July 31st, 2010 by Bob Mathews
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Acts 20:7
So many lessons in today’s reading — indeed, so many in this one verse — but let’s concentrate on one or two.
Why do you attend worship?
- Is it because you’re part of a family, and wherever the family is, that’s where you want to be?
- Is it because there’s a biblical precedent for doing so?
- Is it to worship and praise and honor The God of Creation?
- Is it to partake of what we call the Lord’s Supper?
- Is it to hear a portion of God’s Holy Word preached?
Maybe all of these are reasons you attend. I’d suggest these are all not only valid reasons to gather together to worship, but also that none of these is the reason we should be there. Yet we’re told the express purpose of the saints at Troas for meeting was to “break bread” — a reference to the Lord’s Supper. So does this mean that when we assemble as a church, the most important thing we do is participate in the Communion service? I’d say that’s arguable, and I’d argue the negative position of that particular premise.
But my purpose this morning isn’t to argue — it’s to make you think.
I believe any time we start to think in terms of being there for the Lord’s Supper, and if we’re there for that, the rest is pretty much a bonus, then it’s time to re-think why we even attend worship in the first place. Isn’t partaking of the bread and the cup something you can do at home with your physical family? So there must be a reason besides this one observance to make a special trip to a special location to meet with a special group of people for a special time.
Here’s my take on it; feel free to disagree in the Comments section below: we are there on Sunday for the same reason we are placed here on earth — to worship the One who put us here. That’s it. It’s my opinion that the reason Luke is telling us the church at Troas met in order to break bread, is not because the Holy Spirit through Luke is giving us a hint that this is the most important act of worship. He’s simply stating a point of fact. So when we meet together tomorrow, let’s sing as if it were the last song of praise we’ll sing this side of Heaven, let’s listen to the Word proclaimed as if it were indeed coming from the lips of Jesus Himself (because it is God-breathed), and let’s partake of the Lord’s Supper remembering that it commemorates the express reason Jesus came to earth — to seek and to save that which was lost.
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July 30th, 2010 by Matt Lee
I’m writing this after returning from a short business trip. Most of these thoughts came from my mind after as we descended from 30,000 feet into the Austin airport. I had just endured a 2 hour delay in the Chicago airport (stunning I know) after my previous flight had also been delayed. I began to wonder why the airline seats can wreak such havoc on my skeletal system and whether if I sat just the right way the seat could actually put my spine back into place. If it can move my bones one way, why not the other? The problem is a little thing called entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Without specific corrective care (energy put back into the system) my spine will continue to get worse, not better, especially in the closed environment of an aircraft hull.
How does this relate to our scripture? Like I said, it’s late and so this may make no sense at all. But we don’t live in a closed system. God lives outside of the universe he created and can provide the anti-entropy medicine that we need so often. Job constantly reminds us of this as he is reminded of it himself. I was particularly struck by Job 10:10 “Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?” Now, Job is a book of poetry but I don’t think we’ll be incorporating this line into our praise songs anytime soon. I mean just finding words to rhyme with “curdle” and “cheese” would take a stroke of genius (or maybe just cheese). But it reminds us along with the rest of the passage that God is the one who created and is in control of it all. And this is even a more personal creation. It reminds me of the book (which I have not read but need to) “Who Moved My Cheese?” The book discusses how we deal with change. Rather than asking who is to blame (as Job’s friends are doing), ask what we can do in spite of the situation to survive and make the best of it. Job’s handling of the situation puts into perspective my complaints of airline delays and hard seats.
Another verse that is intriguing but I can’t fully comprehend in my current state is Job 12:11 “Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?”
And speaking of entropy…
How about those Ephesian riots in Acts 19:23-41? A mob mentality is no stranger to us. We’ll riot if our team loses the championship. We’ll riot if our team wins the championship. Luckily it only took a little common sense injected into the situation to calm things down and disperse the crowd. “Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?” Maybe, but I’ll have to think about that some more.
Thanks to the Southwest pilots who provided us safe travel and to the stewards on the flights who provided an entertaining take on the security policy. And thanks to our God who gave me safe travel and who reduces entropy by curdling my cheese.
Mmmmmmmmm cheese.
Posted in Creation, God, Job | 1 Comment »
July 29th, 2010 by Randy Consford
My mom had schizophrenia and our family struggles were great and compounding our struggles came the day when it seemed as if God was piling on greater suffering upon suffering. As a young teen, I was informed that my seven year old brother was run over by a truck and would not live. I understand Job’s bitterness. I have expressed some of the same words Job penned. Job and I and maybe you too have succumbed to the unchallenged worldly assumption that extraordinary suffering is to always be understood as the action of God, specifically a response to sin (Job 7:20-21). For a woman at our church reminded my mother and I that our sins caused the death of my brother. We are often left to conclude God is after us and it is unfathomable.
