Eco-Promise (sort of)

Ezekiel 39:7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.

The middle of the verse tells us why God will use modern-day Israel once again.  The fact that God will not allow Israel to pollute his name anymore is clear indication that Israel will pollute the name of Jehovah.  They did so in the past, and it led to the great diaspora.  The great dispersion.  1948 saw the return of national Israel to the land God had given them.  However, by continuing to reject Jesus as their Messiah, they continued to pollute the name of Jehovah.  This is clearly evidenced by the severe lack of moral purity required from God’s people.  Israel is no better than any other depraved nation on this earth.  They have the same issues with immorality, abuse, and worship of ungodly things.  What cannot be lost, however, is that no matter how far from God they get, they are still God’s people.  There is application here for the New Testament Saint.

Every child of God who loves his or her Savior sincerely desires to overcome sin.  If repentance is part of our salvation experience (and it must be or we are not saved) then our attitude towards sin changed.  We abhor it.  Not that we are all that successful in avoiding it.  Temptation comes, and we fall.  What changes is an elevated reaction of guilt and a deep desire to make it right with God.  We didn’t have that prior to our regeneration.  Now, the Holy Spirit convicts to an even greater degree because our person had been born again.  That process has made us much more sensitive to the work of the Spirit.  Looking at the verse above and the promise made to Israel; we have the same promise.  In the sense that we will be made perfectly sinless without any capacity to sin is called glorification.  There will come a day when it will be impossible to pollute the name of the LORD anymore.  Gone will be the sinful part of us that yields do easily to sin.  God will be the old man.  There will come a day when polluting the name of the LORD will be just as impossible for east to become west or up to become down.

This is the hope of all who walk with God.  We hate our failures and sin.  We hate failing to be all that we can be for the pleasure of our Almighty Father.  We hate having to go to His throne time and again to confess and forsake.  We hate it.  More than life itself, we hate sin and want it forever eradicated!  We have that promise.  So, if we have that promise, what would happen if we lived in that promise?  When I started PT following my shoulder surgery, the therapists promised that if I applied myself, then I would regain one-hundred percent use of my left shoulder and arm.  There was nothing but a lack of determination that could stop it.  That drove me past the pain.  That motivated me to higher degree of commitment.  In the same vein, if we are promised eternal perfection, why are we not striving after it now?  It is our hope!  It is our future.

Don't Forget To Rejoice

“He turned the sea into dry [land]: they went through the flood on foot: there did we rejoice in him.” (Ps 66:6 AV)

Can you imagine trying to rejoice when there are walls of water on both sides of you?  Can you imagine trying to rejoice when the entire Egyptian army is behind you and if the pillar of fire were to fade, you would be trapped?  Can you imagine rejoicing when you are trying to get your family and all your belongings across a sea that is abating?  Rejoicing?  Are you nuts?  I think I would run as fast as I could, and when the sea closed upon the Egyptians, then I would rejoice.  Yet our psalmist tells us they rejoiced in the middle of the sea.  To have that state of mind while escaping certain death takes a lot of patience and faith.  Faith, which they would later forget that they had.

When God does a great thing, it is often overwhelming.  Rejoicing, although completely appropriate, is not our natural reaction.  After the shock of what God did has worn off, then rejoicing usually follows.  One of the hardest days of my life was the day of my wife’s cancer surgery.  Up to this point, I had learned to trust my intuition.  When I knew in my heart that something was about to happen, it usually did.  It is a sixth sense by knowing how God works and what He is trying to accomplish before He acts.  It has served me very well over the years.  This sense of God’s leading has put me in places of opportunity.  One such case was going to a hospital for a visit and knowing beforehand that I would bump into a specific someone whom I hadn’t seen in 15 years.  Sure enough, they walked into the hospital the moment I was at the desk inquiring of the patient whom I came to see.  The day of my wife’s surgery, I was prepared to hear the news that she didn’t make it out of the OR.  I was sitting with my son and had the overwhelming feeling that she had passed at noon on the dot.  I remember looking up into the sky and saying goodbye.  We sat there.  In silence.  Thirty minutes later we were called to the consult room where the surgeon was to meet us.  I was prepared to hear the worst.  After all, if all went well, they usually came right to the lobby area.  I was sitting in a private room.  As the surgeon described the surgery and what she accomplished, I was stunned.  My wife was alive.  She did well.  All my fears were abated.  Rejoicing was not my first response.  Shock was.

