I got selected to be on jury duty Tuesday. I was really rooting for being dismissed. Perhaps I could have come up with some excuse to delay my service. But then it is our civic duty and someone has to serve on the jury.
Being in judgement over someone’s actions and life is a fearsome responsibility. Yet we are judging all the time. We like to think we don’t but we do.
Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. – Psalm 38:1
Being judged by the Lord is a blessing. The Lord judges us rightly and righteously. He is not all jacked up with emotional anger or hurt. His judgments are truth based. Based not on personal preferences but on his majesty and truth.
My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. – Psalm 38:4
Because the Lord sees us rightly and righteously, we wriggle and squirm. We don’t want to be under his wrath.
Psalm 38:21–22 (NIV): Lord, do not forsake me; do not be far from me, my God. Come quickly to help me, my Lord and my Savior.
Amazingly our judge is also our savior. Celebrate that God’s mercy is greater than our judgement.
Every epoch of history, every season of life has its challenges. When we finish one set, another new set emerges. In our challenges we can lament, whine and be discontented. We live in a time when lamentation seems especially plentiful. We focus on our discontent. We lament all the places in our lives where we feel vulnerable, weak, and under attack.
Focusing on the negative only feeds more lament. Our discontent deepens and depresses us. We feel defeated. This discontent dries out our lives. Dried out lives mean we are just a bag of dried bones.
The LORD looks down to see the valley of the dried bones. Though people may be walking around, so many are just dried up bones. We try to find life in ourselves, in our own efforts, in our own aspirations. We come to the end of our fried up bones. “Mortal, can these dry bones live?” On their own? Hoping in their own arid state? No. “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost.”(Ezek 37:11)
The LORD speaks to the dried bones. “O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.” (Ezek 37:4) The LORD promises to speak and act in our lives.
There is hope for the Dried Up. The LORD says to us, “I am going to open your graves.” I am going to bring you back to life when I put my Spirit with you. What an amazing promise! The LORD promises to breathe his Spirit into our dried up, slain lives. As Paul proclaims. “But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.” (Rom 8:10) Even though we are dead and dried up, the Spirit can come into you to give you life.
Where discontent dries out our lives, Hope in God is moisture and breath. We are blessed when our help, our hope is in the LORD our God (Ps 146:5) So we are to listen for the Word and the Spirit. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom 8:11)
Isaiah 30:21 (NIV): Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”
We all need guidance in our lives. Just like we need directions to drive to a new place we need directions to walk in the ways that lead us into salvation. We don’t naturally walk in the ways of righteousness. Rather we travel our lives in self preoccupied and self destructive ways. We can do no other outside the grace of God.
To teach us to live beyond the natural, to live beyond our temporal sinful nature the Lord gives us the Holy Spirit.
John 14:16–17 (NIV): And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.
The Spirit is the voice of God to encourages to walk in the way. The voice is heard and confirmed in scripture, prayer, worship, preaching, and the fellowship of the saints. We need this voice every day because we need directions to the place we’ve never been before- eternal life with God.
I can’t imagine being asked to give my son for sacrifice. What is our reaction to the story in Genesis 22 when the LORD calls on Abraham commanding him, “Take your only son, whom you love, and give him as a sacrifice.”
Often we ask, “How God can be so barbaric?” Sacrificing children to appease the gods and ensure prosperity was common then and remained common until modern history. Yet we often miss how children are sacrificed today for the prosperity and contentment of adults (human trafficking, abortion, parental neglect, and sexual abuse). We can miss the barbarism of our own age.
Abraham takes two servants and a donkey laden with wood for the execution. As they arrive to the sacrificial spot the wood is laid on the shoulder of the son Isaac as Abraham carries the fire and the knife. The Son asks the painful question, “Where is the lamb for the offering?”
The old man Abraham binds his strong young son? Isaac lets himself be offered. Can we imagine the heart ache of that moment? How can Abraham even look at his one and only son whom he loves?
The LORD intercedes. “Stop Abraham!” “I know you revere and trust me to even give your son for me.” The LORD makes clear repeatedly that he forbids human sacrifice to appease him or curry favor.
The LORD provides a lamb. For all the sin and hurt and utter darkness of this world the Heavenly Father gives Jesus Christ, his one and only Son whom he loves. The Son carries the wood of his execution to the site of his sacrifice, Golgotha. The Father gives the Lamb of God to cover and wash away the sin of the world. He does not withhold his own son (Rom 8:32)
As you contemplate these days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and the Sunday of the Resurrection we rejoice that the LORD who gives himself for you!
Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord / the Rock of our salvation. For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. – Psalm 95:1 & 3
“I will place shepherds over them who will tend them, and they will no longer be afraid or terrified, nor will any be missing,” declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:4)
The LORD calls me to shepherd his flock. To bestow care on his sheep (jer 23:2). I am called to gather them rather than scatter. I know each of my sheep by name. I pray for them. I know when I see them and when I don’t. I worry about them when they scatter from the flock for weeks, months, or even years. The scattered ones seem to scatter even more when I seek to bring them back into the fold. I am charged with protecting them from what would destroy (Jer 23:1) Destroyed by what? Sin death and the devil. Destroyed by being lost in this transitory life.
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Rom 8:36, Ps 44:22).
I am called to lead them so they are no longer afraid ot terrified. Where instead of guilt, shame or unworthiness, they are filled up with the joy of belonging to Christ.
Jesus said to Peter, “feed my sheep.” I desire to feed my sheep giving them the Word of God. TO feed them the Lord’s Supper. (Jn 6:54-56) But many sheep are too busy for the Bread of Life. So many sheep do not like the taste, don’t recognize its nutrional value and would rather consume junk food.
I am explicitly aware of how inadequte I am for this calling. How I fall short. How much I mself need the Great Shepherd. Still I am not relieved of being their shepherd. In spite of my short comings, I still seek to gather and feed my sheep. I do rejoice in the 99 gathered together (Lk 15:1-7). But I guess I am like Jesus thinking about the one that has wandered away.
“Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every human being.” —Thomas Wolfe.
Loneliness touches every human existence. We dread it. We fear being alone; being unwanted. The TV or radio is on to dispel the loneliness. We have pets to give us company.
While our need to connect is innate, some of us are always home alone. A the same time, we can be surrounded by others throughout the day, or even be in a lifelong relationships, still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness.
Although we try to connect with others, we are alone in our heads, alone in our emotions, alone in our health, alone in our sin and alone even in our death.
I can’t imagine living in this lonely world without Christ. To be like Tom Hanks in Castaway just having Mr Wilson for companionship and volleyball.
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” – Mother Teresa
Our loneliness can have many causes, but our fear of being hurt, of losing people, of being rejected or betrayed often keep us from making connections. Jesus experiences all of that on his path to the cross. He willingly experienced all that to redeem us from the loneliness of broken humanity into the promise of eternal life with God and His people.
Jesus experiences all of this loneliness to bring us closer to God. Christ experiences the absolute loneliness of being cut off from God to redeem our loneliness. The sin of the world is cast upon him so he experiences the absolute hell of being cut off from God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(Matt 27:46)
My soul waits for God, from him comes my salvation. (Psalm 62:1)
When we see Jesus lifted up on the cross, when we see Christ experience this profound loneliness, then we know Jesus is the Christ. Then we know that he is giving us the wisdom and power of God. When we see Christ Jesus resurrected and restored to relationship with God the Father we know the Father is always with him – and with us. (John 8:28-29)
The LORD created you for relationship and for community. God created you for himself. But as we are all too much aware, our sin and brokenness hampers our relationships with God and others.
Which is why Christ comes for you to take you from eternal loneliness into eternal community. This is why Good created the Church to build a community beyond our self-interests, hurts, and disconnection.
Every time we gather as a Church we have the opportunity to build each other up, to sow into the sense of belonging and being wanted. As we celebrate the LORD who comes for each human being, we celebrate caring for each other. We vanquish loneliness with the presence of Christ.
Don’t be lonely. Come belong to Christ and your brothers and sisters in Christ.
May the grace of the LORD God be with us all, now and always. (1 Tim 6:21)
Recently we were shopping in a town center in DFW when we passed a store front selling Tesla automobiles. While Debra is interested in Teslas, I am not. First, the dashboard has no gauges. No needle to watch the RPMs rev up! Everything is computerized. Under the hood is a “frunk” with a storage space because the engine is under the car. With no combustion engine the car does not go vroom-vroom. Though it looks and acts like a car, it still very different.
And I realize how beholden I am to certain automobile concepts and thinking. Tesla and electric cars are disrupting what we are accustomed to.
Jesus Christ was the ultimate disruption in human history who conquered sin, death and evil. Even for us as Christians, Jesus disrupts to what we are accustomed.
Jesus says we can’t put new wine in into old wineskins. The new wine will burst the old wineskin and the new wine will be spilled and destroyed (Mark 2:22). Are we ready for new wine? Are we ready for to live in a new way?
At the wedding in Cana Jesus produced from ordinary water not only wine, but the best wine (John 2:10). Do you still suck down the vinegar wine of this life? Or, are you ready for the best wine of the life of Christ? Sometimes we would rather keep clinging to the old patterns of life, clinging to what we are accustomed.
Since we are saved through grace to new life, eternal life, in Jesus Christ, should we continue to sin and keep running the old life (Rom 6:1)? Christ has disrupted your life when you were baptized. Your old wineskin, your old life was made obsolete. As your old way of living was disrupted and put to death in your baptism, why for your own sake would you want stay stuck in the obsolete pattern? Why keep sucking down the old vinegar wine? Why keep driving a relic?