Job models for me a deeper theological reflection that begins by reminding us of the realities of life. Job models a realistic but incorrect view of God who provides inexpressible suffering. These issues have always left me wondering why God would ever inspire a book to be written that would in so many ways possibly make Him look bad. Yet, I have come to the conclusion that God is helping us process the pain of suffering and He acknowledges our pain and bitterness. How does someone who is angry and feels alienated speak about God or to God? If you have experienced excruciating pain, you too know the difficulty in talking calmly to God, praying, singing cheerful songs, or dealing with a friend who has no idea what you’re going through, while commanding you to repent of your sins. God is not so shallow and He provides us with Job chapter 7. It is honest, realistic, and provides me with catharsis. It does not satisfy all the questions but nothing ever really does. Sometimes venting helps.
So Job is suffering and he expresses himself. Yet, in this uncomfortable speech we overlook an important verse. Job acknowledges that God will search for him (Job 7:21). Job makes a dig at God that he may not be there when God finds him but he knows God will seek him out. Job may not be using what we may call Christian language and it may even be seen as blasphemy. Yet, his words show that his conversation with God is far from over. Isn’t this the beginning of restoring a relationship? We all know God will come after us. We know God is not finished with us yet.
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July 28th, 2010 by Scott Dutton
Job is a book filled with misunderstanding and bad theology. Yet in the middle of all that these men do not understand are bits of wisdom that if separated out ring true for today’s Christians. Job chapter four is the first of the speeches Job’s friends will make. I call them friends because they have made a long journey to be with him and they have sat with him for the proper period of mourning.
From this point their assessment of Job’s situation is skewed. But today we want to focus on just the first five verses of Job 4. Eliphaz just touches on something that happens with all too much frequency today. That is — how do we react when trouble visits us?
We are able to speak words of courage to others when it affects their lives but how do we react when it visits us personally? I had to struggle with these thoughts yesterday. Over the last eighteen months my wife and I have both lost our mothers. Then yesterday a single phone call shook my world again. My sister called to tell me my younger brother was in the hospital on a ventilator and the doctor said it could go either way.
My brother is still with us this morning, and he is still on the edge. But my problem yesterday was in asking God how much was enough. As I sat thinking about all my family has endured over the last few months, I suddenly realized it was time for me to let it go and trust in God. Stop worrying about the impact this would have on me and focus on how to use it to reach those who have little hope of eternity.
Will I trust in God only when it is good news or will I cling to Him in all things, trusting that He is bringing me to a better place? He is in control; not me. I’m praying for my brother and his family but I’m confident that whatever the outcome, God knows exactly what He is doing.
Posted in Job, Trust | 1 Comment »
July 27th, 2010 by Randy Consford
In our reading today, there was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. We are beginning a journey in Job that will travel past the iconic cliché of a sufferer who endures without complaint. Yet, focusing on just the “patience of Job” may limit our understanding and thwart our reflection of a more complex figure. The book begins with just such a portrayal of Job as the pious, who patiently endures calamity. Remembering the type of wisdom literature provided us by God may help us recognize that Job provides us with contrasting characteristics when he rebels, confronts the piety of his friends, and boldly accuses God of injustice. Traditional interpreters have often been embarrassed by Job’s unrestrained blasphemies. In modern interpretations, our culture focuses on the dreadfulness of the suffering and adds fodder to a mindset that wants to blame God for allowing these atrocities — which is often just a projection of blame because of our own struggle with suffering. Yet an attempt to proclaim Job as the patron saint of religious rebellion creates further humiliation when God questions Job at the end of the book and Job recants his blame against God.
Job is a complex book and does not provide simplistic answers. Our job (no pun intended) is to explore the issues of the motivation for piety, the meaning of suffering, the nature of God, the place of justice in the world, and the relationship of order and chaos in God’s design of creation. Are you up for the challenge? As we begin, please read with reflection, take your time, spend a lot of time in prayer, and remember God is not giving us some easy explanation of suffering but something really to think about.
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July 26th, 2010 by Powell Pendergraft
Jews reading Esther found great encouragement to know that although the name of God may not be heard frequently, or at all, He is still at work for His people wherever they are. Although some question whether Haman was descended from Agag the Amalekite, 1 Chron 4:43, the lesson remains true: I must root out all sin from my heart lest it find me one day in the grips of a weak moment and the battle could be lost. But again, God knows those that are His, 2 Tim. 2:19. The celebration of Purim to this day marks the victory and preservation given by God to His people in exile to a foreign homeland. Their passport may have read “Persian” but their souls were imprinted with “people of the covenant.” Deut. 7:6-9; 2 Chron. 6:36-40. There are no earthly boundaries of the kingdom of Heaven.
