journey in Genesis, chapter 24.

In Genesis 22, we have the story of Abraham’s trial—his test. God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham! Here I am, he replied. Then God said, Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.

Now, it would be hard to overstate the crisis that this represented to Abraham. He had waited so long for this boy. He had been willing to have Ishmael for his heir, but God had promised him a son through Sarah. Finally, he had that son, and he was now being asked to give him up as a burnt offering.

We are told nothing about how Abraham felt at this moment. I heard one preacher say that Abraham didn’t question God—didn’t waver. He just went and did as he was told. I really think, though, that misses the whole point of this story. And is there any way we could miss the parallel of this event with the sacrifice of the only son of God?

When God told Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham nearly talked him out of it. He got God to agree that if ten righteous men were found in the cities, he would not destroy the cities for their sakes.

Abraham quit reasoning with God after getting to him to agree to ten. I think Abraham felt there where ten righteous men there. But he was wrong. Ten were not found, only one, and Sodom and Gomorrah were left as smoking ruins (if there were any ruins left to smoke).

Why did God, you suppose, agree to save this city for ten people? When one righteous man was found, he got him and his family out of the city. If there had been ten righteous men, he could have just gotten them out of the city, as well. So, why did God respond to Abraham the way he did?

My message today is about the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. I know, in their own days, Greece and Rome were great and powerful, and the British Empire at its peak was indeed a great empire. These were nations that created empires. There is no American Empire, because Americans have never wanted one. In our history, Americans have mainly wanted to be left alone—left alone to build families and businesses, left alone to live and enjoy life. Fortunately (or unfortunately), history has not left us alone.

And as I watched the greatest nation bury one her greatest presidents, I was overwhelmed with an awareness of how great, how wealthy, how powerful this nation has become. And some questions grew in my mind. To what do we own our greatness as a people? Are there any obligations that go with that greatness, that power?

Every Sunday school kid knows that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, but not many adults know why that happened, and the incredible underlying story of Jonah. And very few recognize the connection to one Jesus of Nazareth.

Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah saying Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah got up and fled in the opposite direction to get away from God.

Now this really doesn't make sense. Jonah knew God well enough to recognize when God spoke to him. He was a prophet. Why didn't he just get up and go to Nineveh and do as he was told? What motive—what dynamic—was strong enough to send a prophet running in the wrong direction? Jonah will tell us in the end of the story and it may not be what you think it is.

There is such a thing as believing God and still having your doubts. The fact that a person doubts on a given point, though, doesn’t mean they don’t trust God. People who read the Bible and try to get it right should know this: God is not offended by our doubts.

In fact, it is our willingness to put our trust in him in spite of our doubts that constitutes faith. If there were no doubts, there could be no faith. Faith, in that sense, is trusting God instead of trusting our doubts. And it has to do with the choices we make.

We know that Abraham believed God, and that his faith was counted for him as righteousness. This doesn’t mean, however, that Abraham never doubted. In fact, some of the promises that God made to Abraham could easily be viewed as outrageous. Consider this encounter between the two in Genesis, chapter 17.

There is nothing new about surrogate motherhood, you know. In fact, there is an example of it in the Bible—and it carried with it then the same pitfalls and potential for discord as it does today.The infertile woman was Sarah, and her husband was Abraham. God had promised them a son. But, after some time, Sarah seemed to now be beyond childbearing age and they had not yet received their promised son. Maybe, they thought, they weren’t doing their part and were going to have to take matters into their own hands.

Turn back to Genesis, chapter 16, and let’s read the rest of this story which tells of the birth of two boys—and of a multitude of nations—as well as foretelling conflicts that the world deals with to this day.

Everyone loves a mystery, so I have a good one for you. There is this shadowy Old Testament character who appears only once in the historical accounts of the Bible. His name is Melchizedek, and there are some truly strange things about him.

He is mentioned after the patriarch Abraham and his men defeated a coalition of kings and recovered the captives and booty that had been taken from the city of Sodom (including his nephew, Lot). After this battle, we find Abraham giving Melchizedek a tenth of the spoils as an offering to God.

When you understand that there seems to be none greater in the Old Testament than Abraham (not even Moses) a question is raised. What is going on when we find Abraham giving a tithe to a man of whom we know next to nothing?

What in the world is God doing? And what does religion have to do with it? I know it may sound a little strange to ask, but asking strange questions is sometimes what teachers do.

Man is very prolific in religion-building. But, very often, his religions have very little to do with what God is doing. So, we’ve been looking around in the Book of Genesis for some clues—as I imagine he runs a little deeper than we may first expect.

First, a question: who is this we’re dealing with? His name is not God, you know. God is what he is, not who he is. The word God has been used so much, made its way into our language in so many different ways, that we have to take care to be sure what we’re talking about. Here, in the beginning of the Bible, what are the names God is called by—and what do they mean to us today?

Are all the events of your life already written down somewhere? Does an inexorable fate drive you onwards to some destiny that you can’t foresee or know? If something really terrible happens to you, was it written that it had to be that way? According to The Living Bible, the Psalmist writes, You saw me before I was born, and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book.

Now, that’s a profound thought—that, before I was ever born, every day of my life was scheduled for me. In Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life he wrote, God made you for a reason. He also decided when you would be born, and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and your death. The Bible says, You saw me before I was born, and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book.

Actually, that’s what The Living Bible says. The Living Bible is a paraphrase for easy reading. And it’s also an interpretation of the Scriptures. Here is how the King James version renders the verse. It’s Psalm 139, verse 16: Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. Marginal reading says, And in your book all my members were written which in what days they should be fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

So we see a substantive difference in what two different sources think the Psalmist is trying to tell us. I think that difference arises out of the theological assumptions of the translators. I believe translators try hard for objectivity. But sometimes they take us down the wrong path because they believe that’s what the Psalmist was trying to say. Now, what’s the ordinary reader to make of all this?

It must have been terrifying being on Noah’s ark for all those days—closed up inside, unable to see the sky, hearing a pouring torrent beat the roof, and feeling the whole shop rock to and fro with the waves. But, you know, the most terrifying part of this experience must have been knowing that, outside the ark, everyone and everything, was dying. The people who had been cooped up in that boat emerged totally changed.

It’s no wonder that the tradition of the flood is found in nearly every tribe on Earth. After all, every one of us is descended from these eight people. We are all one family. Genesis 11 tells us that the whole earth was of one language and one speech.

That certainly is not the case today. How did that change? What can these few chapters in Genesis tell us about how people in the ancient world dealt with issues we still face in the modern age?

Sometimes the Bible can be very disturbing. One reason is because the Bible presents ideas that upset us when they are not what we want to hear. Most of us have a personal theology and our own unique way of looking at God. We then tend to see everything we read in that light.

But the problem is that sometimes the Bible is so plain we cannot escape what it is saying. We will run into some things that are very troubling—things that don’t fit in with our personal theology. But when we encounter something in the Bible that conflicts with that personal theology, maybe it is time to re-think it.

Let’s take another look, for example, at the Book of Genesis, chapter 6, and the story of the great flood.

People get some really strange ideas about the Bible. There are those who believe, for example, that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was sex or that Cain was the result of some union between Eve and the serpent. They pay no mind to what the Bible says.

There is a law called the Law of Parsimony which says roughly that of two arguments presented the shorter and simpler one is more likely to be true. Why make something complicated out of something simple?

But we can always learn more—even from relatively straightforward stories—and clear up some misconceptions. So let’s take another look at Genesis, chapters four through six, from the lives of Cain and Abel to the calling of Noah.

If there’s one story in the Bible that is familiar to everyone, it’s the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. For one thing, people who start out to read the Bible naturally start at the beginning. A lot of times they make it about to Leviticus 6 and they just get lost or give up. Some time later, they return and they go back to Genesis. There’s no point in going back to Leviticus 6, is there? And they read the story of Adam and Eve all over again.

It would be a rare person who doesn’t know who Adam and Eve were, and that they lived in the Garden of Eden. But this familiarity means that there are hundreds of different theories about Adam and Eve—none of them really compelling. Was the Forbidden Fruit an apple? It is generally taken for that. Or was it sex? Was the Devil a snake?

I’ve advanced a few theories on Genesis, myself. Everyone who believes in God is an implicit theologian. And who’s to say your theories are not as good as anyone else’s? It’s good enough to direct your walk of faith. But you do want your theology to be informed. And you are willing to modify it as you learn, right? Why don’t we take a walk through the Garden of Eden and see if we can develop our own theory of the case. The story in question starts in Genesis 2:7.

Several years ago I knew a young woman who was frustrated in her marriage and wanted a divorce. Her family pleaded with her not to do it, to seek counseling, and to try to work things out. So many couples, they said, tough it out during the hard times and later they find themselves with good, strong marriages. Her husband did not want the divorce and was prepared to do almost anything to keep the family together. They said, Think about your little boy. He needs a father in the home. But she had married young, felt restricted, and wanted to spread her wings. Her reply considering the little fellow was dismissive, Oh, he will be all right. You know, I don’t think she knew the risks she was taking.

Children without fathers in the home are almost twice as likely to be hyperactive as kids in homes with two parents. I don’t think she knew that 63% of youth suicides are kids who grew up with no father in the house. I don’t think she knew that 90% of all the runaways and homeless kids out there grew up in fatherless homes. Or that 85% of the children with behavior disorders, 71% of high-school dropouts, 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions, and 85% of youths in prison grew up in homes without a father.

Fathers who abandon their children and mothers who take their children away from their fathers have no idea of the price the kids are going to pay. But I think, it is because they don’t want to think about it. It is not because the information isn’t out there. At the same time a full 92% of Americans believe that our nation can only go forward if American families are made stronger. A solid majority realize that the institution of the family is weak and getting weaker. Over 25 million children today, right now, are being raised with no father in the home. The most reliable predictor of crime is not poverty, it is not race, it is growing up without a dad. What is really odd about all of this, is that while there’s a very strong consensus among American people about the importance of the family, no one really has any idea what to do about it. And may not have the will, even if they knew.

You aren’t under any stress, are you? The funny thing about that question is that most people will answer that question with something like, No. Not really. But, in reality, far too many people are suffering from things like anxiety, high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue, and an array of stress-related conditions.

How did we get here? Why are we being eating up with these illnesses? The answer could be that we work hard. In fact, the problem is that we think we have to work harder than God.

But God actually gave us a tool to deal with stress. But it is all too often ignored. What is it? Turn to chapter 2 of Genesis and we’ll take a look.

Referenced Works:

From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity by Samuele Bacchiocchi

Most people believe that there is a God. Strangely, many people have not considered the consequences of that belief. If God exists, and if he created the world and everything in it, then that raises a really fascinating question: Why did he do it?

Somewhere in time, God arrived at a decision or series of decisions that lead to all this we see. Why did he do it? Why did he create the heavens, Earth, and man? What is he up to?

The Apostle Paul informs us that the invisible things of God can be understood through the creation—the things which are visible. So maybe we should take a deeper look at that book of beginnings—the Book of Genesis, starting in chapter one.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1–2 KJV

There’s a theory that in the original creation the world was not without form and void (the Hebrew suggests chaotic and in confusion) and, according to this theory, since God is not the author of confusion, something must have gone wrong. This theory allows any number of years between the original, pristine creation of the heavens and the Earth and the chaos and confusion that followed.

What may have happened during this period is hinted at in several passages of both the Old and New Testaments. Let’s take a closer at this theory and the idea of a great rebellion and war between Good and Evil.

What in the world is God doing? I don’t think any religious system on Earth has even scratched the surface. Now, we owe a staggering debt to those who have gone before and received and passed onto us the testimony of God. The Bible is a book of enormous value and a revelation of God. But we should never assume that those who came before have comprehended God.

Why God conceals things from us is not entirely clear, but it is clear that he does. The Bible does not answer directly what God has been doing for the last 15 billion years, but it does give us hints. More importantly, it authorizes us to search, to think, to reason, and to come to conclusions. As Solomon put it:

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.

Proverbs 25:2 KJ2000

So if the Bible does not answer directly, what makes me think I can answer it? Well, maybe I can’t—you be the judge. We have to start with what we know about God from the Bible and another, often-overlooked source.

As I understand my basic science, time can speed up or slow down depending on the speed at which an object travels. That is a little hard to grasp, but they say it has been scientifically demonstrated, so we will take that as a given. But my first proposition is that, fast or slow, time is a one-way street. There is no such thing as time travel, nor will there ever be.

Now I have heard people speak of God existing outside of time, and they draw a mental picture of God sitting on a hill where he can see the entire timeline of man. He sees it like a road. We can’t see around the next bend, but God sees it all. But let me pose a problem to you. As I write this, I am sitting in Texas. Can God see me right now in, say, Mexico City? Of course not, because I am not in Mexico City, I am here. Have I limited God? No, the question is absurd and everyone knows it.

Well, can God see me next year? If we say no, are we limiting God? Can’t God travel in time? Can’t God see the future? Whether God can or not, we might discuss. But first, you may want to write this down: God does not do things merely because he can.

The apostle John is in vision, and he’s nearing the end of an incredible experience. Step by step, he has seen the sequence of visions that make up what we call the Book of Revelation. I would think that he is pretty well wrung out by the time he gets to the end of all this. It must have been some experience. What he has seen are the last days, and late in the 20th chapter he summarizes it all. He says:

And the sea gave up the dead who were in it; and death and hades delivered up the dead who were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:13–15 KJ2000

You know, it sound like a kind of clean-up operation. All those who were written in the Book of Life are saved, they’re all caught away from the earth, and down here everything is burnt up. Simon Peter made a reference to this time in his second letter.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in all holy conduct and godliness, Looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God, in which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

2 Peter 3:10–12 KJ2000

Kind of scary, isn’t it? The heavens are on fire and the elements are melting. It sounds like that time when the sun, in its dying throes, will become a giant ball—a great red giant—that reaches out nearly to the earth. Surely, what is described here will happen when that day comes. It sounds like that would be the lake of fire that John described. Peter concluded:

Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, in which dwells righteousness.

2 Peter 3:13 KJ2000

Well, that’s what Peter said would be coming, so what more did John say he saw?

Click here for The Tree #1.

There’s an odd thing about the Bible that’s easy to overlook: It begins and it ends with a tree. Everybody knows that in the Garden of Eden there was the Tree of Life. What’s easy to overlook is that, in the very last chapter of Revelation, God says, Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

Now, as you know, the Tree of Life was in the Garden of Eden, and it hasn’t been seen since Adam and Eve were evicted. But you also need to understand that the Garden of Eden was not everywhere. It was a little world of its own within the larger world of the planet. In fact, the Garden of Eden did not even encompass all of Eden, but was eastward in Eden. God created man out of the dust of the ground and put him into this small world—a world of their own.

