Category Archives: Devotional Reflections

What Really Matters?

June 12, 2010

It’s really quite amazing when you suddenly realize that the books of 1st and 2nd Kings in the Old Testament seem to care very little about about the types of politics and events that fascinate people in our world today.  If there were any oil spills or mudslides or riveting debates between liberals and conservatives, we are not told about them.  This is noteworthy because of what the book actually does record in detail: the state of Yahweh-worship under each king.

Any who have read this part of the Bible are familiar with the oft-repeated phrase, “And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD.  He did not depart all his days from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin.”  This is the way every single king of the northern kingdom is introduced.  And what is the great sin that keeps being pointed out?  Jeroboam had made two golden calves and told his people to worship those instead of going down to Jerusalem and worshiping there as they had been commanded.  So all of these kings are judged on the basis of whether those idols were permitted to remain.

The southern Kingdom of Judah is likewise judged on the basis of her obedient worship of Yahweh.  In fact, one of the kings, Ahaz (2 Kings 16) reigned for sixteen years and all we are told about his reign is what he did to the temple.  His claim to infamy is that he made some changes to the look and layout of the temple complex.

The story of Ahaz is extremely relevant to today’s culture – and Christians in particular.  Remember, it seems that the only thing that matters in the judgment of a king in the Old Testament is how he treated the worship of the LORD.  So how did Ahaz treat this worship?  He went to Assyria and saw an altar there that he really liked, so he had someone copy down all the details and build an exact replica in Jerusalem for the LORD’s temple (2 Kings 16:10).  He also made changes to the bronze sea and the portable basins because of what he saw in Assyria (verse 18).  And in all this, it is important to realize that Ahaz does not mean to worship a different god; he just wants to worship Yahweh differently – in a way more in tune with his tastes.

So many Christians want to do exactly that these days.  We are seemingly less and less concerned with what God said we ought to be doing and more and more concerned with what feels right or good or comfortable to us to do.  Ahaz wasn’t given the freedom to change the worship furniture.  The fact that he is copying a pagan design is even more condemning.  And yet this is where the modern Western church is today also.  We are increasingly pulling more and more of our ideas about morality and our ideas about worship from the unbelievers and pagans.  We see it both in our churches and in our government.

There is only one solid place for true believers to stand: firmly and only on the revealed Word of God.  God has told us what is right and what is wrong.  God has told us how He expects to be worshiped.  He has revealed how the leadership of a church is to be structured and He has revealed how we ought to relate to and interact with one another in the body.  Yet there are still many who wear the title “Christian” or even “Pastor” or “Bible Scholar” who want to move the boundary stones in each of these areas.  They’ve been out there in the world and they like what they’ve seen.  They want to bring it back into the church and implement it there to suit their tastes.

We need to realize that our own desires, tastes, and preferences are often in league with the Enemy.  He has won them to his side.  The only sure test is the Scripture.  What does it say?  Do you not like it?  Which needs to change: your opinion or the Word of God?

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I Hate Easter

March 29, 2010

What do bunnies and eggs have to do with the resurrection of Jesus?  I have actually been asked this question a great number of times by Christians and non-Christians alike.  The only proper answer to the question is, “Nothing!”

Oh I know that there are lots of folks out there who will try to say that bunnies and eggs are symbols of new life and so they relate to the resurrection because that was also a promise of new life.  Well, at least the people who would say this are trying to find some connection between the way the world celebrates the holiday and the historic reality that Christians honor on the same day.

The truth of the matter is, though, that bunnies and eggs never had anything to do with Jesus’ resurrection.  They do, however, have everything to do with the name that the world has given to the holiday: Easter.  Here’s the appropriate article on the etymology of that word from Wikipedia:

The modern English term Easter is speculated to have developed from Old English word Eastre  or Eostre or Eoaster, which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede as named after the goddess  Eostre  of Anglo-Saxon paganism.  Bede notes that Eostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honor during Eostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced with the Christian custom of Easter.  Using comparative linguistic evidence from continental Germanic sources, the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of an equivalent form of Eostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as Ostara.

