What’s Really Appropriate for Christmas?

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” —Isaiah 7:14

Christmas is almost here again, and people are pretty much doing one of three things: they’re looking forward to it, ignoring it, or dreading it. If you’re one of the ones looking forward to the holiday, you probably are one who has some very specific memories attached to Christmas from your own past. And it seems the day just can’t get here fast enough. (Just ask any 7 year old!)

It only takes a mild case of procrastination for one to ignore Christmas: “I’ll worry about Christmas when I get done with these other things.” And of course, you never get done with the other things in time. So this action eventually turns into dread.

For those dreading it, I suspect it may be financial. These are tough times. In my own family, we just spent some five months with my wife on sick leave and unable to work. It’s hard to do everything you want to do when all of the sudden the job ends or sickness intervenes. We all get caught off guard at times. And yet Christmas, and our own expectation of what we want to be able to do to celebrate and make it a special day, still rolls around every year, regardless of the finances available.

But some that may be dreading Christmas have a much deeper reason than just finances. You see, there’s been a story going around for a while now that Christmas is actually a celebration of JESUS. And for those who, for whatever reason, hate Christianity and anything to do with Jesus, the Christmas holiday becomes almost a horror. You have to hear that name. The songs of old talk about the ‘new born king’ who is laid ‘away in a manger’ bringing “Joy to the world’ are just too much.

Often, these are the people who push aside the “Christ” of Christmas and opt for some “Happy Holidays” instead. And in the past seventy years or so, our society has even developed a whole canon of ‘Happy Holidays’ music so that Christmas can be celebrated without all that Christ talk. So now we hear the music of White Christmas, of Rudolf saving Santa, of Frosty and his magic hat, of grandma in a hit & run accident with a reindeer, of chestnuts being cooked by a fire, of a kid who wants teeth as a gift, and of another kid who’s misbehaved so much that he expects nothing for Christmas. And there’s even a few that are so suggestive that I’m embarrassed to even write about them.

What on earth do these songs have to do with Christmas? Very Little. And Lots. They have very little to do with the gift of a savior given by God Himself; sending his one and only son to live and die and be raised again.

But they also have a lot to do with Christmas because the savior that was born came to a world that wasn’t Christian and didn’t really even realize how much they needed a savior. They didn’t know God. They didn’t even know that they didn’t know him… let alone care.

The gushy, warm feelings of imagining a peaceful land without war is about as close to heaven as many people can ever get. In fact, without Jesus, it is as close as any of us could ever get. But with Jesus in our lives, we can know the peace of God.

Besides, the influence of Jesus Christ on the world around us is still pretty pervasive. Courts and marketplaces may have walked away from many of our earlier Christian practices as a nation, but people the world over still know Christmas as a day of peace and hope, whether they know Jesus or not.

The first Bible passage I quoted, from Isaiah 7:14, is in the midst of God delivering Judah’s King Ahaz from an attack by a foreign army. God tells the king he’s going to deliver him from his enemies and he allows the king the privilege of a special sign as proof that God will keep his promise. Ahaz tells God “No.” He doesn’t want a sign. But the Lord gives him a sign anyway, so that everyone will understand that it was GOD ALMIGHTY who really rules and reigns. God’s sign describes a young woman (the Hebrew actually means a young woman who has never given birth yet) who will give birth and have a miraculous son. And it goes on to describe how the birth, and life, of that child will be a reminder of God’s care for his people.

In fact, whoever that little child was in Ahaz’s day, he didn’t grow very old before the enemies of Ahaz were no longer even nations! The child’s name was Immanuel. His name literally meant “God is with us!” Every time Ahaz (or anyone else) said this child’s name, they were reminded how much God was with them and how he had delivered them from their enemies. What a reminder! What a gift! What a gracious and loving God!

And yet, like so often in Scripture, God had a double meaning in that sign of the child. Yes, it referred to someone that Ahaz would have been able to see in his day (if not, then God would have been a liar). BUT God also was looking ahead to another day when another young woman, this one an actual virgin, would conceive and have a baby who would also be called Emmanuel… the very one that would save us from our sins.

