By John Stallings
Once I was asked to speak at a church banquet and as I rose to speak, people were finishing their deserts and still engaged in small talk.
Not being all that used to speaking under these conditions, I just stood there and looked out at the folk. The Pastor who understood the room said to me, tell them to SSssssshhhh. I didn’t want to do it but finally I leaned into the mike and said, SSSssssshhhh, in a gentle but firm way and as I did I noticed things slightly quiet down.
The Pastors wife then spoke up and said “Bro. Stallings, tell them louder to SSSsssshhhhh. I looked at her and said, “Does that work?” She answered, “It’s the only thing that does work.” Well I SSSSssshhhed them again a little louder and this time they looked as if a gunshot had gone off. I finally had my audience and all it took was a fairly loud SSssssshhhhh. Everyone seemed fine with it.
I’ve thought many times about that and wondered why we human beings respond so well to SSssssshhh. I can remember many times as a child when my Mother would just say SSshhh to us. Often that’s all she would say and it usually got the job done. Sometimes if the ssshhh wasn’t heeded things got a little rougher. Maybe it was even the first thing she ever said to me as baby, sssshhhhh it’s o.k., be quiet son—Sssssshhhh. There there-sssshhhh.
One time I was going through a stressful patch and somehow a mania hit me to just talk-talk-talk about it to anyone who would listen. One night as I meditated I distinctly heard God’s voice whisper to me, “son, ssshhhhhhh. Give it a rest. Stop dwelling on the problem son, you’re making too big a thing out of this SSSssssshhhhh. Keep it low key-low key—easy-does-it, keep the problem small in your mind.” Yes God said exactly that to my spirit. I was stunned in a way but then as usual I began to see God’s point. I was so revved up that I had the problem all out of proportion.
Over the last years our nation has gone through some tough elections. It seems that even now about all we hear are negative things said from both sides of the political spectrum. It causes us to wonder how things have gotten so crazy. I often wonder how two groups of people in America can look at the same event and come to such dramatically different conclusions? Yes we have problems and yes we should be able to speak our convictions but let’s not “throw the baby [America] out with the bath water.” Won’t we all wake up Americans tomorrow? The answer to that is yes, If we keep our hearts right. It's not just the "left wing" or the Right wing" we need to be concerned about, it's the whole bird we need to watch.
Many times the best thing we can do when things get stressful is just stand back, take a deep breath and relax. Sssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”
I remember an actor named Larry Hagman who for many years played J.R on the TV show Dallas. I read that one day a week he wouldn’t talk to anyone , he’d wear a sign on his chest saying “please excuse me I’m not talking today, It’s my day of silence.” I think Larry had a good idea. Sometimes a little peace and quiet is fine. God bless you Larry!
Power Leakage occurs with too much talk.Samson lost his power because he wanted to talk and when he spoke he gave away the secret of this power. Have you ever talked until you were just totally tired out? Talking takes the strength out of you. Ask any preacher or teacher. In WW2 there was a big promotion in American called “Loose lips sink ships.” They observed that when people were loose in their talk about the work they were doing, for some reason more bad things happened. Have you ever been riding down the road or engaged in some activity when all at once you started thinking about something you said? Am I the only one who does that? You shake your head and say "Oh God, why did I say that? "
Perhaps that’s why David said in Psalm 141:3;
“Set a watch Oh Lord before my mouth keep the door of my lips.”
Help me to SSSSssssshhhhhhhh.I once heard a man say, “I can tell you what I know and I can tell you what I think, which one do you want to hear?” Believe me, telling what we know takes lot’s less time doesn’t it? But most of the time when we talk we don’t make a clear distinction between the two.
WE SHOULD BE WARY OF IDLE CHATTER.
Jesus said in Matthew 12:36, “But I say unto you that every idle word that men speak they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment.”
This is speaking of idle gossip. Frightening isn’t it? How often have you heard these words, “you didn’t hear this from me?” That opener will usually start a statement off that will be hurtful to someone and believe it or not, very often the reason for the statement is to hurt someone. The definition of Gossip is; “Rumor or talk of a personal or sensational nature, someone who habitually spreads sensational or intimate facts.” We have all seen the gossip rags in grocery stores and sadly that’s where America’s mind set is these days. Too bad we Christians are not exempt, but we aren’t, we seem to crave it as much as anyone.
MANY DON’T SEEM TO BE AWARE THAT LOOSE AND IDLE TALK IS WRONG.
If you’ve ever wondered why people continue to engage in such a harmful practice, the answer is many faceted: many seem to feel its o.k. because we get away with it. We do it and nothing bad happens to us immediately. Other folk do it because they’ve never heard a reliable source talk or teach on it. And maybe it’s this; some are too rebellious to stop gossiping.
Proverbs 9; 8 tells us “A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise when rebuked will love you.”
It is obvious that gossip isn’t a popular subject but it sure as a popular thing to do.
James 3:5-8 says, “So also the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it boasts great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire. And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. For every species of beasts and birds, of reptile and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil full of deadly poison.”{NASB}.
Though the tongue can’t be tamed outside a divine intervention of the Holy Ghost, just as a wild animal, it can be trained and there- in lies our victory. Meditating on and speaking what is true-God’s Word, day and night.God’s word places the practice of gossip in serious categories. In Romans 1:29-30 it is among sins like deceit, malice, slander and arrogance, and is called deceiving and defamatory, accompanied by cruelty and pride.
In 2 Timothy 3; 1-3 we find another Pauline list of vices and sins and God places gossip right in the middle of it. Is it any wonder that one of the Ten Commandments is, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor?” We can say what we will but that which slips from our lips is a dead give away of what’s in our hearts. We often forget that mouth/heart connection don’t we?
The Psalmist David cried out;
“let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight Oh Lord my rock and my Redeemer.”Psalm 19; 14.
GOSSIP IS A DEVILISH GENIUS- IT GIVES A DRUG-LIKE EFFECT AS IT SWINGS BETWEEN LIFTING US UP AND PUTTING SOMEONE ELSE DOWN.
Isn’t it amazing how fake we can be sometimes? Have you ever seen someone run another person down and practically demonize them and almost in the next breath walk up to that person and embrace them like they were long lost buddies? I am not finger pointing and saying I’ve always been strong in this area. I’m saying to you that God is dealing with me and breaking me in this area and I weep at the times I’ve let myself and God down going against what I knew to be right.
We seem to feel that we can make our hum-drum lives better and feel better about ourselves if we run someone else down. The real issue isn’t so much about the other person as it is our own mentality and self-portrait. And maybe we also possess just a dash of criticism of God and the way he made the other person.
Listen to how hellish the Corinthians sound in 2 Corinthians 12:20.
“For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder.”
Read that verse sometime and also read the verse after it. Friend I don’t know about you but that sounds like hell to me, but its Christians.
Over the years I have personally witnessed how gossip has affected friendships. The arrogance of others has cost me pain from lies and, just as important, half-truths that were spread about me. Perhaps you’ve experienced the same. I say this not out of bitterness because I’m a healed man today , but I never want my words to ever cause anyone the pain vicious gossip has cost me.
As a people, what do we possibly have to gain by this? It does nothing but separate and destroy us. We are, and have been too long, destroying the Kingdom of God He has so graciously provided.
The good news is that we can beat this quagmire if we come together and put forth an effort to be real with each other and learn again to love as Jesus taught us to love.
Lesson One.---SSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Blessings,
John
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Saturday, June 20, 2015
"Birthright"
By John Stallings
I think the reason so many people enjoy Soap operas on T.V is they make them feel normal. Or perhaps they make them feel that others are having more problems than they are.
I can get the same feeling from the six-o’clock news or some movies for that matter.
If you like soap operas or if you just love a good story, you’re going to love this. As in the “soaps,” we need a reminder of what’s gone before….. so here it is.
God called Abraham & Sarah to leave their home country & head out to the far land of Canaan, taking with them the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars. But for decades Sarah was unable to bear children until finally the birth of Isaac.
Isaac was a late bloomer, who at forty was still living in the basement of his parent’s tent. Concerned about the future of the family lineage, Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to seek a bride for Isaac. He finds just the right one; a beautiful, generous, energetic & determined young lady named Rebekah. She responds to the stranger & agrees to go with him to a far away land to marry another stranger.
GOTTA LOVE THIS YOUNG WOMAN CALLED REBEKAH!
Isaac married Rebekah when he was 40 years old. Speaking of soap operas…. Rebekah too was barren- so Isaac asked the Lord to let her bear children.
Have you ever noticed how many women in the Bible struggled to have children? Mary the mother of Jesus was a notable exception of course. Rebekah, like her mother-in-law Sarah, like Hannah the mother of Samuel, like Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, struggled with the reality that it was difficult for them to get pregnant.
God answered Isaac’s prayer & Rebekah got pregnant, but it was a difficult pregnancy. Twin boys were mixing it up inside her. In Genesis 25:22-23 when she inquired about this “young & restless” unborn duo, God answered; “you’re carrying two nations in your womb.”
These boys’ rambunctious little hands were already clawing at each other in Rebecca’s womb. They were at war before they saw the light of day.
The conflict goes on even to this day. Some say it’s the longest family feud in history.
Being a man, I can’t say much about the gynecological side of Sarah or Rebekah’s situation, [thank God] but I will make a theological comment. Isn’t it interesting that these were all women hand-picked by God to do His will in bringing the ones into the world He planned to use? But even though it was God’s will, still the process wasn’t easy. God wanted the babies to be born but it seemed so hard for them to get here.
Being willing to be used of God is a good thing but people often forget that being used of God has its struggles as well as its great blessings. Indeed, just because God is in a venture doesn’t necessarily guarantee smooth sailing. Paul got into a two-week storm on the high seas on his way to Rome.
When the twins, Jacob & Esau came out of the womb, one was red & the other was hairy. Jacob was grasping Esau’s heel. Jacob’s name actually means “Grabber” or “Supplanter.”
I don’t know if you saw the movie “Twins” with Arnold Schwarzenegger & Danny De Vito. Believe it or not in the movie the pair supposedly was twins. Jacob & Esau were a bit like that; all the testosterone seemed to go to Esau. He’s born covered with hair & loves the outdoors & was probably the captain of his high school football team. Esau was also a skillful hunter, a man of the open country. With him what you saw was what you got, & he probably wore his heart on his sleeve.
Jacob was an introvert, a quiet man preferring to stay among the tents & be near his momma. He preferred cooking to killing. He was a good cook, & loved doing needlework. He thoroughly enjoyed helping out around the house. But the kid was clever & ambitious. If he grew up today, he’d probably be big crossword puzzle guy, more of a chess player than a football player like Esau. Isn’t it interesting that all these thousands of years later we can recognize in these very different brothers people we know?
Papa Isaac loved wild game so Esau the hunter was his favorite son. Rebekah was partial to Jacob. If you’re like me you ask yourself, what kind of family was this, showing partiality & favoritism to one child over the other? Where in the world did these brothers come from anyway; one smooth & smart, the other strong & hairy?
This is a real family. This is a real mother & a real father. Maybe they’re like your parents. Maybe these words were often spoken; “Look how good your brother is doing in school. Don’t you think you’d be wise to model yourself after him a bit more?”
Family dynamics are subtle & hard to understand, let alone untangle. Back before we adopted such sophisticated words like dysfunctional, people just came out with the truth: Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
It didn’t mean that both the parents didn’t love both the boys; it just means they each had a favorite son.
THE SIN OF FAVORITISM IS EGREGIOUS
The sin of favoritism in this family is terrible & it wounded deeply just as it does in families today. Favoritism is about as brutal & blunt an object as a person can be pummeled with. The neglected or seemingly unwanted child will often spend a lifetime yearning & competing for the love of a parent.
Just as is always the case in a family breakdown, the real crunch-time came over something trivial. In the case of Jacob & Esau, it was a bowl of stew.
This whole scene might not have happened if Isaac had taken his responsibility as a parent & transferred the birthright earlier. God had told Rebekah even before the birth of the boys that… the older would serve the younger.
One day Esau came in from working in the field & he was famished. Jacob has been puttering around the kitchen & has come up with some great smelling stew. Esau says, “Give me some of that red stuff.” Jacob says, “its not red stuff its bourguignon & you can’t have any.” “But why not” says Esau, “I’m starving.”
Esau made the worst possible deal. In Philippians 3:19 the apostle Paul speaks of those
—whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, & whose glory is in their shame who mind earthly things.
Esau traded the eternal for the temporal, the spiritual for the physical, & the unseen for the seen! Losing his birthright cost Esau his standing among God’s people. In Hebrews 12:16-17
—lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of bread sold his birthright. For ye know that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears.
Esau had no appreciation for what God was doing in his life. Life was about pleasure to Esau. Spiritual matters were a waste of time. Life was about pleasure.
JACOB-WHAT A GUY!
Watch carefully now as Jacob shows us his prowess in thinking on his feet. He’s a quick-witted opportunist. He’s neither afraid nor ashamed to take full advantage of the situation & he’s not above using deception & trickery.
But there’s something else. Jacob has been thinking about Esau’s birthright & what it meant. For one thing it meant he’d receive a double share of the inheritance which was intended for the eldest son. He also knows the promises that God made to Abraham & he values those promises.
But the birthright wasn’t all Jacob wanted. Not even close. I suspect that he wanted to be the one through whom the promises to Abraham would continue.
“O.K says Jacob, you give me your birthright, sign the family fortune over to me & make me the heir, make me the older brother—first born in the family & I’ll give you a little bowl of stew.”
Surely Esau is exaggerating about his hunger here. Surely he could have gotten food from one of the other tents. Maybe these brothers are still quite young & there’s an element of clowning around in what they’re doing. Maybe it starts out kidding but Jacob is deadly serious now.Whatever the exact dynamics are here, one thing we know is, Esau despised his birthright. He didn’t value it, at least not now. He was one of those people who lived for today -“for tomorrow we die.” He had no time for things like birthrights & the big picture in life. His attitude was—you can’t eat a covenant. Consequently, because Esau frivolously bartered away his birthright, the promise didn’t pass to the elder child of Isaac.
Strike one against Jacob. He has tricked his brother & taken something extremely valuable.
Isaac was old now & could no longer see so he called Esau to his bedside. “Go to the open country, kill some wild game & prepare me the tasty food I like so much so I can give you my blessing before I die” he said.
Rebekah overheard the conversation. She told her favorite son Jacob to get himself in gear fast & kill two choice goats so she can prepare her dying husband the meal the way she knows he likes it.
Jacob didn’t only want the birthright & a double portion of the family inheritance; he wanted his father’s blessing too. Jacob was crooked but not dumb. He knew the inheritance wasn’t his but he wanted it anyway. He knew that he came from a line that was promised by God to do great things.
Jacob takes the skins & covers his arms & chest with the hair so he can fool his father, thus pulling the rug out from under Esau, stealing the blessing given the oldest son---the family fortune.