There are a few things we can say about this world. We know there were animals there, but we know none of them were dangerous. We know they had all the food that anyone could desire to eat. There was work to do, because Adam was told to dress and keep the garden. We know the climate was mild, because there was no need for clothes. From what comes later we know there were no thorns or briers. We can infer there were no weeds or noxious plants. We can also infer that there was no pain, no disease, and we know that there was the potential for living forever. It was an altogether perfect world—all upside, no downside. But there was a gateway out of this world, and that gateway was a tree.

Click here for The Tree #2.

What is objective truth? Subjective truth is something that is true to you but may not be true for me. Objective truth is something that is true for everyone. It is not based on a false religiosity centered on personal experience. People speak of having experienced God. But that experience is not of truth to me. I can't verify it. And if that experience contradicts objective truth, then it is false.

For many people, a paranormal experience they have had trumps all objective truth. They are special to God, and you can't tell them anything. I was struck by all of this, because it had long since become clear to me that Christianity had completely lost touch with its roots. And I don't mean its Hebrew roots or its Jewish origins; I mean its roots in objective truth.

It is very much the in thing to do, these days, to question everything, challenge everything, and change nearly everything. In the process, a lot of people become disoriented and get lost in the shuffle. People everywhere find themselves dissatisfied with their church. Our church may be knowledge based, or experience based, or based on Hebrew Roots, or based on group participation, extemporaneous communication.

When we come together as a church, it seems to me that there is a small handful of things that are of importance: worship, fellowship, service, edification. And when it comes to this last item, if it is not based on objective truth, we are going to end up as lost as the rest of the world.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, self-control: against such there is no law.

And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22–25 KJ2000

Referenced articles:

Why Do We Use the Hebrew Calendar?
The Hebrew Calendar (chapter from The Thread)

What did the First Christians believe about speaking in tongues? It is always risky assuming we know what people think, but we have a pretty impressive body of writing by these folks, and from those writings, we can get an idea of what their experiences were and what they thought about them.

Just to clarify: When I speak of the First Christians, I am talking about those Christians who were alive and active when the various books of the New Testament were being written. That puts them all in the first century, and mostly before the fall of Jerusalem.

I am not arguing a case for what 21st-century Christians should practice. That is an issue that churches will decide for themselves. But if we do differ from what the First Christians believed and practices, reason suggests that we should frankly acknowledge the difference and offer a reason for it. The logical place to start is with the first instance of speaking in tongues recorded in the Bible. But to put that in perspective, consider something Jesus said:

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Matthew 28:18–20 NKJV

Many people have called Pentecost the birthday of the New Testament Church. It has also been called a lot of other things down through the years. It has been called a harvest festival. It’s been called a celebration of the resurrection. It’s a celebration of the Holy Spirit. It’s been called the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Firstfruits, and the name we generally use—the Feast of Pentecost, itself a curious little Greek word signifying that it is the fiftieth day. In the very beginning, though, Pentecost was a harvest festival. Let’s begin with the very earliest reference to the feast, found in the 23rd chapter of Exodus.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Christian Educational Ministries Weekend Bible Study. It is good to be with you and we thank you for being there and allowing us to make this weekly service possible.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve followed Ron Dart in taking a closer look at the Passover, the resurrection of Christ, and the beginning of the countdown to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. As we find commanded in Leviticus 23:

From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain…a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord.

Leviticus 23:15–17 NIV

This weekend concludes the sixth of those seven weeks, so tonight we’ll join Mr. Dart in examining this time of year and its accompanying harvest—both of grain and of men.

These are times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Thomas Paine, The American Crisis. December 19, 1776

It is amazing how the same principles emerge again and again in all walks of life. This paragraph reminded me of the speech by Henry V, in Shakespeare's play, on the eve of the battle of Agincourt. I guess it is true that human nature doesn't change. Neither does the divine nature.

Washington read this to his troops not long before crossing the Delaware on the famous night of December 25, 1776. Washington's army had collapsed from 30,000 to 2,500. One third of these did not have boots; they wrapped their feet in burlap and left a trail in blood as the marched the nine miles to Trenton to cross the river—at night, in a snowstorm. The password that night? Victory or death. And I have no doubt that those with feet wrapped in burlap knew the truth well enough: Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.

It is an odd thing to consider that tyranny does not arise in a night from nowhere, and a sobering thing to consider that we are in danger of surrendering to the new Tyranny. When I heard a speech outlining what happened on that occasion, I thought of Christians now in 21st-century America. Many people today seem to think that the Christian Church is facing a crisis.

I think it is indeed; but I need to open your mind a little to the nature of that Crisis, how we should think about it, and what we should do about it. First, don't assume that your church is the only church with a problem. If there are people in your church, you have a problem; because churches are composed of people, and people are always a problem. And, as unlikely as it seems, you are likely part of the problem yourself.

Where would I go in the Bible to evaluate my church, your church, our churches, our Christianity? The Epistles of Paul? Oh yes, and John and Peter. But there is a temptation when you read this to say, Oh, that was them. We don't have that problem. That said, there are some letters in the New Testament that seem to be directed more broadly in time and place. There are seven of them, and they are found in chapters two and three of Revelation...

4 [Jesus], being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, said he, you have heard of me.
5 For John truly baptized with water; but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.
6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?
7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in his own power.
8 But you shall receive power, after the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
9 And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.
10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
11 Who also said, You men of Galilee, why stand you gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen him go into heaven.

Acts 1:1–11 KJ2000

What did the First Christians believe about the Bible? It is an interesting question for several reasons, not least because the Bible, as we know it, had yet to exist. The components of what we call the New Testament were being written in the years between about AD 55 and 70. To the First Christians, these were written testimonies and letters of the apostles.

However, the First Christians were not without a Bible. But they referred to it by a different name. I won’t bore you with the details right now, but the collection the First Christians called The Holy Scriptures was what we call the Old Testament.

For the First Christians, the Scriptures were authoritative. We should think a little further about what that means. When we speak of the authority of Scripture, we are using a shorthand phrase for something a little more complicated that I’d like to talk about.

The whole Christian world believes in the resurrection of Jesus. They believe it because of the testimony of the witnesses. But did you know that no one saw Jesus rise from the tomb? Oh, they saw him alive afterward, so they knew that he was risen, but no one actually witnessed the event. They knew there was an earthquake that opened the tomb, but they could only assume that Jesus rose at that moment.

There is another interesting fact about the resurrection of Jesus that you don’t seem to hear about that often. You would have to be a serious student of the Bible to even notice the distinction, but when the Bible says that the women came to the tomb early on the first day of the week, the expression first day of the week—as normal as it is to us—was a rather unusual expression at that time.

What do I mean by that? Well, normally, if you are going to talk about Sunday, you would have said. on the day after the Sabbath. But not one of the gospel writers do. They all use the expression, on the first day of the weeks—notice the plural. This was the first day of the seven weeks leading up to Pentecost. It was a singular day of the year, not of the week, and there is an often-overlooked significance about this day which sheds light on the work and ministry of Jesus.

And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming in from the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus. And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, who also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts which never nursed. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things with a green tree, what shall be done with the dry?

And there were also two others, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his clothing, and cast lots. And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he is Christ, the chosen of God.

And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar, And saying, If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. And one of the malefactors who were hanged railed at him, saying, If you are Christ, save yourself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Do you not fear God, seeing you are in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man has done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto you, Today shall you be with me in paradise.

And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the curtain of the temple was torn in the middle. And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit: and having said this, he gave up the spirit.

Luke 23:26–46 KJ2000

My heart goes out to Simon Peter. It is impossible to feel what Simon and the others felt on the night Jesus was arrested. They had followed this good and gentle man up and down the hills of Judea and Galilee for 3 1⁄2 long years. Not only did they love him like a brother, they were convinced of the rightness of his cause—their cause. When you have done nothing but good, when you have been nothing but kind, when you are absolutely convinced that your cause is just and your conduct righteous and blameless, it must come as a terrible shock to have your leader betrayed, arrested, and dragged away in chains.

But that was not the worst of it. When Jesus was arrested, Simon Peter and all the rest of them had fled into the darkness in abject fear. There is no ease for the shame that comes on a man when he has run away. No one needs to convict him of cowardice, for his own heart is judge and jury. I suspect that it was that sense of shame that brought Peter back to follow Jesus and his captors back to the place of judgement. Peter was trying hard to recapture his courage.

And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the court of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door outside. Then went out that other disciple, who was known unto the high priest, and spoke unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter. Then said the girl that kept the door unto Peter, Are not you also one of this man’s disciples? He said, I am not. And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself.

John 18:15–18 KJ2000

These were some of the very people who had arrested Jesus. (Apparently they had not seen Peter in the garden.) It took a certain amount of courage to be in that place, trying to keep his hands from shaking with the cold and the fear. But it would have taken a lot more to have confessed Jesus, in that time and in that place. Peter stood and warmed himself by the enemies’ fire—and denied Jesus, outright.

Love is no defense against fear. Neither is faith. And if you are afraid, you are no different from any other man, not even those great pillars of faith that formed the foundation of the Christian church. It may shock you, but in this very human trait, you are not very different from Christ himself. After the last supper, Jesus completed a rather long discourse with his disciples and they were totally enthusiastic. They gave him rave reviews. They said:

[…] Lo, now speak you plainly, and speak no proverb. Now are we sure that you know all things, and need not that any man should ask you: but this we believe that you came forth from God. Jesus answered them, Do you now believe? Behold, the hour comes, yea, is now come, that you shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

John 16:30–33 KJ2000

I know these men loved Jesus. I think they believed him as far as they were able. They just did not know what they yet had to face. Jesus knew. Then he paused to pray for them and, strangely enough, for us. Let’s see what he had to say, in John, chapter 17.

The world can be a very confusing place, can’t it? It isn’t always easy to know the right thing to do, the right road to take, or the right decision to make. And most of us, most of the time, want to do the right thing. At least we want to think we want to do the right thing. But it seems that, in the modern world, the right thing to do keeps shifting ground on us. There is no constant standard—no absolute truth—some people tell us.

The problem is that life and death really are absolutes. When the chest pains come upon you, when they have yelled, Clear!, and tried to shock you back into life, and have failed, when they have pulled that sheet up over your face, you are absolutely dead. Sickness, poverty, slavery, disease, hunger; these are real absolutes in the world. So how come we hear people telling us there are no absolutes, when we know better?

Why should anyone be so stupid as to believe there aren’t rules of life somewhere that make the difference between life and death, sickness and health, wealth and poverty, when you see these around you every day? Oh sure, time and chance account for a lot of man’s trouble, but on the whole, there is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death. Intuitively, most of us know that—we just aren’t sure what those ways might be. When you come to the crossroads, how can you know which road to take?

Where is God? Where does he live? Can you point in the direction where one might find him? There are those who believe that God is in every blade of grass, every leaf of a tree. But they may believe in an amorphous God that is everywhere in general but nowhere specifically. They may believe in a God who puts in appearances from time to time, but usually is somewhere else—especially when you need Him. One of Jesus’ disciples may have been thinking in these terms when Jesus told him:

He that hath my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me: and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will show myself to him. One of the disciples said, Lord, how is it that thou wilt show thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

John 14:21–23

We are not going to put in an appearance from time to time. We will live at your house. We’re going to move in. We will be at the table for every meal. When you are having a soak in the bathtub, we will sit nearby and we can have a talk. As humorous as that may sound, the relationship is actually closer than that. Jesus speaks of living, not merely with you, but in you. I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember that as often as I should. I really should not take Jesus to places he wouldn’t want me to go.

We all know that God loves the world. But I’m afraid that we think of it as God loving us as one big gaggle down here, without any particular love for the individual. But when I say that Jesus loved his disciples, I am going way beyond the idea of a collective love. Jesus had spent 3 1⁄2 years with these 12 men. They had laughed together, cried together, slept on the ground around a campfire together. They had faced hardship and fear together. They had eaten together and been hungry together. He had taken them places and showed them things they had never seen before—never even imagined before. He loved them so much that he was prepared to die for them. He loved all of them, individually, even Judas.

Here we are at the Last Supper and Jesus tells them, I have really wanted to share this last Passover with you before I suffer.

21 […] Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
22 Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake.
23 Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.
24 Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake.
25 He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?
26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.
28 Now no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him.
29 For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.
30 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.

John 13:21–30

I don’t think event is very well-understood by many people. Why did it have to be so? Why would Jesus choose a man that he knew would betray him in the end?

We have an incurable fascination with the future, don’t we. We want to know what is going to happen, when it is going to happen, why it is going to happen. Small wonder that when Jesus foretold the coming destruction of the temple, his disciples wanted to know. Enquiring minds always want to know. When will these things be, they asked, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?

Jesus’ answer has a lot of information about the end time, but I can summarize it in two points: It is not for you to know the time. Get on with life and the work you have been given to do. When you see Jerusalem being surrounded, flee into the mountains, but between now and then, he said, you have things to be doing. What are those things?

As a Bible teacher for many years, I have often had occasion to look over the prophetic studies of a lot of students and teachers. Almost all of them have been consumed with questions of timing and events. They try to correlate the events and the number of days. There are prophecies that deal with 1,260 days, or 42 months, or 3 1⁄2 years. These are benchmarks that men try to connect with a time line. It is almost as if we assume that working out the details of these prophecies have some practical value. I think there is a practical value in knowing what the prophecies say, but I doubt seriously that there is much to be gained by attempts to predict the course of events. Not many stop to ask why God would bother to tell us the future at all. I can think of two important reasons.

The idea of the End of the World has a kind of morbid fascination for us. We are conditioned to think in terms of beginnings and ends of things, so it becomes not so much a question of whether, but of when. It is not a happy topic. I suppose it is a lot like a sore tooth—we have to keep exploring to see if it still hurts.

I can’t pass up those old disaster movies that have us colliding with an asteroid or comet and facing up to the temporary nature of things. There have been some really huge meteor strikes in the past—the one that caused meteor crater in Arizona is one of the smaller ones. Now they believe that just such a collision accounts for the extinction of some species in the past and even the onset of the ice age. And they believe it can happen again. It is only a matter of time. I have heard this kind of collision called an extinction event. The question is whether or not man will be made extinct, either by such a collision or by our own devices.

Jesus Christ spoke of such an event in what is called the Olivet Prophecy. According to Jesus, we are going to come face to face with extinction, but something will save us.