And that second child, Emmanuel (in the Greek New Testament) or Immanuel (in the Hebrew of our Old Testament) was truly more than just a reminder that God was with us… He literally was GOD WITH US!

In the midst of our day in and day out stuff that happens, even when it seems so ungodly and even hostile or painful, God is still with us. When the finances are tight, when the neighbors cause trouble, when things aren’t going well at work, God is still with us.

And, like Matthew did with a verse in Isaiah written to a king about an invading army, God will take seemingly unimportant things from our pasts and our surroundings and open up spiritual truths to us… helping us to see that God really is here with us at all times and in all places if we’ll turn to him.

And so it is that the world feels the ‘warmth’ of the season and celebrates as best as it can with “Happy Christmas’ and ‘Feliz Navidad,” and yet doesn’t realize that there’s more to the story. But as they see that story and peace exhibit itself in our lives, then they too will want what we have… and they won’t just have to imagine.

“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 1:23

SNOW DAY!!

The elusive “SNOW DAY” has descended upon us… What a GREAT time to remind ourselves about how thorough the forgiveness that God offers all who repent of their sins. – Isaiah 1:18 (NIV)

Prayer from the Heart

I’ve used this little devotional Augustine Day By Day over the past 22 years… some years following it “day by day” while most years I just pull it out whenever the Spirit moves me. This was one of those days. 

You see, I’ve been sensing a deeper call to prayer. I mean, I’ve always prayed… pretty much the way I talk (and even write most of the time)… in a conversational style. I’ve never been a big one to pray long fancy, polished, prayers… In fact, I felt the call to pastoral ministry at an altar rail when I was 17… but the “joy” (most people spell that as “f-e-a-r”) of praying in front of people paralyzed me inside. I eventually did step into the pulpit at age 34… and was still scared of that public praying aspect of the job. I mean, I talk to God all the time… but I talk to Him like I talk to a friend… and sometimes it’s absolute silence… because I’m simply listening.

Anyway, in the May 6 entry of this devotional, the editor shares a quote from Augustine from a commentary Augustine wrote about Psalm 118. The closing verse (118:29) of the Psalm is exactly the same as the opening verse (118:1). They both read: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever.” (NAS=New American Standard version)

As Augustine reflected on that verse (those verses?) and all that had been sandwiched in between that opening and closing verse, he drawn to consider the way we Christians try to pray. And, he was overwhelmed by the awareness that the out loud voice in prayer can be used to connect with God in true prayer but it sometimes can just as easily simply try to fool the humans nearby into thinking the one uttering the words is connecting in prayer with God when there is NO real communication going on at all.
Check out Augustine’s thoughts from the devotional…

“If the cry to the Lord uttered by those who pray is made with the sound of the bodily voice without the heart being turned to God, who can doubt that it is made in vain? But if it comes from the heart, even if the bodily voice is silent, it can be concealed from everyone else but not from God.”
“Therefore, when we pray–whether aloud as required or silently–to God, our cry must come from the heart.”

Augustine recognizes that the REAL prayer, is the prayer from the heart… and sometimes that’s also expressed out loud and others can listen in as one is praying from their heart and it happens to come out in their voice as well. But sometimes, the real, true prayer, the ‘heart prayer’ comes from such a deep place in the heart that it rises straight to God’s heart without anyone else even hearing a peep.

It reminds me of a story I once heard about a meal at which President Lyndon Johnson was in attendance. The president asked a friend to ‘share grace’ or ‘say the prayer.’ The man proceeded to pray and, after a few seconds, Johnson spoke out and said something to the effect of “Speak up, we can’t hear you!” And the praying friend calmly responded, “I wasn’t speaking to you, Mr. President,” and calmly returned to his praying.

I’m not arguing against vocalized prayer, but as that presidential friend reminded Johnson, and Augustine reminds the rest of us, we listeners who happen to be near enough to someone to hear them pray out loud or to hear them in prayer when there is just silence… we need to recognize that we cannot always hear the true prayer… but God can! And none of us ever fool him!

