Standing

Esther 5:9 ESV

And Haman went out that day joyful and glad of heart. But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate, that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was filled with wrath against Mordecai.

The pride of the powerful is of magnitudes beyond comprehension. Esther seems to be the story of one man on a power trip. Haman rises to power but one man refuses to honor him. One man in the entire city does not bow before him and he goes into a rage to destroy all the Jews. Partly because seeing that one man, he was worried there were more that he had never seen that would dare not to honor him! He hatches a plan, like all tyrants, to destroy any who would not bend the knee to his power.

The verse above picks up the story near its conclusion. The plan for the destruction of the Jews has already been announced. The Imperial declaration was posted, copied, and spread to the Empires four corners by a mail system that was the envy of all the world. And yet even after this, Mordecai did not “tremble” he paid no heed to fools, even powerful ones. He would persist to deny the KINGS command to bow to Haman. It wasn’t simply that Haman was powerful so people bowed, according to Esther 3:2, we are told that: “all the king’s servants who were at the king’s gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded…” and they would ask Mordecai “why do you transgress the KING’s command?”

Scripture is not so clear about why Mordecai felt Jews were not to bow before Haman the Agagite. Yes, you can research the command to destroy the Amalekites and Saul sparing Agag and build a narrative of tribal animosity, but the fact remains it wasn’t EXPRESSLY unbiblical to bow to Agag. Yet, conviction of the events and times had so persuaded Mordecai that he could not follow such a command from the King. It is easy to see why Daniel, Hananniah, Mischael, and Azariah should not pray to the king, or worship a golden image, but with Mordecai it seems to be much less clear. And God protects him for his conviction, and works in providence to raise him to new heights of honor.

Often, fools are placed in positions of authority. They will bask in the glory they feel they have earned, and when they find their power has limits, they will chaff. When some will refuse to bend the knee because of their religious belief, they will take drastic action. How dare some stand when all should bow? Their action will not hinge on reason, wisdom, knowledge, or science but rather on their need to be obeyed, to feel powerful. They may claim all of those things or only some, but that is not the reality of the moment.

Mordecai shows us that what to do in those situations may not be as definitive as we may like. Some will choose different ways to respond to such times, but Christian Liberty tells us that God is Lord of the conscience and he is the one who will Judge.

All Christians have decided what they wish about vaccines, but I will tell you this, it is your Christian responsibility to “go outside the camp” (Hebrews 13:13) for those who chose not to obey a Mandate that seeks to establish the Government as Lord of the conscience. To join the Jews of Susa who would fast and pray, even though they were not the ones that chose not to bow.

Coram Deo

Superman

Exodus 15:1 ESV              

“Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the LORD…”

Exodus 15:20 ESV        

“Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.”

When is celebration called for? Looking at Exodus 15, Israel had just watched as God defeated the Egyptians. They had walked through the sea between walls of water like heaps on either side, and after experiencing this miraculous salvation they celebrate. God had delivered them as only he could do. So, they composed songs and danced before him. This was a time to celebrate, they were on the way to the promised land and God was with them.

After suffering tremendous losses of life, a group of widowers and orphans celebrated the bounty of the harvest. They knew how hard winter was and had worked hard through the summer such that they had been blessed with bounty and chose to celebrate. When we are overwhelmed by earthly blessing it is right and good to thank God for how he has worked through providence in our provision. Knowing that sometimes our best efforts do not yield such blessings. In trying and hard times even the most diligent and faithful can be reduced, and so we praise God for blessing our efforts and work with fruit. This seems natural and right.

Studying Hebrews has brought the unnatural nature of true Christian fellowship under consideration. Paul wants us to be encouraged by the discipline of God. Knowing that when we are disciplined it is because we are partakers in the household of God and treated such that our resemblance comes to the fore (Hebrews 12:3-11).  Christians that rejoice and give thanks that they have been “counted worthy to suffer” is wholly unnatural. When we “loose” and suffer harm, lose, and rejection we are commanded to suffer as those that God wishes to discipline, looking to Jesus who was disciplined, not because he had done wrong but because he was God’s son (Hebrews 12:3). What a shame to my heart that I am downcast when “life” doesn’t turn out the way I want? When those I love and long for seek other pastures, investments that I had hoped to be blessings to my family don’t yield as I wished, when hearts I had planted and watered leave before I can see what fruit may come.

It is easy to grow discouraged and let your heart be downcast. It is very natural and normal for such a turn of events, yet it is unchristian. It is right and normal for the dead to remain dead. For rot and decay to ravage the dead and unused. Christianity is an unnatural thing. It is miraculous for the dead in Christ to be revived and live for him. It is miraculous for the rot and decay that comes from years of complacency to reverse and become vibrant once again. These are not natural things that is why to hope in them is to hope in Christ. His work in the lives of neighbors and groups of neighbors (i.e. communities). To worship when you have been beaten and thrown in prison (Acts 16:25) is unnatural, and it is Christian.