As to how to apply this, I am searching beyond the obvious.  The obvious application would be to rejoice as a discipline to the miraculous hand of God.  One can always meditate on it a bit later.  One has to imagine what this might have looked like.  Israel was rejoicing and celebrating while crossing the Red Sea.  Egypt had to have heard this and erroneously thought it was presumptuous to do so.  As the Jewish people sang songs of praise and glorified God with a shout, Egypt necessarily had to become more enraged.  Perhaps the joy expressed is what motivated the enemies of God to self-destruction.  Maybe the Devil has more influence over us because we have not motivated him to self-destruction.  Maybe the temporal enemies of the gospel have not collapsed because we as God’s people simple are too stoic in our response to what our great God has and will do!  Maybe rejoicing in the middle of God’s deliverance is the key to getting on the other side.  Maybe a heart of rejoicing is what gets us to higher ground, and not always the result of it!

The Blessing of Being Chosen

“Blessed [is the man whom] thou choosest, and causest to approach [unto thee, that] he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, [even] of thy holy temple.” (Ps 65:4 AV)

I can’t get over the words “whom thou choosest”!  Now, I hate to disappoint you, but this is not an entry regarding Calvinism.  Calvinism is heresy.  There, I said it.  It changes the very process of salvation and that, by definition, is a heresy.  If it makes you feel better to call me a heretic if I reject your theology, I’m ok with that!  Rather, I would focus on the fact that in spite of what God knows of me, He still chooses to fellowship with me.  What love!  Note that the satisfaction that follows is tied to the choosing that precedes it.  Perhaps that is why so many believers are unhappy today.  Maybe that is why so many who claim to be a child of God are dissatisfied with life.  Maybe they have forgotten they were chosen with the full knowledge of an omniscient God who has every right to decline our presence.  He would be fully within His holiness if He rejected us all!  Yet He does not.  Those who chose to trust Him, He chooses to grant them an audience.  Why?  It is a great mystery to me!  Love explains it.  But the depth of love is what I trip over.  If I were God, I wouldn’t let me anywhere near me!  Yet He chose me!

Every once in a while, I have the same thought regarding my wonderful wife.  She could have done so much better.  Don’t tell my father-in-law I said that.  He would agree.  LOL.  She is smart beyond smart.  She is funny.  She is a master organizer.  She is my spellchecker, my cheerleader, and my best friend.  I wonder why she ever chose me.  What prompts these thoughts?  When I look at other men and notice what they have accomplished, why she ever chose me, I will never know.  I see what others have done; I watch the strengths of others; I wonder why it is that I have never met my full potential.  I compare all this against her faithfulness and admiration and have to ask that one-word question, ‘why’.  Then I examine my personal failures.  My foolish ways that often cause more harm than good.  There are slip-ups with the tongue.  There are times of laziness that creep in.  There are misjudgments that occur.  She deserves much better.  So, why?  Why did she choose me?  I am still amazed almost forty years later that she chose me when there were far better options out there.  She could have had a much better life.  So, why?  Why did she choose me?

Take that thought and multiply it by a factor of infinity!  That is what God did for His children.  He knows us better than any spouse could ever know us.  Yet, He chose us.  When we err against our spouse, sometimes it is deliberate.  Sometimes it is simple human error.  But when we sin, it is always against God.  It is personal with Him.  Yet, knowing what we would do before we do it, He still chose us.  Now, we can choose to do one of two things.  We can react in paralyzing self-pity.  We can look with deep humility and react in a false humility that is actually pride.  Or, we could appreciate the unspeakable gift of divine affirmation by reciprocating as best we can our devotion to Him!  The first reaction is stated above.  We can choose to be satisfied with the presence of God above all other things.  This means contentment in the person of God rules the heart and mind.  If we were to realize just how blessed it is to be chosen, then all other needs or anxieties would become a far-distant concern.  The one who realized the blessedness of being chosen is the one who is satisfied no matter what follows or does not follow.  Being chosen is the principal thing!

He'll Get His

“By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.” (Eze 28:16 AV)

Through the events of the king of Trye, Ezekiel prophesies the eventual downfall of Satan.  We know this is future tense because the Bible clearly tells us.  When the LORD returns, Satan will be bound and cast into the bottomless pit for 1,000 years.  After the 1,000 years he will be loosed from the pit to deceive the nations.  At the commencement of the second battle of Gog and Magog, the devil and all the lost will be cast into the lake of fire forever.   As tormented as we are by the forces of evil, this will come to an end.  This casting out is not a light thing.  God tells the devil that he will be destroyed.  This means that as much as the world wants us to believe Satan will rule hell, he won’t.  Satan will exist in a permanent state of destruction.  He will have no liberty to go as he wishes.  He will have no power to do as he wants.  His end is complete and total torment with no hope of parole.