Theophilus reads of Paul in Philippi, a major, enfranchised city. Only citizens of the city of Rome could vote, receive protection of law and freedom. Other cities became “enfranchised” and participated in the citizenship of Rome. Philippi, too, was an old soldiers’ home, praetorian guard retirees, and some soldiers of Mark Anthony’s defeated at Actium, 31 BC, and other folks. The church starts with a few women and slaves. Then its proponents are jailed. Where is God? Moving walls, breaking down barriers, opening hearts. The jailer is saved from suicide by God’s intervention by Paul and Silas, and becomes a citizen of the true kingdom. Then the surprise: a citizen of Rome, Paul of Tarsus, was jailed and held without due process! And they will not “disappear” quietly! What is God doing? He demonstrates that Christians are good citizens, follow the law of the land insofar as it is in harmony with the God of heaven and earth, Phil. 3:17-21. There is no place where God cannot see or help His people when it is time. There are no earthly boundaries of the kingdom of Heaven, and so much so that “Jesus is king” becomes the mob’s warrant for a riot in Thessalonica.
When I left home after college, way back in 19 hundred and none-of-your-business (as a teacher of mine used to say) I looked for the church in central Missouri. Due to some mishaps and misunderstandings I went back to my apartment and nearly wept, depressed that I could not find my people in this “foreign” place. To make a long story short, God blessed me with one of the more dynamic and wonderful Christian families I have known. They helped me to build my faith as I began to build my life. Things are not as I think they are, things are as God has created and prepared them. We need only to look for God, His people, and His blessing. There are no boundaries to the kingdom of God.
Prayer: Holy Father, Righteous and True, open my eyes to see Your rule and reign around me today, and by Your Spirit may I glorify Your name as a citizen of Your Heavenly Kingdom. Thank You in Jesus’ name.
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July 25th, 2010 by Matt Wilson
When I was a student at Texas Tech I majored in two areas of study — Public Relations and Political Science. It was always my intention to become involved in politics. In short, I wanted to become the next Governor of Texas. At some point, I might still have to try to make this happen because it was part of my pitch to get Leah to marry me.
Public relations and political science are actually quite similar. Both deal with how you present and communicate a set of ideas or product. One of the overriding differences is publicity. Some PR professors will tell you that any kind of publicity is good. Political science professors will tell you that a bad endorsement or bad publicity can cripple not just your campaign, but cripple your career. The apostle Paul was very aware of the danger of a bad endorsement.
Turn with me to Acts Chapter 16. I would like to focus on Acts 16:16-24. There is a slave girl that is making money for her owners as a fortune teller. The fact that she had made a lot of money probably indicates that she was pretty good at her job. As Paul and the other disciples enter a place of worship, this girl recognizes them and begins to follow them. She continually exclaims “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept it up for days. Now, you may be wondering why that is a problem. Here you have a fortune teller that probably had a good record of being right (based on the fact she made a lot of money for her owners) exclaiming that these group of men were servants of God and that they could tell you how to be saved. Where’s the harm?
The harm comes from the fact that she was a fraud and Paul knew it. Pay special attention to the language she used to describe them. “Servants of the Most High God…” Recognize that? Turn over to Mark 5:7 and see if you see a similarity. This girl was possessed by a demon and Paul was deeply troubled. Why? Because an endorsement by a demon is still an endorsement by a demon. Just as this demon proclaimed them to be servants of the Most High God, the next day the demon could proclaim something false. Paul commands the demon out of the girl and causes Paul and Silas to be stripped, flogged and thrown into jail.
Brothers and sisters you better believe that the Devil knows who is righteous and who is not. Evil people will greet you with a smile and shake your hand and tell you how great it is being a Christian. Be very aware and do not fall into their trap. Just as Paul could not afford a false endorsement from a demon, neither can you.
May God bless you and keep you this week,
Matt
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July 24th, 2010 by Bob Mathews
[the Moabites] had hired Balaam to call a curse down on [the Israelites]. (Our God, however, turned the curse into a blessing.) Nehemiah 13:2
There are so many lessons in the book of Nehemiah, and the closing chapter is loaded with them. You’re no doubt familiar with the story of Balaam; if you need to jog your memory, it’s in Numbers 22-24. The king of Moab, feeling threatened by the Israelites, hired Balaam to call down a curse on his “enemy”. Instead, Balaam followed God’s instructions and blessed His people instead (Numbers 23:11-12).