This last Sunday our family listed the things we were thankful for this last year and some of the things we hoped for this next year. It was a very natural thing, as I reflect and meditate on the implications of God’s discipline on me over the next few days, I pray by Thursday I will be able to rejoice in the hardships of this last year with the same joy and pleasure as I do the earthly blessings. Just as I rejoice in the man that my father’s discipline has helped me to be, I long to rejoice in the struggles behind and ahead knowing the Christian God is creating to be very unnatural, so much so he should be viewed as supernatural.

Join me these next few days and find a trial that God is disciplining you through. Rejoice in it this year, after all Superman had to be trained to fly.

Coram deo

Sin & the Grave

Ezekiel 16:23,24 ESV

“And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! Declares the Lord GOD), you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square.”

In the Late 30s Neville Chamberlain felt he could appease the German Socialist Party. They would chip away and press until they got what they wanted. So, he gave it to them, thinking they would stop when they got what they said they wanted. That fatal miscalculation destroyed a generation of young men, literally. Even if it worked, the goal was very much like Hezekiah and he was only desiring “peace in our time”. Would twenty years of peace have been worth what we now know was transpiring in Germany?

In the text for today, Ezekiel is contemplating the failings of his country. They have already been rebuked by God once, that is why he is “by the Chebar canal”, he was an exile with the exiles from Judah’s first attempt at independence from Babylon. Ezekiel notes the nature of sin in the context of his country. They had sold themselves and future generations by destroying the children God had provided them. Slaughtering them and then burning them as an offering to gain economic advantage and freedom, aka a better harvest. As this practice became common and casual things appeared to get better for the residents (Jeremiah 44:17) of Judah so they persisted in their sin. Needing more places to practice this right they built temples at every square to make sure anyone that wanted to could get to a place to sacrifice. Even as the men may have led in this right it was the women who would take the chant up and rejoice in the freedom that there was no shame in their idolatry (Jeremiah 44:19).

Sin and death were given all that they wanted and they kept pressing for more. After all, “the leach has two daughters, Give and Give” (Proverbs 30:5). More Temples, more infant sacrifices, more idolatry, promising better things if only more would be done. “And after all your wickedness” you just kept going deeper in the refuse of sin. Until they as the adulteress “eats and wipes her mouth and says, ‘I have done no wrong.’” Such was the struggle of Ezekiel as he watched his beloved nostalgia fade before a tide of sin with none willing or able to stand against it and reverse the tide. No sea wall to maintain the shore and so Jerusalem and Judah had sunk under a sea of sin.

As our nation gives itself to the idolatry of freedom, throwing off all restraint and joining the sea in its torment of chaos, I wonder is any willing and able to hold back the sea? Sin continues to press further into our society. It will never cry enough. Just as Gays, became lesbians and Gays became LGB, Became LGBT, became LGBTQ, Became LGBTQ+… so if we give quarter, it will simply keep pressing. How far does appeasement get? As far as we let them come. At some point you stop giving ground and start taking it or you wind up drowned in the sea. Will we as the church of God have the courage, will, and ability to stand against the tide of sin that our nation has sown? I pray we do, but the buck has to stop before any advance can be made. Do not give quarter to sin in your life. Courageously attack your sin and help your brother attack his.

Cruce, Dum Spiro, Fido

Stagnation

1 Timothy 3:14, 15

…I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God…

Timothy was young and simply wanted to serve. He was willing to help and watch, seeing how he could help all the more. By God’s grace and provision, he was gifted with skills through experience. God worked in his life little by little so that he was able to serve easily in this place or that. He would teach and be taught. So, Paul sent him. He had the skills that would be needed, Ephesus. I have preached through 1 Timothy and felt I had garnered a good understanding of. As I read through it again, it became more plain to me.

It is always good to try and understand the heart of God. When he chooses to tell us why is doing something we are best helped by listening. As Paul writes to Timothy, he makes one of these statements. He says “so that”. Paul is writing this letter to Timothy at Ephesus “so that” … “you may know” It is expressly for the purpose of teaching. Teaching what, you ask? How we are to act and behave in Church. All of what we read in 1 Timothy is so Timothy can understand how God’s people are to “do” church how to behave when they gather together.

As I meditated on these things, I was struck by other texts I know are in 1 Timothy. “Among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” (1 Timothy 1:20 ESV). Why would someone be removed from the fellowship of the saints. If the goal is being an example, wouldn't denying them that example hurt the end goal? Yet, Paul gives men over to Satan to LEARN. One of the more “controversial” sections of 1 Timothy says “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, rather she is to remain quiet.” (1 Timothy 2:11 ESV) I am not so much interested in the direct application to women in the pulpit/eldership, but that the focus and concern is about learning and teaching. Continuing to Chapter 3 we read that an elder “must be…apt to teach”. In that same chapter a deacon needs to be “tested” before he should be part of the diaconate.

Moving past the verse at hand, in Chapter 4 we read a Christian is to “train yourself for godliness” (verse 6 &7), “devote yourself…to teaching”, and to “practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.” (1 Timothy 4:15).