It is hard to imagine a reality with the force of evil as the major part of it.  We have help by reading of heaven in the word of God.  Our imagination limits us to the total picture of what a perfect place might be like.  One can only get a picture in mind of how human interaction will change without the presence of evil.  I have this app on my phone.  It monitors dispatch calls.  I get a report of all the crime that occurs within my designated area.  The other night there was activity in my immediate neighborhood, and I never knew it.  Apparently, there was a gang of young people attempting to break into cars.  They made the mistake of breaking glass, and someone heard it.  They called it in.  Law enforcement was all around our block, and a drone was deployed.  They eventually caught the young ones who were trying to hide on a property.  It wasn’t too smart to try to break-ins less than a block from our city’s main police station.  I live two blocks from city hall to my south and two blocks to my north is a police substation.  If there were any block in our city that a criminal might want to avoid, it would be mine.  The point is, this happened well after we had turned in for the night.  We had no idea.  Had it not been for the app, I never would have known of the evil that was right outside my front door.

That is the way Satan operates.  Clandestine work is his favorite.  The less he is noticed, the more damage he can do.  Not until he is completely removed will God’s temporal creation realize the scope of evil that dwelled among us.  But one of these days it will be all over.  It will be all over forever.  Those of us who have eternal life by the blood of Jesus Christ can never lose it.  Those who have eternal death will never escape.  One of these days there will be an eternal separation of good and evil.  Good will reside with God.  Evil will be confined to the lake of fire.  This is the patience of all the saints!

Following Hard

“My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.” (Ps 63:8 AV)

The first part of this verse speaks loudly to me!  For the first time in a long time, this writer is of few words.  David was overwhelmed.  At what point in his life he wrote this is unclear.  We do know, because of the mention of enemies, that David was at his wit’s end with those who would do him harm.  Who they were and when this was in not stated.  The title of the psalm places David in the wilderness of Judah.  Although he may have spent more time there than was recorded in the scriptures, this may correlate to his flight into Judah, their initial rejection of him, and his consequent trip to Moab to secure his parent’s safety.  If this is the time of which David speaks, it was a particularly lonely time.  His tribe refused to protect him from Saul.  Saul had killed everyone associated with David.  Therefore, David was forced to flee to Moab and leave his immediate family there.  For the first time, David was all alone with His God.

David is not ashamed to say that his soul followed hard after God.  The picture I have in my head is our wedding reception.  Several weeks after our wedding, my wife’s boss gave us a compliment.  She said she noticed that I followed my wife around like a forlorn puppy.  Where she went, I went.  I followed hard after her.  I know what you are thinking.  Just stop it.  I did this because we were now one flesh.  We were no longer two people.  We were one family.  This was before our wedding night.  This was before our consummation.  We were one.  No longer two.  The thought of being far from her was not a thought I cared to entertain.  It has been that way ever since.  Time has allowed us to be apart.  But not for very long.  It is extremely rare for us to be away from one another for more than a few hours.  Those times when we are apart for days are rare.  It is usually a woman’s retreat, a hunting trip, or an overnight hospital stay that demands our severance.  But these times are extremely rare.  We could say that we follow hard after one another.  There isn’t much space or time that separates us.  And I like it!

When David says that he follows hard after the LORD, I understand this.  It breaks the heart of the saint who truly loves his God that heaven is so far away.  We must accept our relationship as it is.  One of these days, we will see our Savior face-to-face!  Following hard after the LORD will take on a whole new meaning.  Jesus saved my soul over forty years ago.  My biggest regret is that I am not as close to Him as I possibly could be.  Like all of us, sin and life happened.  One of these days, following hard after the LORD will have no competing interests.  One has to wonder who we love the most.  One has to wonder who it is we could not live without.  It should be the LORD.  As a newlywed who follows hard after his new spouse, our souls should follow hard even more so after our God.  He will never leave nor forsake.  He is always there.  Closer than we realize.  So, the question still remains.  Do we follow hard after the God of our existence?

God's Tent Is Broad!

“I will abide in thy tabernacle for ever: I will trust in the covert of thy wings. Selah.” (Ps 61:4 AV)

For David, the tabernacle was a physical place of worship that Israel visited regularly.  This tabernacle had five pieces of furniture.  The Ark of the Covenant was there.  God’s glory rested on the tabernacle whenever it ceased to travel.  But note here that David says he will abide in the tabernacle of God forever.  Yet as a warrior king, this simply was not possible.  He had to go to the palace.  He had to be with his family.  David has to go out to the field of battle.  He simply could not live in the tabernacle for his entire human existence.  So what does he mean when he says he will abide in the tabernacle of God forever?