Jacob fools his father & by deception gets Esau’s blessing. Jacob had hardly left his father’s tent when Esau came in with a sumptuous meal he’d prepared from the game he’d killed.
When Isaac & Esau realized they’d been duped, they both reacted violently. Papa Isaac trembled all over. He has been deceived by his youngest son. Something promised to his older son Esau. What must he have thought? How sickening this must have been for him. Esau burst out in a loud bitter cry, “Bless me, bless me too my father.” Esau wept loudly, “Please give me a blessing too.”-Gen.27:39-40
I think it could be safely said that most all who read this story will be able to relate because most all of us have been wronged & hurt by family at some point. It’s bad enough when a friend hurts us but family is supposed to be that “safe zone,” where everyone is there for one another & looks out for one another.
People get a little crazy when someone dies or is near death. It literally brings out the worst in people. Relationships have been broken with parents, children, & siblings many times over material things. Families will hurt one another to the point of splintering & fracturing beyond belief.
This sets Esau up with a grudge against his brother & his plan is to kill him. Everything is gone for him. He is wronged on so many levels. Rebekah gets wind of Esau’s intentions [have you noticed that Rebekah is the major player in this story?] & tells Jacob he’d better “get out of Dodge” -& quick.
She instructs Jacob to go 400 miles away to her brothers place, his uncle Laban & she’ll let him know when Esau is no longer mad at him. This will all blow over quickly. Right? Wrong!
On his way to Haran where his uncle lived, Jacob stopped to sleep one night, using a stone for a pillow. I think I used one of those rock pillows a while back in a motel somewhere. As I remember there was a rock garden in the mattress also.
JACOB THE DREAMER & A TITHER
Jacob dreamed a spectacular dream that night & saw a stairway stretching from heaven to earth with angels walking up & down the ladder. Standing at the top of the ladder the Lord spoke to him promising protection for his journey. Gen. 28:13-15
The next morning Jacob took the stone he’d used as a pillow & poured oil on it & named the place Bethel, “the house of God.” Ever the pragmatist Jacob made a vow—if God comes through giving him food & clothes & lets him return home safely, then the Lord will be his God & he’ll give a tenth of his blessings to God.
When Jacob gets to his uncle Laban’s house, he finds out quickly that Laban is as big a crook & double-dealer as he is. Both these men would make good Las Vegas card sharks. Old Jake is about to get a dose of his own medicine.
Jacob is thunderstruck & falls in love with pretty Rachel the youngest daughter & Laban promises her to Jacob if he’ll work for him 7 years. Jacob becomes embroiled in a fierce tug of war between Rachel & the older less beautiful Leah & has eleven kids with them & their servants. He ends up working for Laban for 20 years & in his spare time manipulates the breeding of the flocks so that he has the strong cattle & Laban has the weak ones. That’s our boy!
Laban’s sons find out about the evil plan & tell their dad & the “fat’s in the fire.” Jacob slithers out of it by saying, --turn about is fair play.
THE STORY CONTINUES
Just before it’s too late God warns Jacob it’s time to leave & head back home so Jacob loads up, slips away & heads back to Canaan. Jacob leaves his uncle’s house a very rich man.
Laban is madder than an old wet-setting hen & pursues him & asks, “Why did you deceive me? You didn’t even let me say good-bye to my daughters & grandchildren.” At this point Jacob & Laban made a truce & set up stones as a boundary, promising they’d not pass this border to harm the other.
Laban made Jacob swear an oath not to mistreat his daughters or to take any other wives. Jacob complied. Laban kissed his family, blessed them & left for home.
Jacob now sends servants ahead to tell his brother Esau he was heading home. They return with some very interesting news. Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men.
At this point Jacob freaked & divided his company into two groups so Esau wouldn’t kill everyone. Jacob sent out three waves of gifts hoping they would somehow pacify Esau. In essence -giving him some of his money back.
All Jacob could do now was wait. That night he sent his wives, servants, all his possessions & 11 sons to the other side of the Jabbok River. This river was actually a boundary between Jacob’s old life & his new life.
He remained alone that night, camping under the stars.
Jacob had a lot to think about. He probably thought about his lies, his deceptions & his fears. He had to be worried sick that his brother Esau was going to kill him. He had no way of knowing he was going to wrestle with God all night long, until daybreak. Gen. 32:24-31.
JACOB’S LIFE NOW COMES FULL-CIRCLE
Jacob, who had wrestled with his brother Esau in the womb, wrestled with him all through childhood, had been wrestling with Laban for over 20 years, wrestled for position & power & wealth was going to have to wrestle with God.
God could have left a greasy spot where Jacob used to be but God doesn’t always do what He can do, He does what He wants to do. His intention wasn’t to kill Jacob but to change him.
But in this wrestling match we find one of the redeeming aspects of Jacob’s make-up; he wouldn’t let go of God. He refused to let go until he received a blessing.
Isn’t it true that often you & I give up too quick? We can learn something from Jacob. He would grab hold & refuse to quit until he was victorious. That night God changed Jacob. He even changed his name from Jacob to Israel.
After this encounter, Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. When he makes an appearance in Hebrews 11, he’s at the end of his life & still ….leaning on his staff.
The next day Jacob meets Esau by himself, bowing to the ground seven times. Esau ran to meet him & embraced him, threw his arms around his neck & kissed him. And they wept…..Gen.33:3-4.
Jacob, relieved & totally frazzled out by the events of the last hours looked his brother in the eye—“Now that you have received me favorably to see your face is like seeing the face of God.-Gen.33:10
This story isn’t one we can make come together in a tidy package, wrap up & put a bow on & feel really good about. Yes these brothers did meet & seemingly patch things up. But if you follow the story after this, they went their own way & never saw each other again; neither did they see their mother again. I’m sure they had to deal with feelings of hurt, anger & bitterness for years to come.
What we can be assured of is that God is bigger than all our problems & hard feelings. Nothing is ever beyond repair with God. If we’ll allow Him to, He’ll reconcile us amid the ashes & rubble of our brokenness. God loved Jacob, He loved Esau, He loved Isaac & He loved Rebekah.
And God loves you & me. He loves each of us through the imperfections & sins of our lives. God is merciful & gracious. We might not want to give people second & third chances when they hurt us but God does. As in the lives of those in this “soap opera,” God’s will is accomplished regardless of how much we try to mess it up.
I can’t understand every little detail & every facet of what Jacob’s life meant. I wish I had more answers. But actually, all I need to do is simply to marvel at the fact that God was, & is in control & knowing that means everything to me.
I’m sure that Jacob was haunted many times by the thought that someday his brother would hang him from the nearest tree & leave him for buzzard food. After all Esau had vowed to kill him.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED……
But a strange thing happened on the way to Jacob’s date with death; Esau’s heart was changed. Where there was bitterness there was now brotherly love. God’s tender mercies were working that day because God didn’t want to destroy, He wanted to reconcile.
God works on both ends of a situation. He not only worked all night on Jacob, he was working to change the heart & mind of Esau.
God showed Jacob, as He wants to show us through this story that regardless of the odds, & regardless of the way things might appear to be, He’s going to accomplish His ends, for our good & His glory. He doesn’t leave us to struggle through our problems alone.
If we believe that, what else matters?
Blessings,
John
I think the reason so many people enjoy Soap operas on T.V is they make them feel normal. Or perhaps they make them feel that others are having more problems than they are.
I can get the same feeling from the six-o’clock news or some movies for that matter.
If you like soap operas or if you just love a good story, you’re going to love this. As in the “soaps,” we need a reminder of what’s gone before….. so here it is.
God called Abraham & Sarah to leave their home country & head out to the far land of Canaan, taking with them the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars. But for decades Sarah was unable to bear children until finally the birth of Isaac.
Isaac was a late bloomer, who at forty was still living in the basement of his parent’s tent. Concerned about the future of the family lineage, Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to seek a bride for Isaac. He finds just the right one; a beautiful, generous, energetic & determined young lady named Rebekah. She responds to the stranger & agrees to go with him to a far away land to marry another stranger.
GOTTA LOVE THIS YOUNG WOMAN CALLED REBEKAH!
Isaac married Rebekah when he was 40 years old. Speaking of soap operas…. Rebekah too was barren- so Isaac asked the Lord to let her bear children.
Have you ever noticed how many women in the Bible struggled to have children? Mary the mother of Jesus was a notable exception of course. Rebekah, like her mother-in-law Sarah, like Hannah the mother of Samuel, like Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist, struggled with the reality that it was difficult for them to get pregnant.
God answered Isaac’s prayer & Rebekah got pregnant, but it was a difficult pregnancy. Twin boys were mixing it up inside her. In Genesis 25:22-23 when she inquired about this “young & restless” unborn duo, God answered; “you’re carrying two nations in your womb.”
These boys’ rambunctious little hands were already clawing at each other in Rebecca’s womb. They were at war before they saw the light of day.
The conflict goes on even to this day. Some say it’s the longest family feud in history.
Being a man, I can’t say much about the gynecological side of Sarah or Rebekah’s situation, [thank God] but I will make a theological comment. Isn’t it interesting that these were all women hand-picked by God to do His will in bringing the ones into the world He planned to use? But even though it was God’s will, still the process wasn’t easy. God wanted the babies to be born but it seemed so hard for them to get here.
Being willing to be used of God is a good thing but people often forget that being used of God has its struggles as well as its great blessings. Indeed, just because God is in a venture doesn’t necessarily guarantee smooth sailing. Paul got into a two-week storm on the high seas on his way to Rome.
When the twins, Jacob & Esau came out of the womb, one was red & the other was hairy. Jacob was grasping Esau’s heel. Jacob’s name actually means “Grabber” or “Supplanter.”
I don’t know if you saw the movie “Twins” with Arnold Schwarzenegger & Danny De Vito. Believe it or not in the movie the pair supposedly was twins. Jacob & Esau were a bit like that; all the testosterone seemed to go to Esau. He’s born covered with hair & loves the outdoors & was probably the captain of his high school football team. Esau was also a skillful hunter, a man of the open country. With him what you saw was what you got, & he probably wore his heart on his sleeve.
Jacob was an introvert, a quiet man preferring to stay among the tents & be near his momma. He preferred cooking to killing. He was a good cook, & loved doing needlework. He thoroughly enjoyed helping out around the house. But the kid was clever & ambitious. If he grew up today, he’d probably be big crossword puzzle guy, more of a chess player than a football player like Esau. Isn’t it interesting that all these thousands of years later we can recognize in these very different brothers people we know?
Papa Isaac loved wild game so Esau the hunter was his favorite son. Rebekah was partial to Jacob. If you’re like me you ask yourself, what kind of family was this, showing partiality & favoritism to one child over the other? Where in the world did these brothers come from anyway; one smooth & smart, the other strong & hairy?
This is a real family. This is a real mother & a real father. Maybe they’re like your parents. Maybe these words were often spoken; “Look how good your brother is doing in school. Don’t you think you’d be wise to model yourself after him a bit more?”
Family dynamics are subtle & hard to understand, let alone untangle. Back before we adopted such sophisticated words like dysfunctional, people just came out with the truth: Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
It didn’t mean that both the parents didn’t love both the boys; it just means they each had a favorite son.
THE SIN OF FAVORITISM IS EGREGIOUS
The sin of favoritism in this family is terrible & it wounded deeply just as it does in families today. Favoritism is about as brutal & blunt an object as a person can be pummeled with. The neglected or seemingly unwanted child will often spend a lifetime yearning & competing for the love of a parent.
Just as is always the case in a family breakdown, the real crunch-time came over something trivial. In the case of Jacob & Esau, it was a bowl of stew.
This whole scene might not have happened if Isaac had taken his responsibility as a parent & transferred the birthright earlier. God had told Rebekah even before the birth of the boys that… the older would serve the younger.
One day Esau came in from working in the field & he was famished. Jacob has been puttering around the kitchen & has come up with some great smelling stew. Esau says, “Give me some of that red stuff.” Jacob says, “its not red stuff its bourguignon & you can’t have any.” “But why not” says Esau, “I’m starving.”
Esau made the worst possible deal. In Philippians 3:19 the apostle Paul speaks of those
—whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, & whose glory is in their shame who mind earthly things.
Esau traded the eternal for the temporal, the spiritual for the physical, & the unseen for the seen! Losing his birthright cost Esau his standing among God’s people. In Hebrews 12:16-17
—lest there be any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of bread sold his birthright. For ye know that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place of repentance though he sought it carefully with tears.
Esau had no appreciation for what God was doing in his life. Life was about pleasure to Esau. Spiritual matters were a waste of time. Life was about pleasure.
JACOB-WHAT A GUY!
Watch carefully now as Jacob shows us his prowess in thinking on his feet. He’s a quick-witted opportunist. He’s neither afraid nor ashamed to take full advantage of the situation & he’s not above using deception & trickery.
But there’s something else. Jacob has been thinking about Esau’s birthright & what it meant. For one thing it meant he’d receive a double share of the inheritance which was intended for the eldest son. He also knows the promises that God made to Abraham & he values those promises.
But the birthright wasn’t all Jacob wanted. Not even close. I suspect that he wanted to be the one through whom the promises to Abraham would continue.
“O.K says Jacob, you give me your birthright, sign the family fortune over to me & make me the heir, make me the older brother—first born in the family & I’ll give you a little bowl of stew.”
Surely Esau is exaggerating about his hunger here. Surely he could have gotten food from one of the other tents. Maybe these brothers are still quite young & there’s an element of clowning around in what they’re doing. Maybe it starts out kidding but Jacob is deadly serious now.Whatever the exact dynamics are here, one thing we know is, Esau despised his birthright. He didn’t value it, at least not now. He was one of those people who lived for today -“for tomorrow we die.” He had no time for things like birthrights & the big picture in life. His attitude was—you can’t eat a covenant. Consequently, because Esau frivolously bartered away his birthright, the promise didn’t pass to the elder child of Isaac.
Strike one against Jacob. He has tricked his brother & taken something extremely valuable.
Isaac was old now & could no longer see so he called Esau to his bedside. “Go to the open country, kill some wild game & prepare me the tasty food I like so much so I can give you my blessing before I die” he said.
Rebekah overheard the conversation. She told her favorite son Jacob to get himself in gear fast & kill two choice goats so she can prepare her dying husband the meal the way she knows he likes it.
Jacob didn’t only want the birthright & a double portion of the family inheritance; he wanted his father’s blessing too. Jacob was crooked but not dumb. He knew the inheritance wasn’t his but he wanted it anyway. He knew that he came from a line that was promised by God to do great things.
Jacob takes the skins & covers his arms & chest with the hair so he can fool his father, thus pulling the rug out from under Esau, stealing the blessing given the oldest son---the family fortune.
Jacob fools his father & by deception gets Esau’s blessing. Jacob had hardly left his father’s tent when Esau came in with a sumptuous meal he’d prepared from the game he’d killed.