In this simple verse, Nehemiah reminds us that sometimes what is intended by others to work against us, God, who is all-powerful, can work for us. Isn’t that what the Apostle Paul reminds us of? This is a verse we all know by heart and quote often:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28
The way many of us learned that verse was that “all things work together for good” (KJV), as if magically “all things” just happen to “work together for good”, rather than the active “God works for the good”. I believe that’s exactly what Nehemiah is reminding us of — that God is active in the lives of His people. Whatever circumstances you’re dealt by your job, your friends, your health, whatever — God can turn bad into good, cursing into blessing.
What’s your “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)? Is God’s grace sufficient? When you look at “life’s lemons”, do you see curses thrown at you by circumstances, or do you see opportunity for God to work blessings through you?
Holy Father, forgive us for the times when in our selfish stubbornness, we fail to surrender our lives to You to allow You to work through us. May today be Your day; may our lives be instruments of Your blessing to others we meet. We offer our lives to You, so that You can turn curse into blessing, in the name of our precious Savior Jesus.
Posted in Complaining, Nehemiah, faith | No Comments »
July 23rd, 2010 by Scott Epperson
In Acts 15 Luke gives us the story of how believers were trying to impose their beliefs (fragmented as they were) on other believers. Acts 15:1 says “Some men came down from to Judea to Antioch…” They were teaching that unless believers (paraphrased) were circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses that they “…could not be saved.” Most likely the same group of men again brought this forward in Acts 15:5. Here they are identified as believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees. So, learned men who were Jews but converted to Christianity brought at least one and likely other beliefs from their former religious practice to their Christian practice AND they were going about wanting to impose their beliefs on believers who had not come from the same prior religious practice.
SOUND FAMILIAR? Or more to the point, does this sound like you or maybe I should say “ME”. When each of us individually was saved and became a “believers, we brought a bag of beliefs with us (baggage). We may have come from no religious background, a Christian denomination, or other religion (i.e. — Judaism, Islam, etc.). In order to maintain some sense of who we are and where we came from, we hang onto some of the past. That is what these men were doing, but worse, they were trying to impose their beliefs on everyone else.
In Acts 15:7-11, Peter states that God knows men’s hearts, made no distinction between men, and purified men’s hearts (Romans 5:1). He goes on to ask why, when the Jews couldn’t live up to required acts, such as circumcision, should Jewish Christian brothers try to put a “yoke” (the Law) upon gentile Christian brothers. So, the burning question is how do we try to make other Christian brothers and sisters abide by the same exact belief that we have? Don’t fool yourself into thinking that we don’t all do it, because we do. Each of us may have different views on acts of worship or Christian life, but we should not be about trying to impose our belief or will on others. Invariably, when we do, disorder and conflict results. Should we talk with each other, study the Bible individually and with each other to try to let God guide our actions — YES. Should we idly stand by and let something happen that we know is unscriptural — NO. That is when we have to stand up and speak out. In matters that don’t go against scripture, we should be willing to work together for the good of all, which will enrich the lives of Christians and the Church.
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July 22nd, 2010 by Randy Consford
I remember Captain Picard on the Starship Enterprise visiting a less sophisticated and under-developed planet. The inhabitants on the planet confused Picard as being a god. He took extreme efforts in proving he was not. I remember in Ghostbusters, Gosher the Babylonian god asked Ray if he was a god. He answered negatively and they were all zapped. The other Ghostbusters chided Ray and told him next time when asked if he was a god to answer in the affirmative.
I find it interesting that even in our sophisticated world, we still do not understand the issue of god. We may have a learned society that no longer believes in a god, but that’s not true, because in reality, we have just changed the names. Now, we worship the god of economic systems and materialism, the environmental god, the familial god, the god of narcissism and ego-centrism, the hedonistic god, etc. We are just like the Gentiles in Lystra that Paul and Barnabas ran into in Acts 14:8-18. They thought Barnabas was Zeus and Paul was Hermes (Acts 14:12). Paul and Barnabas tried to correct them and teach them about the true living God who made everything (Acts 14:15) but to no avail. They went on trying to worship their gods.
Who is your god? We make fun of the ancients for being a pluralistic society that worshiped ancient gods. Many discard the idea of one God who created everything. We as Christians are often made fun of as old, outdated relics. Yet, if everyone is honest, what is really different with the ancient pluralistic societies and our society today? Man-made peace is still far from us, social equity is confused with socialism, justice is run by politics, mercy is more about what is in it for me than real mercy, and man is psychologically sicker than ever. Maybe we have forgotten about sin and the need for a Savior. I am glad I have a God who created all things and knows I need forgiveness from my sins. He provided me with His Son. I am proud of my God and he ain’t me and he ain’t you! He ain’t the environment and He ain’t the government!
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