21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
25 Behold, I have told you before.
26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.
27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Matthew 24:21–28

What would happen to you if you were down and out and there was no one to help? Where would you be if you were sick and broke in a strange city with no place to sleep and nothing to eat; no money, no credit cards, no checks; no one to accept a collect call, no one to send you bus fare home, no one to send you money for a meal, and no home to go to; no father, no brother, no sister, no one?

You know it doesn’t take long to start looking like a tramp. It doesn’t take very long before you start smelling bad—about two days. It doesn’t take long for your clothes to start looking very dirty and very worn. Do you realize how short the distance is between an executive—walking along the street with his briefcase in hand, and his necktie, hair combed, clean-shaven—how short the distance is between that man and a man lying on a grate in a gutter, if you take away from that man all of his money and all of his support?

You know, families have obligations. They have obligations that should not be taken lightly. No man should ever become alienated from family; he should not allow himself to be. There’s safety in family. There’s safety in love. I have a message for you from home. If you’re out there alone and life is not working for you, if you somehow got alienated from your family—I don’t care whose fault it is—go home. Take your hat in your hand, prepare your apology if you need one, but go home. And while you are thinking about going home, think for a moment about God. There’s a passage from the Bible that reminds us of this. It’s found in Ecclesiastes, chapter four.

How would you like to know—step-by-step—all the events leading up to the end of the world? Maybe you’d rather not know. We really have a morbid fascination with the end of the world, don’t we? We fantasize about how to escape it, how to prevent it. We make movies about blowing up asteroids and extinction-level events. It was chilling, several years ago, to actually watch as a comet slammed into a neighboring planet—piece by piece—and knowing that, if that ever happened here, it would be all over.

The question of the end of the world was raised 2,000 years ago by the disciples of Jesus, and they got an answer from Jesus himself. Actually, it was only a couple of days before Jesus was crucified that there were standing among the magnificent buildings of the Temple and said, Master, look at the kinds of stones and what buildings they built here! Jesus replied, Do you see these things? I tell you the truth: there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.

It’s hard to imagine the impact of that statement on Jesus’ disciples. The Temple was the center of their religious life—where men prayed, where sacrifices where made—even the plan of salvation, in a sense, was played out upon the stage of the Temple. The idea that this building—God’s building—would be destroyed? It seemed absolutely unthinkable—though they knew it had happened before.

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the world?

Matthew 24:3 KJ2000

Power corrupts. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. It is one of the reasons why men have rejected absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings. But forget about absolute power for a moment and think about power—power in small amounts. It is a little spooky to realize how little power it takes to start the process of corruption.

When Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, Rome was the absolute power, and Rome was corrupt. What was less obvious was that there was also power in the hands of religious leaders, and that power had done its work in all of the sects of the prevailing Judaism. But nowhere was it more apparent than among those who formed the religious establishment.

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

Matthew 23:1–3

There is nothing more frustrating than a double standard in religious leadership. What is it about power that causes that?

When you consider the mess the world is in right now, you might wonder if God has written us off as a bad investment. But if you read the Bible, you know that the world—at least man’s world—has been in a mess from the very beginning and yet God has taken an interest in it, and seems to be making sense out of it all. He has plan and is working the plan. The challenge for is for us to make sense of it and go along with his plan.

God has not only taken an special interest in the world, but has acted in history and has related to people in the world—sometimes to a community of people. The most obvious illustration is the most-favored nation status that God afforded Israel during much of their existence as a people.

God was Israel’s king, and they were his Kingdom. The first manifestation, as it were, of the Kingdom of God. It is odd, in a way, the confusion that surrounds the expression, The Kingdom of God. It simply refers to that entity which God rules. It is a Kingdom in the past where Israel is concerned. It is a future kingdom where the whole world is concerned. It is a present Kingdom where individuals are concerned who submit themselves to that Kingdom in a spiritual sense.

But knowing all this makes it all the more earthshaking when we grasp what Jesus was trying to tell the people of his day. Take this allegory, for instance. Surrounding Jesus when he gave this parable were a number of Jewish leaders, along with Jesus’ disciples. Listen carefully, because allegories are not always what they seem to be. We’ll find it in Matthew, chapter 21.

There is a name that will live forever in our memories, and there is probably not a culture in the world that does not understand the significance of the name…Judas. Judas is hard to understand…almost as hard to understand as Jesus who included Judas in the small band of men he named as apostles. Because Jesus included Judas in that band knowing from the beginning that Judas would betray him.

People have a morbid fascination with Judas, knowing that he did an evil thing but wondering at the same time if there is any way to rescue him, to rehabilitate Judas. He first starts emerging from the background noise around Jesus in an incident that took place a mere six days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus had come to Jerusalem for the last time and was staying in Bethany, at the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Bethany is about a half hour’s walk from the temple mount. Martha had prepared supper for Jesus. Lazarus was one of those sitting at the table, and so was Judas.

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

John 12:3–5

What was Jesus’ response to Judas?

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.

If I could tell you a way whereby you could live forever, would you be interested? Well, the question was put to Jesus, and Jesus gave a straight answer. Would you like to hear it?

And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?

Mark 10:17

Now, there is our question. But the answer comes as a bit of surprise. One of the most fundamental Christian doctrines is that salvation is by grace, through faith and not of works. But listen to Jesus response.

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Matthew 19:17

Now this comes as a bit of shock, not that we should keep these commandments, but the suggestion that works have anything to do with eternal life, right? There is a funny thing about the 10 commandments, though. They don’t call so much for you to do anything as to avoid doing things. Is it a good work to abstain from committing murder? And surely we don’t think that men who habitually break the ten commandments will receive eternal life, do we?

I think what many confuse in this issue is that salvation is a rescue operation. Sin is the transgression of the law, right? And the wages of sin is death, right? Well, you cannot get rid of the guilt of sin by keeping the law. That can only come about by grace through faith. But the person who will not forsake the sin that killed him cannot receive the grace of God, no matter that God extends it to him. It is called repentance.

The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

Matthew 19:3–6

Jesus’ answer? One man, one woman, for life.

They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

Matthew 19:7–8

What Jesus is here saying is in total agreement with Moses. His first statement was the ideal. The conclusion deals with the reality once sin has entered the picture.

A very wealthy man had a manager who had allowed a dangerous cash flow situation to develop. Various customers had built up debts and were slow to pay. The manager had allowed this, not so much out of negligence, but out of aggressive business policy. But the thing got out of hand, and the manager’s job was on the line. It is odd to think that a spiritual lesson could be drawn from such an incident, but Jesus does just that in the 16th chapter of Luke. It is yet another allegory, and one must walk very carefully to understand what Jesus is saying here.

1And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.
2 And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.
3 Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.
4 I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.
5 So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?
6 And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.
7 Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.
8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: [for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.]
9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

Luke 16:1–9

This is a curious expression and probably hides the significance. Everlasting habitations is a kind of oxymoron in that the word for habitations is tent or tabernacle—a temporary kind of dwelling. An everlasting, temporary dwelling. Probably, Jesus’ statement is a figure of speech. To a man who just lost his job, he is suggesting a course of action that will give him a more permanent—though still temporary—situation.

Always practical, Jesus is telling his listeners not to be greedy. Not to attempt to hold on to the last dime. And to use their physical possessions to make friends, because they may need them someday. So how did this very useful message play out with Jesus’ listeners?

Is it hard to be a Christian? Or is it relatively easy? What is demanded of us to actually be a servant of Jesus the Christ? I suppose it depends on your theological perspective. If we are talking about forgiveness of sins, then salvation is by grace through faith. There is not a thing you can do to rescue yourself from the consequences of your sins.

On the other hand, there are those who practice a kind of sound-bite theology and they say that salvation is by Christ plus nothing. Their detractors, also practicing sound-bite theology, accuse them of cheap grace. Other sound bites include, Faith alone, only believe, saved by grace rewarded by works.

I think the problem may lie in the perception of religion as a kind of fire escape. The whole world is going to hell, and my primary interest is in not going there. Once the fires of hell are avoided, there doesn’t seem to be very much left to do. Christianity being that easy, one wonders why there are any non-Christians left. It may be because some people have read the New Testament and found Jesus’ theology in this area to be a bit more complicated than the sound bites they have been hearing. Let’s examine a story Jesus told in Luke, chapter 14.

What did the First Christians believe about prayer? Did they believe that it really mattered; that it changed outcomes? Or did they believe that God carried out his will regardless of how they prayed?

Sometimes I sense a conflict in Christian folk about such things. On the one hand, they believe God is sovereign, he knows what is best, and practically has our lives already written out for us. On the other hand, they believe that prayer changes things. (I’ve seen that on bumper stickers, I think.)

The First Christians were people who turned the world upside-down. But it isn’t always easy, looking back 2,000 years, to be certain what those people actually thought, believed, and practiced. We do have their writings, though, and those writings tell us a lot. I want to start by using them to help clarify a related and very dominant idea that profoundly influenced everything that those First Christians thought and did. That is the concept of fellowship.

The chances are pretty good that you know someone who has had a miraculous answer to prayer. There are a lot of people walking around out there who ought to be dead. But people have prayed for them, and tumors have disappeared. The problem is often that the healing can be explained away: missed diagnosis, spontaneous remission, etc. There is one miracle that is hard to explain away. A man who was surely dead, who was brought back to life. No, I don’t know anyone like that. But Jesus did.

Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

John 11:1–4

Prayer is in a way something of a mystery. How can a mere man talk to God and be heard? If you’ve read much of your Bible, read about God, and realize his greatness, his power, the fact that he would even so much as be interested in what I had to say is amazing. Not only is he interested in what I have to say, but in what all of us have to say, and the Bible leads us to believe that God is able to hear and respond personally to every one of the perhaps millions of people whose voice may be calling out to him at any hour of the day or the night. It’s staggering to consider it.

It’s very clear that God expects us to pray, that he commands us to pray. It’s also obvious that God hears our prayers, and that our prayers make a difference in what happens. I expect every one of you, at one time or another, have had an answer to prayer. The problem you have is all those prayers of which you’re not so sure. These are the ones that sometimes trouble us.

Believing in God, believing the Bible, and committing your life as you have to Jesus Christ, you would think that prayer would come naturally—that man would pray as easily as breathing. But it is not so, and I wonder if the reason for it is that we really don’t believe.

Maybe we are like the man who came to Jesus for the healing of his son; when Jesus said, If you believe, he can be healed, and the man in desperation said, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. I think I understand that man. I really do. For I believe in Jesus, I believe in his words, I believe in the Father and pray to him, and I believe he can answer prayer. What I need is help with my unbelief.

Jesus addressed this question fairly early on with his disciples and with the people who came to listen to him, in the most basic of Christian instructions: the Sermon on the Mount…

It doesn’t seem that praying should be all that hard. It certainly isn’t when you are in trouble.Lord help me comes quickly enough. And we probably have some childhood prayers we memorized. The first prayer I can recall is Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take. Then I added a few God blesses on the end. I still am not sure why someone thought little kids should be praying about dying in their sleep. That gave me a few bad moments.

But I gather prayer is not all that simple, because the disciples of Jesus came to him and asked him to teach them to pray. What he gave them is utter simplicity—the Lord’s prayer. With a little simplification, it is a better prayer for kids to memorize than If I should die before I wake. In any case, the question the disciples asked led to a discourse beyond the Lord’s prayer and it raises some fascinating questions. After giving them the Lord’s prayer Jesus continued with an illustration:

5 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves;
6 For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him?
7 And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.
8 I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.
9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
10 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

Luke 11:5–10

Now in context, there is only one way to understand this. He that keeps on asking will receive. To him that keeps on knocking, it shall be opened. But why? Why is it necessary to persevere, to agonize in prayer? Why can’t we just ask once and receive?

I wonder how long it took for Jesus’ disciples to sort out what it was that he really wanted to do.

It’s not merely that they were obtuse (although there are times, reading through the gospel accounts, you really kind of think they were), and it’s not merely that Jesus was difficult (although sometimes you think that he was). The problem was that the ideas that Jesus was presenting to them were absolutely new to them. You talk about “thinking outside the box”, they were having trouble keeping track of where the box was; because Jesus was new wine; and, in a sense, they were old bottles. They had gotten used to Judaism. They were used to their own brand of it (which probably in most of their cases wasn’t very formal, in any case). They were fishermen. They were tax collectors. These were not highly religious men until Jesus came on the scene and called them. But they had trouble with what Jesus told them; and it took a long time, I think, for them to sort these things out.

What you read in the New Testament is not really an accurate reflection of the way they felt at the time, or the level of understanding they had at the time Jesus told them these things; because by the time they wrote these down some 15, 20, 30 years had passed; and they’d had time to digest them. They’d had time to grasp the meaning of them. They had time for experience on the one hand, the Holy Spirit on another hand, and then on still another hand the awareness of Jesus’ words all to blend together like a fine, old stew, and finally merge the flavors until they understood far better what it was they were doing, and why it was they were supposed to be doing these things. And so, at this time of year, you know we go back and we read through the gospel accounts sometimes about what it was that was happening.

What I want to tell you today is crucial for both Christian and non-Christian alike. For too long, for generations, Christians have cloaked their faith in church-speak—in jargon that, too often, they don’t even understand. I suppose it is inevitable that it should be so, because most of the church or religion radio and television programs you encounter are taped in church—before a live church audience. That is to say that the speaker is talking to an audience of insiders who know the vocabulary—or at least think they do.

On the other hand, when questioned carefully about their beliefs, too many Christians have to admit they really don’t understand what their church teaches. This is one of the differences between this radio program and some others. I am not just speaking to people in church. I may be talking to a housewife doing the ironing, or to a trucker headed west out of San Antonio on Interstate 10, or to an elderly woman lying in bed listening to the radio because she can’t sleep. And it forces me to think carefully about what I am saying when I try to explain something to you, because using church-speak just isn’t going to get it done. It is just as well, because a lot of Christian people wouldn’t get it either, even though they might pretend that they do.

It is, in large measure, a problem of words. I can illustrate what I am talking about by a lovely Christian song I heard on the radio just last night: There is a Redeemer, Jesus God’s own son. For most people, Redeemer is church-speak. It is just another word for Jesus and is synonymous with savior. But this is still a problem when you don’t even understand what savior means. Saved from what? Saved for what? This word Redeemer says far more than most Christians imagine. So who knows what it says to those of you who are not Christians? I’d like to remedy that for both of you.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Unless you just arrived from another planet, you have heard that sentence many times in your life. These words are the words of Jesus and they are found in John 8:32. They are true beyond a doubt, and in a wide range of applications. But you may not be familiar with the response to that statement by the people who heard it first.

Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed on him, If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed; And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We are Abraham’s descendants, and were never in bondage to any man: how say you, You shall be made free?