When Isaac & Esau realized they’d been duped, they both reacted violently. Papa Isaac trembled all over. He has been deceived by his youngest son. Something promised to his older son Esau. What must he have thought? How sickening this must have been for him. Esau burst out in a loud bitter cry, “Bless me, bless me too my father.” Esau wept loudly, “Please give me a blessing too.”-Gen.27:39-40
I think it could be safely said that most all who read this story will be able to relate because most all of us have been wronged & hurt by family at some point. It’s bad enough when a friend hurts us but family is supposed to be that “safe zone,” where everyone is there for one another & looks out for one another.
People get a little crazy when someone dies or is near death. It literally brings out the worst in people. Relationships have been broken with parents, children, & siblings many times over material things. Families will hurt one another to the point of splintering & fracturing beyond belief.
This sets Esau up with a grudge against his brother & his plan is to kill him. Everything is gone for him. He is wronged on so many levels. Rebekah gets wind of Esau’s intentions [have you noticed that Rebekah is the major player in this story?] & tells Jacob he’d better “get out of Dodge” -& quick.
She instructs Jacob to go 400 miles away to her brothers place, his uncle Laban & she’ll let him know when Esau is no longer mad at him. This will all blow over quickly. Right? Wrong!
On his way to Haran where his uncle lived, Jacob stopped to sleep one night, using a stone for a pillow. I think I used one of those rock pillows a while back in a motel somewhere. As I remember there was a rock garden in the mattress also.
JACOB THE DREAMER & A TITHER
Jacob dreamed a spectacular dream that night & saw a stairway stretching from heaven to earth with angels walking up & down the ladder. Standing at the top of the ladder the Lord spoke to him promising protection for his journey. Gen. 28:13-15
The next morning Jacob took the stone he’d used as a pillow & poured oil on it & named the place Bethel, “the house of God.” Ever the pragmatist Jacob made a vow—if God comes through giving him food & clothes & lets him return home safely, then the Lord will be his God & he’ll give a tenth of his blessings to God.
When Jacob gets to his uncle Laban’s house, he finds out quickly that Laban is as big a crook & double-dealer as he is. Both these men would make good Las Vegas card sharks. Old Jake is about to get a dose of his own medicine.
Jacob is thunderstruck & falls in love with pretty Rachel the youngest daughter & Laban promises her to Jacob if he’ll work for him 7 years. Jacob becomes embroiled in a fierce tug of war between Rachel & the older less beautiful Leah & has eleven kids with them & their servants. He ends up working for Laban for 20 years & in his spare time manipulates the breeding of the flocks so that he has the strong cattle & Laban has the weak ones. That’s our boy!
Laban’s sons find out about the evil plan & tell their dad & the “fat’s in the fire.” Jacob slithers out of it by saying, --turn about is fair play.
THE STORY CONTINUES
Just before it’s too late God warns Jacob it’s time to leave & head back home so Jacob loads up, slips away & heads back to Canaan. Jacob leaves his uncle’s house a very rich man.
Laban is madder than an old wet-setting hen & pursues him & asks, “Why did you deceive me? You didn’t even let me say good-bye to my daughters & grandchildren.” At this point Jacob & Laban made a truce & set up stones as a boundary, promising they’d not pass this border to harm the other.
Laban made Jacob swear an oath not to mistreat his daughters or to take any other wives. Jacob complied. Laban kissed his family, blessed them & left for home.
Jacob now sends servants ahead to tell his brother Esau he was heading home. They return with some very interesting news. Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men.
At this point Jacob freaked & divided his company into two groups so Esau wouldn’t kill everyone. Jacob sent out three waves of gifts hoping they would somehow pacify Esau. In essence -giving him some of his money back.
All Jacob could do now was wait. That night he sent his wives, servants, all his possessions & 11 sons to the other side of the Jabbok River. This river was actually a boundary between Jacob’s old life & his new life.
He remained alone that night, camping under the stars.
Jacob had a lot to think about. He probably thought about his lies, his deceptions & his fears. He had to be worried sick that his brother Esau was going to kill him. He had no way of knowing he was going to wrestle with God all night long, until daybreak. Gen. 32:24-31.
JACOB’S LIFE NOW COMES FULL-CIRCLE
Jacob, who had wrestled with his brother Esau in the womb, wrestled with him all through childhood, had been wrestling with Laban for over 20 years, wrestled for position & power & wealth was going to have to wrestle with God.
God could have left a greasy spot where Jacob used to be but God doesn’t always do what He can do, He does what He wants to do. His intention wasn’t to kill Jacob but to change him.
But in this wrestling match we find one of the redeeming aspects of Jacob’s make-up; he wouldn’t let go of God. He refused to let go until he received a blessing.
Isn’t it true that often you & I give up too quick? We can learn something from Jacob. He would grab hold & refuse to quit until he was victorious. That night God changed Jacob. He even changed his name from Jacob to Israel.
After this encounter, Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. When he makes an appearance in Hebrews 11, he’s at the end of his life & still ….leaning on his staff.
The next day Jacob meets Esau by himself, bowing to the ground seven times. Esau ran to meet him & embraced him, threw his arms around his neck & kissed him. And they wept…..Gen.33:3-4.
Jacob, relieved & totally frazzled out by the events of the last hours looked his brother in the eye—“Now that you have received me favorably to see your face is like seeing the face of God.-Gen.33:10
This story isn’t one we can make come together in a tidy package, wrap up & put a bow on & feel really good about. Yes these brothers did meet & seemingly patch things up. But if you follow the story after this, they went their own way & never saw each other again; neither did they see their mother again. I’m sure they had to deal with feelings of hurt, anger & bitterness for years to come.
What we can be assured of is that God is bigger than all our problems & hard feelings. Nothing is ever beyond repair with God. If we’ll allow Him to, He’ll reconcile us amid the ashes & rubble of our brokenness. God loved Jacob, He loved Esau, He loved Isaac & He loved Rebekah.
And God loves you & me. He loves each of us through the imperfections & sins of our lives. God is merciful & gracious. We might not want to give people second & third chances when they hurt us but God does. As in the lives of those in this “soap opera,” God’s will is accomplished regardless of how much we try to mess it up.
I can’t understand every little detail & every facet of what Jacob’s life meant. I wish I had more answers. But actually, all I need to do is simply to marvel at the fact that God was, & is in control & knowing that means everything to me.
I’m sure that Jacob was haunted many times by the thought that someday his brother would hang him from the nearest tree & leave him for buzzard food. After all Esau had vowed to kill him.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED……
But a strange thing happened on the way to Jacob’s date with death; Esau’s heart was changed. Where there was bitterness there was now brotherly love. God’s tender mercies were working that day because God didn’t want to destroy, He wanted to reconcile.
God works on both ends of a situation. He not only worked all night on Jacob, he was working to change the heart & mind of Esau.
God showed Jacob, as He wants to show us through this story that regardless of the odds, & regardless of the way things might appear to be, He’s going to accomplish His ends, for our good & His glory. He doesn’t leave us to struggle through our problems alone.
If we believe that, what else matters?
Blessings,
John
Monday, June 15, 2015
When God Does A Quick Work
By John Stallings
A 25 year old man had just ascended to the throne to become Judah’s 13th king. His name was Hezekiah. He was a high-caliber young man, but he lacked experience. Unbelievable challenges loomed large in his path.
To really understand the importance of this young man we must look at the times he lived in. The Assyrians from Nineveh ruled most of the Middle East. There were continual wars between them & the Egyptians for territory.
Israel & Judah were separate & Israel was known as Samaria at this time. They even warred between themselves occasionally. Hezekiah lived & reigned in a time when the very existence of Judah was threatened. The nation was blessed with a dynamic duo; the righteous king Hezekiah & an outstanding Hebrew prophet named Isaiah at this critical point in its history.
But let’s back up a bit. Ahaz, the king before Hezekiah, was a nasty piece of work who left no happy tracks. They don’t come worse than this guy. Mean, wicked & evil are words that come to mind in describing king Ahaz. This added to the seriousness of Hezekiah’s situation.
Ahaz made images of Baals & burned incense to them. He even offered his son up in the fire to these Gods. In him we see the attitude & actions of a man far from the Lord. But better things lie ahead for the people of Judah. You might say Ahaz is the “darkness before the dawn.”
The Bible gets right to the point doesn’t it? In 2 Chronicles 28:1-4 we’re taken straight into the depths of Ahaz’s depravity. If we were using New Testament language, we’d say, “He reaped what he sowed.” God allowed many nations to attack & humble Judah because of Ahaz’ wickedness.
Part of the story is in 2 Kings 16:7-11. With enemies all around him, Ahaz reached out to the King of Assyria & said, “I’m your servant…come & save me!” What Ahaz should have done was to ask this of the Lord, but he didn’t. Do you see any parallels here with our great nation? Are we making God number one or are we leaning on the arm of flesh?
Ahaz even went to Damascus to meet the king of Assyria & started to copy his altars. He made Urijah the priest copy the plans & reconstruct the alter back in the temple in Jerusalem. God had already given instructions as to how He wanted worship to be conducted but this man was following the world & worshipping false gods. The king of Assyria even turned against Ahaz & he now entered his “time of trouble.”
SHUTTING DOWN THE TEMPLE
The ultimate act of rebellion came when Ahaz closed the temple. 2 Chron.28:24;
And Ahaz gathered together the utensils of the house of God & cut the utensils in pieces. He shut the doors of the Lord’s temple & set up alters at every street corner in Jerusalem. In every town in Judah he built high places to burn sacrifices to other Gods & provoked the Lord, the God of his fathers to anger.
We see finally the actions of king Ahaz in cutting up the temple utensils & locking the doors so that no one could worship God. I wonder if America hasn’t made the same mistake when we’ve relegated God’s Word & ways to the dust-bin & replaced Him with other gods.
2 Chronicles 28:27says;
Ahaz rested with his fathers & was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And Hezekiah his son succeeded him as king.
Ahaz wasn’t buried with the other kings of Israel & he deserved exactly what he got. As dark as this period has been however, again, it’s the ‘dark before dawn.” Change was coming!
TO BE FAIR, AHAZ LEFT ONE THING BEHIND; --- HE GAVE THE WORLD A GREAT SON, --HEZEKIAH.
When we look at Hezekiah’s life & heritage, we see he broke the family mould. We tend to think that sons are always like their fathers but here we see that challenged. It’s a relief to see that the transmission of character doesn’t always operate. We could look at some marital unions & feel the world would be better off if they never multiplied, but thankfully in many cases sons aren’t always like their fathers.
When we look at the long history of Israel we see this dynamic played out often. For instance, Ahab, the wimp married to Jezebel, was the son of a very godly father & the father of a godly son. Hezekiah, a godly man, was the son of an evil father. But he was also the father of an evil son, Manasseh who was probably the worst king on record. But Manasseh was the grandfather of Josiah, one of Judah’s most godly kings. So there you go.
At an age when many young men are eager to gratify their fleshly desires, it’s evident that young Hezekiah wanted to please the Lord. Though his family lineage was unfavorable, he was a righteous man & he called God’s people back to true worship.
God was angry with the people of Judah & Jerusalem & He punished them. They were losing their battles & many of the people had been taken away by the enemy. They had become an object of ridicule. But change is coming.
In the first month of the first year of Hezekiah’s reign, the young monarch opened the doors of the temple & repaired them. For years the House of God had been unused & deserted. He brought in the priests & Levites & gathered them in the courtyard on the east side of the temple. Only the priests were to go into the holy apartments, so for the work to go on, the religious leaders had to participate.
However, the priests had let impurities into their lives & into their temple. They had been unfaithful to God & had done what God said was wrong. Consequently, they had to re-consecrate themselves to be ready to serve the Lord & make the temple a holy place again.
A PRIORITY IN HEZEKIAH’S CHANGES
Notice, Hezekiah didn’t deal first with the civil problems of his kingdom. He had the wisdom to realize if he was going to improve things, he’d have to first deal with Judah’s spiritual condition.
Are you seeing the relevance to us today? America has problems, & our problems are getting worse not better. Our politicians are telling us change is needed. Here’s a new concept that should be old; change must begin within the human heart. When I was just a boy I can remember my parents taking me to hear Billy Graham. I can hear him almost like it was yesterday uttering these words; “America needs revival & it has to start in our hearts.” It’s still true!
The church must be the leader of this change because a nation will only be as strong as its churches.
Judah’s priests responded to Hezekiah & sanctified themselves & went in to clean up the house of God. They brought all the trash into the courtyard & the Levites picked it up & took it out & dumped it by the brook Kidron. For 8 days they worked on cleaning out the temple & for 8 more days they cleaned the rest of the buildings. The various instruments used in the sanctuary services were also cleaned & sanctified.
Hezekiah rose up early, gathered the rulers of the city & went up to the house of the Lord. He had brought 7 bulls, 7 lambs, & 7 male goats for sin offerings for the sanctuary & for Judah. The bulls, rams, & lambs were sacrificed & their blood sprinkled on the alter. Then the male goats were brought out to the congregation & starting with the king, each person confessed their sins over the heads of the goats by laying hands on their heads. Then these goats were killed to make atonement & their blood was presented as a sin offering for all the sins of Judah.
It was a joyous time in Jerusalem. Hezekiah encouraged the people to bring individual sacrifices to the Lord as many as were of a willing heart. There was one sad thing that day; there were too few priests so the Levites had to help until enough priests made themselves ready.
THIS CHANGE HAPPENED QUICKLY
2 Chronicles 29:36 says, --The thing was done suddenly.
It doesn’t take long when people decide to really make a change.
Notice again the sequence of events that happened under the leadership of Hezekiah:
1. The king declares he wants to make a covenant with God.
2. There is an opening of the doors & cleaning of the temple along with the cleansing of the priests & Levites.
3. There was a restoration of worship in the temple.
4. There was a cleansing of a nation & a voluntary spontaneous outpouring of love for the Lord. Gifts & offerings were brought that the temple might be set in order.
So it’s clear that Hezekiah restored worship in Israel on a scale that had never before been seen. The memory of the success of his godly grandfather Jotham & the unmitigated failure of his evil father Ahaz drove him to dedicate his career to instituting a revival of worship among his people. What a sight to see this young man of God at the threshold of his reign, leading a people who’re willing to be led in national revival.
WE SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED BY THIS STORY
This story shows no matter how far the decline has taken a nation, a home, a church, or an individual; nothing is too hard for the Lord. Do you believe that? We might very well be a part of the Laodicean church but I still believe God can revive His people. We’ve seen it in the past & God can do it again in the present. We should never lose hope for our great nation & its people no matter how bad things are.
BUT TROUBLE AGAIN DOGS HEZEKIAH’S STEPS
Hezekiah was a man of courage. He had reinstated spiritual worship in Jerusalem & smashed the pagan alters & images that dotted the rolling hills of Judah. But if you turn to 2 Chronicles 32: 1, you’ll find that after all he’d done for his people & for true worship of God, Sennacherib, king of Assyria came & invaded Judah.