-Augustine in Commentary on Psalm 118 (29), 1 in Rotelle, John E., ed. 
Augustine Day By Day (Catholic Book Pub.Co., New York) 1986,
(entry for May 6 on p. 71).

Jesus Is Lord?

This “stay-at-home” order has me out of my normal groove… So here I am at my home office and I went to look for some notes (that are probably at the church office) and stumbled across some notes I took while listening to another preacher give a sermon at Cherry Run Camp Meeting back in 2016. John Oswalt is one of my favorite preachers to listen to… He is an actual Bible scholar and helped to translate the Old Testament in both the New International Version (NIV) and years later, the New Living Translation (NLT). I love hearing him preach!

Back to today… I came across my notes that I had jotted down while listening that summer day almost four years ago. Based on 1 Corinthians 12:1-3, I’m going to give you a rundown of what the Lord was speaking to me this morning through those notes from then.

FIRST CORINTHIANS 12:1-3

¹ “Now, dear brothers and sisters, regarding your question about the special abilities the Spirit gives us. I don’t want you to misunderstand this. ² You know that when you were still pagans, you were led astray and swept along in worshiping speechless idols. ³ So I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God will curse Jesus, and no one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.” –NLT

Picking up on that verse three phrase “… Jesus is Lord …” Oswalt explained that anyone of the Jewish background, whether in the city of Corinth or somewhere else in the Roman Empire, were inheritors of the tradition that came down from Moses himself (based on Exodus 3) where the name of God, in transcribed Hebrew, was “YHWH.” This was God’s personal name, and the English translation says it meant “I am that I am” (or “I was that I was” or “I will be that I will be” … there is no tense with God’s name… that’s why we so often in Christian liturgy talk about the God who “was and is and is to come”).

Oswalt explained that every time a good, faithful Jew of Jesus’ day wen to read that passage, or any passage with the “YHWH” they IMMEDIATELY said “LORD” instead… to ensure they never “took the name of the Lord in vain.”

So when we read about people like these Corinthians saying “Jesus is Lord” it truly freaks out the faithful Jews! Because the phrase “Jesus is Lord” is equal to saying “Jesus is God!!!!”

That piece of explanation helps explain why “Jesus is Lord” was such a bombshell in Bible times… but it also presents a new thing for us in our day and age to be thinking and praying about: If Jesus IS our Lord (and God!), then shouldn’t that mean He is Lord of all of our life?

I don’t remember how he preached this next section, but in my notes, I made a table of sorts…

If Jesus IS our Lord, then He should also be Lord of…

• OUR LIPS – Is He Lord of all that comes from our mouths? If so, there should be no foulness or filth or cruelty coming through our lips.
• OUR BODIES – Do our actions show that He is Lord of our bodies? Our sexuality? Our modesty? Our eating? The fitness of our body?
• OUR ENTERTAINMENT – Does our watching, listening, and reading show that He is Lord of what entertains us? Murders, destruction, hatred, immorality, sexual fornication… What is the focus of our TV? Our movies? Our books? Our music? Our video games? Our online time?
• OUR HOME – If He is Lord of our home, then there should be godly behavior even between family members. Gratitude, respect, kindness, patience, our conversations, …
• OUR BUSINESS – Is He Lord of our money? Is our business and work known by the godly behaviors Jesus taught such as integrity, compassion, and stewardship?
• OUR PLANS – We used to use the Latin phrase “D.V.” or “Deo volente” when talking about the future. That phrase means “God willing…” A recognition that we need to set our priorities after learning what God’s priorities are. Nowadays, in our families, our businesses, and even in our churches, we too often set our plans and then ask God to bless them.
• OUR FEARS – If He IS our Lord, then we go to Him when faced with the fear of what could happen or the fear of our loss of control, our health, or even world events…

As we continue to walk through (or stay-at-home through) these troubling times of fear and worry, ARE WE STILL DEMONSTRATING THAT JESUS IS LORD?