The clue we are given is in the punctuation and explanation we find in our passage.  A colon is a very important tool for interpreting a verse.  A colon tells us that what follows further explains that which was just said.  What follows may be additional context.  It might be a clearer definition.  What follows a colon might supply missing information that clarifies an otherwise broad point.  In our passage, what follows the colon defines the ‘tabernacle’ as David saw it.  By including the ‘wings’ of God, David defines the ‘tabernacle’ as far more than a tent located in Jerusalem.  David saw the tabernacle of God as the presence of God manifested by God’s sovereign rule and protection over his life.  The ‘tabernacle’ of which David would abide forever is the perfect will of God and God’s ever-present person.  Even though the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night rested on the physical tabernacle in Israel, David knew that his God was not restricted to that particular place and time.

The same is true for us today.  God is not any more God while was are in church, our prayer closet, or a bible study.  He is just as much God while we are in the car on the way to the market.  God is just as much God and just as present whether we are sitting in a doctor’s waiting room or kneeling at an altar.  God is just as much God if we are fixing a leaking sink or putting the kids to bed as He is during our private devotional time.  David understood this.  He vows that he will abide in the presence of God forever.  Because he does, the sovereign presence, protection, and provision will always be there.  Fear can drive us from it.  Fear can blind us from it.  We can look outside and see the sky darkening and lowering.  We hear the sirens begin to blow and the treetops swaying violently in the wind.  Anxiety grips us.  We wonder if God sees and hears.  He certainly does.  His tabernacle has not moved.  We have.  David accomplished the great things that he did because he remained in the presence of God.  It didn’t matter where he physically was, he strived to stay in the ever-present person of our Creator.

Love Sends You To Your Room

“And I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, and will plead with him there for his trespass that he hath trespassed against me.” (Eze 17:20 AV)

Call me crazy, but I see the tenderness and compassion of God in this verse.  Ezekiel, the prophet of God to Judah, is sharing the reason for the Babylonian captivity.  The net of God will draw all of Judah and Benjamin together.  He will place them in servitude to a pagan king far away from home.  They will cease temple worship.  Their liberty will be severely restricted.  They will be surrounded by those who hate Jehovah.  They will be treated as a conquered people.  This doesn’t sound compassionate or tender, does it?  But note one small phrase: “and will plead with him there.”  I find this very tender.  I find in this pleading a loving Father who wants the best for His child, but the only way to provide it is to reduce that child to nothing so he will quiet himself long enough to listen.  I find in this verse tough love.  But I also find in this verse the patience of God.  I find a God who wants a sit-down with His children in a situation where there is nothing else to do but to listen.

When we think of the chastening of God, unfortunately, we use our childhood experiences as a comparison.  Far too many times our fathers chastened us for their own pleasure.  That is what the book of Hebrews calls it.  Too many times, chastening was more about assuaging anger or feeding an ego.  Too many times, it was inflicted by an impatient heart.  We experienced chastening as an outburst of angry parent.  My dear mother, the patron saint of patience, would rarely explode.  In fact, in my entire childhood this only happened to me once.  My brother and I were messing around at the breakfast table and my Mom’s last nerve snapped.  She had a serving spoon in her hand and threw it at me.  It hit me right above my right eye.  From that day forward, she never lost her temper with me.  Not once!  My father, however, was not nearly as patient.  Serious beating came at his hand.  Did I deserve them?  Most of them.  The thing is, we can misunderstand God’s chastening if we compare our experience against His actions.  God doesn’t easy lose His patience.  If He does, it is planned.  It is not spontaneous.  Therefore, the phrase mentioned above is the norm.  Not the exception.

One can imaging a father who removes his child from everything.  He sends him to his room.  He lets him stew a bit over what is coming.  Dad is wise enough to know that if he goes up too quickly, emotion will be the major influence in any conversation.  The child is removed from his toys.  The child is removed from his siblings.  He is removed from to comfort of his mother.  Everything that could distract or minimize the infraction is removed.  When dad does go to the room, he is going to try to reason with his child.  Sending him to his room is not the punishment.  Sending him to his room isolates him from everything and anything that would get in the way of instruction and correction.  When dad does reason with his erring child, it is not to make himself feel better.  Ego is put aside.  He reasons with his child and tries to help him see why his choices were wrong and the consequences that could come as a result.  The word pleading is more than reasoning.  It is reasoning with a heart of compassion and understanding.  It is reasoning with the knowledge of what will come if the arguments are not heeded.  Pleading is reasoning with the deepest of concerns.  So, when God sent Judah and Benjamin to Babylon, He was sending them there so He could have their ear.  He wanted their ear because He foresaw what would become of them if they didn’t heed His commandments.  There is compassion here.  There is understanding.  There is love.