Sometimes when we’ve done all we know to please God, testing will still come our way. Here is a man who has done things right up to this point but God is testing him further. The vicious, barbaric armies are coming to attack & Jerusalem is about to fall. What would you do? How would you face this situation? Well Hezekiah faced it with courage, not only for himself, but he finds the strength to lift up the hearts of God’s people, his own soldiers & warriors.
Hezekiah tells his people to- “be strong & courageous. Be not afraid or dismayed for the king of Assyria nor for all the multitude that is with him.
When you & I are courageous we’ll also be encouraging to others. Sennacherib sent a threatening letter to Hezekiah trying to scare him into surrendering. Do you know what Hezekiah did with the letter?
HE SPREAD THE LETTER OUT BEFORE THE LORD-2 Kings 19:14.
Isn’t that humbling? After Hezekiah prayed, he went to bed & slept the sleep of the righteous. While Hezekiah was sleeping, God visited the Assyrian army & killed 185,000 of them. Hezekiah knew he didn’t have an army large enough to beat these barbarians so he just put it in God’s hands & God killed 185,000 warriors in one night. What a test & what a triumph of this man of prayer.
BUT ANOTHER TEST IS COMING FOR HEZEKIAH
If you turn to 2 Kings Chapter 20, you see that Hezekiah falls desperately ill. After all these victories, God tells him to –Set thine house in order for thou shalt die & not live.
Now Hezekiah finds himself in more hot water, so to speak. At mid-life, in his prime, he finds himself sick, probably the bubonic plague. He’s terminal. He doesn’t know exactly how sick he is but here comes the prophet Isaiah with a bedside manner that would get him a big F in any pastoral care class. His prognosis is from the Great Physician Himself, God. He said in essence, “You’re not going to walk out of here. Don’t buy any green bananas. With what you’ve got your chances are zero! Set your house in order.”
In the last few years we’ve seen so many world-wide tragedies. Multitudes have suddenly & unexpectedly died in earthquakes, storms, fires, floods & war. Were their houses in order? Is your house in order? There are no guarantees of tomorrow.
To put it simply, life had caved in for Hezekiah. He’d been handed nothing less that a death sentence. He was now on death row. But he doesn’t relinquish himself to death. He looks death in the eye & tackles it head-on. In other words, Hezekiah prays. That’s exactly what we need to do when we’re face to face with our own brokenness & the brokenness of this world.
PRAY!!!
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall & prayed for God to give him more time. He poured out his heart for the continuance of his life. He asks God for a second opinion & he gets it.
I heard about a man whose doctor told him he was grossly overweight. The man got agitated & said, “Well, I want a second opinion.” The doctor said, “Alright you’re ugly too.” Another man asked his doctor for a second opinion & he said, “O.k., come back tomorrow.”
GOD DOES A QUICK WORK!
I don’t know what was in Hezekiah’s heart. I do know he was only 39 years old & probably had much unfinished work he wanted to complete. How astonishingly fast his prayer got an answer. Isaiah had just delivered the news of his impending death & hadn’t even gotten out of the palace when Hezekiah’s prayer is heard in the courts of heaven. God told Isaiah to go back & tell the king he had 15 more years to live.
God also gave Hezekiah a sign causing the shadow to go back on the sundial ten degrees. The sun-dial was the instrument by which the king might know the time of day because obviously there were no clocks as we have now. Hezekiah asked that the shadow might go backward so Isaiah prayed & the shadow moved backward ten degrees. God also promised to protect the city of Jerusalem.
We read in Isaiah 38 the great Psalm of thanksgiving that arose from Hezekiah’s heart for this momentous answer to prayer in his life. What a man of prayer!!!
Politician Phil Gramm recently said in essence that we American’s are a nation of whiners, not seeing the great things we have going for us. People jumped down Gramm’s throat including McCain, & he probably faces political exile for saying it, but I tended to agree with him. We are “Whining & dining” enjoying the good things God has blessed us with but not seeing how really blessed we are. [I might be sent to Belarus for saying this. Kidding!]
Don’t misunderstand me here. Yes we have problems, but we should follow this man Hezekiah’s example & instead of going to cry on someone’s shoulder, go straight to God with our petitions. While we’re at it we could also follow the example Jesus set in His prayer life.
WAS HEZEKIAH’S HEALING IN THE PERFECT OR PERMISSIVE WILL OF GOD?
For years I’ve heard Bible students debate whether or not Hezekiah should have prayed for God to heal him. We know that when Israel was in the wilderness, God gave them their request but sent leanness to their souls. Psalm 106:15.
Those who say Hezekiah shouldn’t have lived longer point to the fact that he had children during those extra 15 years & one of them was Manasseh, Judah’s most wicked king; Even though he repented in 2 Chronicles 33. Other scholars believe
That when God said, “set your house in order” that literally meant, “Pick out a man to succeed you on the throne.” God had promised that Judah would always have a descendant of David on the throne therefore Hezekiah was actually holding on to the promise of God & pleading his case that he would live & have a son to fulfill this promise.
Also, though Manasseh was a bad king, he had a grandson named Josiah, one of the greatest kings & reformers Judah ever knew. Also if you turn to Proverbs 25, you’ll read of “the men of Hezekiah.” The men of Hezekiah were a group of scribes, whose job it was to copy Old Testament scriptures & put them in order. The order of some of our Old Testament books & chapters that we actually have in our Bible today goes back to the men of Hezekiah. Some of those Psalms are put together to commemorate Hezekiah’s recovery from sickness.
AS FAR AS I KNOW, BESIDES JESUS, HEZEKIAH IS THE ONLY MAN WHO KNEW HOW MUCH TIME WAS ALLOTTED TO HIM ON THIS EARTH.
If you knew you were going to die in a few days or weeks what would you do. How would you spend that time? That’s an awesome question is it not?
Whatever the answer to the question of whether Hezekiah should have prayed to God for the elongation of his life, the fact of the matter is that he put those years to good use. He made some mistakes, [that’s another message,] but I believe that much of his 15 years were used wisely.
If you were going to die in a short time how would you go about getting ready to go? Would you need to put your house in order regarding your personal salvation? What sort of changes would you be compelled to make?
Ladies & gentlemen, we’re dealing with a God of love & a God who catches our tears in a bottle. He hears our prayers & He cares. As this story underscores, we serve a miracle working, healing God. What a joy & a privilege to serve a God like that.
God not only offers 15 more years, as he did with Hezekiah, He offers us all eternal life if we trust in His word & call on His name. If there’s to be change of any consequence in our nation it must start with a humble position of our hearts before God.
The God who didn’t balk at Hezekiah’s request won’t balk when we pray for ourselves, our families & our beloved nation. He wants to help us but He wants us to turn to Him in faith believing nothing is impossible.
We see in the example of Hezekiah that the key to an honorable life is to humble ourselves before God & obey Him.
Just as God was willing to throw His massive solar system in reverse for Hezekiah, He’ll do it for us when we turn to Him in prayer.
Blessings,
To really understand the importance of this young man we must look at the times he lived in. The Assyrians from Nineveh ruled most of the Middle East. There were continual wars between them & the Egyptians for territory.
Israel & Judah were separate & Israel was known as Samaria at this time. They even warred between themselves occasionally. Hezekiah lived & reigned in a time when the very existence of Judah was threatened. The nation was blessed with a dynamic duo; the righteous king Hezekiah & an outstanding Hebrew prophet named Isaiah at this critical point in its history.
But let’s back up a bit. Ahaz, the king before Hezekiah, was a nasty piece of work who left no happy tracks. They don’t come worse than this guy. Mean, wicked & evil are words that come to mind in describing king Ahaz. This added to the seriousness of Hezekiah’s situation.
Ahaz made images of Baals & burned incense to them. He even offered his son up in the fire to these Gods. In him we see the attitude & actions of a man far from the Lord. But better things lie ahead for the people of Judah. You might say Ahaz is the “darkness before the dawn.”
The Bible gets right to the point doesn’t it? In 2 Chronicles 28:1-4 we’re taken straight into the depths of Ahaz’s depravity. If we were using New Testament language, we’d say, “He reaped what he sowed.” God allowed many nations to attack & humble Judah because of Ahaz’ wickedness.
Part of the story is in 2 Kings 16:7-11. With enemies all around him, Ahaz reached out to the King of Assyria & said, “I’m your servant…come & save me!” What Ahaz should have done was to ask this of the Lord, but he didn’t. Do you see any parallels here with our great nation? Are we making God number one or are we leaning on the arm of flesh?
Ahaz even went to Damascus to meet the king of Assyria & started to copy his altars. He made Urijah the priest copy the plans & reconstruct the alter back in the temple in Jerusalem. God had already given instructions as to how He wanted worship to be conducted but this man was following the world & worshipping false gods. The king of Assyria even turned against Ahaz & he now entered his “time of trouble.”
SHUTTING DOWN THE TEMPLE
The ultimate act of rebellion came when Ahaz closed the temple. 2 Chron.28:24;
And Ahaz gathered together the utensils of the house of God & cut the utensils in pieces. He shut the doors of the Lord’s temple & set up alters at every street corner in Jerusalem. In every town in Judah he built high places to burn sacrifices to other Gods & provoked the Lord, the God of his fathers to anger.
We see finally the actions of king Ahaz in cutting up the temple utensils & locking the doors so that no one could worship God. I wonder if America hasn’t made the same mistake when we’ve relegated God’s Word & ways to the dust-bin & replaced Him with other gods.
2 Chronicles 28:27says;
Ahaz rested with his fathers & was buried in the city of Jerusalem, but he was not placed in the tombs of the kings of Israel. And Hezekiah his son succeeded him as king.
Ahaz wasn’t buried with the other kings of Israel & he deserved exactly what he got. As dark as this period has been however, again, it’s the ‘dark before dawn.” Change was coming!
TO BE FAIR, AHAZ LEFT ONE THING BEHIND; --- HE GAVE THE WORLD A GREAT SON, --HEZEKIAH.
When we look at Hezekiah’s life & heritage, we see he broke the family mould. We tend to think that sons are always like their fathers but here we see that challenged. It’s a relief to see that the transmission of character doesn’t always operate. We could look at some marital unions & feel the world would be better off if they never multiplied, but thankfully in many cases sons aren’t always like their fathers.
When we look at the long history of Israel we see this dynamic played out often. For instance, Ahab, the wimp married to Jezebel, was the son of a very godly father & the father of a godly son. Hezekiah, a godly man, was the son of an evil father. But he was also the father of an evil son, Manasseh who was probably the worst king on record. But Manasseh was the grandfather of Josiah, one of Judah’s most godly kings. So there you go.
At an age when many young men are eager to gratify their fleshly desires, it’s evident that young Hezekiah wanted to please the Lord. Though his family lineage was unfavorable, he was a righteous man & he called God’s people back to true worship.
God was angry with the people of Judah & Jerusalem & He punished them. They were losing their battles & many of the people had been taken away by the enemy. They had become an object of ridicule. But change is coming.
In the first month of the first year of Hezekiah’s reign, the young monarch opened the doors of the temple & repaired them. For years the House of God had been unused & deserted. He brought in the priests & Levites & gathered them in the courtyard on the east side of the temple. Only the priests were to go into the holy apartments, so for the work to go on, the religious leaders had to participate.
However, the priests had let impurities into their lives & into their temple. They had been unfaithful to God & had done what God said was wrong. Consequently, they had to re-consecrate themselves to be ready to serve the Lord & make the temple a holy place again.
A PRIORITY IN HEZEKIAH’S CHANGES
Notice, Hezekiah didn’t deal first with the civil problems of his kingdom. He had the wisdom to realize if he was going to improve things, he’d have to first deal with Judah’s spiritual condition.
Are you seeing the relevance to us today? America has problems, & our problems are getting worse not better. Our politicians are telling us change is needed. Here’s a new concept that should be old; change must begin within the human heart. When I was just a boy I can remember my parents taking me to hear Billy Graham. I can hear him almost like it was yesterday uttering these words; “America needs revival & it has to start in our hearts.” It’s still true!
The church must be the leader of this change because a nation will only be as strong as its churches.
Judah’s priests responded to Hezekiah & sanctified themselves & went in to clean up the house of God. They brought all the trash into the courtyard & the Levites picked it up & took it out & dumped it by the brook Kidron. For 8 days they worked on cleaning out the temple & for 8 more days they cleaned the rest of the buildings. The various instruments used in the sanctuary services were also cleaned & sanctified.
Hezekiah rose up early, gathered the rulers of the city & went up to the house of the Lord. He had brought 7 bulls, 7 lambs, & 7 male goats for sin offerings for the sanctuary & for Judah. The bulls, rams, & lambs were sacrificed & their blood sprinkled on the alter. Then the male goats were brought out to the congregation & starting with the king, each person confessed their sins over the heads of the goats by laying hands on their heads. Then these goats were killed to make atonement & their blood was presented as a sin offering for all the sins of Judah.
It was a joyous time in Jerusalem. Hezekiah encouraged the people to bring individual sacrifices to the Lord as many as were of a willing heart. There was one sad thing that day; there were too few priests so the Levites had to help until enough priests made themselves ready.
THIS CHANGE HAPPENED QUICKLY
2 Chronicles 29:36 says, --The thing was done suddenly.
It doesn’t take long when people decide to really make a change.
Notice again the sequence of events that happened under the leadership of Hezekiah:
1. The king declares he wants to make a covenant with God.
2. There is an opening of the doors & cleaning of the temple along with the cleansing of the priests & Levites.
3. There was a restoration of worship in the temple.
4. There was a cleansing of a nation & a voluntary spontaneous outpouring of love for the Lord. Gifts & offerings were brought that the temple might be set in order.
So it’s clear that Hezekiah restored worship in Israel on a scale that had never before been seen. The memory of the success of his godly grandfather Jotham & the unmitigated failure of his evil father Ahaz drove him to dedicate his career to instituting a revival of worship among his people. What a sight to see this young man of God at the threshold of his reign, leading a people who’re willing to be led in national revival.
WE SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED BY THIS STORY
This story shows no matter how far the decline has taken a nation, a home, a church, or an individual; nothing is too hard for the Lord. Do you believe that? We might very well be a part of the Laodicean church but I still believe God can revive His people. We’ve seen it in the past & God can do it again in the present. We should never lose hope for our great nation & its people no matter how bad things are.
BUT TROUBLE AGAIN DOGS HEZEKIAH’S STEPS
Hezekiah was a man of courage. He had reinstated spiritual worship in Jerusalem & smashed the pagan alters & images that dotted the rolling hills of Judah. But if you turn to 2 Chronicles 32: 1, you’ll find that after all he’d done for his people & for true worship of God, Sennacherib, king of Assyria came & invaded Judah.