The implications of the goddess have resulted in theories about whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede, theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic folk custom (including hares and eggs), and as descendant of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn through the etymology of her name. Grimm’s reconstructed Ostara has had some influence in modern popular culture. Modern German has Ostern, but otherwise, Germanic languages have generally borrowed the form pascha, see below.

In other words, “Easter” is a transliteration of the name of the Germanic goddess Eostre into English.  She was a fertility goddess whose roots go all the way back to the Ashtoreth of the Old Testament (see 1 Kings 11:33, for example).  Bunnies and eggs are her symbols – symbols of fertility.

So what should we as Christians do about the fact that the name and symbols of a pagan deity have entered right in through the doors of our churches?  I was reading this morning in Joshua 23.  Verses 6-8 say the following:

Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, but you shall cling to the LORD your God just as you have done to this day.

“Do not make mention of the names of their gods.”  We need to throw out all vestiges of this pagan crap from our churches.  Stop calling our most sacred holiday “Easter”!  Stop putting pictures of bunnies and eggs all over the bulletin board!  And for God’s sake (literally), stop having Easter egg hunts!  This trash is dishonoring and just downright disobedient to our great and awesome God.  I don’t care if you think it’s cute.  I don’t care if you think it’s harmless.  If so, you’re wrong and you need to repent.

The modern English term Easter is speculated to have developed from Old English word ?astre or ?ostre or Eoaster, which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede as named after the goddess ?ostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism.[15] Bede notes that Eostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honor during ?ostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced with the Christian custom of Easter.[16] Using comparative linguistic evidence from continental Germanic sources, the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of an equivalent form of Eostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as Ostara.

The implications of the goddess have resulted in theories about whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede, theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic folk custom (including hares and eggs), and as descendant of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn through the etymology of her name. Grimm’s reconstructed Ostara has had some influence in modern popular culture. Modern German has Ostern, but otherwise, Germanic languages have generally borrowed the form pascha, see below.

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The Poor Thirty-Six

March 24, 2010

When we do something wrong, can others end up getting hurt because of our bad decisions?  You bet!  The number of fatalities each year caused by drunk drivers is testament to this.  But what about when we sin against God?  If you break His Law in such a way that it does not immediately spell injury to someone else (like murder), would God cause other people to suffer and die until you repented?  Be careful how quickly you answer that question.

In the book of Joshua there is the well-known story of Israel’s victory at Jericho, immediately followed by their defeat at Ai.  And most of us remember the reason for the defeat: a man named Achan had taken some of the forbidden spoils of Jericho that were to be totally devoted to destruction.  What we don’t usually immediately consider, however, are those thirty-six men who died in the initial attack on the city of Ai (Joshua 7:5).  It is made clear to us that these men died because of the unrepentant sin of Achan (verses 11-12).  The sticky part of all of this is that those thirty-six men had no idea about what Achan had done.  One man sins against the Lord and thirty-six others who are unrelated to the sin pay with their lives.  Is this fair?

Some might be quick to point out passages like Ezekiel 18:1-4

The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’?  As I live, declares the Lord GOD, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.

Isn’t what God is saying in Ezekiel 18 a direct contradiction to what He did in Joshua 7?  Not when we rightly understand the sentiment that God is countering by telling Ezekiel that Israel shall no longer repeat their proverb.  The Israelites of Ezekiel’s day were not taking responsibility for their own sin.  They were wailing and complaining that they were being punished for their fathers’ sins while they themselves were innocent.  That was not the case.  God does not pour out wrath on innocent people (except for when Christ became sin for us).  If a person dies, it is because he was a sinner.

