Religion

Treasure Hunt

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Mark 4:34 But without a parable He did not speak to them. And when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.

If you’ve ever read through the gospels, you’ve probably noticed that some of the sayings of Jesus are difficult to understand. You’re not alone in this. Even His disciples had difficulty deciphering some of these things. Have you ever wondered why He didn’t speak more plainly sometimes? There is an answer to that.

The Bible is not like any other book. It’s author wants to sit with you to explain and apply it as you read. If you treat the Bible as any other book in the way you read it, you will pass right over many of its treasures. Often in the past I have found myself passing over some obscure passage that I didn’t understand. But I have come to realize that the Holy Spirit wants to reveal these things to us (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). Sometimes understanding comes through study, sometimes it comes through pondering and meditating on the passage. But our verse is clear – Jesus will explain things to us if we will stop and listen. How many treasures in the Word of God have we passed right over because we were determined to finish our daily Bible reading!!

Bible reading is not merely about reading a book. It’s about communion with God. He wants to meet with us as we read His Word, revealing its truths, making it life-giving to us by the Holy Spirit and bringing radical change into our life through it. If everything was immediately clear to our human understanding we would breeze right on through our reading, satisfied that we have gained some bit of knowledge, without leaving any room for the Holy Spirit to speak to us.

So the next time your Bible reading leaves you with questions don’t be so quick to move on the the next verse. There may be a treasure just beneath the surface that He is waiting to reveal to you…if you will just stop, ask, and listen.

From riches to rags

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Ezekiel 16:8-15 “When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord GOD. “Then I washed you in water; yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood, and I anointed you with oil. I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin; I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments, put bracelets on your wrists, and a chain on your neck. And I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful, and succeeded to royalty. Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you,” says the Lord GOD. “But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it.”

This passage was written to Israel as their idolatry had finally brought judgment upon them and they were carried off to Babylonian captivity. The Lord reminded them that HE was the one who made a mighty nation out of one man and bestowed it with glory and beauty. Israel was as helpless as a newborn baby, abandoned and left for dead, but the Lord loved them and gave them such prominence among the nations of the world. Wouldn’t you think they would be grateful to God? Faithful to God? They weren’t. Their history is littered with their backslidings as they forgot God and chased after the gods of the nations around them.

I wish I could say that we are different. Sadly, we are not. The financial prosperity that God has blessed us with, we squander on our own desires. The gifts He has given us for the purpose of serving Him and building His kingdom we have used to serve ourselves and expand our own influence and importance. We too, forget.

Think for a moment about the relationship between a father and child. That father provides all that the child needs. Food and clothing certainly, but what father would be content to clothe his child in rags. He wants to give her beautiful princess dresses so she feels pretty. Imagine he sends her off to school in her pretty sparkly clothes and she comes home in tattered shorts and a stained T-shirt. He would be shocked by her appearance and ask what happened to her beautiful clothes. She traded her beautiful dress to a friend because she liked the shorts and T-shirt better. Imagine the father’s sorrow. He wanted to make her beautiful but she traded it for filth.

Beloved, God has made us beautiful in Christ. Don’t trade that beauty for the pollutions that inevitably follow our ventures into idolatry with this world.

It just isn’t worth it.

Broken hearted love

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Ezekiel 6:9 Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations where they are carried captive, because I was crushed by their adulterous heart which has departed from Me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols; they will loathe themselves for the evils which they committed in all their abominations.

I don’t know why I was so surprised to find the love of God in this passage on judgment, but it shocked me. I would have expected to read of God’s indignation over their unfaithfulness. Or His anger. But His love?

This passage reminded me of the book of Hosea, where the Lord illustrated His relationship with Israel through Hosea’s relationship with his wife Gomer. God didn’t just tell Hosea to marry her, but to love her (Hosea 3:1). And just to clarify the verse from Ezekiel, many translations use the word “whorish” instead of “adulterous” to describe the heart of the people. I think the difference is significant. Adultery implies an act committed because of affection or passion. But whorish actions are done strictly for profit. This describes those who claim to be followers of God, but live in ways that are contrary to Him because it’s better for them.