Sometimes when we’ve done all we know to please God, testing will still come our way. Here is a man who has done things right up to this point but God is testing him further. The vicious, barbaric armies are coming to attack & Jerusalem is about to fall. What would you do? How would you face this situation? Well Hezekiah faced it with courage, not only for himself, but he finds the strength to lift up the hearts of God’s people, his own soldiers & warriors.
Hezekiah tells his people to- “be strong & courageous. Be not afraid or dismayed for the king of Assyria nor for all the multitude that is with him.
When you & I are courageous we’ll also be encouraging to others. Sennacherib sent a threatening letter to Hezekiah trying to scare him into surrendering. Do you know what Hezekiah did with the letter?
HE SPREAD THE LETTER OUT BEFORE THE LORD-2 Kings 19:14.
Isn’t that humbling? After Hezekiah prayed, he went to bed & slept the sleep of the righteous. While Hezekiah was sleeping, God visited the Assyrian army & killed 185,000 of them. Hezekiah knew he didn’t have an army large enough to beat these barbarians so he just put it in God’s hands & God killed 185,000 warriors in one night. What a test & what a triumph of this man of prayer.
BUT ANOTHER TEST IS COMING FOR HEZEKIAH
If you turn to 2 Kings Chapter 20, you see that Hezekiah falls desperately ill. After all these victories, God tells him to –Set thine house in order for thou shalt die & not live.
Now Hezekiah finds himself in more hot water, so to speak. At mid-life, in his prime, he finds himself sick, probably the bubonic plague. He’s terminal. He doesn’t know exactly how sick he is but here comes the prophet Isaiah with a bedside manner that would get him a big F in any pastoral care class. His prognosis is from the Great Physician Himself, God. He said in essence, “You’re not going to walk out of here. Don’t buy any green bananas. With what you’ve got your chances are zero! Set your house in order.”
In the last few years we’ve seen so many world-wide tragedies. Multitudes have suddenly & unexpectedly died in earthquakes, storms, fires, floods & war. Were their houses in order? Is your house in order? There are no guarantees of tomorrow.
To put it simply, life had caved in for Hezekiah. He’d been handed nothing less that a death sentence. He was now on death row. But he doesn’t relinquish himself to death. He looks death in the eye & tackles it head-on. In other words, Hezekiah prays. That’s exactly what we need to do when we’re face to face with our own brokenness & the brokenness of this world.
PRAY!!!
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall & prayed for God to give him more time. He poured out his heart for the continuance of his life. He asks God for a second opinion & he gets it.
I heard about a man whose doctor told him he was grossly overweight. The man got agitated & said, “Well, I want a second opinion.” The doctor said, “Alright you’re ugly too.” Another man asked his doctor for a second opinion & he said, “O.k., come back tomorrow.”
GOD DOES A QUICK WORK!
I don’t know what was in Hezekiah’s heart. I do know he was only 39 years old & probably had much unfinished work he wanted to complete. How astonishingly fast his prayer got an answer. Isaiah had just delivered the news of his impending death & hadn’t even gotten out of the palace when Hezekiah’s prayer is heard in the courts of heaven. God told Isaiah to go back & tell the king he had 15 more years to live.
God also gave Hezekiah a sign causing the shadow to go back on the sundial ten degrees. The sun-dial was the instrument by which the king might know the time of day because obviously there were no clocks as we have now. Hezekiah asked that the shadow might go backward so Isaiah prayed & the shadow moved backward ten degrees. God also promised to protect the city of Jerusalem.
We read in Isaiah 38 the great Psalm of thanksgiving that arose from Hezekiah’s heart for this momentous answer to prayer in his life. What a man of prayer!!!
Politician Phil Gramm recently said in essence that we American’s are a nation of whiners, not seeing the great things we have going for us. People jumped down Gramm’s throat including McCain, & he probably faces political exile for saying it, but I tended to agree with him. We are “Whining & dining” enjoying the good things God has blessed us with but not seeing how really blessed we are. [I might be sent to Belarus for saying this. Kidding!]
Don’t misunderstand me here. Yes we have problems, but we should follow this man Hezekiah’s example & instead of going to cry on someone’s shoulder, go straight to God with our petitions. While we’re at it we could also follow the example Jesus set in His prayer life.
WAS HEZEKIAH’S HEALING IN THE PERFECT OR PERMISSIVE WILL OF GOD?
For years I’ve heard Bible students debate whether or not Hezekiah should have prayed for God to heal him. We know that when Israel was in the wilderness, God gave them their request but sent leanness to their souls. Psalm 106:15.
Those who say Hezekiah shouldn’t have lived longer point to the fact that he had children during those extra 15 years & one of them was Manasseh, Judah’s most wicked king; Even though he repented in 2 Chronicles 33. Other scholars believe
That when God said, “set your house in order” that literally meant, “Pick out a man to succeed you on the throne.” God had promised that Judah would always have a descendant of David on the throne therefore Hezekiah was actually holding on to the promise of God & pleading his case that he would live & have a son to fulfill this promise.
Also, though Manasseh was a bad king, he had a grandson named Josiah, one of the greatest kings & reformers Judah ever knew. Also if you turn to Proverbs 25, you’ll read of “the men of Hezekiah.” The men of Hezekiah were a group of scribes, whose job it was to copy Old Testament scriptures & put them in order. The order of some of our Old Testament books & chapters that we actually have in our Bible today goes back to the men of Hezekiah. Some of those Psalms are put together to commemorate Hezekiah’s recovery from sickness.
AS FAR AS I KNOW, BESIDES JESUS, HEZEKIAH IS THE ONLY MAN WHO KNEW HOW MUCH TIME WAS ALLOTTED TO HIM ON THIS EARTH.
If you knew you were going to die in a few days or weeks what would you do. How would you spend that time? That’s an awesome question is it not?
Whatever the answer to the question of whether Hezekiah should have prayed to God for the elongation of his life, the fact of the matter is that he put those years to good use. He made some mistakes, [that’s another message,] but I believe that much of his 15 years were used wisely.
If you were going to die in a short time how would you go about getting ready to go? Would you need to put your house in order regarding your personal salvation? What sort of changes would you be compelled to make?
Ladies & gentlemen, we’re dealing with a God of love & a God who catches our tears in a bottle. He hears our prayers & He cares. As this story underscores, we serve a miracle working, healing God. What a joy & a privilege to serve a God like that.
God not only offers 15 more years, as he did with Hezekiah, He offers us all eternal life if we trust in His word & call on His name. If there’s to be change of any consequence in our nation it must start with a humble position of our hearts before God.
The God who didn’t balk at Hezekiah’s request won’t balk when we pray for ourselves, our families & our beloved nation. He wants to help us but He wants us to turn to Him in faith believing nothing is impossible.
We see in the example of Hezekiah that the key to an honorable life is to humble ourselves before God & obey Him.
Just as God was willing to throw His massive solar system in reverse for Hezekiah, He’ll do it for us when we turn to Him in prayer.
Blessings,
John
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
The Husband God Honors
By John Stallings
When a young man stands in front of the preacher at the time of marriage, it’s not at all certain what kind of husband that young man will eventually be.
As the years pass and the stresses and strains of life come, he might show himself to be selfish, egotistical, a “ne’er-do-well” when it comes to being a provider, a tyrant or “petty dictator,” or one who’ll never have much time or concern for the welfare of his family. As the years go by it’s possible that he may prove to be a physical or verbal abuser, or even an unfaithful philanderer.
But while all this is possible, it’s also possible that he’ll become a fine, devoted Christian husband and father. It’s this last one that we choose to believe.
I have been that young man, barely 21 years old, standing in front of the preacher with my soon to be bride. I’ve also, more times than I could count been the pastor standing there to unite two young people in holy union and see them set sail on the seas of matrimony.
One thing is for sure, the most burning question at that moment in time is; “are you ready?” The boy, just out of his teens has a lot to learn in order to be the kind of husband God wants him to be. Another sure thing is; this young man will have to grow and keep growing if he is to be equal to the task of being a Christian husband and father.
The greatest thing about this day is that this young man will now be trusted with one of the most tremendous privileges in life; to be the head of one of God’s families. Among his responsibilities will be…
TO LOVE HIS WIFE MORE THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN ON EARTH.
In the Ephesian letter, the apostle Paul said, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it.” (Eph. 5:25).
Paul adds, “Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies.”
For both husbands and wives its good occasionally to turn back to the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians and read the list of qualities which love possesses. If that love is what it ought to be, the rest of the problems in the home will be melted by its warmth.
Many times over the years I’ve been on my way to church on Sunday, and noticed a car pulling a trailer with a fishing boat on it. Usually in the car will be three or four men going to spend the day on the water. I can’t help but wonder what their wives were to do that day. Let’s face it; a lot of men love themselves more than they love their wives, at least in the realm of recreation. Many husbands spend unbelievable amounts of time and money fishing, hunting in the woods, golfing and following all the sporting events that come along. The wife is left at home to provide whatever recreation she can. Something’s wrong with this picture.
The Bible makes it clear that not only in recreation but in every other phase of their activities; husbands are to be considerate of their wives- to love them as they love themselves. If wives were to follow their husband’s example, and spent as much time and money outside the home in recreation, the husbands would blow a fuse.
Though many men are willing to work hard and expend great energy at work and with hobbies and leisure, they act like indolent teenagers at home, shirking their responsibility toward their wives and kids.
I believe a family should find common activities in which husband and wife can both be recreated. I realize it’s not always realistic nor for that matter necessary for couples to do everything together, but in the absence of that when a husband loves his wife as he loves himself he will provide for her the same extent and quality, though not necessarily the same kind of recreation that he provides for himself.
HE’S RESPONSIBLE TO PROVIDE FOR HIS FAMILY.
When Paul wrote to Timothy who was to go out and preach to others, he said,
“If a man provide not for his own, and especially for his own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (I Tim. 5:8).
It is pretty hard to be worse than an unbeliever, but to be able to
provide and not to provide is a serious charge that God places against whoever is guilty of it.
HE’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HEADSHIP OF THE HOME AND FOR THE DISCIPLINING AND TRAINING OF THE CHILDREN.
In the third place the husband has the responsibility as head of the home for training and disciplining the children. This is not something that he can abandon to the wife, though certainly she’s an important part of that training process. Many mothers Home School their kids and my hat’s off to these great women. I believe that should Jesus tarry His coming, Home Schooled young people will be leaders and considered the intellectual ‘cream of the crop” in the nation.
The head of the family ought, therefore, to be a Christian, because a key part of his responsibility is to train his children in religious matters. He must see that they have secular training of the right kind and he must also see that they have religious training. In fact, it is more important that they get to heaven than it is that they get a good job, so the husband ought to be a Christian- leading in this most important activity. Long before the church, the home was God’s first idea and His plan is for fathers to be the priest of their home.
GOD DEALS WITH MEN IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS.
We recently dealt with Peter’s advice to women in 1Peter 3:1-6. In this piece we’re going to deal with one verse; 1 Peter 3:7. Here’s where God shows men the treasure we really have in our wives.
At first glance it might appear that Peter has shortchanged the women as far as the number of verses. The ladies get six verses on being Godly wives, the men only one on being godly husbands.
However it would be a mistake to think Peter lets men off easy. The seventh verse of 1 Peter 3 is a doosy. This verse is very “nutrient dense.” Men, we have a command here to love our wives as Christ loved the Church. With God’s help we’re going to drill down into this verse and when we do, we’ll no doubt be surprised at the treasures we find.
In verse seven, Peter doesn’t, as we might expect give men advice on being sensitive to the needs of their wives. Of course that is part of it and will come later but first Peter is telling us to “get some knowledge about women.” He could have chosen a word that denotes sympathy and compassion but instead the word he uses goes more toward deep understanding and knowledge. Peter says -it’s the husband’s job to study his wife, to get to know her intimately and to live together with her on the basis of that knowledge. In modern colloquium, can’t you just hear some “smarty-pants” saying, “Read a book already?”
Isn’t it interesting that God’s command to husbands isn’t that they be sensitive types but that first they are called to know what makes their wife tick? This may sound good to “information junkies.” But it may make some men say, “Are you kidding me? You mean to obey God I have to understand my wife? I have to know what makes her tick. Are you kidding?” For some husbands this would seem an impossible task.
But then Peter continues, - Showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.
What does Peter mean by- “weaker vessel?” It certainly isn’t a spiritual weakness because in the proceeding six verses he describes the woman as a means to God’s redemptive work. Indeed the wives are evangelizing their husbands through their actions. In a previous blog we talked about that at length. Peter might be talking about physical weakness, that generally men are stronger than women, but it’s hard to see how that would fit the overall kind of understanding of wives Peter is calling for.
I believe when Peter talks about weaker here, he’s talking about something different. I see a clue in the word “vessel’ because it actually has a sexual connotation. When you see that along with the words “fellow heirs” in verse 7, it would seem that Peter is talking about the physical union. God has designed into the wife a basic dependency on the husband. In Genesis 2:18 God says-I will make a helper suitable for him—then he tells the woman, “Your desire will be for your husband and he shall rule over you." This speaks to the fundamental union between husbands and wives and the dependency on the husband God has designed into the wife.
If we can see this then we can see what God is telling us about the real key to the understanding of our wives and,—don’t miss this,—our place in their lives. God has given your wife a dependency on you and if you start there –if you as a man will see the key place you have in your wife’s fulfillment, you will be on your way to understanding what makes her tick. It’s the kind of knowledge that if used rightly is of great benefit to our wives and if used wrongly or ignored does tremendous damage.
Without getting too intense here, I don’t think we men fully understand how powerful it really is when God says;-The two will become one flesh.
Men, when we think about it, it’s as plain as the nose on our face. God wants us to understand our wives and a large part of that understanding is to understand- the way we live impacts her. Every word you speak either good or evil, every gesture of kindness or cruelty, every decision to be active or passive in the marriage has profound implications on your bride because God has established her as a part of you.
If we abuse that knowledge, if we bully or ignore, if we “ Lord” that understanding over our wives then we should expect judgment from a holy God, because to abuse such a precious trust is unconscionable and will not be overlooked. As husbands we must cultivate the horizontal relationship with our wife in the interest of the vertical relationship between God and us. It’s very interesting that God says if we don’t do this; it will effect our very prayers.
He tells us that our prayers will be hindered or road- blocked or impeded. Peter is telling us that the shape of our marriage is going to have a lot to do with our relationship to God.
WATCH HOW THE ORDER IS REVERSED
In other parts of scripture such as in Ephesians 4, we first have a relationship with God, the vertical relationship, and then we move out in our horizontal relationships, getting along with each other. Not here! Here, failure to keep the horizontal impacts the vertical. Can you see that God has set our marriages up to reflect His Church and if we don’t love and respect our wives and treat them with utmost respect we are saying something false about Christ? It’s so serious in the eyes of God that it’s something akin to blasphemy.
A Christian marriage rightly understood is a powerful advertisement for the gospel. It reflects the glory of God and opens a window into eternity and brings a bit of heaven down to earth. Husbands, our wives should be the best friends we have in the world. A godly marriage gets better and better and better as the years go by.