The thirty-six men who died in Joshua chapter 7 were not innocent men.  They had not personally committed Achan’s sin, but they were guilty of sin all on their own.  God was not unjust in deferring His righteous judgment on them until the moment when it best suited His purposes.  In that case, it served as a clear indicator to the people of Israel that there was sin in the camp.

God is certainly within His rights to work things out in this way.  Since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), that means every single human being is on death row, so to speak.  And the Righteous Judge can enact the sentence whenever He wants.  The condemned may cry, “Unfair!”, but they would be wrong.

The scariest part of all of this to me, however, comes when I think about the church.  How many like Achan do we have secreting away their sins in our congregations?  Worse, how many in our churches are guilty of sins that we know ought to be disciplined by the church according to Matthew 18:15-20 and yet we do not because we are weak and cowardly, caring more about what men think of us than God?  How many of our churches experience stunted growth – a jarring halt to the conquest of the world with the Gospel – because of all of the forbidden spoil in our midst?

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Those Horrible Saturdays

March 22, 2010

For some reason I hate Saturdays.  It was not always so.  Saturday was the great free day; you could do whatever you wanted on that day.  It was a day to hang out with friends, explore a new mall, go see a movie, pretty much anything your heart desired.  Then I became a pastor, and while Saturday didn’t stop being a day to try to do the things listed above, there is now one huge difference: I have to preach the next morning.

What this means for our family is that all the fun stuff has to come to a crashing halt at about 8:00 PM so that my wife can plan her Sunday School lesson (she teaches the young children) and iron the family’s clothes and so that I can attempt to get “re-attuned” to God after a day of pursuing other things and then go over my sermon for the next morning.

When I say that I have to “re-attune” myself to God, what I mean is spending a significant amount of time in prayer seeking God’s face, reading a good portion of His Word in order to hear His voice, and then trying to relive all that I have studied throughout the week so that I can get to where I need to be spiritually in order to proclaim His Word the following morning.  In biblical terminology it would be called “consecrating yourself for worship” (Exodus 19:10, Joshua 3:5).  In the Old Testament, this action of consecration was seen as a necessary condition in order to see and experience the wonders of God’s presence.

Now if that is the case, I want you to think for a second about what the Enemy has done in America by working it so that there are two days off on the weekends for most people.  Those who hate God use Sunday as their day to play the hardest, tempting those who would otherwise like to be a part of worship in a church somewhere to join them.  But even apart from this temptation, and much more sinisterly subtle, by having another day off right before the day of worship, Christians are encouraged to do everything but consecrate themselves for worship the following day.  In fact, we usually desecrate ourselves with an overabundance of worldliness on Saturday that it is impossible for us to indulge in on any other day because of our work schedules.

Now, as I said earlier, I never had the opportunity to even notice this before I became the pastor of a church.  I always played right up until I went to bed on Saturday night, not really ever thinking about the need to consecrate myself for worship.  And I know that I am not alone.

How much more of God might we experience in our worship services on Sunday mornings if the majority of our people actually made their hearts ready for worship on the day before?  How much more of God’s glory might be evident in my sermons if I spent the entire day on Saturday consecrating myself for worship rather than just the last three hours of the evening?  What we all seem to be doing is wrapping the weeds of the world (Matthew 13:22) tightly about us on the very day that we ought to be digging them up.  And then we wonder why the church in America is so fruitless these days.

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Be Happy or Die!

March 19, 2010

One of my three daughters has to be forced to eat dessert.  It’s truly one of the most ridiculous things you’ll ever see.  I’ll sit there next to her with a warm chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven bending under its own weight in my hand, the chocolate stretching and oozing, begging her to take it and eat it, and she will start whining, “I don’t want to eat it!”  And what’s even more frustrating is that she loves chocolate chip cookies!  She has eaten them many times before, but there’s still this ludicrous fight every time.

Now, clearly I think that is a very foolish thing to do, but I must admit that I am guilty of something very similar – only my particular brand of stupid has more lasting and severe consequences than rejecting a cookie.  God says in Deuteronomy 28:47-48:

Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.