John 8:31–33 KJ2000

Now, this response is truly astonishing. The Jews had been a conquered people in one way or another for most of the years since the Babylonian Captivity. They had been under the Medes, Persians, Greeks, and here they sat under the heel of the Romans even as they spoke these words. Yet they thought they were free.

It's almost an analogy for life, in general. Is it possible that we are living out our lives in a kind of bondage while we say, along with these Jews, We are free men. We have never been in bondage? It’s possible, I suppose, to be a slave and not know it. Most of us are in one kind of bondage or another. The terrible irony is that we have forged our own chains and wear them when we could probably just as easily cast them off, because the chains are in our minds.

I think we have discovered why some of the words of Jesus are so obscure. Deep into the years of his ministry, there were so many people laying wait for him, trying to trap him and wanting to kill him, that he often spoke in riddles and allegories which he later had to explain to his disciples. It was not so much that he was afraid as it was that his time had not come. At the last Feast of Tabernacles he attended, he went there secretly and did not teach until the feast was half over.

Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. And the Jews marveled, saying, How knows this man letters, having never learned? Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.

John 7:14–16 KJ2000

I have to stop here and take note of a theological doctrine that Jesus and the father are coequal from eternity. The line of reasoning that comes to that conclusion is a little beyond most of us. The average reader, making his way through the four gospel accounts will naturally and easily assume that the Father is greater than Jesus. For one thing, Jesus is found right here saying that the doctrine he taught was given to him by the one who sent him. There is no simple way of getting around the fact that the greater sends the lesser. And the message Jesus taught originated with the Father. If that is not enough, consider what Jesus will later say to his disciples in John, chapter 14, verse 28…

There is one event upon which all of history turns. It is an event attested well enough that millions of people believe it, and yet vague enough that some do not; although most of those who do not have never really looked at the evidence.

There was a man who was dead and buried. He was stone-cold dead. He had a spear thrust into him and the blood drained from his body. He had been carefully prepared for burial, his body wrapped in a shroud with burial spices place all around him. He was laid in a tomb in the rock, and a great stone was rolled over the entrance to the tomb. Guards were placed there to ensure that he stayed dead. He lay in that sealed tomb for three days and three nights.

And at the end of that 72 hours, there was a great earthquake, the stone rolled away, and the man walked out of that tomb alive. This is the man who looked death in the face and won. And as you know. His name was Jesus. What makes this the most important event in history is that he defeated death for all of us. But there is another reason why this event is so crucial in human history...

I have asked this before, but let me ask it again: Why was a gentile church, decades after the ascension of Christ, observing the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread—what is generally assumed to be a Jewish holiday? And why is such a notable Christian observance as Easter never mentioned in the Bible?

Now if you are a King James reader, you may recall Acts 12:4, where Herod has arrested Peter, and put him in prison, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. The problem is that the Greek word translated Easter is the Greek Pascha, which means Passover. So why, 1600 years later, did the KJV translators use Easter instead of Passover here?

Well, the reason is that by the third century the entire church had begun to confuse Easter and Passover. How did it happen that the early church stopped observing the Passover and began observing Easter? It is quite an interesting story.

Unless you’ve recently arrived from another planet, you already know that most Christian people believe that Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and he was raised from the dead on Sunday morning. But if you read the New Testament with any care at all, you probably have got a lingering question about this. Because Jesus said plainly that he would be in the grave for three days and three nights. Here’s what he said in Matthew 12:

But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah: For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:39–40 KJ2000

Now, how do you get three days and three nights from late Friday afternoon to Sunday morning before daybreak? You’ve got Friday night—that’s one night. You’ve got Saturday—that’s one day. You’ve got Saturday night—that’s one night. You’ve got one day and two nights. You have to reach to find any even a part of three days. But three days and three nights? Yes, I know some people think it’s a Greek idiom. But you don’t have to be a scholar to check that out. You can use your concordance and run down both the Greek and Hebrew words that are used in the Bible and check the usage there. Now, when you toss in that expression and three nights you add an emphasis to the expression that really requires that third night or at least some part of that third night. Now let me suggest an alternative for you consider…

Sometimes the simplest answers are the best. I’ve asked again and again why it was that, thirty years after the ascension of Christ—long after everything that was nailed the cross was nailed there—a gentile church was observing the Passover and the days of unleavened bread that go along with it? Well, the simple answer is that the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are all about Christ.It was Paul who said it in his first letter to the Corinthians.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.1 Corinthians 5:6–8 NASB

According to Paul, the Passover and the days of unleavened bread are about Christ. But how so?

It seems odd, doesn’t it, that a Gentile church, 30 years after the ascension of Christ, was observing the Passover and the seven days of unleavened bread that follow it? And just as odd that there is not a single mention of Easter in the early church. Well, if that seems strange, consider this. The vast majority of the Christian world still observes the Passover—in their own way.

The word for the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus in Latin, Spanish, Italian, and all the Romance languages is Pascha. And Pascha is the Greek and Latin word for Passover. This is the word that is usually translated Easter. So in Latin or Spanish, resurrection Sunday is not called Easter. It is called Passover.

Now, why is that? And what is the connection of the Jewish Passover to Christianity? Well, the connection comes straight out of the ministry of Jesus Christ. If we turn to Matthew 26, we’ll find an interesting passage in here about the last supper of Jesus that many Christian-professing people don’t really understand.

In the book of Revelation, Jesus is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Someone recently noted that this Lion of Judah is not a tame lion. Which led me to ponder what we have made of Jesus the Christ. It is also true that Jesus is the Lamb of God, but that is only for the purpose of dying. The risen Christ is once again a Lion, and he has not been tamed.

We are nearing the end of the age of relevant Christianity. The older—not the oldest, but the older generation has been in a long chase after something they call relevance. Youth are into rock and roll, so let's do Christian Rock. Christianity should be made relevant to the younger generation.

The generation that is now passing strove to make Jesus relevant to the times. Even to make Jesus easy. I think that is a terrible mistake. Jesus is what he is, who he is. People do not need Jesus made into the mundane. They have more than enough of that already. They need to encounter the Lion of Judah.

There are some things about Jesus that are bound to be troubling to a Christian reading the New Testament—that is, if you are reading the New Testament carefully and thinking about what you read. It’s a testimony to the hateful antisemitism that still exists that some people get real uncomfortable when I remind them that Jesus was, after all, a Jew. Jesus observed the Sabbath every week of his life—even though he rejected the Pharisees interpretation of Sabbath observance. Jesus also observed all the religious festivals of the Jews. Every year of his life, he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. To have failed to do so would have been to break the written law—something Jesus never did.

2 Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand.
3 His brothers therefore said unto him, Depart from here, and go into Judea, that your disciples also may see the works that you do.
4 For there is no man that does anything in secret, when he himself seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.
5 For neither did his brothers believe in him.
6 Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: but your time is always ready.
7 The world cannot hate you; but me it hates, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.
8 Go you up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my time is not yet fully come.
9 When he had said these words unto them, he remained still in Galilee.
10 But when his brothers were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.

John 7:2–10 KJ2000

It may seem strange that Jesus could go up in secret, but remember, this was an age without television or newspapers. Relatively few people would recognize him, though nearly everyone had heard of him. And, during this festival, Jerusalem was thronged with hundreds of thousands of people.

There is a peculiar Christian conceit that dismisses all things Jewish as though it were another religion and another God. Because of this, we sometimes fail to recognize things that are vitally important. We fail to pay attention to things like the Feast of Tabernacles. What is this feast and what was its purpose?

It is becoming increasingly common these days for a minister, a pastor of a church, to be caught in some kind of sexual sin. I recently read that upwards of 30% of church pastors have committed adultery or some cognate sin at some time in their pastorate. I don’t know why I should have been surprised at that. Our society is so sexually overcharged, and a minister is at once in a vulnerable and powerful position to either be taken advantage of or to take advantage. What is a little surprising is that increasing numbers of these men are being retained in their positions even after the discovery of a sexual dalliance.

When this happens, there is usually confession and forgiveness by the whole church. I presume the fact that a man has fallen off the fidelity wagon once need not destroy a lifetime career of an otherwise effective pastor and preacher. I am not so sure what churches do the second time he falls off the wagon. Or the third. How many times can a church forgive a wayward pastor and have the forgiveness mean anything?

There was a day when Peter came to Jesus and asked the question: Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus’ answer places a pretty big burden on us all: Oh no, Peter, I wouldn’t say seven times: but, Until seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22). But I can’t see a church retaining a pastor who keeps repeating his sins. Sooner or later, he will fired. Probably sooner—especially in this day of the instant lawsuit. Is a church that fires its minister being unforgiving? The problem with forgiveness is that the word has a rather broad range of meanings. Let’s examine some of them.

Which is more important, do you think, pursuing a religious argument with someone, or giving a life to man who doesn’t have one? Note that I said, pursuing a religious argument, not resolving a religious difference. These arguments never seem to be resolved, so we must engage in them for our own entertainment. And when I talk about giving a life to a man who didn’t have one, I am talking about poor devil who claws at his flesh, foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth. I am talking about a man whose life is so bad that he throws himself into the fire or sometimes into the lake trying to destroy himself. This is a really tormented man, and I am talking about complete and total restoration. Which is more important?

There must have been times when Jesus wondered if he could afford to leave his disciples alone. The poor man I was talking about was brought to Jesus’s disciples while he was away. His father brought him and asked the disciples to cast the demon out of the man. I don’t know what they did. Whether they stood there helpless or whether they attempted an exorcism that didn’t work. But when Jesus returned, he saw a crowd gathered around them and the scribes questioning them. For the scribes this was an important failure by Jesus’ disciples, and they would have jumped on this as they did everything Jesus and his disciples did. And while they stood and argued religion with the disciples, this poor, tormented man sat there drooling and clawing at himself.

For some, he was just an object of a religious argument. But Jesus did not see people like this as objects. He saw them as tormented human beings. What was it like to be inside a body and mind like that? How bad does it have to get in your mind before the pain of tearing your skin or burning yourself is preferable to the torment of the soul? When Jesus came on this scene, he focused on the poor man. In a way, you might think that having the power to heal a person like that would give you a flippant attitude toward suffering. You could shout be healed and walk away triumphantly. I have an idea that, when you really have the power, it is not that way.

When you don’t have the power, you feel bad about human suffering, but there is nothing you can do. But when you do have the power, there is a terrible burden of responsibility that comes with it. I suspect that Jesus, having the power to heal, felt the pain of the sick and the suffering much more deeply. And all the more so, because he would bear their sicknesses and their pain to the stake.

It is hard to imagine the confusion that swirled around Jesus during his ministry. The entire Jewish world had already been ripe with expectations of a Messiah, but Jesus was not exactly what they expected. It is strange when you think about it—that a person could miss seeing the Messiah because he expected the Messiah to be different. I think this is what the prophets were talking about when they warned man about making God in their own image. It is sobering to consider that I could miss something very important about God because I expected something else. It is testimony to the importance of keeping an open mind.

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

Matthew 16:13–20

Now what seems strange to me about this passage is that not one of the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, what is a church? Don’t you think that is odd? Up to this point, he had said nothing about any church. Now, out of the clear blue sky he says He is going to build his church. What is a church, anyway?

I got an email a few nights ago from a man in the military who is often away from home for extended periods. He enclosed a picture of himself, his wife, and his little child. He told me the three of them commonly listen to me in bed at night before going to sleep. More than that, he told me he took my sermons with him on his iPod and listened to them in a tent late at night—and that they were a comfort to him.

I doubt if anyone can realize how much an email like that means to me, personally. Unlike some ministry programs, I don’t do mine in a church with a live congregation in front of me. I do these programs in a studio, usually with no one except Gary Gibbons across the glass from me. I know you are out there, though, and I can ride along with you on the way to work, I can sit with you while you have breakfast, I can chat with you over a cup of coffee. And, through all the days, I feel like I am talking with friends.

But when I say that, I have to recognize an important truth. What has made you and I friends is the Bible, Jesus Christ, and his Father, and the Holy Spirit. It is here that we have found common ground. It is here that we find a spirit of brotherhood and friendship. I think the Apostle John must have felt the same way when he wrote his first letter.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

1 John 1:1–4 NIV

Fellowship is a well-worn religious word, and like all overused words, it has lost some of its significance. The word in the Greek denotes more than sitting around after church, sharing coffee and snacks. The word denotes partnership. If we were partners in business, and the business goes broke, we are both losers. If it makes money, we both can get rich. But if we are partners, we share everything. It is a little frightening to think about this is relationship to our faith. But listen to what Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper…

Do you wash your hands before you eat? Well, if you had a mother, you probably do. It is a habit acquired in childhood. But chances are you don’t worry about it very much unless you have just been petting the dog or something like that. Why do I ask? Well, it became a major issue between Jesus and the Pharisees, believe it or not.

Jesus had made a decision to stay in Galilee because the religious leaders in Jerusalem wanted him dead. It just wasn’t safe for him in Judea. So the Pharisees sent delegates to Galilee to report on what Jesus and his disciples were doing. What did they find? Jesus’ disciples were eating without washing their hands. Mind you now, this was not a matter of hygiene. The oral law had a long section dealing with ritual purification. They scrubbed up like a surgeon before sitting down to eat.

Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?

Mark 7:1–5

A small digression about ceremonial defilement. Under the law of Moses, there were a lot of things that might defile a man or a woman, but ceremonial defilement or uncleanness as such was not a sin. It was a sin to go to the tabernacle or temple and to attempt to carry out the ceremonies there in an unclean condition. But the condition of being unclean was not a condition of sin. A woman was unclean after childbirth, but childbirth is no sin. All uncleanness or defilement did was to prohibit a person from temple ceremony. But for the Pharisees, ritual purity was a way of life. So how did Jesus answer this charge?

There were at least three major categories of people who heard Jesus speak. There was a smallish group of people who immediately responded to him. To them, he was like water on dry ground. They soaked up his every word and wanted more. There was another small group that bristled at Jesus’ every word. There was something about him that annoyed and angered them. Frankly, I don’t think in most cases they could have told you why. There was a third group, by far the largest, that just didn’t get it. They were fascinated with Jesus—who wouldn’t be? But his words seemed to go in one ear and out the other.

It is easy to criticize these people, but it probably better to feel sorry for them. Jesus certainly did. They tell us he was moved with compassion for the multitudes because they were scattered abroad as sheep without a shepherd. The truth is, they had looked at things so long in the same way, that Jesus might as well have been from another planet. They simply were unable to process a lot of what Jesus had to say. Jesus brought new wine, but they only had old wineskins. And they thought the old wine was better.