“SWEETHEART, GO FOR IT!!”
God wants the husband to be supportive of his wife, so supportive he can open the door and say. “Honey, the world is yours.” If she can sing, write songs, teach, buy and sell, if she can organize, if she can design, if she can administrate, if she can encourage, if she can counsel, if she can program a computer, if she can start a company, if she can think creatively, he says, “Go for it!”
It would help husbands to go back and read Proverbs 31 again. This virtuous lady, this homemaker finds a field and she buys it. From her earnings she plants a vineyard. Proverbs 31:11 says,-The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. NASB. This biblical husband will have no lack of gain. Obviously God is speaking of the ideal here, assuming both partners in the marriage are biblically upright and Godly in their endeavors and intentions.
Unworthy husbands and unwilling wives can take the union of marriage that could and should be heaven on earth and turn it into a living hell.
RIGHT BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN
In Song of Solomon 4:3, the lover says to his beloved, “Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate.”
If you open a pomegranate you find that it has many sections inside, little ones and big ones. Obviously this is what a woman’s mind is like. Complex, with many sections big and small. Modern science backs up Solomon’s insight. We know that the brain contains two hemispheres—the left and the right. Neuroscientists tell us that women typically have a larger pathway between the two hemispheres so that information flows more freely. To put it simply, most men have a footpath, most women have a superhighway. They are generally more verbal and more in touch with their emotions and better at forming deep relationships.
Men are better with non-verbal tasks. That’s why we have the remote control.
While we’re speaking of Song of Solomon, we may as well talk about the physical side of marriage. Some Christians, especially older ones, seem to feel that the physical body is just ‘in the way” of the godly marriage. It’s an issue many married couples face. Here’s the truth; according to God’s Word, He designed sex to create an intimate bond between husbands and wives. Still multitudes of couples struggle to find fulfillment in this area.
My godly mother would have had a stroke and a mild heart attack if she’d ever heard the words— “marriage can be –hot and holy!” Now for those I haven’t lost, let’s be real; God created sex and it’s O.k. for couples to find pleasure making love.
About all you’ll ever hear in church is, “sex is O.K within the bonds and bounds of marriage.” That’s true!! But there’s more to be said, however it probably won’t be said. The Bible has more to say about sex than people think. Some Christians, who rightly got angry because the Senators didn’t read the Bills they passed a few months back, should go back and brush-up on their Bible. Sex is more than “The forbidden fruit,” “The destroyer of lives,” and “The tool of the devil.” God in His Word encourages married couples to understand the gift He’s given us in martial sexual-love. I’ve reached the limit in my ability to teach further on this subject so I’ll stop right here while we all go back and do some scriptural research.
Moving along, women are amazing. That’s why you can be married for 30 years and still find your wife fascinating and captivating. Her mind works in so many ways and the wise husband recognizes this and encourages her to develop. That’s what the Proverbs 31 wife did. She developed her abilities for the good of her own family.
Some husbands fear their wives will change if they turn them loose. The godly woman spoken of here will change, but for the better. We husbands must encourage our wives to be all they can be for the glory of God. Don’t stifle her growth. Water it, nourish it and bring it to full bloom.
Proverbs 18:22 says---he who finds a wife finds a good thing.
One of the saddest things in marriages is that both parties seem to think their spouse is a mind-reader. We tend to think our spouse knows what we’re thinking and nothing could be further from the truth.
Men will say, “My wife knows I love her, I’ve told her many times.” But have you told her lately? We think we don’t have to tell her over and over again but that’s wrong. You have to tell her over and over again. Then show her- and show her again. I’ve never understood why some men will refuse to give their wives any money to spend on themselves, and then she divorces him and takes everything he’s got.
Men will say, “I work hard for a living to provide a nice home, clothes and food. What more do you want?” Our wives married us, not a paycheck. Many wives who’re well off financially are desperately lonely, waiting for their husbands to notice them, waiting to be appreciated, waiting to be remembered, waiting for their husband to talk to them, waiting and hoping.
A STRONG AND STRANGE WARNING
Peter is now going to close this tutorial on a godly marriage with a powerful warning to husbands. If we haven’t taken him seriously up to now, here’s the motivation for getting deadly serious about our marriage;-“That your prayers be not hindered.”
Men, if you and I don’t treat our wives with honor and respect, God will just ignore our prayers. The word for hindered is a military term for an army digging a trench in a road to stop the enemy’s advance. It describes what Satan will do in our spiritual lives if we don’t take this admonition seriously. If husbands don’t take this seriously and love and respect their wives, Satan will dig a trench and our prayers will never get through. Gentlemen, we can’t ignore our wives and get through to God. Almighty God is going to take the side of the weaker vessel! It isn’t until we’re truly one in our marriage that we’re truly one with God.
We already understand this principle when it comes to fellow Christians. We know we can’t as James said, “Bless God and curse men.” And this is especially true with our marriage partners. If our prayers seem dull and ineffective, maybe it’s time to do a “relational inventory.”
I’ve experienced this in my own prayer life. I’ve sat in my morning prayer time and had my attempts at praying to come back and hit me in the face. Then I heard the Holy Spirit say, “John, before you pray you’ve got some unfinished business with Juda from yesterday. Go take care of it then come back and we’ll talk.”
God is so profoundly concerned that Christian husbands live in an understanding and loving relationship with their wives, that He’ll “interrupt” His relationship with them when they’re not doing so.
No Christian husband would ever presume to think that much spiritual good will be accomplished by his life without an effective prayer life. Most of us will quickly acknowledge that. But do we as quickly acknowledge that, according to God’s Word, we aren’t going to have an effective prayer life unless we live with our wives in “understanding, bestowing honor on her?”
To take time with our wife developing and maintaining a good marriage is God’s Will, and pleasing in His sight. In doing this we’re not taking time away from our “real ministry” or other “vitally important pursuits.”
Couples taking time fellowshipping with one another and just being with one another is time well spent. That could very well be the understatement of the century.
Especially since God is telling us;
… nothing else of any spiritual significance is going to happen in our lives without it.
Blessings,
John
When a young man stands in front of the preacher at the time of marriage, it’s not at all certain what kind of husband that young man will eventually be.
As the years pass and the stresses and strains of life come, he might show himself to be selfish, egotistical, a “ne’er-do-well” when it comes to being a provider, a tyrant or “petty dictator,” or one who’ll never have much time or concern for the welfare of his family. As the years go by it’s possible that he may prove to be a physical or verbal abuser, or even an unfaithful philanderer.
But while all this is possible, it’s also possible that he’ll become a fine, devoted Christian husband and father. It’s this last one that we choose to believe.
I have been that young man, barely 21 years old, standing in front of the preacher with my soon to be bride. I’ve also, more times than I could count been the pastor standing there to unite two young people in holy union and see them set sail on the seas of matrimony.
One thing is for sure, the most burning question at that moment in time is; “are you ready?” The boy, just out of his teens has a lot to learn in order to be the kind of husband God wants him to be. Another sure thing is; this young man will have to grow and keep growing if he is to be equal to the task of being a Christian husband and father.
The greatest thing about this day is that this young man will now be trusted with one of the most tremendous privileges in life; to be the head of one of God’s families. Among his responsibilities will be…
TO LOVE HIS WIFE MORE THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN ON EARTH.
In the Ephesian letter, the apostle Paul said, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it.” (Eph. 5:25).
Paul adds, “Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies.”
For both husbands and wives its good occasionally to turn back to the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians and read the list of qualities which love possesses. If that love is what it ought to be, the rest of the problems in the home will be melted by its warmth.
Many times over the years I’ve been on my way to church on Sunday, and noticed a car pulling a trailer with a fishing boat on it. Usually in the car will be three or four men going to spend the day on the water. I can’t help but wonder what their wives were to do that day. Let’s face it; a lot of men love themselves more than they love their wives, at least in the realm of recreation. Many husbands spend unbelievable amounts of time and money fishing, hunting in the woods, golfing and following all the sporting events that come along. The wife is left at home to provide whatever recreation she can. Something’s wrong with this picture.
The Bible makes it clear that not only in recreation but in every other phase of their activities; husbands are to be considerate of their wives- to love them as they love themselves. If wives were to follow their husband’s example, and spent as much time and money outside the home in recreation, the husbands would blow a fuse.
Though many men are willing to work hard and expend great energy at work and with hobbies and leisure, they act like indolent teenagers at home, shirking their responsibility toward their wives and kids.
I believe a family should find common activities in which husband and wife can both be recreated. I realize it’s not always realistic nor for that matter necessary for couples to do everything together, but in the absence of that when a husband loves his wife as he loves himself he will provide for her the same extent and quality, though not necessarily the same kind of recreation that he provides for himself.
HE’S RESPONSIBLE TO PROVIDE FOR HIS FAMILY.
When Paul wrote to Timothy who was to go out and preach to others, he said,
“If a man provide not for his own, and especially for his own household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (I Tim. 5:8).
It is pretty hard to be worse than an unbeliever, but to be able to
provide and not to provide is a serious charge that God places against whoever is guilty of it.
HE’S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HEADSHIP OF THE HOME AND FOR THE DISCIPLINING AND TRAINING OF THE CHILDREN.
In the third place the husband has the responsibility as head of the home for training and disciplining the children. This is not something that he can abandon to the wife, though certainly she’s an important part of that training process. Many mothers Home School their kids and my hat’s off to these great women. I believe that should Jesus tarry His coming, Home Schooled young people will be leaders and considered the intellectual ‘cream of the crop” in the nation.
The head of the family ought, therefore, to be a Christian, because a key part of his responsibility is to train his children in religious matters. He must see that they have secular training of the right kind and he must also see that they have religious training. In fact, it is more important that they get to heaven than it is that they get a good job, so the husband ought to be a Christian- leading in this most important activity. Long before the church, the home was God’s first idea and His plan is for fathers to be the priest of their home.
GOD DEALS WITH MEN IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS.
We recently dealt with Peter’s advice to women in 1Peter 3:1-6. In this piece we’re going to deal with one verse; 1 Peter 3:7. Here’s where God shows men the treasure we really have in our wives.
At first glance it might appear that Peter has shortchanged the women as far as the number of verses. The ladies get six verses on being Godly wives, the men only one on being godly husbands.
However it would be a mistake to think Peter lets men off easy. The seventh verse of 1 Peter 3 is a doosy. This verse is very “nutrient dense.” Men, we have a command here to love our wives as Christ loved the Church. With God’s help we’re going to drill down into this verse and when we do, we’ll no doubt be surprised at the treasures we find.
In verse seven, Peter doesn’t, as we might expect give men advice on being sensitive to the needs of their wives. Of course that is part of it and will come later but first Peter is telling us to “get some knowledge about women.” He could have chosen a word that denotes sympathy and compassion but instead the word he uses goes more toward deep understanding and knowledge. Peter says -it’s the husband’s job to study his wife, to get to know her intimately and to live together with her on the basis of that knowledge. In modern colloquium, can’t you just hear some “smarty-pants” saying, “Read a book already?”
Isn’t it interesting that God’s command to husbands isn’t that they be sensitive types but that first they are called to know what makes their wife tick? This may sound good to “information junkies.” But it may make some men say, “Are you kidding me? You mean to obey God I have to understand my wife? I have to know what makes her tick. Are you kidding?” For some husbands this would seem an impossible task.
But then Peter continues, - Showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.
What does Peter mean by- “weaker vessel?” It certainly isn’t a spiritual weakness because in the proceeding six verses he describes the woman as a means to God’s redemptive work. Indeed the wives are evangelizing their husbands through their actions. In a previous blog we talked about that at length. Peter might be talking about physical weakness, that generally men are stronger than women, but it’s hard to see how that would fit the overall kind of understanding of wives Peter is calling for.
I believe when Peter talks about weaker here, he’s talking about something different. I see a clue in the word “vessel’ because it actually has a sexual connotation. When you see that along with the words “fellow heirs” in verse 7, it would seem that Peter is talking about the physical union. God has designed into the wife a basic dependency on the husband. In Genesis 2:18 God says-I will make a helper suitable for him—then he tells the woman, “Your desire will be for your husband and he shall rule over you." This speaks to the fundamental union between husbands and wives and the dependency on the husband God has designed into the wife.
If we can see this then we can see what God is telling us about the real key to the understanding of our wives and,—don’t miss this,—our place in their lives. God has given your wife a dependency on you and if you start there –if you as a man will see the key place you have in your wife’s fulfillment, you will be on your way to understanding what makes her tick. It’s the kind of knowledge that if used rightly is of great benefit to our wives and if used wrongly or ignored does tremendous damage.
Without getting too intense here, I don’t think we men fully understand how powerful it really is when God says;-The two will become one flesh.
Men, when we think about it, it’s as plain as the nose on our face. God wants us to understand our wives and a large part of that understanding is to understand- the way we live impacts her. Every word you speak either good or evil, every gesture of kindness or cruelty, every decision to be active or passive in the marriage has profound implications on your bride because God has established her as a part of you.
If we abuse that knowledge, if we bully or ignore, if we “ Lord” that understanding over our wives then we should expect judgment from a holy God, because to abuse such a precious trust is unconscionable and will not be overlooked. As husbands we must cultivate the horizontal relationship with our wife in the interest of the vertical relationship between God and us. It’s very interesting that God says if we don’t do this; it will effect our very prayers.
He tells us that our prayers will be hindered or road- blocked or impeded. Peter is telling us that the shape of our marriage is going to have a lot to do with our relationship to God.
WATCH HOW THE ORDER IS REVERSED
In other parts of scripture such as in Ephesians 4, we first have a relationship with God, the vertical relationship, and then we move out in our horizontal relationships, getting along with each other. Not here! Here, failure to keep the horizontal impacts the vertical. Can you see that God has set our marriages up to reflect His Church and if we don’t love and respect our wives and treat them with utmost respect we are saying something false about Christ? It’s so serious in the eyes of God that it’s something akin to blasphemy.
A Christian marriage rightly understood is a powerful advertisement for the gospel. It reflects the glory of God and opens a window into eternity and brings a bit of heaven down to earth. Husbands, our wives should be the best friends we have in the world. A godly marriage gets better and better and better as the years go by.
“SWEETHEART, GO FOR IT!!”
God wants the husband to be supportive of his wife, so supportive he can open the door and say. “Honey, the world is yours.” If she can sing, write songs, teach, buy and sell, if she can organize, if she can design, if she can administrate, if she can encourage, if she can counsel, if she can program a computer, if she can start a company, if she can think creatively, he says, “Go for it!”
It would help husbands to go back and read Proverbs 31 again. This virtuous lady, this homemaker finds a field and she buys it. From her earnings she plants a vineyard. Proverbs 31:11 says,-The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. NASB. This biblical husband will have no lack of gain. Obviously God is speaking of the ideal here, assuming both partners in the marriage are biblically upright and Godly in their endeavors and intentions.