I have found this to be the case over and over in my life.  I know what true happiness is.  I have tasted it many times.  I am most happy when I wake up eager to study God’s Word in the morning, when I come before Him often in prayer throughout the day, when I delight to read what others have written about Him, and when I am being obedient to His commands.  It’s not just good.  It’s really good!  I love and delight in my job in these times.  I love and delight in my family.  I am just happy with pretty much everything.

At some point, though, I will entertain the lie that something else will make me happy.  This can be anything from video games, books, new hobbies, or whatever.  And the truth that masks the lie is that these things can be very enjoyable and can be a blessing from God when enjoyed in and through a relationship with Him.  That’s not how it usually works with me, however.

Finding some enjoyment in such things, I start to ravenously pursue more and more until, somewhere along the way, I have lost sight of the One who is the source of all true delight.  At that point, I invariably find myself serving my Enemy in hunger and thirst and nakedness, lacking everything.  I’ve let myself fall into sin, I dislike my job, I’m unhappy around my family, and it’s a chore to even get up in the mornings.  Down in this pit of despair, I look around and see all the things that I thought would end up making me happy.  They now form the walls of my prison.  And now, sadly, from this vantage point, returning to God looks hard and distasteful.

So I sit there whining while my Father holds out the delightful prospect of true happiness and contentment.  The whole episode has to look absolutely ridiculous to the heavenly court.  I’m sure any onlooking angelic beings think I’m a total moron.  I love cookies.  I even want the cookie that’s being offered.  I just don’t want to take it for some reason.

How long will we keep falling for the same old tricks and lies that lead us away from the only Person who can truly delight our souls?  And how long will we keep stubbornly believing that we have to stay in this pit once we’ve dug it for ourselves.  God, give us the strength and the wisdom to come back to You and to hold fast to your infinite delights.

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Beware the One-Handed Woman!

March 18, 2010

The miscellaneous laws of the Old Testament are just awesome.  If you’ve never taken the time to read through a book like Deuteronomy, then you need to.  It’s a real treat.  Not only is this where Jesus got all of the ammunition that He used against the Devil during His temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11), but there are also some rare gems among the various laws.

Now, I don’t mean in any way to make fun of the law that I’m about to discuss, but it’s one of those rules that makes me chuckle when I read it.  It makes me think of playground hi-jinks and people making funny faces.  I’m talking about Deuteronomy 25:11-12.

When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity.

I suppose you could say that I have an “immature” sense of humor for laughing when I read a law that mentions seizing someone by the “private parts”, but so be it.  This is a funny picture in my mind.

The Law makes it clear, however, that this is in no way a minor offense.  Other cultures and religions have various situations in which a person’s hand is to be cut off as punishment for an offense, but this is the only case in the Bible’s Law that calls for this particular penalty.  But what makes it such a serious crime?  Why take such drastic measures against an action that seems rude but not overly injurious (other than that sickening pain)?

Well, I suppose you could say that since the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” law can’t possibly apply here, something else had to be done, but I don’t think that’s it.  The true answer probably lies a couple of chapters back in Deuteronomy 23:1, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.”  In other words, the woman who reaches out to grab hold of her husband’s enemy’s “private parts” may end up permanently disqualifying him from participating in the worship assembly.

Sadly, there are a lot of men sitting through worship services in our churches today that probably wish that there was something to disqualify them from having to be there.  Men have become so effeminate in our culture that they abandon the spiritual headship of the home to their wives while they go out and do supposedly “manly” things.  In the Bible, however, faith and worship are extremely masculine pursuits.  One could make a joke concerning these laws that I’ve mentioned about what you have to have to be able to worship.

Worship of the Almighty Creator and King of the cosmos is at once our highest privilege and the most natural expression of our faith.  Worship is not our right.  God makes that clear by denying many people access to the assembly (Deuteronomy 23:1-8).  It is a gracious blessing to be able to draw near to God, even just to be able to sing with others about His greatness.  But this is exactly what the man who loves God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength greatly desires to do.  When something or someone is truly praiseworthy, we long to give the deserved praise.