Keeping Christ In Christmas

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.”                                                        —Isaiah 7:14

Christmas is almost here again, and people are pretty much doing one of three things: they’re looking forward to it, ignoring it, or dreading it. If you’re one of the ones looking forward to the holiday, you probably are one who has some very specific memories attached to Christmas from your own past. And it seems the day just can’t get here fast enough. (Just ask any 7 year old!)

It only takes a mild case of procrastination for one to ignore Christmas: “I’ll worry about Christmas when I get done with these other things.” And of course, you never get done with the other things in time. So this action eventually turns into dread.

For those dreading it, I suspect it may be financial. These are tough times. In my own family, we just spent some five months with my wife on sick leave and unable to work. It’s hard to do everything you want to do when all of the sudden the job ends or sickness intervenes. We all get caught off guard at times. And yet Christmas, and our own expectation of what we want to be able to do to celebrate and make it a special day, still rolls around every year, regardless of the finances available.

But some that may be dreading Christmas have a much deeper reason than just finances. You see, there’s been a story going around for a while now that Christmas is actually a celebration of JESUS. And for those who, for whatever reason, hate Christianity and anything to do with Jesus, the Christmas holiday becomes almost a horror. You have to hear that name. The songs of old talk about the ‘new born king’ who is laid ‘away in a manger’ bringing “Joy to the world’ are just too much.

Often, these are the people who push aside the “Christ” of Christmas and opt for some “Happy Holidays” instead. And in the past seventy years or so, our society has even developed a whole canon of ‘Happy Holidays’ music so that Christmas  can be celebrated without all that Christ talk. So now we hear the music of White Christmas, of Rudolf saving Santa, of Frosty and his magic hat, of grandma in a hit & run accident with a reindeer, of chestnuts being cooked by a fire, of a kid who wants teeth as a gift, and of another kid who’s misbehaved so much that he expects nothing for Christmas. And there’s even a few that are so suggestive that I’m embarrassed to even write about them.

What on earth do these songs have to do with Christmas? Very Little. And Lots. They have very little to do with the gift of a savior given by God Himself; sending his one and only son to live and die and be raised again.

But they also have a lot to do with Christmas because the savior that was born came to a world that wasn’t Christian and didn’t really even realize how much they needed a savior. They didn’t know God. They didn’t even know that they didn’t know him… let alone care.

The gushy warm feelings of imagining a peaceful land without war is about as close to heaven as many people can ever get. In fact, without Jesus, it is as close as any of us could ever get.

The influence of Jesus Christ on the world around us is still pretty pervasive. Courts and marketplaces may have walked away from much of our earlier practices as a nation which tried to mandate Christian behavior, but people the world over still know Christmas as a day of peace and hope, whether they know Jesus or not.

The first Bible passage I quoted, from Isaiah 7:14, is in the midst of God delivering Judah’s King Ahaz from an attack by foreign armies. God tells the king he’s being delivered because God has decided to do so. And  he allows the king the privilege of a special sign as proof that God will keep his promise. Ahaz tells God “No” he doesn’t want a sign and the Lord gives him a sign anyway. He describes a young woman who will give birth and have a miraculous son. And goes on to describe how the birth, and life, of that child will be a reminder of God’s care for his people.

In fact, whoever that little child was in Ahaz’s day, he didn’t grow very old before the enemies of Ahaz were no longer even nations!  His name was Immanuel… His name literally meant God is with us!  Every time Ahaz (or anyone else) said this child’s name, they were reminded how much God was with them and how he had delivered them from their enemies. What a reminder! What a gift! What a gracious and loving God!

And yet, like so often in Scripture, God had a double meaning in that sign of the child. Yes, it referred to someone that Ahaz would have been able to see in his day (if not, then God would have been a liar). BUT God also was looking ahead to another day when another young woman, this one an actual virgin, would conceive and have a baby who would also be called Emmanuel… the very one that would save us from our sins.

