Dream of the Word Alive in us

For a moment, dream with me.

Let's approach the Bible in a couple of alternate ways.

What do I mean?

Sure, we can study it and dissect it. We can discover the archaeology, historicity and validity. All those things are helpful. We can even be carried away by the poetry (despite what Monty Python thinks).

However, one word continues to shake me: (to paraphrase) "I will fulfill every jot and tittle."

Should we be looking at the Bible with a little more delicacy? Should we be searching to find the beauties of our Lord?

What we find dusty and dry should be coming alive in our hands.

If it's losing relevance, it is not the Bible that has become dull---but the people who read it.

O Lord, let your Word come alive in us. Amen.

The Gospel in Genesis

Genesis 5

(the meanings of the names in the Genesis 5 genealogy)

Adam = Man

Seth = Is appointed

Enosh = Mortal

Kenan = Sorrow

Mahalalel = The blessed God

Jared = Shall come down

Enoch = Teaching

Methuselah = His death shall bring

Lamech = The lamenting

Noah = Rest

As a sentence:

Man is appointed mortal sorrow; the blessed God shall come down teaching that His death shall bring the lamenting rest.

Solomon Misses

Leviticus

Jesus is the law. The law was meant to make us clean and keep us clean. Jesus is the only one who can make us clean and keep us clean. The law was meant to point to the perfect sacrifice. Jesus is the only Sacrifice. The law was meant to take away sin and keep us from sin. Jesus is the only one who can do that.

How do you have a law of life, liberty and love? Only through a vital relationship with the Lord Jesus.

The law has been flipped. It is no longer a religious thing where we work to get to God, it is now a holy thing where we enter into God's presence, which the Lord has provided on the cross. The Lord Jesus fulfilled the law and now He is the Way to enter into God. It's not a keeping of rules. It's talking to, knowing, following and listening to Him.

Suspicion

I have a sneaking suspicion about the Lord. We assume He is moving through life like us, a bit arbitrarily, checking to see what's in the fridge, checking the air in the tires, checking the direction of the wind.

I'm not sure he checked anything, except to see if we (or a fig tree) were bearing fruit.

Why the suspicion? Because I see him in a wheat field on Sabbath on purpose. To Him, the wheat field is the Table of show-bread. What seems capricious to others---picking the heads of wheat, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them---to the Lord is actually the work of the priests in the temple. "The earth is the Lord's..."

Not only that, the Lord of the Sabbath needed to do it on Sabbath to show us that He is our Sabbath rest.

I think we do ourselves a huge favor if we realize the Lord did things on purpose with meanings running deep---to the spiritual roots of who we are and to the satisfaction of Heaven.

The implication: you are not a mistake and your life has purpose---in Him.

Embrace the Throne of God

For those who embrace the Good News, that Christ has redeemed sinners, it doesn’t matter what race, color, job, social status, I.Q., etc. they possess, joy awaits them.  If you are among those who confess Jesus as Lord, you have a magnificent position and future in Christ.  Just how far and wide and deep does this position go?  Beyond all imagining.  The Bible allows us a glimpse of our position in Christ in its last book, the Revelation.  This essay attempts to make a little sense of a fragment of this marvelous vision that has to do with our position in Christ.  Knowing who we are in Christ (more than conquerors) is the greatest news of eternity.

            God is in the heart business.  As cliché as it sounds, this has been His business for thousands of years.  In fact, if one were to examine the motivation of God, the closest we could come to an understanding would be a love of the human heart—despite all its war, terror and sin.  There is a way to understanding this dynamic and toward touching the heart of God revealed in the Scriptures.

            Forgive me if I appear to indulge in hyperbole.  It is the nature of the things under discussion, as well as my own nature.  In the summer of 1980, I was 19 and started teaching swimming as a Red Cross Water Safety Instructor.  You quickly learn the old school John Wayne style of swim instruction—grab them by the shorts, throw them in to the deep end, yell at them to grab handfuls of water and pull it back to themselves—will not work for most people

            In fact, I had the most success by placing a child on the side of the pool, taking a step or two away, and then encouraging them to let go and take a few frenzied dog paddle strokes out to me.  As soon as they did it, I’d hold them, excitedly bounce in the water with them, praise them and say how great it is that they can swim.  Then I’d sneak in a suggestion, “Next time use bigger arms—like a windmill.”

            Now imagine a swim instructor, and of course I have never heard of any like this (they wouldn’t keep their job for long), imagine them going all the way to the other side of the pool and yelling for the kid to swim.  One child responds and makes it halfway across with a frantic dog paddle, then becomes stuck in the middle in a splashing attempt to stay alive.  The teacher seeing an opportunity for further instruction screams, “You stink!”

            The result would be the child becoming a lead sinker on the bottom of the pool.

            We need all kinds of teachers.  God has made them with innumerable styles.  I am the kind of teacher who encourages.  We need the teacher who disciplines.  We sometimes need the teacher who accepts nothing short of excellence.  I happen to be horrible at those aspects of teaching.  I think the Lord Jesus, the great teacher, is the only one to perfectly balance all of the aspects and styles of teaching—and to know who needed which style and when they needed it.

            What I have, I give.  If you are in Christ, if you confess “Jesus is Lord” and believe the one true God to be eternally expressed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, get ready for an oil tanker full of encouragement.

            If anything offends in what follows and fails to glorify our Lord, please let it be held to my account—the failings of a novice.  If it lifts, let it bring glory where glory is due, to our Lord and Savior.