Men who show little or no desire to be in worship ought not to kid themselves that they are genuine believers.  Disobeying the Word of God when it commands attendance at worship (Hebrews 10:25) is not a “cool” and “manly” thing to do.  It is a faithless and cowardly thing.  Real men worship God with all their hearts.  The rest may as well just go ahead and emasculate themselves (Galatians 5:12).

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Double Crushed

March 17, 2010

Disobedience to God’s Law carries two different penalties.  There is the human penalty applied for crimes with physical repercussions: theft, murder, adultery, etc.; but then there is also a divine penalty applied for sins of the heart: covetousness, faithlessness, dishonesty, and others.

Justice absolutely demands this duality.  A government charged with enforcing the law cannot make decisions about what goes on inside a person.  Human law enforcement must concern itself only with outward expressions of disobedience.  So, the person who secretly worships a god other than Yahweh should feel no wrath from the magistrate, but if the same person openly offers a sacrifice to a false god, then such a person is to be put to death (Deuteronomy 17:2-5).

So, one side of this coin is that human government is to punish outward disobedience to the Law, and the sentence may only be carried out on the basis of witnesses (Numbers 35:30), further cementing the fact that heart sins may not be punished by the human magistrate, since there are no witnesses.  The other side of the coin, however, is that God looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).  That is the purview of His justice, and we certainly ought not to think that the retribution He has in store for transgression of His Law in the inner man is inferior to that which the human magistrate can dish out.

The greatest of all commandments in the Law is actually a heart command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4, cf. Matthew 22:37).  A human court cannot measure this love within a person, and so has no jurisdiction, but God can and does, and He will pour out eternal punishment on those who disobey (Matthew 25:41-46).

This duality of punitive justice – civil and divine – is the reason why Jesus died on a cross and not some other way.  He was guilty of neither an outward disobedience to the Law nor an inner one, yet He suffered the consequence of both.  He was put to death by the magistrate – the highest form of human punishment for crime – and He was cursed by God.  The truth of the latter part of that statement is made clear to us from the Law itself:

And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.  (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)

The hanged man is cursed by God!  So by being crucified, Jesus bore the wrath of a criminal against man and a criminal against God when He was neither.  This is the essence of penal substitutionary atonement.  Christ did not suffer the wrath of both forms of justice for His own sins, because He had none, but instead He did so for those who trust in Him (Isaiah, 53:4-6, Romans 3:21-26, Galatians 3:13).

This is the great truth of the Gospel: the sacrifice of the sinless for the sinful.  Accept no substitutes.

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On Whose Authority?

March 15, 2010

Well, it’s no secret that most people don’t care very much for authority these days.  Even those who are actually in positions of authority don’t really like to exercise the privilege – nay, the responsibility – of using that authority toward its intended ends.  Just this past Saturday, my family made a trip to Toys ‘R Us where we witnessed a mother pleading at length with her four or five year old son for him to come down off of a display that he shouldn’t have been on in the first place and then follow her out of the store – as if the parent/child hierarchy was one based on persuasion instead of command and obedience.

Needless to say, I find such situations absurd and pathetic, but this seems to be the way our world is going.  Parents don’t even feel like they have right to sternly rebuke and correct their children, and this most likely as a result of the parents’ own distaste for authority.  There’s a tremendous problem here, with its roots all the way back in the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden when they broke the very first command that was given to them by their Father.