And that second child, Emmanuel (in Greek) or Immanuel (in Hebrew) was truly more than just a reminder that God was with us… He literally was GOD WITH US!

In the midst of our day in and day out stuff that happens, even when it seems so ungodly and even hostile or painful, God is still with us. When the finances are tight, when the neighbors cause trouble, when things aren’t going well at work, God is still with us.

And, like Matthew did with a verse in Isaiah written to a king about an invading army, God will take seemingly unimportant things from our pasts and our surroundings and open up spiritual realities to us… helping us to see that God really is here with us at all times and in all places if we’ll turn to him.

And so the world feels the ‘warmth’ of the season and celebrates as best as it can with ‘Happy Christmas’ and ‘Feliz Navidad’ and doesn’t realize that there’s more to the story… but as they see that story and peace exhibit itself in our lives, then they too will want what we have… and they won’t just have to imagine.

“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 1:23

The Bell

I was looking for something in my computer files a little bit ago and found a file from June 2007 simply titled “The Bell.” I opened it and found such encouragement, I just had to share it. Please be aware, I did NOT write this and have no idea who was the original author (or perhaps compiler would be a better term). Feel free to share!

The Bell

“I KNOW WHO I AM”
I am God’s child (John 1:12)
I am Christ’s friend (John 15:15)
I am united with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17)
I am bought with a price (1 Cor. 6:19-20)
I am a saint (set apart for God). (Eph. 1:1)
I  am  a  personal witness of Christ (Acts 1:8)
I am the salt & light of the earth (Matt 5:13-14)
I am a member of the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27)
I am free forever from condemnation ( Rom. 8: 1-2)
I am a citizen of Heaven.  I am significant (Phil.3:20)
I am free from any charge against me ( Rom. 8:31-34)
I am a minister of reconciliation for God (2 Cor.5:17-21)
I have access to God through the Holy Spirit (Eph 2:18)
I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms (Eph. 2:6)
I cannot be separated from the love of God (Rom.8:35-39)
I am established, anointed, sealed by God  (2 Cor.1:21-22)
I am assured all things work together for good (Rom. 8: 28)
I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit (John 15:16)
I may approach God with freedom and confidence (Eph. 3: 12)
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Phil. 4:13)
I am the branch of the true vine, a channel of His life (John 15: 1-5)
I am God’s temple (1 Cor. 3: 16).  I am complete in Christ (Col. 2: 10)
I am hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3).  I have been justified (Romans 5:1)
I am God’s co-worker (1 Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor 6:1).  I am God’s workmanship (Eph. 2:10)
I am confident that the good works God has begun in me will be perfected (Phil. 1: 5)
I have been redeemed and forgiven (Col. 1:14).  I have been adopted as God’s child (Eph 1:5)
I belong to God
Amen

 

Ot

What The Bible Really Says About Homosexual Behavior

    The words “homosexual” and “homosexuality” are English words introduced within the last two centuries, however, the behaviors those words refer to are addressed in the Bible. So what DOES it say that deals with those behaviors?

    The first reference is in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two angels have come to warn Lot and his family they need to leave Sodom because God’s judgment is about to happen because of the sins of Sodom. (And, by the way, “to know” someone is the Genesis way of saying two people became intimate and had sexual relations with each other.)

• GENESIS 19:4-5 “But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.”

    Many now-a-days argue that the sin of Sodom was being inhospitable. But Jesus’ brother, Jude, writes of their sin as “sexual immorality” and “unnatural lust.”

• JUDE 7 [speaking of the Lord destroying those Israelites in the wilderness who did not believe…] “Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”

    Likewise, in Second Peter, chapter 2, the apostle Peter writes about the way God judged various ones in the days of Genesis, including Sodom and Gomorrah, then the Lord knows how…

• 2 PETER 2:9b-10 “… to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment — especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.”