It is tempting to think, when you encounter people like this third group, that more arguments or better arguments will help. But the problem is not with the facts, the doctrines, the arguments. The problem is on the inside of the people who are listening. There is an interesting dialogue between Jesus and a crowd that included all three of these groups of people. It is found in the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to John.

The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone; (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:) When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither? Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.

John 6:22–26

Was Jesus a racist? You know, he live in a society that was, frankly, racist. Religious Jews would not eat with gentiles and Samaritans were beneath contempt. Oh, they were happy enough to make a proselyte from among the Gentiles, but they still treated them as second-class worshipers of God. So what was Jesus doing when he sent his disciples out and told them to stay away from Gentiles and Samaritans?

And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. […] These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter you not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Matthew 10:1,5–6 KJ2000

Racist? No. In the words of Jesus we have already seen too many references to the conversion of the Gentiles. We has seen, when he was in Samaria, he spoke to those people and thought it important that they know the truth of the gospel. The breakout of the gospel from merely a Jewish religion into something far greater was foretold in the prophets and developed in the gospels. No, but the gospel had to go first to the lost sheep of Israel for a witness to them and as a witness against them. But in this passage, we will also find another interesting lesson for interpreting the Bible.

Jesus must have given a lot of people whiplash. For one thing, he didn’t seem to be very religious. That is not to say that he was not a law-abiding person, or that he was profane or irreligious. It was just that he wasn’t religious in the accepted sense. For one thing, he consorted with the wrong kind of people. And he was under near constant criticism from the more religious people of the time. And it was not just a matter of who Jesus consorted with.

And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink? And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

Luke 5:33–35

You don’t fast in a time of celebration. Fasting is a sign of mourning, and the time would come when Jesus’ disciples would mourn. But the bottom line was that Jesus brought something entirely new. The Pharisees had a religious system their fathers had built in response to God’s revelation. It was full of customs and practices of essentially human invention. It had been around for a long time and had become a habit as well as a religion. Jesus was something entirely new.

Poor Joseph. It is hard to imagine what a shock it was to him when he learned that his betrothed wife was with child. Understand that, in that society, at that time, this was a much bigger thing that it is today. The role of women in society was different, and her marriage-ability was all that stood between a young woman and starvation—or perhaps prostitution. In some societies, it led to what is called an honor killing—that is, the girl had shamed her family, and the father killed her for it. Israelite law allowed for stoning the girl for playing the harlot, but it was not required. And thus, Joseph decided he would just quietly put the girl away instead.

God had chosen well in this man and this girl. They were good people. Joseph was a just man, and his betrothed, Mary, was a remarkably poised young woman. Thus, a messenger from God appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him not to hesitate to take Mary as his wife because the child she was carrying would be a son who would save his people from their sins. Joseph had to understand that this meant the boy Mary was carrying would be the Messiah. He was to be named, Jesus. Matthew then adds one relevant fact:

Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Matthew 1:22–23

Now the prophet being cited here was Isaiah, and the prophecy came in a definite time and place in history. Taken in isolation, I would never have connected this prophecy with the Messiah. Because what Isaiah will offer is a type of something yet to come. (I explained the term type and its corollary, anti-type in the last program. So keeping this in mind, and realizing that Isaiah has no idea that this prophecy would be applied to Christ by Matthew, let’s consider the context of what Isaiah said. We’ll find it in Isaiah, chapter 7.

Why was Jesus so hard to understand at times? Oh, there were times when he was clear as crystal, and we just don’t like what he said, but there are other times when he is not clear at all. Jesus, like any good communicator used all the various devices, analogies, illustrations, stories, comparisons, etc. But he had another tool that he used frequently that is not so well understood. He used allegories. You have read Jesus’s allegories, haven’t you? No? Oh well, you probably know them by the Greek word for them: parables. I remember a Sunday school class when I was just a boy—parables are little stories Jesus used as illustrations so we could understand what he was teaching better. Was she ever wrong.

If you have ever read a serious allegory, like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or C.S. Lewis’, Pilgrims Regress you will realize right away that clarity of meaning is not the objective. An allegory is a representation of spiritual, moral, or other abstract meanings through the actions of fictional characters that serve as symbols. The fascinating thing about an allegory is that two people can hear it and gather two very different meanings from it. It is a marvelous art form, because it forces the reader to bring his mind and experience to bear on the allegory and to find meanings and lessons of his own—that might vary somewhat from those of the writer. Let me show you what I mean:

The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in allegories, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Matthew 13:1–8

Imagine for a moment that you and your family go out to a movie one night and when you come home, your house has burned to the ground. I know, it would be a terrible loss. You would all shed a lot of tears. It would be horrible. But assuming you had your house properly insured, have you ever considered how free you would be the next morning?

The insurance will pay off the mortgage and give you some cash in hand. You don’t have to clean out the garage today as you had planned to do. You don’t have to worry about ironing the clothes that had backed up on you. The list of repairs you had to do around the house burned up with the house. We rarely consider what a burden our stuff can become, how complicated our possessions make our lives.

And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you? And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Luke 12:13–15

When reading the Bible, especially the words of Jesus, have you ever wondered why Jesus did not speak more plainly? He was a man of few words, and I often find myself wishing for more words from him—more detail, more explanation. Only a part of the problem is the brevity of Jesus’ remarks. Part of it is an assumption of knowledge on the part of his listeners. Jesus is building on a foundation, and he expects the people standing around him to be acquainted with the scriptures.

Part of our modern problem, too, is that we have a lot of preconceived opinions about what Jesus said, and when we encounter something in his words that doesn’t match that opinion, we get confused. More often than not, we dismiss what we just read or reinterpret it to fit the model we have always believed. The result is sure to be imperfect understanding of Jesus and his words.

Another part of our problem is that Jesus spoke in the idiom of the time, and some of that idiom is lost on the translators. An idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual grammatical rules of a language or from the usual meanings of its constituent elements. For example, try translating someone kicking the bucket into another language. There are a number of idioms in the New Testament, and translators do their best with them, but they drive the literalists crazy. Another reason why Jesus often seems obscure is that he was positively curt with the religious establishment of the time. Let’s examine an interesting example of this, found in Matthew 12.

There is such a thing as an unpardonable sin. I hesitate to bring it up, because some poor soul out there who is guilty of serious sin is likely to have a few bad nights worrying about whether he or she has done it. But you needn’t worry. The unpardonable sin is not a matter of degree. It isn’t adultery or theft. What is it? Well, Jesus popped the idea on a rather annoying group of people who suggested that Jesus had a demon. Why? Well, because he cast out demons. Having shown the irrationality of that idea to the crowd, he went on to say this:

Therefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.

Matthew 12:31–32 KJ2000

Jesus had, with the power of God, cast demons out of several people. He didn’t do a lengthy exorcism, he just told the demon to leave and it left. Some, who had actually seen what he had done, alleged that Jesus himself was using demonic powers. They knew that what Jesus had done was supernatural. They could not explain it away. But if they attributed it to the power of God, then they acknowledged that Jesus was of God and they ought to listen to him.The problem was, that Jesus was calling on men to change their lives—to repent. These men were not willing to repent, so they attributed the power of God to the devil.

In the end, the refusal to repent leads one to reject the call of God in his life, and the attribution of the works of God to some other power. Thus it is the hardened, unrepentant spirit that leads to the unpardonable sin—not human weakness, fecklessness, or stupidity.

There are so many mysteries in the Bible. Yes, it was written in another language and in another culture, and there is much we simply don’t know. But I am not talking about that. I am talking about things we aren’t programmed to understand. We are programmed, you know. Just like a computer has to have an operating system to, well, operate, so do we. And just as a small example, our system of thought addresses everything in terms of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

So grasping the idea of a being is eternal, that is, who has always existed, is just beyond our reach. It is hard enough to imagine living forever into the future. But when we turn around and look back, we can’t help ourselves. We have to ask: Where did God come from? That he has simply always been doesn’t compute. I don’t mean to say that we aren’t willing to believe it. Only that we can’t really understand it. And, I don’t mean to say that we can’t understand God. We can, but only in terms in which he chooses to reveal himself. When we step beyond that, we are lost.

Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord.

Jeremiah 9:23–24 KJV

How do you look at religion? Is religion a burden you have to bear, or is it more of a release from burdens? I don’t mean theoretically, I mean by your own observation of the religious people you know. As a person becomes more religious, is she more or less happy? Jesus made a short statement on this; it is found in Matthew’s 11th chapter:

All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knows the Son, but the Father; neither knows any man the Father, except the Son, and he to whomever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:27–30 KJ2000

I am not so sure that modern man really appreciates this in these days of five-day work weeks and eight hours a day of work—and work that is not at all physical in many cases. Jesus spoke into a world of hard labor. He spoke to people who worked a twelve-hour day, six days a week—if they were lucky. But then there are other kinds of burdens, as well—like fear and anxiety. I suppose these words of Jesus still resonate with us in the 21st century. The words rest, and easy, and light sound awfully good to me when things aren’t working out as I wish they would. Is religion hard or easy? Well, at times, Jesus suggests it is hard, and here he says his yoke is easy. Which is it, really?

Man is a territorial creature. I don’t mean that purely in a geographical sense, either. Man is socially territorial—we expect people to stay in their class or in their race. Man is even territorial in an ideological sense. We put together belief systems—think of churches with all of their doctrines and creeds—that are exclusionary. They accept all people who believe exactly what we believe and exclude everyone else.

Part of this, I think, comes from a very natural desire to feel special. No one wants to be ordinary—just a part of the herd. We want to know that there is something special about us and we want to be together with people who share this same special quality. I realize this sounds like psychobabble, in a way, but let me explore the idea with you from a religious point of view.

If you were to ask a hundred people, what is the name of the religion of the Old testament, most of them would answer: Judaism. They would be wrong. In the New Testament, we encounter two of the major sects of Judaism—the Pharisees and the Sadducees—and Jesus is at some pains to make it clear to us that what these people believed was sharply different from the revealed religion of the Old Testament.

Judaism was not the revelation of God, but the response of the Jewish people to the revelation of God. This is manifest in the sectarian nature of Judaism. I don’t know if Judaism can boast as many sects as Christianity, but if not, it will only be because there are not as many adherents in the world. Consider, in this light, a fascinating encounter Jesus had with a Roman Centurion. We’ll find it in Luke, chapter 7.

There’s a funny thing about people. We seem to have a need to conform to something or someone. Children, for example, are great imitators; it is how they learn. One day I was walking across campus behind a fellow faculty member who, because of an old injury, walked with a peculiar, bowlegged gait. Alongside him was his very young son who, although he had nothing wrong with his legs, was walking exactly like his dad. But the curious thing about it is that this childhood tendency doesn’t go away when we grow up.

Every man walks in an image. When you look at people, ask yourself: What is that man’s image of himself? What is that woman’s self-image? Soon enough, you will come to understand what I mean. What I wish is that more people, young people in particular, could come to understand is that there is an even higher standard of conformity.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:1–2 NIV

Would you consider yourself a fair-minded person? I mean a person who believes in equity—who holds yourself to the same standards to which you hold others; a person who really believes we shouldn’t have double standards; a person who is offended when someone judges you for doing something and then does the same thing himself? Jesus said:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you again.

Matthew 7:1–2 KJ2000

Frankly, this is a little bloodcurdling, but it is only fair. If I hold you up against a standard, it is only fair that I be held up against the same standard. How are we supposed to take what Jesus said here? It is problematic, because we all have to judge at times. Jesus recognized that. Take what he said to one of the churches in the Book of Revelation. He told them:

I know your works, and your labor, and your patience, and how you can not bear them who are evil: and you have tried them who say they are apostles, and are not, and have found them liars[.]

Revelation 2:2 KJ2000

You can’t do that without judging. You have to look at the facts and judge whether what the man says is true or not. You are allowed to conclude that a liar is a liar. In fact, I think God would be pleased if more of us would exercise our critical faculties in matters religious and political. When a preacher tells you one thing and you can see the Bible plainly says something else, you can safely conclude that something is wrong somewhere.

All of us grow up familiar with rules. Our parents had rules for us. Schools had rules. The community had rules. If you are the parent of a teenager, I’ll bet you have heard at least once, Aw, you never want me to have any fun. And if you are teenager, you have heard, in answer to your question, Why? the words, Because I said so.

When you grow up and move away from home, you no longer have to obey the rules of your parents, but does that mean the rules have been abolished? Hardly. We hope that they have been internalized by the time we move away from home. Mom and Dad will no longer be there to see that we brush our teeth and shine our shoes, but they hope we will continue to take care of ourselves. Similarly, God intends for us to internalize his rules, to make them a part of our character. To be out from under parental administration in no way invalidates the things they have taught us. So perhaps we can understand why Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:17–20 KJ2000

The Pharisees observed many rules, yet our righteousness must exceed theirs. What was wrong with the righteousness of the Pharisees?

Was Jesus a pacifist? It hasn’t been much of a question in this country since the end of the draft, but it still resonates with a number of people. Did Jesus say we could not defend ourselves if attacked? When he said turn the other cheek, just how far does that go? In this program series, we are talking about the words of Jesus—what he actually said—and on this subject, Jesus had something definitive to say. It is in his longest discourse—the Sermon on the Mount.

You have heard that it has been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That you resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Matthew 5:38–39 KJ2000

This is a troubling saying of Jesus. Does this mean if a mugger knocks you down in the street that you can’t defend yourself? Does it mean that if someone attacks your wife or children that you cannot defend them? Would it have meant to the British in WWII that when the German bombers were overhead, they could not shoot back? That as a nation, they should have turned the other cheek and let the Nazis roll over them? To understand these words, we first have to understand an important thing about the role Jesus is assuming in his Sermon on the Mount.

When the history of our generation is finally written, I think historians will see the single greatest tragedy of our generation is the disintegration of the family. Some experts are now saying that half of all new marriages will end in divorce. We tried an experiment in making divorce easier in this country, without thinking through the consequences. I don’t think we understood why society ever felt constrained to keep marriages together. I think people thought that it was purely a religious impulse and, since religion isn’t very important, we don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t think they realized that the reason why society has an interest has an interest in keeping marriage together is for the children.

A study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that children in single parent families (including those whose parents never married) are more likely to drop out of high school, become pregnant as teenagers, abuse drugs, and get into trouble with the law than those living with both parents. Society and God have seen the need to keep families together for the children’s sake. So Jesus, in his most fundamental teaching—the Sermon on the Mount—takes what appears to be a very strict view of divorce. It is a pretty tough statement, though not as tough as some theologians try to make it. He says this:

It has been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of fornication, causes her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced commits adultery.