And as a pastor, I struggle with the various notions of authority that are in the minds of my hearers.  Some believe that their own opinions are the most important source of truth in their lives.  When I present my case from the very words of God in the Bible, they judge God’s declarations and instructions against their own “infallible” assumptions, and if the two don’t match, God’s Word gets rejected.  These know what they want to believe and are predisposed to reject anything that differs.  “Foolish” and “unteachable” are two words that come immediately to mind.  Others judge what they believe to be true by which preacher said it best.  If I say something that contradicts the teaching of a former beloved pastor, some are liable to cling to the previous teaching out of a sense of loyalty to the man even when the Bible passage in question is abundantly clear and my case for its truth is open-and-shut.  Few seem to have the mindset of “If that’s what the Scripture says, then that’s what I’m going to believe.”

And almost nowhere can we see these various notions of authority in such disagreement as we can when we examine the so-called “church rules” that have been prevalent for the last hundred or so years in American fundamentalist churches: “don’t drink”, “don’t smoke”, “don’t dance”, and “don’t gamble”.  Thankfully, some of the emphasis on these Pharisaical legalisms is passing away.  You don’t find too many folks anymore that vehemently decry the evils of playing cards or dice, but some of the broader categories still find a deep-seated conviction in many of our churches – especially among the elderly.

Now, believe it or not, I’m actually all for holding on to the old ways.  I, like some of the older people in our churches, am by nature very distrustful of anything new making its way into our church, and I always try to be on the lookout against sliding into the places that the Enemy would like us to be.  The fact of the matter is, however, that these “church rules” are the very “new things” that have come into the church.  We don’t find these rules in the Bible (and it is very old).  In fact, in the Bible we find people gambling (Judges 14:12-13), but never any commands against it; we find God’s people dancing (2 Samuel 6:16), but those who dislike it are cursed; we just don’t find any teaching about smoking whatsoever; and when it comes to drinking, we find God at one point even commanding His people to drink wine or strong drink in celebration to Him (Deuteronomy 14:24-26), even though there are also commands to not get drunk (Ephesians 5:18).

This is where the issue of authority comes into play.  How are you going to decide what is right or wrong for you to do?  Are you going to decide based on your own opinions, laying new rules that the Bible doesn’t give (like the Pharisees did) or ignoring the commands that the Bible does contain?  Are you going to decide based on what some favorite preacher said?  Or will you diligently search the Scriptures for yourself with a submissive and obedient heart, allowing God Himself to instruct you?  When we are judged, it will not be on the basis of our own opinions or any other man’s; it will be on the basis of God’s Law, so let’s aim to please Him instead of ourselves.

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Fanatics

March 12, 2010

Sometimes as a pastor I wonder what to expect out of the people that I preach to at our church.  Clearly, my job is all about studying the Word of God, spending time in prayer, and talking to other people about Jesus.  I do that full-time, but what level of spirituality ought I to expect out of the lives of those who work a secular job and who have not been called into the ministry in the same way that I have?

I used to struggle with this question a lot back when I was discipling a group of high school and college guys.  What I witnessed in teaching those young men was that as soon as any one of them “got it” – developed a love for the Word of God, started thinking Biblically in every area of life, found a delight in prayer, and got over the fear of telling others about the Gospel – then that one would start talking about how he felt that maybe God was calling him into ministry.  And it’s easy to see where that sentiment comes from.  That person who has discovered how awesome it is to love, obey, and walk with God looks around and doesn’t see too many other “Christians” on the same path.  “So,” they think, “maybe this is what it means to be called to be a preacher, because I guess only the preacher feels close to God like this…right?”

Most protestant denominations don’t believe in break between clergy and laity like the Roman Catholics do.  We understand that the New Testament dissolves the priest class, or more correctly just includes all believers in that class (Revelation 1:6).  But if ever there was a time when a clear break could be made between priests and “normal folks”, it would have to be in the Old Testament where only those of a certain family (the Levites – specifically the sons of Aaron) were allowed to draw near to God in spiritual service.  What is fascinating, then, is the level of spiritual depth and devotion that God requires of all of His people, regardless of tribe:

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good? – Deuteronomy 10:12-13

Even in the Old Covenant, when the call to ministry was based on family blood and those who were not to serve in the temple knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt, all were called to a level of devotion to God that is far beyond what most folks in our churches aspire to today.  And I love the way that Moses phrases this requirement – not as if it is a Himalayan mountain to be climbed, but as if it is the least that we can do: “what does the LORD your God require of you but to…”  He knew that these were not burdensome commandments for those who truly loved God.  Rather, all that he says constitutes the logical outworking of a true encounter with the Lord.