    In giving the Israelites the laws concerning proper sexual behavior, sex with relatives and with animals are prohibited along with…

• LEVITICUS 18:22 “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”
• LEVITICUS 20:13 “If  man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

    The apostle Paul shares the same standard in the First Century…

• ROMANS 1:26-27 “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
• 1 CORINTHIANS 6:9-10 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
• 1 TIMOTHY 1:8-9 “…the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.”

    Many now-a-days argue that the rules back then also say we are not to wear clothing of two different materials, or eat pork, and even include a requirement to stone to death a disrespectful child, along with a whole host of other “laws” that we don’t feel it necessary to follow today.

    And that’s true. Here’s the difference… In Acts 15, in the very first ecumenical council, Christians from all over gathered together and sought God and asked if someone becoming a Christian had to follow all of the Old Testament laws. After discussion and prayer, they unanimously agreed there were four things from the Old Testament Jewish laws that would still be required of Christians:

• ACTS 15:28-29 “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.”

    Notice, the requirement includes ALL of the laws about sexual immorality from the Old Testament. One of the frustrating parts of our conflict in this day and age is that the Christian standard is to be: “NO sexual immorality,” but many just want to focus on the homosexual sins. It was never supposed to be about homosexuality, but rather about faithfulness in marriage between one man and one woman.

    And while we’re at it… that ruling in Acts releases us from all the killing and stoning of sinners, too.

    One other thing that’s important in this context is the objection some raise that ‘Jesus never spoke about homosexuality, so why should we care?’

    In Matthew 19 (and also Mark 10), Jesus is given the chance to clarify and describe what marriage is supposed to be like, when he’s asked by the Pharisees about divorce. He does not talk about any two individuals (or one man and many wives or two same gender people), but rather speaks of God’s plan for marriage being one man and one woman.

• MATTHEW 19:4-5 “ ‘Haven’t you read.’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’?’ ”

    The final consideration, in my understanding thus far, is this: Since the Bible clearly identifies homosexual behavior as sin, what should we do about it? After all, there are other sins and people with those sins can be ordained and get married and more. Why do we pick on this one sin?

    The difference is that in all of those other examples, as well as with homosexual sin, the difference is whether or not the sinner repents of their sin.

• 1 JOHN 1:8-10 “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.”

    (This originally appeared in The Circuit Rider, the bimonthly newsletter of the First United Methodist Church of Carmichaels, PA, as a sidebar story to an article about General Conference 2019 describing a bit of the history and background of that historic meeting. The contents of that article appear as a separate post here.)

 

Saddest Obituary Ever!

I’m not a big one for New Year’s Resolutions, but I stumbled upon a Scripture passage this morning that caught my attention. It’s the entry in Second Chronicles, chapter 21, where we learn the basics of one of Judah’s kings, King Jehoram. And in the last three verses, we read how Jehoram has so distanced himself from God and the ways of God, that God Himself sets Jehoram up for a fall. Jehoram ends up with a painful disease and it takes some two years before his painful, tragic end.

And, in 2 Chronicles 21:20, the Bible, as it does for so many Biblical women and men of faith, simply shares his death and how he died, along with his age when he ascended the throne, how long he reigned on that throne, and the people’s way of honoring the now dead king.

This passage has to be one of the saddest obituaries I’ve ever read. Particularly the last sentence… Check it out from some of the various English translations:

KJV: Jehoram “departed without being desired.” [v. 20b]

NKJV: Jehoram, “to no one’s sorrow, departed.” [v. 20b]

NIV: “He passed away, to no one’s regret…” [v. 20b]

NRSV: “He departed with no one’s regret.” [v. 20b]

NLT: “No one was sorry when he died.” [v.20b]

CEB: “No one was sorry he died.” [v. 20b]

Reading through the various passages where Jehorum is mentioned, we learn that he had married the daughter of the evil King Ahab & his wife Jezebel from the northern kingdom of Israel, as well as murdering all of his brothers upon becoming king, setting up and leading the people of Judah in worshipping pagan gods in “the high places.”