Unworthy husbands and unwilling wives can take the union of marriage that could and should be heaven on earth and turn it into a living hell.
RIGHT BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN
In Song of Solomon 4:3, the lover says to his beloved, “Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate.”
If you open a pomegranate you find that it has many sections inside, little ones and big ones. Obviously this is what a woman’s mind is like. Complex, with many sections big and small. Modern science backs up Solomon’s insight. We know that the brain contains two hemispheres—the left and the right. Neuroscientists tell us that women typically have a larger pathway between the two hemispheres so that information flows more freely. To put it simply, most men have a footpath, most women have a superhighway. They are generally more verbal and more in touch with their emotions and better at forming deep relationships.
Men are better with non-verbal tasks. That’s why we have the remote control.
While we’re speaking of Song of Solomon, we may as well talk about the physical side of marriage. Some Christians, especially older ones, seem to feel that the physical body is just ‘in the way” of the godly marriage. It’s an issue many married couples face. Here’s the truth; according to God’s Word, He designed sex to create an intimate bond between husbands and wives. Still multitudes of couples struggle to find fulfillment in this area.
My godly mother would have had a stroke and a mild heart attack if she’d ever heard the words— “marriage can be –hot and holy!” Now for those I haven’t lost, let’s be real; God created sex and it’s O.k. for couples to find pleasure making love.
About all you’ll ever hear in church is, “sex is O.K within the bonds and bounds of marriage.” That’s true!! But there’s more to be said, however it probably won’t be said. The Bible has more to say about sex than people think. Some Christians, who rightly got angry because the Senators didn’t read the Bills they passed a few months back, should go back and brush-up on their Bible. Sex is more than “The forbidden fruit,” “The destroyer of lives,” and “The tool of the devil.” God in His Word encourages married couples to understand the gift He’s given us in martial sexual-love. I’ve reached the limit in my ability to teach further on this subject so I’ll stop right here while we all go back and do some scriptural research.
Moving along, women are amazing. That’s why you can be married for 30 years and still find your wife fascinating and captivating. Her mind works in so many ways and the wise husband recognizes this and encourages her to develop. That’s what the Proverbs 31 wife did. She developed her abilities for the good of her own family.
Some husbands fear their wives will change if they turn them loose. The godly woman spoken of here will change, but for the better. We husbands must encourage our wives to be all they can be for the glory of God. Don’t stifle her growth. Water it, nourish it and bring it to full bloom.
Proverbs 18:22 says---he who finds a wife finds a good thing.
One of the saddest things in marriages is that both parties seem to think their spouse is a mind-reader. We tend to think our spouse knows what we’re thinking and nothing could be further from the truth.
Men will say, “My wife knows I love her, I’ve told her many times.” But have you told her lately? We think we don’t have to tell her over and over again but that’s wrong. You have to tell her over and over again. Then show her- and show her again. I’ve never understood why some men will refuse to give their wives any money to spend on themselves, and then she divorces him and takes everything he’s got.
Men will say, “I work hard for a living to provide a nice home, clothes and food. What more do you want?” Our wives married us, not a paycheck. Many wives who’re well off financially are desperately lonely, waiting for their husbands to notice them, waiting to be appreciated, waiting to be remembered, waiting for their husband to talk to them, waiting and hoping.
A STRONG AND STRANGE WARNING
Peter is now going to close this tutorial on a godly marriage with a powerful warning to husbands. If we haven’t taken him seriously up to now, here’s the motivation for getting deadly serious about our marriage;-“That your prayers be not hindered.”
Men, if you and I don’t treat our wives with honor and respect, God will just ignore our prayers. The word for hindered is a military term for an army digging a trench in a road to stop the enemy’s advance. It describes what Satan will do in our spiritual lives if we don’t take this admonition seriously. If husbands don’t take this seriously and love and respect their wives, Satan will dig a trench and our prayers will never get through. Gentlemen, we can’t ignore our wives and get through to God. Almighty God is going to take the side of the weaker vessel! It isn’t until we’re truly one in our marriage that we’re truly one with God.
We already understand this principle when it comes to fellow Christians. We know we can’t as James said, “Bless God and curse men.” And this is especially true with our marriage partners. If our prayers seem dull and ineffective, maybe it’s time to do a “relational inventory.”
I’ve experienced this in my own prayer life. I’ve sat in my morning prayer time and had my attempts at praying to come back and hit me in the face. Then I heard the Holy Spirit say, “John, before you pray you’ve got some unfinished business with Juda from yesterday. Go take care of it then come back and we’ll talk.”
God is so profoundly concerned that Christian husbands live in an understanding and loving relationship with their wives, that He’ll “interrupt” His relationship with them when they’re not doing so.
No Christian husband would ever presume to think that much spiritual good will be accomplished by his life without an effective prayer life. Most of us will quickly acknowledge that. But do we as quickly acknowledge that, according to God’s Word, we aren’t going to have an effective prayer life unless we live with our wives in “understanding, bestowing honor on her?”
To take time with our wife developing and maintaining a good marriage is God’s Will, and pleasing in His sight. In doing this we’re not taking time away from our “real ministry” or other “vitally important pursuits.”
Couples taking time fellowshipping with one another and just being with one another is time well spent. That could very well be the understatement of the century.
Especially since God is telling us;
… nothing else of any spiritual significance is going to happen in our lives without it.
Blessings,
John
Monday, June 1, 2015
HAS THE GOSPEL FAILED??
By John Stallings
Surveying America today we see a wicked world, a weak church & unconverted multitudes. The reasons God could chastise our nation are nearly endless.
Many ministries & individuals are putting forth an effort to stem the tide of unrighteousness but a far higher number of lukewarm Christians sit on the sidelines expecting someone else to do the work & make the sacrifices.
We are killing babies by the millions in our abortion clinics. Laws have been passed to protect those who engage in these savage acts of butchery. We sugar-coat this horror with words like “pro-choice” & “a woman’s right to choose.”
We kicked God out of the public school system & replaced Christianity with the false teaching of evolution. Many young people have turned away from God because they’ve been falsely told evolution proves the Bible wrong.
Our schools indoctrinate children to believe homosexuality is a morally acceptable life-style. This is in conflict with God’s Word & is often done against the wishes of the parents. Our society is so inundated by sexual imagery that many of both sexes admit to sexual addictions.
NASA spent billions of dollars ransacking space trying to find the origins of life in hopes of finding some proof that man can comfortably be his own God, while all the answers to what they seek have been right under their noses for thousands of years in the Bible.
All kinds of “new age” philosophies are sweeping our country. Many states sponsor lotteries in spite of the fact that it’s nothing but gambling, a sin that dooms more people than many other addictions combined.
Far to many folk would rather have a known serial adulterer & rapist in the White House than a person who has a sense of morality as well as a Christian testimony. Partially for this reason premarital sex as well as having a baby out of wedlock have lost the stigma they had just a few decades ago.
Stay at home mothers are mocked by society as being out of touch with the way a modern woman should be living her life. Corporal punishment which is strongly supported by the Bible has come under secular liberal attack & because of this children are disrespectful toward their parents & other authority figures.
Divorce rates are high.
Fathers in large numbers are failing to teach & train their children & dump this responsibility on already over- burden wives, or on the church, or it doesn’t get done at all.
T.V shows are filled with openly gay characters who shamelessly parade their lifestyle before a morally anesthetized nation. Our society is far more interested in sports & other entertainment than they are Godly matters. Every sign the Roman Empire evidenced before it crumbled into the dustbin of history is seen in today’s America.
ALL THIS RAISES A QUESTION; HAS THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST FAILED? HAS THE GOSPEL FAILED?
After all there’s a church on every other corner in America not to mention the fact that Christian television & radio saturate our airwaves. Christian book stores stocked with the finest of spiritual reading are easily assessable to most Americans. If the aforementioned sins go unchecked in our beloved nation there has to be a reason.
Is the gospel we believe to be so powerful only performing a holding action? What is the answer to this conundrum? Perhaps we’ll find the answer by examining some of the parables of Jesus.
Some of Jesus’ richest teachings are found in the parables. He used parables for several reasons; to reveal, to conceal & to bring his teachings from head knowledge to heart knowledge. When Jesus wanted to separate truth-seekers from curiosity-seekers He used parables. Parables are also hyperbole all of us use because sometimes words can’t convey the true feelings of the heart. For instance when we say to someone, “I love you so much I could eat you up,” we’re using hyperbole. When we say “we’re so hungry we could eat a horse” we’re using hyperbole.
Matthew 13 contains several parables so let’s delve into them & see if we can find any answers to the question, “has the gospel failed?”
First is the parable of ...
THE SOWER.
In this parable Jesus tells us that the sower is the witness, the seed is the gospel & the soils are the hearts of men. There are four soils; the hard heart, the shallow heart, the worldly heart & the receptive heart. Again, the sower is the witness or the person who plants the seed, the seed is the gospel or the Word of God & the soil is the heart where the seed falls.
Notice that only one of the four soils is responsive to the gospel. What was Jesus teaching us here? The lesson I see is that if the seed doesn’t take root & spring up, it’s not the seeds fault; it’s the fault of the soil. Some seed falls on soil that receives, protects & nurtures it but most of the seed “fails” because it falls on the wrong soil. This doesn’t change our responsibility to take the gospel to the world but certainly Jesus was giving us a template that the gospel will only be successful when it falls on fertile soil.
When Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago He wasn’t personally “successful” with everyone He came in contact with. The Rich Young Ruler came running to Christ but when he was challenged to give up everything & follow Him, he couldn’t do it. Did Jesus fail where this young man was concerned? Certainly we can’t say Jesus failed. The failure lies at the feet of the young man & his unwillingness to commit to Christ. He was so concerned about finding eternal life that he ran to Jesus but in the final analysis he loved his possessions more, & went away sorrowful.Notice that Jesus didn't go after the young man & try to convince him to change his mind.
In 1967 I was privileged to visit Athens Greece & stand on Mars hill where Paul preached in Acts 17. Embarrassed as I am to say it, I used to have pictures of me standing on the hill striking a “preacher pose.” I’m not sure where those photos went but they vanished somewhere along the way.
NO CHURCH IN ATHENS
One thing we didn’t do while in the beautiful city of Athens was to visit the ruins of the church Paul planted there. I visited the ruins of the churches in Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus & Colosse. In almost every city we visited we viewed the ruins of the ancient Christian church.
If I were to ask you to turn to Paul’s letter to the Athenians, you’d quickly remind me there isn’t such a book. Why is there no letter to the church in Athens? Well; Paul didn’t build a church there. He planted a church in just about every place he visited but Athens. Why was there no church in Athens? I’m sure it wasn’t Paul’s fault. I’m sure Paul would have been especially anxious to have a church in this metropolis city teeming with false gods & false teaching. If you read Acts 17 you’ll find the Athenians mocked Paul when he preached the Resurrection of Jesus. They were just not that interested in the gospel Paul preached, it’s just that simple. You & I know the gospel didn’t fail, Athens failed to receive the gospel.
Juda & I were ministering in a church a few years back where the people could best be described as “DOA,” dead on arrival. Good people, but DOA. I would struggle to preach each night & I understood what our good black preachers mean when they say “You’re not helping me preach.”
One day Juda, who was almost as frustrated as I was asked me, “Why don’t you preach that sermon you preached last week in that other church?” I said, “The sermon I preached tonight WAS that sermon.” There it is in a nutshell; the unresponsiveness of the church we were in made the exact message sound differently than when it was preached to open receptive folk.
This parable teaches us to sow gospel seed everywhere possible but not to expect everyone to receive it, because they won’t.
WHEAT AND WEEDS
The next parable Jesus tells in Matthew 13 is the parable of the wheat & the tares. Many people look at the church, see hypocrites & say, “I’ m not going back to church because there’re too many hypocrites there.” I have often told people “if there’s a hypocrite between you & God the hypocrite is closer to God than you are.” Jesus made it plain that the devil had sowed the tares.
I think it apparent that we can’t call Christianity a failure because of hypocrites. I’ve also told people who quit God & His church because of the tares, “I’d rather spend a few years of my life in a church with a few hypocrites than to die unsaved & spend all eternity with them.”
I’ve known people who quit watching Christian T.V because of some inconsistency they saw in someone. One man I knew quit watching TBN because he saw a young man in a band with long hair that “looked like a hippy.” That was against his principles so he stopped watching Christian T.V. Of course I didn’t make any points with him when I asked him if he quit watching CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or FOX when he saw someone on there who wasn’t dressed or coiffed according to his standards. His answer included a few coughs & a lot of throat clearing but as you might expect, “he’d never thought of it that way.”
One thing to remember is that church leadership should have a different standard of dress & overall conduct than those who sit in the pew. If we go to a church & see people shabbily, or perhaps less than modestly dressed (unless it's totally ridiculous)sitting in the pews, that's understandable. What are we going to do, drag them to the door & give them the bum's rush? The Gospel will raise these folk to another level if given the chance. However, it's a different "kettle of fish" to see people on platforms slopping around or presenting themselves in a less than & exemplary manner. The people on the platform or podium after all represent what the church stands for & we need no one to tell us what that looks like.
Why should the church be subjected to criticism when they do what they’re called to do --reach the lost? Isn’t that a strange standard to force on the church, when it should be a place where all can come & hear the gospel? Some people want to clean the fish before they catch them. Jesus told us in this parable not to go around judging & pulling up tares, but to let the wheat & tares grow until the day God separates them. 1 Cor. 3:11-15.
Obviously God gave us these instructions because none of us are qualified to tell wheat from tares. Would you want that job? If you’d have tried to guess which of Jesus’ disciples would betray Him do you think you’d have chosen His treasurer? You & I might have well picked Peter or Thomas as the betrayer. I’m glad I don’t have that job.
So the gospel hasn’t failed because of an unconverted world or because of hypocrites?
THE PARABLE OF LEAVEN
What can we learn from the next parable, the parable of LEAVEN? Physically leaven is an old lump of dough in a high state of fermentation or a substance that causes dough to rise. Leaven is used in the Bible as a type of evil. Yeast would be our modern equivalent of leaven. Leaven, like yeast had a stealthy quality & a small amount of it could greatly affect a large amount of dough. In Exodus 12:8 & Leviticus 2:4 God told the people to make sure the Passover Lamb & other ceremonial meals were eaten without leaven.
In 1 Corinthians 5 when telling the church to deal with immorality within their ranks, Paul tells them to “purge out that leaven.” In Matthew 16:11 Jesus warned about the leaven of the Pharisees, which was their false teachings of Legalism & Liberalism. In Mark 8:15 He warned of the leaven of Herod, which symbolized worldliness.