Do you believe God can transform your ordinary life into the New Life in Christ? Will you let God disrupt your customary life?
By the amazing glorious power of the LORD Almighty you are raised to newness of life in Christ. In baptism your life is disrupted into a freedom from old assumptions. Will you rest your life on God’s power (1 Cor 2:5)? How can you let the Spirit disrupt you into New Life?
Out of his glorious riches, may the Father strengthen you with power in your inner being through the Spirit so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.(Eph 3:16-17)
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6–7
You are under constant spiritual assault whether you realize it or not.
The enemy is constantly prowling looking for opportunities to steal your joy. Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. ” (John 10:10)
The Lord gives you a strategy for softening or deflecting the blows when the wicked one seeks to sow fear and doubt into your heart and mind. Through all of scripture, the Lord calls you to rejoice repeatedly to cling to his blessings, to remember all the blessings and benefits the LORD has poured into your life. This attitude of gratitude has the power to keep you knowing in your heart and mind that the LORD is faithful and true. Knowing this will soften and even defeat the fear and doubt which threatens to steal your joy.
Rather than be strangled by anxiety and doubt, in every situation rush to give thanks to God as you ask the Lord for help again. When you pray with thanksgiving THEN the peace which comes from beyond will guard and protect your heart and mind by keeping you abiding in Christ Jesus. How can you not be joyous if you dwell in Christ?
So look for all the incredible blessings in your life, large and small. Give thanks for whatever is right, noble, lovely, admirable or true. Think about whatever is cool and praiseworthy. Focusing on these will help you keep your joy.
Do you keep track of all the blessings as much as you track the problems? What blessings, simple or big, have you received just today?
“The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them.” (Revelation 13:5–7)
Blasphemy – to insult or show contempt God.
The beast in Revelation has great influence and power, using that power to blaspheme the LORD. The beast slanders the LORD telling us that God does not exist, that God does not love us, and that God does not forgive us. The beast also utters all kinds of blasphemes which are lies that this life is the only one that matter, that we are only material beings, and that we are to live for our selves. The proud and arrogant beast opens its mouth to deceive and hurt and cripple and destroy God’s holy people.
What are the blasphemous words we speak in our lives? I recognize that I have often followed the beast in my life. That I have doubted God and his good will for my life.
But even worse, out of my pride and arrogance I have utter blasphemes which have injured and wounded other people. What words have I given voice that robbed one of God’s holy people of their beauty, dignity, sacredness or forgiveness? Out of my pride and arrogance I speak words which defy God and which attack people, even the very people I love.
For that I am repentant. But how does that bring healing? My repentance may not bring healing.
Whose word undoes the blasphemous words?
Jesus was found guilty and executed for blasphemy (Matthew 26:65). Yet in his cross and resurrection Christ Jesus demonstrates that his word alone is powerful and true. Eventually that beast is thrown down into the fiery abyss (Rev 19:20). Christ will judge the arrogance and pride of this world, of my own life, and cast it into the abyss.
Then comes the promise of being healed and restored and made new. Amen.
Even when the Lord is talking to us sternly he can’t help himself from speaking grace.
What do I mean?
Jonah was a sign to a wicked and sin-filled community of Ninevah. The reluctant prophet walked three days spreading a message of doom and repentance. A sign they heeded. Why would they respond to a message telling them they were lost in sin and would be destroyed by that sin unless they turned? They did paid attention to the message to turn from their sins. They got busying reflecting on what kind of lives they lived – and all they had was a message calling them to repentance.
Jesus says he himself is a Jonah sign to this generation. Jesus is also calling us to repentance. Jesus is also talking with us sternly to consider our lives to see we are dead where we stand in our sins.
But he says there is now something greater here. He says the people of Ninevah will mock us if we can’t see there is something greater than Jonah preaching here.
The other sign of Jonah is that he was in the whale for three days. Now Jesus the Christ is the Jonah sign that will die and be buried and on the third day be raised. Jesus is the Jonah sign that He is the resurrection, Where Jonah preached repentance so we turn from sin, Jesus preaches the Resurrection where we will go from death to life.
Even when our Lord is talking to us sternly he can’t help himself from slipping in His eternal promises.
I got selected to be on jury duty Tuesday. I was really rooting for being dismissed. Perhaps I could have come up with some excuse to delay my service. But then it is our civic duty and someone has to serve on the jury.
I can’t imagine being asked to give my son for sacrifice. What is our reaction to the story in Genesis 22 when the LORD calls on Abraham commanding him, “Take your only son, whom you love, and give him as a sacrifice.”
The Daily Plunge 