Matthew 5:31–32 KJ2000

The Sermon on the Mount is easily the best known of all Jesus’ discourses, probably because every beginning preacher is encouraged by his mentor to speak about that sermon. So even if you don’t read the Bible very much, you still would have heard, Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

The sermon is a memorable work, with the poetic beatitudes leading the way. Each of these could be the subject for a much longer exposition. Blessed are the meek, for example, would make a strong theme for a full sermon. But early on in Jesus’ discourse that day, there is a statement that challenges the very structure of some Christian doctrine. Jesus said plainly that we are not to think something, which a surprising number of Christians think anyway. Here it is, in Jesus own words:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

Matthew 5:17–18 NIV

There are two criteria that have to be in place for a comma or the crossing of a T to pass from the law. One: Heaven and earth have to disappear. (As I record this program, they are still here.) Two: Everything must be accomplished. And there is a rather large array of things that God has said he will do that haven’t rolled around yet, so we’re still waiting. This poses a huge problem for anyone who is aware of the contents of the law that Jesus is talking about. Let me explain what I mean.

I known I’ve been complaining about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John not giving us more of what Jesus actually said. They’ll tell us that Jesus went into a synagogue and taught, that people were astonished at his doctrine, that he delivered it with authority—but wouldn’t tell us what his doctrine was.

Well, we’ve discovered that the reason for that supposed lapse is that the doctrine is conveyed to us elsewhere in the gospel accounts. Jesus was an itinerant preacher, and many of his messages were the same in one location as they were in another. So we can presume that when we do find a comprehensive lesson from Jesus, we are getting what he taught in most of those places where the evangelists neglected to include the message.

In our study on the words of Jesus, we have come to Sermon on the Mount—which is the longest, and perhaps the most comprehensive statement of Jesus’ doctrine in the New Testament. And we have come to the point where Jesus is about to tell his audience something very important. I don’t know how his audience took it, but I know it poses major problems for modern Christian students. First, let me explain a little background that those listening would already have known…

Jesus was a man of few words, so we want to pay close attention to the words he did say. When he spoke, he was often enigmatic in what he said–sometimes it was hard to figure out exactly what he meant. As often as not, he would make his point with a question, or perhaps with a question followed by an action. For example, Jesus was a Sabbath-keeper, but he was very much at odds with the scribes and Pharisees on their interpretation of Sabbath observance. In its origins, the Sabbath was a liberating law–it set men free. One version of the original commandment is found in Deuteronomy, chapter 5:

Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God: in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm: therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Deuteronomy 5:12–15

What’s the idea here? Well, you were toiling as slaves for hundreds of years. Now, with an escape from bondage, you, your servants, and your animals would be given a day off. You’re liberated, you’re free. The Pharisees had managed to turn this liberty–something to be rejoiced over–into a burden. They had a list of do’s and don’ts as long as your arm. According to Jesus, they had lost touch with what the Sabbath was all about. So how did Jesus, a man of very few words, make his point?

How was it possible that otherwise sane men would want to kill Jesus? Think about it. He was a quiet man. He was plainly a kind man. He was an engaging teacher and faithful to the scriptures. More important, he was doing miracles—he was healing people left and right, and such healings as no one had ever seen. And yet, immediately after some of these healings, they wanted him dead. I submit to you that this is strange behavior.

We know a lot of it had to do with jealousy. The religious establishment felt threatened by Jesus. The establishment always feels threatened by someone outside the establishment who is successful. Even Jesus’ own disciples felt threatened by a man successfully casting out demons in Jesus name. They wanted him stopped. It is just human nature, I suppose. But the establishment would not have admitted they were jealous. What was their reason?

And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered them, My Father works still, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

John 5:16–18 KJ2000

So the establishment had two reasons for getting rid of Jesus: breaking the Sabbath, by their definition, and blasphemy—making himself equal with God. In response to their objections, Jesus gave a relatively long response. (I say relatively. It is only 108 words.) It is an important statement, because it addresses the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It is Jesus’ first major doctrinal statement as well. I touches on the nature of God, the resurrection and the fact that there are at least two resurrections, the judgement, and the connection between Jesus and Moses. All this in 108 words. Let’s read it.

Over the years, a common objection people raised to religion is that, well, it’s pie in the sky. Religion, they think, has some vague promises of benefits in the next life, but it doesn’t do much for a person in this life. That’s really a pity that those of us who call ourselves Christians have allowed people to think of us that way; for if a person comes to understand the words of Jesus, they’ll come away with a totally different perspective.

Take for example one day when Jesus came to a synagogue in Nazareth where he had been brought up. As his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read. (As Jesus was a Sabbath keeper, he did not work at his job on the Sabbath and he was in regular attendance at the synagogue. Adult men were allowed to read aloud from the scriptures in the synagogue and it was very important in a time when hardly anyone had even a piece of the Bible of their own and a lot of them couldn’t have read it if they had it.) So, Jesus stood up to read, and there was delivered to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. When He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

Luke 4:18–19 KJ2000

He closed the book, he handed it back to the minister, and he sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. Something about the way he read it, something about the way he communicated this ancient prophecy, struck people, and he said to them, This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears. Not tomorrow, not in the next life, right now.

Why did the Jews reject Jesus? The apostle Paul seems to have been very troubled about the issue, and he engages in a remarkably frank discussion of the question in his letter to the Romans. He comes to a conclusion of sorts, and I was surprised recently to find a Jewish writer coming to a similar conclusion—well, sort of similar.

David Klinghoffer in his book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus explores the question in a way sure to raise controversy among both Christians and Jews. His subtitle, though, added a dimension Paul could not have seen and I had never thought about—the complete title: Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History.

This rather far-reaching theory encounters a lot of opposition in reviewers, but I think he may be on to something, and I think Paul might agree. What is painfully at issue in the Book of Acts, and in Paul’s letters as well, is whether the Christian faith would be just another Jewish sect. And it is this very question that David Klinghoffer addresses in his book. He says:

What Jesus rejected was the oral Torah that explains the written Torah. Essential to Rabbinic Judaism, this concept of an oral Torah recognizes the Pentateuch as a cryptic document, a coded text. It posits that the Bible’s first five books were revealed to Moses along with a key to unlock the code.

And he has this mostly right. I say mostly, because not all Jews would agree with his description of the oral law. But Jesus, and then Paul after him, flatly rejected the oral law as the authoritative interpretation of the written law. And it is squarely here that so much misunderstanding of Paul arises. His readers at the time understood this. Modern readers mostly do not. Paul was not down on the law of Moses. His anti-law statements were not directed at the written law, but at the traditions of the Pharisees and sages. Try to keep this in mind when you read his letters. So where do we find this idea of an oral law mentioned in the New Testament? Let’s begin in Matthew, chapter 15.

I doubt if there are any words of Jesus more widely quoted and better known than his little statement in John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16 KJV

It is hard to grasp how a first-century Jew would have taken that. Listen to the emphasis. God so loved the world—not just the Israelites, and not just the Jews. And it is everlasting life we are talking about here, and it is for whosoever believes him, not just for the Jews. It is difficult, looking back from our perspective in the 20th century to the 1st—we already have a concept of Jesus, we already have a very strong idea of what he taught and believed, and we have attached a very strong meaning to this one little verse. But it’s hard to understand what that verse meant to the man who first heard it.

Judaism was the religion of the Jews. Gentiles were shut out unless they made the complete transition—being circumcised and observing the whole package including the oral law and traditions of the Jews in order to have any access to God at all. Observant Jews would not so much as eat with a gentile.

What Jesus is saying here is not new. The prevailing doctrine of the Jews relative to Gentiles was not what the Old Testament taught. The prophets—especially Isaiah—spoke quite frankly of the conversion of the Gentiles, and the Torah made definite provision for Gentiles to worship God, to adore him, and observe most, if not all, of his festivals. So Jesus, in a manner that must have gone over his listeners heads, speaks of God loving the whole world and extending salvation to all people.

Whatever image you have in your mind of Jesus Christ, it is surely wrong. None of his disciples told us anything at all about how Jesus looked—which is a curious oversight, in a way, because we really would like to know. It comes as a shock to some people when they learn that the picture of Jesus they bought and hung on the wall is a painting of some male model the artist recruited to sit for the portrait.

There is every indication that Jesus was unremarkable physically. He was a Jew, but that was completely ordinary to his disciples. So we know nothing about Jesus’ physical appearance, but we do know a great deal about his character and personality—which is of a great deal more interest anyway. He was definitely not a talkative man. And when he did speak, he was often cryptic. When he acted, though, he was pretty definite.

And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things away; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.

John 2:13–16 KJ2000

I have often pondered how Jesus got away with this. He turned the whole place upside-down, and no one laid a hand on him. I think they were a little bit afraid of him. First, they knew that he was right. No one argued that these activities should have been going on. The temple should have been a quiet place of prayer, filled with the smell of incense. But it had all the noise of a marketplace and the stench of animal dung. They knew this was not right. I think that Jesus also had a charismatic personality—he spoke and acted with authority. When challenged on the source of his authority, Jesus had this to say…

Nothing is more central to the Christian faith than baptism. Whether it be by immersion, sprinkling, or pouring, baptism is the initiation rite to the Christian church. If you haven’t been baptized somehow, someway, you haven’t met the entry level requirement. Baptism is a Christian thing—and yet baptism did not originate with Christianity. It had been practiced for at least 150 years before Jesus appeared on the scene, and even in the New Testament itself it does not originally come from Jesus, but from John the Baptist, who baptized Jesus himself.

There is a puzzling exchange that takes place between these two men, and it is only in recent years (because of things we’ve learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls) that we have come to understand what it is all about:

Then came Jesus from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized by him. But John forbad him, saying, I have need to be baptized by you, and come you to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Permit it to be so now: for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he permitted him.

Matthew 3:13–15 KJ2000

Baptism was already an old custom—how old, no one really knows. The Qumran community had been in the area where John was baptizing for generations, and John’s baptism resembled theirs in some important respects. We make a mistake if we project the doctrine of Christian baptism back onto John’s baptism. There was an important difference. Christian baptism washes away sins—purifies. But the baptism of the Qumran community required that a person become clean and free from sin before he could be baptized. It is hard to say if John knew anything of Christian baptism when Jesus came to him. Now, listen to the words of Jesus in response to John…

Did it ever occur to you to wonder why Jesus didn’t write his own book? Why do have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the four Gospels, but no Gospel According to Jesus? And have you ever noticed how little Jesus had to say? He was a man of few words for the most part, though he did sometimes wax eloquent for, say, five minutes. Let me show you something really curious about the gospel accounts of Jesus speeches. Mark, in his gospel account, passes over all the early years of Jesus’ life very quickly and comes to the actual beginning of Jesus’ work. Jesus calls his disciples, and then we have this:

And they went into Capernaum; and immediately on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.

Mark 1:21–22 KJ2000

Then he heals a man in the synagogue and Jesus and his disciples leave the synagogue. What is wrong with this picture? Well, I for one, would give a lot to know what Jesus said in that synagogue. Mark says they were astonished at his doctrine. Mark doesn’t, however, see fit to tell us what the doctrine was! To a 20th-century reader, this is a remarkable oversight. He taught doctrine. He taught with authority. His listeners were astonished. Please, please, tell us what he said! But no, Mark doesn’t think it is important. Here I am, concerned about the intellectual content of Jesus’ teaching, while Mark is far more concerned with what Jesus actually did and the message contained in what he did. But if I want the intellectual content of Jesus’ message—what did Jesus actually say, what did he teach—how am I going to find it?

Imagine that you are in a room, all by yourself. No one else is there. No one else is supposed to be there. You are in the process of carrying out a rather simple task, but one that requires you to pay attention to what you are doing. All you have to do is carefully replenish the incense burning on a small altar.

Then, with no fanfare, no warning, no noise, there is suddenly a man standing there just to the right of that small altar. One minute he isn’t there, and the next minute he is. All of us know what it is like to have someone creep up one us when we didn’t know they were there. It can make you nearly jump out of your skin.

That is precisely where a man named Zechariah found himself one day. He was a priest. He was in the temple alone. No one else should have been anywhere near, but suddenly there was a man standing there. The book says he was startled and gripped with fear. I would certainly think so. And what is especially remarkable about this particular event is that nothing like this had happened in the past 400 years.

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.

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 1850s 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

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

I’ve never known of a womanizer who really liked women. Women are useful to him, things to satisfy his ego—but not people he respects or cares about (or, more importantly, cares for).

There may have been no one more destined to win than Solomon. His wisdom was legendary. But in the end, it was his choice of women that turned him into a loser. King Solomon was a man with enormous personal charm and he could have all the women he wanted. But he did not really like women and, I’m sorry to say, you would have to call him a womanizer.

How can I say that? As he grew older, even Solomon himself understood the failings he had made when it came to women. What can his writings show us about the lessons he learned and help steer us away from making the same bad decisions?

Only by pride comes contention: but with the well advised is wisdom.

We all know that too much pride is a bad thing. And we all know that humility is a virtue. But what are you supposed to do about pride when you are really good at something? Having talented children is a source of great joy, but having talented children who display humility is really special.

So what do you do about this question of humility? Do you fake it and pretend? Is there a good pride—a proper kind of pride that causes us to shine our shoes, comb our hair, and wear clothes that match?

In the Book of Proverbs we find a lot of help dealing with the problem of pride and humility and in making life work. Take, for example, Proverbs 13:10.

It seems that every age and every generation has it defining characteristic. It also seems to me that we are currently living in the generation of the lie. Just look at politics. If we find a man (or woman) who will tell us what we want to hear, truthfulness aside, we’ll vote for them.

But this program isn’t really about politics. It’s about making your life work. And in Proverbs 12:19 we come to a question of truth and lies that transcends politics that gets down to what makes your life work—and what can keep it from working.

The lip of truth shall be established forever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment. Deceit is in the heart of them that imagine evil: but to the counselors of peace there is joy.

Proverbs 12:19–20 KJ2000

Is it possible to give things away and yet become richer? Is it possible to hold on to everything you have and wind up poor anyhow? This is the paradox of generosity—and it has a lot to do with relationships.

No man is ever going to get rich without other people—working with you or for you. Selfishness alienates. But generosity attracts and, as a result, we do better in those cooperative efforts.

This is but one of the lessons that help to make life work that we find explained in this look into the Book of Proverbs.

If you were the devil, and you wanted to destroy what God was doing, where would you start? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. You start with kids. Where else would you start? My question: If you decide you want to fight back, at long last, where would you start? With kids; the same place.

Solomon, a man who gave great attention to wisdom (and who managed to lose it in his old age) learned something from his father. He said in Proverbs 4,

Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away. For they sleep not, except they have done mischief; and their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness, and drink the wine of violence.