All of us have experienced pain in life, and isn’t it true that those who have hurt us most deeply are those that we have loved? Our God isn’t just offended or angry with our backsliding, unfaithfulness and indifference. He is hurt by us. Broken. Crushed. Because He loves us.

I could bury my face in my hands and cry, knowing the far too frequent unfaithfulness of my own heart.

Oh God, help me to love You always with a faithful heart!

The satisfied man

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Psalms 65:4 Blessed is the man You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, of Your holy temple.

Many of us can look back on our lives as believers and remember the early days of our salvation when we lived in the joy of being forgiven. But far too many of us have let the blood of Jesus mean nothing more than the forgiveness of sins. I thank God that my sins are forgiven, for they have been many. But I believe there is far more that is offered to us then we have even begun to walk in.

The man who has his sins forgiven is indeed a blessed man. But the blessing of the Lord has only begun with the forgiveness of sin, for now we have been reconciled to God and brought into a relationship of intimacy with Him. So the blessed man is the man who not only is forgiven but who, through that forgiveness can approach God. I don’t mean that we approach Him like we would an earthly monarch who has so many subjects making demands on his time that he must rush through each encounter. But our verse tells us that He causes us to approach so that we can dwell…remain…abide. The only reason we don’t dwell in His presence is because we won’t. He has already made His mind about it very clear. He wants us to draw near.

But we busy ourselves trying to find fulfillment in jobs, relationships and leisure while true satisfaction will only be found in His Presence. The blessed man, the one who draws near and dwells in His presence, this will be the satisfied man.

Serving God with the spirit

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Romans 1:9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.

Often we serve God with the soul, which is subject to emotional issues, ups and downs. Someone serving with the soul is on fire or lethargic in their service to God in proportion to how happy they are, how encouraged they feel, the nature of circumstances in their life. Those who serve with the spirit take no account of these things but they serve God because He is God in all these things.

We can serve in the flesh by our dedication to a task or a ministry. We are doing a thing and enduring in it by the sheer force of our will power. God may never have called us to that task, or He may have been ready to move us to something else, but we continue on faithfully anyway, in the power of a disciplined flesh. Serving God in the flesh is much like any carnal thing we do. We make our plans, schedule our events, recruit our helpers and go about our work. Everything is structured and organized. So organized that there is no room for the Holy Spirit to move, and if He did move it would “mess everything up”.

But we can serve God in the spirit, leaving all of our own plans and agendas and allowing ourselves to be moved by the Spirit of God, even if waiting to know His agenda means sitting and doing nothing for a time. What matters is what HE wants, and personal preferences must take a back seat. Or be thrown out the window entirely. To serve God with the spirit requires a place of surrender that many are unwilling to accept.

Lord, help us yield to you!

Discrimination conquered by Christ

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Acts 8:5 Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria and preached Christ to them.

After the northern kingdom of Israel was carried off into captivity to Assyria in approximately 722 BC, people of other captive nations were brought in to occupy the land along with the impoverished Jews who were left behind.  They mingled and married and became a mixed breed of people known as Samaritans. A Jewish priest was brought back to teach them to worship the God of the Jews. (2 Kings 17) But they accepted only the Pentateuch as scripture and the Jews considered them inferior.  The hostility was such that strict Pharisees would not go through Samaria, but would cross the Jordan to avoid walking through that land.

When the Jews wanted to insult Jesus, they called Him a Samaritan (John 8:48)

In John 4, Jesus took His disciples into Samaria where He transformed the life of the woman at the well, and consequently the entire city. But we read no more about the Samaritans during the earthly ministry of Jesus.

On the day of Pentecost when the church was born and for some time afterwards the gospel was preached to the Jews. But with persecution came the scattering of the church. Most of the disciples had to find another place to go. Philip chose Samaria.

He wasn’t forced to go there. He went of his own accord and preached Christ to them. These despised and rejected people embraced the message of the One who was despised and rejected for them.

Since that time the message of the gospel has been preached all over the earth as the Spirit of God has stirred the hearts of men and women to leave everything to bring this gospel to people of different races, languages and customs.