            Embrace the Throne of God?  Why not.  The cross of Christ has made the throne of God accessible.  What was once unattainable we are now encouraged to seek (let us come boldly before the throne of grace).  God longs for our presence with Him.  So how do we make that possible?  How do we seek and embrace the throne?  Through the Lord Jesus Christ.

            This is not a new discovery.  I thought I had stumbled upon this by myself, but the more I investigated, the more I found thousands already sitting in the living room of the secret house I fell into.  This doesn’t mean we should hide the truth.  The Gospel is 2,000 years old and preached by millions, yet we still need to shout it from the mountaintops.

            In the book of Esther, the new queen risks her life when she dares to come in to the King on his throne before she is called.  He holds out his scepter to her when he sees her, signifying that she is welcome.  She touches the end of the scepter to make her connection to the throne and the King it holds.  In the same way, there is a scepter held out to each of us today.

            Recourse for those seeking mercy, in the Scriptures, was to somehow make one’s way to the Tabernacle or Temple and “lay hold of the horns of the altar.”  These horns were large, thorny protrusions from the corners of the altar (of sacrifice, for example) that if a person had hold of, they felt safe.  It was like home base.  It was not unlike those who laid hold of the Lord’s hem in the Gospels.

            The difference for a person trying to lay hold of the throne of God (before the cross of Christ) is that they would run smack into God’s holiness.  An attempt to grasp its safety before the righteous blood had flowed would cause one to incinerate.  It was impossible for a sinful man to stand in the presence of the Holy God.  Until the cross, all biblical visions of the Lord’s throne carried with them certain dread (Isaiah, Ezekiel, Moses, Daniel, etc.).

            The passage we will use to unlock the access we have to the throne of God is primarily the first five chapters of The Revelation (not neglecting references to other verses in the Bible).  The Lord does some incredible teaching there.  I do not claim to have figured out the Book of Revelation.  We will not understand every aspect of the entire Bible until the Lord teaches us in the New Jerusalem.  However, there is an exciting way to look at Revelation (and Scripture in general) which all believers should find helpful.

            This exciting look (at the Book of Revelation in particular) is not intended to shatter anyone’s present view of Scripture.  Whether one believes the events described in Revelation have already occurred, are yet to come, or illustrate the spiritual warfare we currently engage in, the perspective presented here is intended only to enhance one’s relationship with the Lord.

Exodus

Nearly every Clint Eastwood western begins with an irredeemable injustice being done.  In a couple he even dies first (or they try to kill him and leave him for dead).  Somehow, by the end of each movie he manages to undo the injustice with revenge.  His persona has worked its way into the American mythos.  In a political cartoon strip from the 80s, Clint’s Dirty Harry character holds a magnum to the head of the Ayatollah and says, “Say your prayers, Khomeini.”

We gleefully forget God’s injunction, “Vengeance is mine . . .”  In Exodus we get to see God in action.  Like Clint’s stories, Exodus has a gritty revenge aspect to it.

The plight of the Israelites starts when they stretch their arms a little too wide in their comfort zone.  It’s been too long since Jacob brought his family over from the Promised Land.  In the comfort of Goshen, they have grown into a considerable clan (hundreds of thousands).  At the same time they have become complacent and forgotten the promises of God.  God decides to use a foe to wake them up.

Pharaoh gazes over at Goshen and sees the army that could emerge out of the Israelites’ vast number.  One of his advisers comes up with one of those brilliant political ideas that leaders regret in retrospect:  use the Israelites to build their cities.  The peace-loving Israelites acquiesce and continue to multiply like rabbits.  The Egyptians decide to beat them while they build.  The Hebrew hordes grow larger.  “Tell their midwives to throw every baby boy into the river.”  The Jewish midwives can’t bring themselves to sin like that and come up with a cover.

The result is more Hebrews than ever, blessed midwives and an edict from the Pharaoh to kill all Hebrew baby boys.  The atmosphere around Goshen goes from oppressive to genocidal.  Irredeemable enough for us yet?  Can Clint come back from that?

Here’s the atmosphere Moses comes into.  It sets up a few keys:  the sacrifice deal.  And not just any sacrifice, but the sacrifice of a firstborn son.  This will be God’s point of contention.  The problem will effect the outcome of the Egyptians and the Israelites.  Remember Abraham?  God asked him to sacrifice his firstborn son of the promise.  Remember Jesus?  Revelation calls him the firstborn from the dead.

The end?  Pharaoh will not change his mind until his firstborn dies.  For redemption, God will ask the Israelites for nothing short of each Israelite firstborn son.  Each family will have to redeem them as a token of God’s ownership.

Here’s the light for our spiritual journey:  watch out for that real comfortable place; we tend to forget God there.  When troubles do come, don’t let bitterness or pride overwhelm, cling to God.  Could it actually be that there is purpose in even the worse things that happen to us, like pain and death?  Careful when everything seems figured out while injustice remains, that’s when Clint appears with his big magnum to set things straight.

All of us have arrived from many different places to begin the spiritual journey.  Some come from a place of tragedy.  Many arrive from a place of plenty.  Perhaps the only common denominator is feeling pushed or tugged out of our comfort zones.  From that place we reach out for God’s light.  This is the primary lesson of Moses’ life:  he constantly gets shoved out of the comfort zones he carves for himself, and each time it brings him closer to the light. It all points to the greatest sacrifice of all: our Lord’s for us. That ended all injustice and is the one we are supposed to receive and emulate.