Proverbs 4:14–17 AKJV

What does that mean, They eat the bread of wickedness and they drink the wine of violence? In our language, don’t we have an expression that we use for a person’s total immersion in what they is doing. We say they eat, drink, and sleep music. He eats, drinks, and sleeps writing. He eats, drinks, and sleeps whatever it is that a person is obsessed with. What he is saying here is that these people eat, drink, and sleep (or don’t sleep, in this case) whatever it is that they are obsessed with. And their obsessions are wickedness and are violent.

Kids today eat, drink, and sleep mischief, wickedness, and violence. It is with them all the time. They are totally immersed in it in our society. It is on television. It is in the movies. It is in books that they read (if they happen to read any books). It’s in their music. It’s in their entertainment. Unless they get too far away from it, they plug into it.

And one of the things that has really struck me is that what all of this is (including the pornography that they see)…it is ugly! It is a denial of beauty. It is a denial of love. For it takes love to produce beauty. And when the love is gone, the beauty is gone, and what is left is just plain ugly. Why, when the kids are immersed in it, in our society day and night, should anybody be surprised that it breaks out in school shootings? I am not surprised at what I see. What worries me, what dismays me is that there are so few parents who seem to have a mind to fight back.

If you call yourself a Christian, what can I assume that you believe? If you call yourself a Christian, what can I depend on you to do? One fellow recently wrote to me and commented that he didn’t think that Mormons were Christians. But you know what? It’s even money that somewhere there is someone who wouldn’t think he is a Christian either. Oddly, the term Christian is not part of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples. He doesn’t mention the term at all. Christian was a descriptive term applied to the disciples of Jesus by the non Christians in Antioch. The followers of Jesus seem to have gradually accepted the descriptor.

That said, it appears that all the term means is that you are a disciple, that is a learner. Anyone can call himself a Christian. And, if he does, Christ takes a personal interest in him. To whatever extent one actually believes Jesus and acts on the things he said, his life is made better. The Holy Spirit will begin to work on your life. So, if you call yourself a Christian, I'll take your word for it. But what assumptions about you can I make?

How many times have you gotten yourself into trouble by speaking up when you should have kept your mouth shut? If we’re talking about making life work, the mouth may be the biggest single problem we have to solve.

Nine times out of ten, when we have caused a problem by something we have said, we try to convince ourselves and others that we didn’t really mean it. But we are far more likely to solve the problem by looking in the mirror and saying, That was the real me and I don’t like it.

Solomon brings up the mouth and tongue again and again because it is so crucial to the way we live our lives and get along with people. Let’s look at some of the simple life principles on speech, wealth, and work that he shares in the Book of Proverbs.

What father does not take pride in the accomplishments of his son? And what mother does not glow with pride when her daughter is honored for her talents? And what parent does not burn with shame when their children are shamed?

I suppose we could say that Solomon was stating the obvious when he wrote that a wise son makes a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

For modern parents: is this just a platitude—or is it a warning? It tells us that your life is not going to work when your kids’ lives are coming apart. You cannot find your own happiness when you neglect the teaching and loving of your own children.

The Proverbs are essentially ideas that grow naturally out of the Law of God. Here we are dealing with one of the most misunderstood concepts in the Bible. If you’ll bear with me, I believe I can clear up a major muddle about the Law and the Bible.

There are certain laws that we call the Laws of Nature. We live with them every day. And while we might like to repeal them from time to time, we can’t live without them. They make life possible.

Right along this set of immutable natural laws is another set. When mankind came on the scene, these laws came right along with it—revealing the natures of both God and man. The former set of laws may make life possible, but this set of laws makes life work.

Of all the ways that a man can mess up his life, sex-related problems have to be some of the most likely. Even more so for a woman—in that the consequences for women seem more likely, dangerous, and permanent.

Many parents make the common mistake of warning their children of the dangers instead of impressing upon their minds the morality of the situation, and the facts of love—not just the facts of life.

I suppose that’s why Solomon gives so much attention to sex in the opening chapters of Proverbs. It is framed as a parent speaking to his child. Let’s examine this a little closer and see what we can learn—not just from the advice, but how it is given.

What do you call those little wooden figures with movable arms and legs that are controlled by strings from above (like Pinocchio)? It’s a puppet, right? Actually, no, that’s a marionette. I learned that from reading an article which featured a prominent psychiatrist referring to people who described themselves as marionettes of helplessness.

Sadly, too many people see themselves (or others) as marionettes—controlled by strings that direct their actions. They can’t help themselves. If they stole your property, it’s your fault for not locking it up. This is a very old idea, but in philosophy, it has a name.

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Determinism may also be defined as the thesis that there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future. Why is determinism attractive? Consider the day when Moses came down from Mount Sinai carrying the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments.

There are a lot of ways to mess up your life. It’s frightening how easy it is to make one small mistake that carries consequences that last a lifetime. There’s no way to avoid every mistake, and accidents will happen from time to time. But we can often be saved from those moments of reckless behavior by having a little wisdom.

The problem is that most people assume that knowledge is wisdom. Mere knowledge will not do the job. Some things are so tempting that just knowing better will not keep you out of it. Wisdom is more than knowledge. It includes a sense of right and wrong that helps you properly piece together knowledge to make the right decisions.

Let’s look at how King Solomon described this in Proverbs 5.

Life is all about challenges, and character is all about meeting those challenges. But the unfortunate thing is that most of us don’t really get a lot of instruction about how to meet them.

All too often, we instead indulge ourselves in attitudes and actions that have very unfortunate results. The problem is that we may not know it immediately. The results are delayed and are often cumulative. They build up on us over time and we don’t realize the damage we are doing.

The Book of Proverbs is absolutely filled with insights that couple a sense of right and wrong with practicality. Join me and we’ll take a look at a few examples that can help to make life work.

How long would you like to live? It depends, doesn’t it, on whether that long life is free of hurt and pain and confusion, and instead filled with joy. How would you like to have a little more peace in your life? What if I could tell you of a way you could have both of these?

Well, there is a way. It’s found in the Bible. It is a special revelation about the way life works—a special revelation of God to mankind about our nature, God’s nature, and how these two natures interact on a day-to-day basis. It is called the Law.

Somehow, that poses a big problem in people’s minds. They look at the Law and see a set of shackles to be loosed from instead of the basis of true wisdom and a guide to long life and peace. You’ll see just what I’m talking about in Proverbs 3:1.

I suppose we would all agree that it’s a good thing to be wise. When you face hard decisions, it’s good to be able to decide which way is best. It would be good to have a power to discern what is true and right in all kinds of circumstances.

But do you have any idea how men get to be wise? Maybe it’s in the genes. Maybe it’s just luck. But what if it is not that way? What if there is something that makes the difference—something that you can do about being wise in any generation? What do you suppose that would be?

One thing we can do is to learn from the experience of others—of those who have gone before us and faced the same struggles. And this is what Solomon had in mind in his introduction to the Book of Proverbs.

Years ago, I used to enjoy going up on internet forums and discussing religion there. They had any number of them divided up by category. I tended to hang out on the Christian forums. What was fascinating to me, and something I did not really understand, was the degree of hostility expressed on Christian forums. It seemed a good thing that these people were separated by the anonymity of the forum. If they had been in the same room, they might have come to blows. And I wondered, What generates so much hostility in some people of faith? Why is it that, when faced with a different belief, people don’t adopt one of two rational responses: indifference, or curiosity.

Indifference—when I encounter someone with an off-the-wall religious idea, I can tell quickly enough whether there is likely to be any merit there or not. If the answer is not, I toss it in the wastebasket or click my mouse and go somewhere else. If I am face-to-face with an adverse person, I have a stock reply. You may be right. I’ll give that some thought. And then I change the subject. Perhaps to the weather. Does that seem disingenuous? Not if you maintain an awareness that even you don’t have all the answers. And why get angry or hostile about it. That goes nowhere.

Curiosity—if I think there is merit, I want to know more, and so I pursue the matter. I may even pursue the matter when I disagree. If the person advancing the idea seems reasonable, well informed, intelligent, well then reason demands that I give him a hearing and try to understand him, even when I disagree with him. I discovered C.S. Lewis a little late in life, and I found that I sometimes disagreed with the man. This would not dismay Lewis in the least. But I never had any difficulty understanding why I disagreed because I tried to understand his point. When you think about it, what’s the point in only reading people you agree with?

Now, realizing that indifference and curiosity are reasonable responses, I wondered why some people found a third response—anger.

Okay, you have your life together and everything is working like it’s supposed to. So tell me—why do you feel so uneasy? Why do you feel like something bad is about to happen? What’s the matter with us that we can’t relax and feel good about life when it is working? Why do we have this nagging fear that everything is going too well and something bad is creeping up on us?

The truth is that we’re an unfinished work. We have been created with a hole inside—a hole that we never can seem to fill with wealth, food, or relationships. Why?

I want you to consider two men who exhibited incredible peace of mind. They seemed very much to have that hole inside of them filled up to the full. And I want you to think about what it was that made the difference. The two men are Paul and Silas.

When people talk about the laws of success, they often overlook the little laws—the not-so-obvious principals that have so very much with how your life works (or doesn’t work). They are the small principles that have to do with the spirit of a man rather than his bank account, and are far more important than many of the objectives we pursue.

If I could offer you a book with a distillation of these little laws, would you be interested? Now, don’t tune out; I’m not selling you anything. Chances are you already own this book. You just may not know where to look in it.

The Book of Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon, who had received a great gift of wisdom from God. It isn’t hard to read, and can be finished in one sitting. But I’ll warn you, it takes a lifetime to digest this book—to grasp and understand it. But it is worth every effort.

There’s one very special statement from Ecclesiastes 9 that deserves to be put up on a wall where you can read it every day. It reads:

Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, where you go.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 KJ2000

What Solomon is saying is that the only chance you have to get anything done is in the here and now. You only have a limited amount of time to get it done, and then it is over. How can we use this knowledge to make our lives work?

Are you satisfied with the way your life is working? Chances are you have a mixed answer to that question. Some things are working fine and some things you wish were better.

Satisfaction is a very elusive quality. We also make an assumption that causes a great deal of dissatisfaction. We assume that satisfaction comes to us from outside of ourselves. The wisest man who ever lived wrote this regarding satisfaction in Ecclesiastes 5:

Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 NIV

Do you take your faith for granted? Or is it like a lot of married couples: We have been together for so long, we can complete sentences for each other. We can take one another for granted. And at some level that is a good thing. I can take it for granted that my wife will be faithful to me. I can take it for granted that she won't bust the budget. I don't have to check her credit card purchases. I only look at them to make sure that nobody is defrauding us with them. After 51 years of marriage, there aren't a lot of surprises, nor should there be.

At the same time, love calls on us to be attentive to one another and this is where we too often fall down. Sometimes we just don't listen when our mates talk to us. Sometimes we just go on doing whatever we’re doing and we pay attention with half our mind. Now, that isn't anything to become upset about, but it is wise to do something about it. We sometimes have to tell our loved one, I need you, right now. Please give me your undivided attention. Now, I want to take a step forward from this and ask if we take our faith for granted in much the same way?

There’s a hazard built into life that you may not think about that often. When you do wrong, you usually get away with it. It surely seems that you do—especially when no one finds out. And when we do bad things and get away with them, we are emboldened.

Now, we’re looking for wisdom here and trying to make our lives work. So let’s check with the man who had the greatest gift of wisdom God ever gave to man. Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 8:

Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.

Ecclesiastes 8:11 KJ2000

What sort of decisions do you have coming up today? Do you know what you’re going to do about them?

Have you made any preparations (like asking a friend for advice or reading a book on the subject) so that when the time comes you can make a sensible decision? Do you have a framework within which you make your decisions—lifetime goals and moral and ethical standards?

When you answer the question, How is my life working? your answer is going to depend very much on the decisions you are making—today, tomorrow, next week—which can impact the rest of your life. It may depend even more on the decisions you have not been making. Because, among the things that make life work, the ability to make decisions and act on them ranks right near the top of the list.

Better is a poor and wise child, than an old and foolish king that will no longer be admonished.

This is one of the saddest things about life—that men of power become foolish. King Solomon learned this the hard way and, in Ecclesiastes 4, penned the quote above. He learned that at the very height of success, foolishness is apt to set in. They begin to think that they are above the law—that the laws that apply to you and I don't apply to them.

Another reason I think that men in power get in trouble is because they come to develop this sense of destiny—that since they are in power, that God or destiny is with them. Thus, their folly cannot cause them to fall.

With that in mind, let's look at another great principle that's important in making your life work: the ability to listen to—and accept graciously—criticism.

So, how is your life working today? Do you have all your ducks in a row? Is everything humming right along and you’re on schedule? Or do you sometimes feel as if the world is just falling apart? Even King Solomon had these troubles. In Ecclesiastes 4, this great, wise man said this:

So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Therefore I praised the dead who are already dead more than the living who are yet alive.

Ecclesiastes 4:1–2 KJ2000

Only a fool plunges on without listening to the words of those who have gone before. I want to know why he felt like he did. I want to know what he had stumbled over—where the pitfalls and booby traps and land mines are. Don’t you? Well, he tells us a lot in this rather unusual book of the Bible. And in the process of studying our way through it, a lot of very important things come to the surface.

It never ceases to amaze me how far man will go, what dangers he will face, in order to penetrate the unknown. To us, the Lewis and Clark expedition was just an early attempt to explore the northwest of our country. But when you really look at what those men did and the dangers they faced, you have to wonder what drives men to do this sort of thing.

They are only one example. The attempts by the Greeks and the Romans to discover the source of the Nile River, Christopher Columbus, and the settlers at Jamestown are just a few more. And if all that were not enough, we had to go the moon—and then go again—six times! And every time we went, the odds of coming back were not 100%.

What on earth drives men to go to such lengths to explore their world, and to take such appalling risks to do it? I don’t recall exactly the path of thought that led me back to the beginning of Man, but I ended up at Genesis 1:26…

There’s a terrible burden that lays upon man. The world around him can be working perfectly. Everything can be in the right place, there is no immediate tragedy stalking him, everything can be beautiful, and a man can still be absolutely miserable. This is the man who can stand on green grass in the middle of beautiful flowers and shrubbery and sweet air, and curse the rain.

There was a very wise man once, to whom God granted the wisdom to experience life and to understand life, and to be able to deal with it, and thankfully, this man wrote down the things that he learned about what make life work and what doesn’t make life work. Much of what he wrote is in the Book of Proverbs in your Bible, but less known and just as important is the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes is one whole context of the reflections of an intelligent, wise, experienced man. And if you want to understand how life works (or maybe more importantly how your life works) and what you can do to make life work for you instead of against you, like it seems to do so often, it is worth reading through.