Leaven works quietly & insidiously just as sin does. Jesus is teaching here that sin in society, even in small amounts has an awesomely devastating effect on the whole of society. The multitudinous multiplying of the leaven of sin in our world doesn’t surprise God. If sin wasn’t as cursedly potent as it is there would have been no reason for Jesus to die on the cross. The proliferation of evil doesn’t mean that God’s work has failed, been thwarted or frustrated, it just means there’s sin in the world & it will be here until Jesus comes back & fumigates the earth.
Next Jesus gives the parable of the-
DRAGNET.
This one must have been a familiar & vivid picture to the disciples, after all Peter, Andrew, James, & John had been fishermen before Christ called them.
Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a large net that’s cast into the sea. In those days the fishermen would drag a net along the bottom of a body of water between two boats. The wide net would catch all manner of fish, then they’d bring the net to shore & some were kept & some were thrown back into the sea.
The church today is doing the same thing in our “sea,” which of course is the world. The gospel is preached & there is no partiality to race, sex, wealth, education, intelligence, ethnicity or beauty. The churches mandate isn’t judicial but declarative, in that we don’t do the separating, that’s God’s job.
Having grown up in Florida, I know what it means to fish in the ocean & catch all manner of creatures. We caught blow-fish, all puffed up (I might add some people caught in the gospel net are puffed up with pride.) We caught Eels that would slither & slide away; we caught Dog fish & Cat fish, Grunts & Croakers. You had to be careful handling some of these sea creatures because they could bite, sting or stick you.
The gospel net pulls in all sorts of people, & just as with fishermen, some stay & some leave. Some would be useable & some would not. No fisherman expects to keep everything he catches. Jesus is saying the gospel hasn’t failed because we don’t keep all we bring in. There’s always the question of why some people leave the church. Jesus told His disciples in response to this question, “They went out from us because they were not of us.”
As in the other parables, all this will be settled at the end of the age when God separates the spiritual “sheep from the goats.”
The last parable I’ll speak about is the...
TREASURE IN THE FIELD.
As in all the parables, there are many out flashings of truth from this story but the basic truth of this parable is that the man who found the treasure went & sold everything he had to buy the field where the treasure was buried.
I don’t want this blog to turn into an Epistle so suffice to say, this man was willing to sell everything he had to buy this treasure. The treasure Christ alluded to in this parable is the riches of God’s kingdom & of His gospel.
When we look at the treasures in Christ, the truth is, some are willing to sell out to follow Him & some aren’t. Some will pay full price & others deem the price too high. Carnal people trample all over this field & don’t even know it’s there. Jesus also said that when the man found the treasure he covered it up temporarily to go buy the field.
That’s exactly what Jesus was doing by using the parables, He was covering up the treasure from those who weren’t interested enough to seek for it.
The gospel hasn’t failed because some don’t see the value of it or aren’t willing to pay the price to claim it.
Paul said, --
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them. --2 Corinthians 3:3-4
Blessings,
John
Surveying America today we see a wicked world, a weak church & unconverted multitudes. The reasons God could chastise our nation are nearly endless.
Many ministries & individuals are putting forth an effort to stem the tide of unrighteousness but a far higher number of lukewarm Christians sit on the sidelines expecting someone else to do the work & make the sacrifices.
We are killing babies by the millions in our abortion clinics. Laws have been passed to protect those who engage in these savage acts of butchery. We sugar-coat this horror with words like “pro-choice” & “a woman’s right to choose.”
We kicked God out of the public school system & replaced Christianity with the false teaching of evolution. Many young people have turned away from God because they’ve been falsely told evolution proves the Bible wrong.
Our schools indoctrinate children to believe homosexuality is a morally acceptable life-style. This is in conflict with God’s Word & is often done against the wishes of the parents. Our society is so inundated by sexual imagery that many of both sexes admit to sexual addictions.
NASA spent billions of dollars ransacking space trying to find the origins of life in hopes of finding some proof that man can comfortably be his own God, while all the answers to what they seek have been right under their noses for thousands of years in the Bible.
All kinds of “new age” philosophies are sweeping our country. Many states sponsor lotteries in spite of the fact that it’s nothing but gambling, a sin that dooms more people than many other addictions combined.
Far to many folk would rather have a known serial adulterer & rapist in the White House than a person who has a sense of morality as well as a Christian testimony. Partially for this reason premarital sex as well as having a baby out of wedlock have lost the stigma they had just a few decades ago.
Stay at home mothers are mocked by society as being out of touch with the way a modern woman should be living her life. Corporal punishment which is strongly supported by the Bible has come under secular liberal attack & because of this children are disrespectful toward their parents & other authority figures.
Divorce rates are high.
Fathers in large numbers are failing to teach & train their children & dump this responsibility on already over- burden wives, or on the church, or it doesn’t get done at all.
T.V shows are filled with openly gay characters who shamelessly parade their lifestyle before a morally anesthetized nation. Our society is far more interested in sports & other entertainment than they are Godly matters. Every sign the Roman Empire evidenced before it crumbled into the dustbin of history is seen in today’s America.
ALL THIS RAISES A QUESTION; HAS THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST FAILED? HAS THE GOSPEL FAILED?
After all there’s a church on every other corner in America not to mention the fact that Christian television & radio saturate our airwaves. Christian book stores stocked with the finest of spiritual reading are easily assessable to most Americans. If the aforementioned sins go unchecked in our beloved nation there has to be a reason.
Is the gospel we believe to be so powerful only performing a holding action? What is the answer to this conundrum? Perhaps we’ll find the answer by examining some of the parables of Jesus.
Some of Jesus’ richest teachings are found in the parables. He used parables for several reasons; to reveal, to conceal & to bring his teachings from head knowledge to heart knowledge. When Jesus wanted to separate truth-seekers from curiosity-seekers He used parables. Parables are also hyperbole all of us use because sometimes words can’t convey the true feelings of the heart. For instance when we say to someone, “I love you so much I could eat you up,” we’re using hyperbole. When we say “we’re so hungry we could eat a horse” we’re using hyperbole.
Matthew 13 contains several parables so let’s delve into them & see if we can find any answers to the question, “has the gospel failed?”
First is the parable of ...
THE SOWER.
In this parable Jesus tells us that the sower is the witness, the seed is the gospel & the soils are the hearts of men. There are four soils; the hard heart, the shallow heart, the worldly heart & the receptive heart. Again, the sower is the witness or the person who plants the seed, the seed is the gospel or the Word of God & the soil is the heart where the seed falls.
Notice that only one of the four soils is responsive to the gospel. What was Jesus teaching us here? The lesson I see is that if the seed doesn’t take root & spring up, it’s not the seeds fault; it’s the fault of the soil. Some seed falls on soil that receives, protects & nurtures it but most of the seed “fails” because it falls on the wrong soil. This doesn’t change our responsibility to take the gospel to the world but certainly Jesus was giving us a template that the gospel will only be successful when it falls on fertile soil.
When Jesus walked the earth 2,000 years ago He wasn’t personally “successful” with everyone He came in contact with. The Rich Young Ruler came running to Christ but when he was challenged to give up everything & follow Him, he couldn’t do it. Did Jesus fail where this young man was concerned? Certainly we can’t say Jesus failed. The failure lies at the feet of the young man & his unwillingness to commit to Christ. He was so concerned about finding eternal life that he ran to Jesus but in the final analysis he loved his possessions more, & went away sorrowful.Notice that Jesus didn't go after the young man & try to convince him to change his mind.
In 1967 I was privileged to visit Athens Greece & stand on Mars hill where Paul preached in Acts 17. Embarrassed as I am to say it, I used to have pictures of me standing on the hill striking a “preacher pose.” I’m not sure where those photos went but they vanished somewhere along the way.
NO CHURCH IN ATHENS
One thing we didn’t do while in the beautiful city of Athens was to visit the ruins of the church Paul planted there. I visited the ruins of the churches in Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus & Colosse. In almost every city we visited we viewed the ruins of the ancient Christian church.
If I were to ask you to turn to Paul’s letter to the Athenians, you’d quickly remind me there isn’t such a book. Why is there no letter to the church in Athens? Well; Paul didn’t build a church there. He planted a church in just about every place he visited but Athens. Why was there no church in Athens? I’m sure it wasn’t Paul’s fault. I’m sure Paul would have been especially anxious to have a church in this metropolis city teeming with false gods & false teaching. If you read Acts 17 you’ll find the Athenians mocked Paul when he preached the Resurrection of Jesus. They were just not that interested in the gospel Paul preached, it’s just that simple. You & I know the gospel didn’t fail, Athens failed to receive the gospel.
Juda & I were ministering in a church a few years back where the people could best be described as “DOA,” dead on arrival. Good people, but DOA. I would struggle to preach each night & I understood what our good black preachers mean when they say “You’re not helping me preach.”
One day Juda, who was almost as frustrated as I was asked me, “Why don’t you preach that sermon you preached last week in that other church?” I said, “The sermon I preached tonight WAS that sermon.” There it is in a nutshell; the unresponsiveness of the church we were in made the exact message sound differently than when it was preached to open receptive folk.
This parable teaches us to sow gospel seed everywhere possible but not to expect everyone to receive it, because they won’t.
WHEAT AND WEEDS
The next parable Jesus tells in Matthew 13 is the parable of the wheat & the tares. Many people look at the church, see hypocrites & say, “I’ m not going back to church because there’re too many hypocrites there.” I have often told people “if there’s a hypocrite between you & God the hypocrite is closer to God than you are.” Jesus made it plain that the devil had sowed the tares.
I think it apparent that we can’t call Christianity a failure because of hypocrites. I’ve also told people who quit God & His church because of the tares, “I’d rather spend a few years of my life in a church with a few hypocrites than to die unsaved & spend all eternity with them.”
I’ve known people who quit watching Christian T.V because of some inconsistency they saw in someone. One man I knew quit watching TBN because he saw a young man in a band with long hair that “looked like a hippy.” That was against his principles so he stopped watching Christian T.V. Of course I didn’t make any points with him when I asked him if he quit watching CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or FOX when he saw someone on there who wasn’t dressed or coiffed according to his standards. His answer included a few coughs & a lot of throat clearing but as you might expect, “he’d never thought of it that way.”
One thing to remember is that church leadership should have a different standard of dress & overall conduct than those who sit in the pew. If we go to a church & see people shabbily, or perhaps less than modestly dressed (unless it's totally ridiculous)sitting in the pews, that's understandable. What are we going to do, drag them to the door & give them the bum's rush? The Gospel will raise these folk to another level if given the chance. However, it's a different "kettle of fish" to see people on platforms slopping around or presenting themselves in a less than & exemplary manner. The people on the platform or podium after all represent what the church stands for & we need no one to tell us what that looks like.
Why should the church be subjected to criticism when they do what they’re called to do --reach the lost? Isn’t that a strange standard to force on the church, when it should be a place where all can come & hear the gospel? Some people want to clean the fish before they catch them. Jesus told us in this parable not to go around judging & pulling up tares, but to let the wheat & tares grow until the day God separates them. 1 Cor. 3:11-15.
Obviously God gave us these instructions because none of us are qualified to tell wheat from tares. Would you want that job? If you’d have tried to guess which of Jesus’ disciples would betray Him do you think you’d have chosen His treasurer? You & I might have well picked Peter or Thomas as the betrayer. I’m glad I don’t have that job.
So the gospel hasn’t failed because of an unconverted world or because of hypocrites?
THE PARABLE OF LEAVEN
What can we learn from the next parable, the parable of LEAVEN? Physically leaven is an old lump of dough in a high state of fermentation or a substance that causes dough to rise. Leaven is used in the Bible as a type of evil. Yeast would be our modern equivalent of leaven. Leaven, like yeast had a stealthy quality & a small amount of it could greatly affect a large amount of dough. In Exodus 12:8 & Leviticus 2:4 God told the people to make sure the Passover Lamb & other ceremonial meals were eaten without leaven.
In 1 Corinthians 5 when telling the church to deal with immorality within their ranks, Paul tells them to “purge out that leaven.” In Matthew 16:11 Jesus warned about the leaven of the Pharisees, which was their false teachings of Legalism & Liberalism. In Mark 8:15 He warned of the leaven of Herod, which symbolized worldliness.
Leaven works quietly & insidiously just as sin does. Jesus is teaching here that sin in society, even in small amounts has an awesomely devastating effect on the whole of society. The multitudinous multiplying of the leaven of sin in our world doesn’t surprise God. If sin wasn’t as cursedly potent as it is there would have been no reason for Jesus to die on the cross. The proliferation of evil doesn’t mean that God’s work has failed, been thwarted or frustrated, it just means there’s sin in the world & it will be here until Jesus comes back & fumigates the earth.
Next Jesus gives the parable of the-
DRAGNET.
This one must have been a familiar & vivid picture to the disciples, after all Peter, Andrew, James, & John had been fishermen before Christ called them.
Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a large net that’s cast into the sea. In those days the fishermen would drag a net along the bottom of a body of water between two boats. The wide net would catch all manner of fish, then they’d bring the net to shore & some were kept & some were thrown back into the sea.
The church today is doing the same thing in our “sea,” which of course is the world. The gospel is preached & there is no partiality to race, sex, wealth, education, intelligence, ethnicity or beauty. The churches mandate isn’t judicial but declarative, in that we don’t do the separating, that’s God’s job.
Having grown up in Florida, I know what it means to fish in the ocean & catch all manner of creatures. We caught blow-fish, all puffed up (I might add some people caught in the gospel net are puffed up with pride.) We caught Eels that would slither & slide away; we caught Dog fish & Cat fish, Grunts & Croakers. You had to be careful handling some of these sea creatures because they could bite, sting or stick you.
The gospel net pulls in all sorts of people, & just as with fishermen, some stay & some leave. Some would be useable & some would not. No fisherman expects to keep everything he catches. Jesus is saying the gospel hasn’t failed because we don’t keep all we bring in. There’s always the question of why some people leave the church. Jesus told His disciples in response to this question, “They went out from us because they were not of us.”
As in the other parables, all this will be settled at the end of the age when God separates the spiritual “sheep from the goats.”
The last parable I’ll speak about is the...
TREASURE IN THE FIELD.
As in all the parables, there are many out flashings of truth from this story but the basic truth of this parable is that the man who found the treasure went & sold everything he had to buy the field where the treasure was buried.
I don’t want this blog to turn into an Epistle so suffice to say, this man was willing to sell everything he had to buy this treasure. The treasure Christ alluded to in this parable is the riches of God’s kingdom & of His gospel.
When we look at the treasures in Christ, the truth is, some are willing to sell out to follow Him & some aren’t. Some will pay full price & others deem the price too high. Carnal people trample all over this field & don’t even know it’s there. Jesus also said that when the man found the treasure he covered it up temporarily to go buy the field.
That’s exactly what Jesus was doing by using the parables, He was covering up the treasure from those who weren’t interested enough to seek for it.
The gospel hasn’t failed because some don’t see the value of it or aren’t willing to pay the price to claim it.
Paul said, --
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them. --2 Corinthians 3:3-4
Blessings,
John
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