Discrimination and racism were defeated on the cross. If you are a follower of Jesus and those things still live in you, draw a little closer to Jesus and hear His heart yearning for every nation, tribe, people and tongue. Let Him teach you to yearn and to love likewise.

You…not your money

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James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

I had always thought of this verse as referring to the physical need the widow and orphan would be in because of not having a husband/father in the household. But the verse doesn’t tell us to give them money or even any type of physical thing. It says to visit them.  Not just throw our money at them (like we can be so accustomed to doing because it’s easy) but giving some of our life to them.

Visit (Strongs #1980) means to look upon or after, to inspect, examine with the eyes in order to see how he is, i.e. to visit, go to see one; to look upon in order to help or to benefit

This verse doesn’t exclude helping in physical ways, but it involves so much more. Go see them, care for them, be with them.  Give them the most valuable thing you possess – your time.

Oh brethren, I fear that we have become content with demonstrations of love that are far below that which Christ intended.

Spirit driven life

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Acts 27:40 And they let go the anchors and left them in the sea, meanwhile loosing the rudder ropes; and they hoisted the mainsail to the wind and made for shore.

Paul and all the people were on a ship that had been in a terrible storm for some time but land was finally in sight. Nothing mattered except getting to shore. The anchors (those heavy weights that kept them from moving) weren’t retrieved and brought into the boat for later. They were cast off and left behind. They didn’t put oars in the water to try and control the pace of the boat, they raised the sails and let the wind take control.

It made me think about times when my life has been in a storm, tossed around…up, then down. Feeling out of control, I have been tempted to grab the oars, start rowing and controlling things. But should I? Is it not better to just take my hands off everything and let it all be in His control…..raising the sails of my life that I might be driven by the Spirit of God where He wants me to go?

Yes. Yes it is!

Absent God

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Jeremiah 2:6 Neither did they say, ‘Where is the LORD, Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, Who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and the shadow of death, through a land that no one crossed and where no one dwelt?’

Jeremiah 2:8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ and those who handle the law did not know Me; the rulers also transgressed against Me; the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.

Israel had seen the works of God like no other people in history. He was intimately involved with them. From their exodus from Egypt, to their possession of the promised land and establishment of a kingdom and king, God was in their midst, making Himself known. The stories of God’s mighty works for His people were passed down from generation to generation. But at some point the stories were no longer a reminder of their inheritance as the people of God but were merely tales of the adventures of people from many years past. Perhaps God became to them like a character from a story book. Distant. Fictional. And here at hand were these idols, so seeable and touchable and convenient. Why spend all that time and effort seeking after a God they couldn’t see when there were already so many to choose from right in front of them? They had never personally known God’s presence so His absence really was of no consequence to them.

As God rebuked the people for their idolatry and reminded them of His works, He didn’t say “these are the things I did for your fathers”. He said “I did these things for you”. The things He did for the generation of Moses and the generation of Joshua, He did with the current generation in mind. He wasn’t just the deliverer of one generation that was in Egypt. He was the deliverer of every generation. Everything He was to those in years past, He longed to be for those in the present.

When Jesus stood up in the synagogue He read from the scrolls that the people heard every Sabbath. They were historical. Familiar. But He wanted them to know that they were a present reality:

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 proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Luke 4:18-19

Sadly, many preferred the familiarity and comfort of the empty religion at hand rather than the cost of knowing a present God.

We too live in a day when our New Testament history has been relegated to the status of story. The power of God and the presence of God are mostly extinct among the people of God. And we have not recognized its absence because we have never truly known its presence. Rather than asking “where is the Lord?”, we too have found it more convenient to embrace methods of worship that are at hand and convenient – our religious activities, our spiritual disciplines, and our moral uprightness, and to live without the His power and presence in our midst.

The God of miracles from the book of Acts has not changed nor lost His desire to move in miraculous power through His people and appear in supernatural presence among His people. He is just wanting for us to realize what we’ve neglected for so long and to care that we’ve lost it.

God help us.