Does your life work? I mean, do you really have it all together? Do you have everything lined out in a nice, neat schedule that works for you every day? Are you working at the job you want, with money saved up for college for your kids, with life clicking right along?

Or is your life like your garage? You can keep it all together for a little while, a couple of days, but pretty soon, entropy begins to set in. It is almost as though someone creeps into your garage at night, every night, and moves just a few things—not everything, just a few things—as the whole thing moves gradually into a state of chaos.

Now, life is a bit like that, but everyone knows it is not really the devil that creeps into your life every night and moves a few things around gradually, until finally everything is out of control, right? You can mess up your life very well on your own without any help from anybody. But when the time comes to clean up your spiritual garage—to tackle certain things in your life—where do we look for guidance? Is there an instruction book for this?

The core, the really core point about making your life work is figuring out what you want. I started to say it’s the hard part about it, but it isn’t so hard. It’s just something we don’t do. We never get around to thinking about it, and maybe taking a cup of coffee, sitting down and saying, What do I really want? What do I want to do tomorrow? Where do I want to be a year from now—or 20 years from now?

We just sort of go through life. We never sit down and think about it. Now for Solomon, it was not so very hard to decide. He faced a frightening challenge for a young man, but he did know what he wanted. So his objective was to meet the challenges of being a new, young king following in the footsteps of a truly great and a much-loved king.

But even Solomon, with the passage of time and the accumulation of power and wealth, got a little confused about what he wanted. Now fortunately for us, he wrote a book, and there is a lot that you and I can learn from that book about ourselves. It is the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Eternity is a very long time. They tell us the universe is 15 billion years old, give or take 3 or 4 billion years, but 15 billion years is not eternity. Eternity is longer than that because 15 billion years, or even 30 billion years, implies that there was a point where it all started, and the astronomers tell us there was a point where it all started. Eternity didn’t start. Eternity was before that.

You know, I can get my mind a little bit around the idea of time not ending—of there never going to be an end to things. God will last forever and ever and ever. But I have a hard time getting my mind around the fact that there was no start, no beginning, that He always has been.

What do you suppose it’s all about? Surely God didn’t just start all this and walk away, and leave it to run down. What are we, some sort of cosmic ant farm? As members of this earthly ant farm, we have vested interests in knowing what’s going on here. Because if we can discern the purpose of God, if we can discern that there is a purpose, then there is one who has purposed, and we have answered the question of his existence, and gone on to something a lot more important than that.

Not long ago, US News had a special, year-end issue with a section on 50 Ways to Improve Your Life. Actually there were a few really good ideas, but there were also some items that made me groan, We killed a tree for this? The Item that gets my award for being the most inane was (drum roll, please): Buy further inland—protection from predicted sea level changes due to global warming. That's going to make my life better? I live 300 miles inland. How high do I need to get?

The editors must have shared my feelings, because this was by far the shortest—one paragraph. A home in the mountains is beginning to look better all the time. Why? Because of Global warming, the US EPA estimates a 1-foot rise in sea level along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. When is this going to happen? By the year 2050. And there will be another foot in the next century. I'm sorry, but it is hard to think I need to move to the mountains before a 2-foot rise in sea levels after I am dead.

I was ready to save a tree, right there. But then there was a handful of good ideas that bear repeating. 1. Read more books, for example. Now there's a really good use for a tree. 2. Go tech-free one day a week. Turn off all the electronic gadgets, cell phones, computers, and the like. Prove you can live without them. The guy advocating this was Jewish, so he kept the Sabbath one day a week. That even used to be important to Christians, but it got in the way of golf.

Those are a few good ideas out of the 50, but there is one more, and perhaps the most important of all, that I'd like to speak a bit more about today: 8. Divorce-proof your marriage. How? First, let's take a closer look at the Why?…

It is fashionable these days to make fun of the Civil Defense initiatives of the Cold War. You have probably seen the old films about duck and cover that were shown in schools to teach the kids what to do in case of nuclear attack. You may occasionally see an old Civil Defense sign that indicates a fallout shelter. In the little town of Pocahontas, Arkansas, the local Savings & Loan basement was a fallout shelter. There was enough food and water stored to maintain a given number of people through the early days after a nuclear attack, until the worst of the fallout radiation had decayed. They even had a Geiger counter down there.

Looking back, it is easy to scoff at these preparations. But here is a hard truth: We had better stop making fun of duck and cover and reconsider teaching it to our kids. The reason we stopped is probably because it was giving the kids nightmares, and it wouldn't make much difference anyway in an all out war between the US and Russia. Nuclear winter would ensue and the dead might be the lucky ones.

But we have entered a new era and a new threat. Reliable sources tell us that China stealing our nuclear secrets is not the worst of it. China will become a commercial conduit for those secrets into the rest of the world, and the danger of nuclear terrorism, nuclear blackmail by a rogue state, becomes a very real worry. Our government is still unwilling it seems to provide a missile defense at any level, so duck and cover and fallout shelters may be all we have left. It won't make any difference at ground zero, but at the margins, it could save tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.

And one more thing for you to think about...

Referenced: Duck and Cover (1952) from the Library of Congress.

I have been fascinated for some years now by the efforts of many Christians to sort out who they are, politically. For the longest time, they were nobody. Then came Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority; and politics hasn’t recovered from that yet.

Now we have a Christian right and a Christian left in this country, and that is somehow disquieting. Nancy Pearcey, in her book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity, has made a very strong case that Christians should not allow themselves to be marginalized. And that disturbs some people who would rather keep Christianity separated into the private sphere of life and out of the public eye.

But now that Christians have awakened from their long sleep and considered that perhaps their faith ought to inform the way they vote, there are counter voices being raised. For one thing, most churches and ministries are recognized as non-profit organizations. Therefore, churches are not supposed to support this or that candidate, nor any ballot issue, for that matter. And that raises the interesting question: Well, is it okay to preach that abortion is wrong?

These are the rules we run into, and we have to play by them, but we also have every right to discuss principles—in church, in print, or on the air. It remains to be seen how long it will be allowed for churches to condemn immoral behavior. Nevertheless, where do Christians fit in the political spectrum? Are they more conservative than liberal? Are they more socialist than nationalist? Are Christians, politically, working toward a just society or a compassionate one; and what difference (if any) lies between the two?

Sometimes catchwords can be revealing, if we just understand what they mean. One I hear often is the word theocracy. We need to talk about this idea, because theocracy may well be the solution to the problems that plague us. But before we can understand this, we have to understand what a theocracy is not.

Through all of the history of Israel in the Old Testament—Saul, David, Solomon, and beyond—Israel was a monarchy, not a theocracy. They had a king, theoretically governing under God’s guidance. Theocracy is often confused with ecclesiocracy which means rule by a religious leader or body. But theocracy means rule by God. How can that be a bad thing?

The best way for me to explain the difference is to go the only known example of a true theocracy. And perhaps the best place to start is with the pivotal moment when theocracy was abandoned in favor of monarchy. The often-misunderstood description of the time between the conquest of the land and the monarchy that began with Saul is found in Judges, chapter 21.

And the children of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from there every man to his inheritance. In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Judges 21:24–25 KJ2000

How should Christians think about Jews? For that matter, how should Jews think about Christians? The relationship between Jews and Christians has been strained right from the very start. It was a mob of Jews who screamed at Pontius Pilate, Let him be crucified!, when Pilate was ready to let Jesus go. And the first persecutions on the fledgling church of Christians came from the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem. But when the Church came into power on its own, it repaid that persecution in spades. And down through the centuries, down through the generations, Christians have given their hand to the murder of Jews in far greater number than the Jews ever killed Christians. Christian nations and peoples have long justified a brand of anti-semitism that is hard to understand and impossible to justify. But in recent years, there have been signs of a change that calls for a fresh look at the differences between Christians and Jews.

What did the First Christians believe and practice about Christmas? I know in a way that is a loaded question, because the word Christmas is found nowhere in the New Testament, nor is any noticeable celebration of Christmas as we know it.Among many Jews, birthday observance is eschewed as originating in Egypt, and that could have influenced many among the First Christians, most of whom were Jews. Whatever the case, there is nothing in the New Testament that so much as hints at celebrating Jesus’ birth. It could be argued that this fact does not weigh against modern celebration, but that is not what interests me at this point.My question is what the First Christians believed and practiced relative to Jesus’ nativity. To get a better understanding of this, let’s first look at the beginning of the Gospel of Luke and the story of another birth—that of John the Baptist.

When I study the prophets, I am looking for God. I’m not looking for an outline of what’s going to happen tomorrow or the events of the next few years. What I want to know is: What does God have to say, what does it mean, and how might it affect my life? Because God doesn’t change, if God came down on an ancient people because they behaved a certain way, I figure if I behave the same way that same God is liable to come down on me.

God doesn’t often speak to man, and when he does it pays to listen very carefully. And just because events were long ago doesn’t mean you and I can afford to ignore them. Now, I can throw out all the old clichés about history repeating itself, but in truth it comes down to this one simple fact: human nature doesn’t change and neither does God. If God has responded to human actions in the past, he is likely to respond the same way in the future. Which is why he said this to Isaiah:

Produce your case, says the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come.

Isaiah 41:21–22 KJ2000

I have said so many times that if you don’t understand the history contained in the Bible, you can’t hope to understand the prophecy. One reason is that without a grasp of history, you don’t know what part of the prophecy has been fulfilled in the past and what part has not. And then there is this statement from the prophet Isaiah; it is a challenge to all prophets.

Produce your case, says the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come.Isaiah 41:21 22 KJ2000

In these last chapters of Jeremiah, there is not a lot to learn about the latter days. They are addressed in only the most general terms, if at all. We do learn some things, though, about God’s overall intent regarding these people–and, since history tends to repeat itself, there may be future prophecies buried in the pattern of the fulfilled prophecies of the time. We’ll find God’s pronouncements against the nations which had been players in the history of Israel, beginning in chapter 46.

When someone we know is touched by the death of a loved one, we can do what we can to help. But to be honest, there isn't a lot we can do besides pray, and then to be there for those who are bereaved. I know we sometimes feel a little helpless, and don't know what to say. Expressions of sympathy, of sorrow, of kindness, of love, are always in place and often comforting. Sometimes, a hug is all you can give; but that is a lot, really.

It occurred to me, at first, to think that the loss of a loved one is a net loss of love in our community, but on second thought, I don't think so. There is a reservoir of love in a community of believers, and it is not diminished by death. It can be diminished by hard words. It can be dimmed by harsh judgments. It can be diminished by neglect, by apathy, by carelessness—but not by death. Death, in fact, give us a chance to refresh the reservoir of love in church and family.

Jesus promised that he would build his church, and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. It occurred to me that our Lord intended the church to become a community of love. And that love is stronger than the gates of hell. This is as true of a family as it is of the church. I want to remind you of a familiar scripture, but I hope in the light of what I have said that it will go a little deeper into your heart. We'll find it Romans, chapter 8…

Early in World War II, there were those who believed they had seen unmistakable signs that we had entered the time of the end. They could point to specific items in prophecy and the movement of nations that made it appear so; and the argument that we were entering the very last crisis in the age of Man was very strong. But it was wrong.

In first-century Judea, when Jerusalem was actually encompassed about with armies, the Temple fell; and the church of that era would have been as convinced as anyone could ever be that they had entered the time of the end. But they were wrong. They couldn't know that. They could see many signs and warnings that they should heed, but there was no way to know whether they were at the time of the end. And, as we now know, they were not.

In fact, when you get it in perspective, we today have seen very little to tell us anything. We have seen one terrorist act (a big one, to be sure) but since then we have seen nothing but talk. From this talk, some have concluded we have entered the time of the end. We may have, but there is no way that we can know it.

I did hear one prophecy after September 11th. It was that many people would be saying that this is the time of end. That one has come to pass. But there has been no credible prophet on the scene, so I have no reason to believe that God did this, nor do I have any reason to believe that we have entered the time of the end except in the broadest sense; but the world has changed, and the Church needs to change, as well.

What kind of changes do we need to make, where should we be going, and what should we be doing? There is a lesson from Jesus' teachings that I think is very poorly understood among God's people—perhaps for the commonest of reasons: we though it applied to someone else and not to us. I'm going to try to rectify that error today, if you'll bear with me.

I don't know if the events of the last two weeks are a harbinger of the last days, or if they are a chastisement from God to give us a time to repent and turn our lives around. I don't know the answer to that; only time will tell. If God really meant for us to know, he'd have told us. I've learned something, though, over the years: that the reading of the Bible conveys a great advantage to men and women who attend to its words. It makes a difference in people's lives.

You do realize, don't you, that every one of the founders of this country were readers of the Bible? They were men who took the Bible seriously; and who, in the founding document of this country said, We hold these truths to be self-evident... (We think everyone knows this.) ...that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The knowledge, the awareness of the Creator was important to them; and it's upon the foundation of that statement that this nation, with all its freedoms and all that it means to us, was built. And these men, in their speeches, would often quote the Bible; and it was clear they knew the Bible—knew what it said, knew the context, knew what it meant; and that their lives and their directions were informed by the Bible. I know that they didn't always do what the Bible said; I know that they didn't always understand everything that the Bible said; but their conscience and their value system was informed by the Bible and the awareness that it is our Creator that guarantees our rights.

And one of the things that I feel encouraged by today as I stand before you is that we have a man sitting in the Oval Office who reads the Bible and takes it seriously. It means a lot to me to know that. And there was something about that speech that the president gave that made me think that he was familiar with a Bible story that has informed my actions at key points in the past in my ministry, and I think should inform our plans for the future of the church. The story begins with bad news...

I take great comfort in the goodness of God—in his kindness, his compassion. Being able to rely on God's mercy means more than we could possibly say. But there are moments when I read the Bible that I feel a kind of chill, because there are two sides to this question. I've mentioned it before to it to you, and I know you understand this: God is not only a God of mercy; he is also a God of justice. And while there is a good side to these things, there is also a more sober side; and today I want to share a couple of passages with you which need to give us pause and make us think from time to time, rather than just going merrily on our way and assuming that everything is going to be alright.

For many generations in England, it was the custom that when a person in the village died the church bell would be rung. These were not just a single bell at these churches, they often had a combination of bells and a team of ringers who took pride in their work. And they had peals for different occasions: for every church season that came along, for the movable feasts of the church, and for when someone died. It was from this custom that John Donne wrote a well-known meditation:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne - Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I came to understand this in a way I had never really understood it before.