Jehoram’s father was one of the good kings of Judah, the godly King Jehoshaphat. However, Jehoram deliberately turned away from his father’s ways and followed the pattern that his wife had learned from her parents, Ahab and Jezebel: Pagan gods, jealousy, spiritual compromise, paranoia, and a controlling spirit to boot.

His people in Judah so despised him, that, in verse 19, we read how they wouldn’t even do the honor of an elaborate “funeral fire” like they had done for Jehoram’s ancestors. (Check out 2 Chronicles 16:14 to read what that tradition was like when Jehoram’s grandfather, King Asa, died.

In fact, while they did bury Jehoram in the captial city of Jerusalem, they wouldn’t bury him in the royal cemetery.

Now, I believe that Scripture is inspired by God and, while it was written in a particular circumstance to readers (or most often hearers) of that day and age, I believe that there is still value in all of Scripture in instructing us, thousands of years later, in our life of faith as well.

Which leads me to consider, in the big picture, how much little compromises and decisions based on doing things “my way” really do make a big difference… even though it might be years or a lifetime later before all the impact might be felt.

Jehoram yielded his upbringing to the influence of his wife and in-laws. He made decisions personally, and as a national leader, that revealed what his heart truly loved… and it was divisive and evil and self-centered. And it turned him into a hated leader who turned his back on God.

SO… Even though I’m not making resolutions and such, I am convinced that as we start 2019, we need to reconsider and evaluate our lives and discover what the little compromises are that we’ve allowed in our own hearts and minds and families? It’s a good time to confess those sins to God and ask for his help in starting over.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”    — Second Corinthians 5:17 (KJV)

 

SCRIPTURE SOURCE NOTES:

While the primary record of Jehoram is found in 2 Chronicles 21 and 2 Kings 8, here are all of the Scriptural sources I studied to learn about him.

• 1 Kings 22:50
• 2 Kings 8:1-2
• 2 Kings 8:16-25
• 2 Kings 11:1-16
• 2 Chronicles 21:1-20
• 2 Chronicles 22:1
• Matthew 1:8

Flintstone’s Ten Commandments

Here is my first attempt at using the iPhone to make a “movie” out of the pictures and the audio recording we made during children’s time a few Sundays ago. Down the road, I’ll learn the technology better and you’ll be able to actually read all the words… but until then… ENJOY!

Please follow this link and watch (& give a thumbs up) on the actual YouTube site. This allows us to post the video where everyone can access it, not just the people who use Facebook. Thanks!

https://youtu.be/cqeUREo6SEQ

Acts of God?

Recently, I’ve heard, read, and watched different supposed Christians who want to take all the hurricanes and fires and earthquakes and ascribe them to God as if GOD had evilly created a plan to punish people with Hell on earth in the nasty now-and-now…

And other people who try to use these events as reasons to “prove” that there is NO God anywhere, nor has there ever been.

In response, today, I want to share a great resource actually written and published by the denomination to which I belong: The United Methodist Church.

Ask the UMC: How do United Methodists understand human suffering from natural disaster?

Photo by Mike DuBose, UMNS

A tire swing sways in the wind from Hurricane Rita over the remains of a beachfront home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in Ocean Springs, Miss. Rita made landfall in East Texas Sept. 24, 2005, nearly four weeks after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi.

Ask the UMC: How do United Methodists understand human suffering from natural disaster?

Sometimes the devastation is overwhelming. The waters rise and the rain won’t stop. The ground shakes beneath our feet, or the wind blows the roofs off homes. Sometimes, even the side of the mountain roars into town. The problems seem insurmountable, the destruction beyond our comprehension.When tragedy strikes, it is common for us to ask why. We turn to our faith for answers, but answers don’t come easily. We wrestle with making sense of the suffering we witness, in light of our Christian faith. Questions are left unanswered. The tragedy is not explained.In a sermon titled “The Promise of Understanding,” John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, says we may never know. He writes,

“[W]e cannot say why God suffered evil to have a place in his creation; why he, who is so infinitely good himself, who made all things ‘very good,’ and who rejoices in the good of all his creatures, permitted what is so entirely contrary to his own nature, and so destructive of his noblest works. ‘Why are sin and its attendant pain in the world?’ has been a question ever since the world began; and the world will probably end before human understandings have answered it with any certainty” (section 2.1).