It is easy to stagnate in your study. To read the same verses over and over and think you know. I have read 1 Timothy enough that I can’t remember how many times. I have preached through both first and second Timothy, and yet the almost obsessive care that Paul and God had for the issue of education was not apparent to me. Paul’s fatherly care of Timothy was on full display for every believer to see, that who teaches and what they teach is important. Not just a little but painfully, repetitively, important. Over and over and over important, immersively important.

I won’t continue to point out all the times teaching, training, practice, and so on persist in this letter or in the next letter, but understand that teachers and teaching are critical to the church. It is easy to stagnate. Water does it the best. It sits still and gets to the point that it is unhealthy, or worse. Its appearance and its content get to the point that serious work must be done if it is to be good for human consumption. The particles settle out and then all the unseen things start to do their work and it is covered in slime. Such is the human mind when it stops learning, seeking to know, practicing what it has been taught. It becomes poisonous and dangerous.

 Small wonder Hebrews tells us to “stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Sometimes all it takes is one question to press the curious to further work. A casual thought grasped, “wait, Paul is talking about knowing and learning a lot, how much is he saying it?” And your mind is agitated, ready to know. Not to know “things” but to know him. The revelation of Paul’s intense concern for learning in the church in Ephesus is nice, but GOD’s concern for it makes that knowledge transcendent. To know him and his heart. That is what makes teaching valuable. To read is a great joy but to read the bible is immeasurably more.

Late is the Hour

Exodus 21:5-6 ESV

But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.

In reading the book The Civil War – as a – Theological Crisis Mark Noll points to the reality that the church in the United States was never able to come to conclusion on slavery. For decades prior to the Civil War pastors and theologians from the north and south would come to scripture and try and determine what God thought of slavery. The crux of the matter was that God clearly allowed slavery and therefore it was hard for the north to say God clearly condemns it. A few were able to make reasoned argument that, as practiced in the south, slavery was evil, but their arguments would never gain traction.

One of those passages that clearly show God allowing slavery is this text. I would also point out that this passage clearly shows God isn’t talking about chattel slavery as practiced in the United States. Nonetheless, here it is. A man sells himself into slavery because he is unable to provide for himself. His master provides for him, room and board, wife, and work. Because he is ultimately God’s he is permitted to go free after seven years, but enjoying the life of being cared for he rejects that and chooses to remain a slave, so a permanent mark is given to him that all may know and he won’t be able to later claim he never chose this fate.

Being an American citizen, I have always looked at this man in disgust and wonder. Why would you choose slavery! God has made us that we might be free. “For freedom he has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1) What kind of fool is this person. How can one come to such a point where they would prefer slavery? He can work and buy his wife and children’s freedom. Why give yourself over to such a fate?

Today, I think I see the man’s position more accurately. I still may think him foolish and unwise but that is the point I suppose. If such a man was unable to provide for himself before, why should he see himself as able to now? He is like the mass of men and women in the United States that bemoan “Adulting” as hard, rather than precious. That whine about how hard it is to get up and work, unable to control their passions they foolishly squander their time on idle pursuits, and find themselves, like the grasshopper, bound to the ant.

Yet, even in this I leave the fault far from my own doorstep. I am able to look down my nose in disgust and wonder. I can ridicule the millennials and think how pathetic they are, but what of my generation? Those with the capitol and experience to own their own business? Lincoln, Kansas is like most small towns in this nation, full of empty downtown stores. Each one used to hold a small business. Men and women willing to sacrifice vacations, weekends, and some holidays that they might be free. That they would be their own boss and slave to no one. Slavery starts to look good when discipline is looked at as hard. I will have another man, even out my income that I don’t have to plan for ups and downs, I will have another man plan for when I will be sick, so I don’t have to. He can help me manage my leisure as well, two days a week, two weeks a year. He can help me know when I am too old to work and give me a pension (or 401k) after I have worked so long.

Is it too late? Have we lost the ability to work, not the ability, per say, but the desire to be our own master, to chart our own course? Do we need to bore a hole in our ear?

“We’re doomed” and with that he exhaled, beaten and came to grips with his fate. But with that breath everything changed and doom was not his fate but hope and victory. Much like Henry the VIII, who did not think it much of a stretch to go from one earthly head, the pope, to another, the state, was much of a change, so is it much of a change to go from trusting another man, or business, with your care to a government?

Last weekend I was blessed by a friend who took our family pictures. We gathered around and ate before going out. I heard of how his oldest wished to own his own restaurant. All I could think was, that’s a lot of work. To my shame I think I even commented as such. In my sin dissuading a young man from hard work and being a blessing to his community. Thinking he had not rightly counted the cost of weekends, vacations, and family, but it is I who have not rightly counted the cost. As a church we must raise men that love work. Not men that pick habits they love and try to make a go at it, but ones that love working and the freedom that comes from it. Men and women who enjoy the challenge of owning their own business and the work associated with it.

Is it too late, for me? This, I think, is what I fear the most. Have I already trained myself to enjoy the blessing of employment more than the blessing of freedom? Is the awl already through my ear? I pray that the hour is only late for, how will my children live free if I cannot train them? How can a generation learn to work if no one showed them the way? If one generation longs for retirement more than work, why should the next generation long for work at all?