If you can’t at least begin to and aspire to conform to the requirements that Moses lists here: fear of God (the beginning of wisdom – Proverbs 9:10), love for Him (the first and greatest commandment – Matthew 22:37-38), serving Him with all your heart and soul (the reason He saves us in the first place – Ephesians 2:10), and keeping His commandments (the way we show that we love Jesus – John 14:15), then you better quit calling yourself a Christian.  The factory worker who truly loves Jesus better be serving the Lord his God with all his heart and soul even while he tends the assembly line.  The housewife better be delighting in her God and in His commandments even while she folds clothes.  All of us better be spending significant time in His Word and in prayer as if we really love this One that we claim has saved us.

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” – 1 Corinthians 10:31

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The Mark of the Feast

March 11, 2010

So many people today miss the real danger of the message of the mark of the beast in Revelation 13.  They get all caught up in wondering if it’s going to be a microchip or a bar-code tattoo that most don’t realize they’ve already been marked.

The beast’s mark, which goes on the forehead and the hand (Revelation 13:16), is not referring to some technological means of physically marking someone.  This imagery of marking clearly represents a spiritual reality because those who receive the mark are judged for it by God and receive His wrath (14:9-10).  In fact, the great horror of the mark of the beast is that it goes in the same place that God’s mark was supposed to go.

God commanded His people to bind His Law as a sign on their hand and as frontlets between their eyes (Deuteronomy 6:8).  The implication is that the Law of God would guide their thoughts (the mark on their forehead) and their actions (the mark on their hand).  And when this mark of God’s Law is forfeited in favor of the mark of the beast – the adoption of Satan’s rules and morality – then one has truly abandoned the proper worship of God, which is so wrapped up in obedience to His commands, and has decided to worship the Enemy.

The beast’s mark is offered everywhere today.  Instead of godly parents teaching the laws of God diligently to their children and talking about them when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise (Deuteronomy 6:7), many send their children to a state-run public school where the beast has his opportunity to influence them for hours a day.  The television pumps metric tons of marking ink straight toward our foreheads and our hands.  The internet is the Devil’s own tattoo parlor.  Even taking a leisurely stroll through a local mall is to be surrounded by legions of those who already bear the mark and who are looking for a fresh flesh canvas to cover with their way of thinking.

Our culture shows very clearly that its thoughts and its actions are not guided by God’s Law.  No, it bears the competing mark – the counterfeit one – and it wants us to wear it too.

But the beast’s mark promises only safety from persecution at the hands of others who bear it.  If you take it, you will “fit in”, but that’s as far as the benefits go.  Not so with God’s mark.  Ultimately, God’s promise of protection is far greater than the beast’s, because His wrath is more to be feared than man’s (Matthew 10:28), but His mark also carries other blessings.

God promises those who are obedient to His commands that He will love them, bless them, and multiply them (Deuteronomy 7:13).  He will bless the fruit of their womb and the fruit of their ground: their grain, their wine, and their oil.  He promises to bless their herds and their flocks.  He will not bring disease on them as punishment, as He did the Egyptians (verse 15).  They will be blessed above all peoples (verse 14).

The Psalms contain similarly glorious promises of blessing for those who obey.  The man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of scoffers will be greatly blessed (Psalm 1).  He who delights in God’s Law and meditates on it day and night will be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season (verse 3).  The Psalm even says that “in all he does, he prospers”.

Our God is a feast for those who love Him and who obey His commands.  “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” (Psalm 34:8)

I couldn’t stop thinking about this song this morning as I was meditating on all of this.

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