The short answer is: We do not know why natural disasters and other suffering are part of our world.

Did God do this?

While Wesley admits we cannot know the complete answer, he clearly states that suffering does not come from God. God is “infinitely good,” Wesley writes, “made all things good,” and “rejoices in the good of all his creatures.”

Our good God does not send suffering. According to Wesley, it is “entirely contrary to [God’s] own nature, and so destructive of his noblest works.” Suffering is not punishment for sin or a judgment from God. We suffer, and the world suffers, because we are human and part of a system of processes and a physical environment where things go wrong.

God with us

In another sermon titled “On Divine Providence,” Wesley again writes of God’s love for humanity and that God desires good for us. He then adds how God is always with us, even in the midst of tragedy. Wesley shares,

“[God] hath expressly declared, that as his ‘eyes are over all the earth’ [see Psalm 34:15; 83:18], so he ‘is loving to every man, and his mercy is over all his works’ [Psalm 145:9]. Consequently, he is concerned every moment for what befalls every creature upon earth; and more especially for everything that befalls any of the children of men. It is hard, indeed, to comprehend this; nay, it is hard to believe it, considering the complicated wickedness, and the complicated misery, which we see on every side. But believe it we must” (paragraph 13).

This is good news. While we cannot fully comprehend the why, we know that God is with those who suffer. Note that Wesley says God cares for “every creature.” We are never alone in our suffering.

In our experience, we know that tragedies happen to Christians and non-Christians alike. As Jesus said, “[God] makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). The good news we proclaim is that God is with us through it all.

A different question

When Jesus and his disciples encounter a man born blind, the disciples ask Jesus the question we are asking. “Rabbi, who sinned so that he was born blind, this man or his parents?” (John 9:2). Jesus, why does seemingly arbitrary suffering occur?

Jesus’ answer, “Neither he nor his parents,” tells us that the disciples are asking the wrong question. “This happened,” Jesus continues, “so that God’s mighty works might be displayed in him” (John 9:3). Jesus asserts that it is in our response to suffering that God is found, in moments of everyday grace and in grand and sweeping gestures of care and solidarity with the suffering. God’s mighty works are found in hospitals and nursing homes and shelters.

Jesus is calling his disciples and us to a ministry. We are to join Jesus in displaying God’s mighty works. We are an extension of God’s presence in the midst of the tragedy as we come beside those who are suffering in ways we don’t comprehend. We are to be agents of healing, working to restore God’s order to people’s lives and communities. We are to be representatives of the day of resurrection to come, as we seek to rebuild and renew.

In our United Methodist congregations, we join together in these ministries. We assemble flood buckets and work alongside those who shovel the muck from floodwaters from the floors of their homes. We rebuild homes. We stand in the gap alongside the suffering. We support our local food banks, help build houses in our communities, take care of one another’s cars, visit those who are ill and imprisoned, and so much more. We are also active in our communities, working to change systems that inflict suffering on people in our communities.

In the aftermath of tragedy, we give witness to the love of God. In our outpouring of support, we proclaim the value of every human life. As we grieve with those in mourning, we share the love of God. When we send supplies through the United Methodist Committee on Relief, we witness to God’s provision. When medical professionals bind up wounds, Jesus is shown as a healer. When homes are rebuilt, we proclaim resurrection.

We may not know why things happen, but we embrace the ministries of healing, renewal and reconciliation to which Jesus calls us, and in doing so, God’s mighty works are revealed.

Related:

Turning to the Bible when sorrow strikes

‘Jesus wept’: Finding God’s comfort when times are bad

 

Have questions? Ask the UMC. And check out other recent Q&As.

This content was produced by InfoServ, a ministry of United Methodist Communications.

First published Aug. 31, 2017.