Month: February 2009

Happy Monday Everyone!

How have you all been? Today we get to the 5th commandment given to Moses by Almighty God at Mount Sinai eons ago. I say eons to challenge your thinking, for what is time to God who is outside of time? What God said thousands of years ago is still relevant today, right? I mean, He said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens…” (Genesis 1:14) referring to the sun, moon and stars, and they’re still here… still unmistakably relevant, ha! How cool is it, to realize the power of God’s words? So, passé is a non sequitur. How have you been regarding these 10 Commandments?

Thus far, we have covered the first four commandments. I’ve also taken the angle of seeing these commandments in terms of love. Oh blessed love, the finest and truest of all litmus tests for the real Christian! And that is the whole point… to stop playing pretend or to stop being confused or worse, to stop being all manner of deceived concerning our “Christian-ness” by seeing if and how we love God and others. Okay… the first four:

1.      No other gods = Our love toward God is loyal
2.      No idols = Our love toward God is faithful
3.      No taking Lord’s name in vain = Our love toward God is reverent
4.      Observe Sabbath, keep it holy = Our love toward God is set apart (untainted)

Now the next six concern our fellow man. And the 5th can be found in your Bible here:

Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

And Paul refers to it in the New Testament here:

Ephesians 6:1-3 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first command with a promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

How about that?!! Growing up, did you obey your parents? How about now, having grown up, do you honor your parents? Just now, I am seeing God said “Honor” and the Holy Spirit through Paul said “Obey”. Is it right to say that one way honor manifests itself is through obedience? Well, to honor can mean to esteem. And to esteem is to regard highly. And, so yes, I think it is natural to conform to what we highly regard.

How so? Well, as kids, think about how we so highly regarded the gang we hung out with that we would conform to that group’s dos and don’ts. Or think of brands… like Sony or Starbucks, how we so highly regard them that we must-buy-their-products, for no other brand will do… And hopefully, having such a high regard for God and His ways, we Christians gladly conform our lives to His teachings. I think honor and obey can logically go together, don’t you? And in terms of love… I would suggest the 5th command is also suggesting love is respectful.

Think back to your growing up. When I look back at how rebellious I was towards my parents, I understand now how unloving I was. My doing what I wanted despite their wishes demonstrated I didn’t regard their directions/ admonishments/ opinions very highly, if at all! Now that I am a parent, I can see how this issue of respect is vital to a person’s upbringing. Personally, I could have avoided a lot of heartache if I just listened to and obeyed my parents more. As kids, I don’t think it is easy to understand how much our Mommy’s and Daddy’s love us and want the best for us.

I also know some of our parents were not the best role models either. And perhaps some were abusive. I’ve struggled with forgiving my folks for some of the things they said and did to me… but forgiving them was/ is the right thing to do. And Christians need to come to grips with what God is commanding here. Don’t plead the 5th, obey it!

Frankly, I am appalled when I see young kids disrespect their parents nowadays. And I’m equally appalled when those parents allow it. Anyhow…

I just had another thought… Christians should actually highly regard everyone else. Isn’t that the right attitude? I mean our parents are special people we know, surely we are to honor them… if everyone, how much more our own flesh and blood?

But Jim, you don’t know what they did to me! I may not, but what does it say about their spiritual condition if they did such and such? Perhaps you need to share the light with them…

The other part of the command, the part that Paul says is a promise, is that of longevity. I can just see how (generally speaking) kids that are taught to respect and obey their parents develop a healthy sense of respect for authority. They are (generally speaking) not those who may possibly evolve from undisciplined trouble-makers to the point of grief-makers. Perhaps the more you keep your cool and stay out of trouble, (by the prerequisite parental training and subsequent honor towards them) the longer you’ll live.

All I know is that God’s hand in our affairs can be mysterious. I am certain His grace has spared us many many times! I’m planning on living to 100 years old, how about you? 😉

Lastly, I ask you all… who’s your ultimate father? Do you think the 5th commandment applies to Him?

Comments/ questions encouraged!

Peace,
Jim

Good Morning Everyone,

I hope all is well with you. Don’t forget that this Google Group is another option when wanting to share some tidbits on your life, perhaps a prayer request or a “Praise God” story. And you’d be sharing such things with compassionate people who know you 😉

Priming the pump as it were, I attended a men’s small group this past Thursday. In addition to discussing the Bible with other grown men, I met a man there who, get this, works as a coffee salesman! Ha! Needless to say, I’ve got an order pending…

So on to this week’s commandment of discussion, the last of our relating to God:

Exodus 20:8-11: Remember the Sabbath (rest) day and keep it holy (set apart). Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God, in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering right now, do we have to keep the Sabbath? And the answer is no. The Sabbath was implemented by God for the Jews and was part of their Theocratic observances. And as you may well know, when Jesus finished His work, the whole Old Testament Mosaic/ Ceremonial/ Levitical system ceased… recall the tearing of the temple curtain, etc…. Christ was the fulfillment of the Law.

The Apostle Paul wrote this:

Colossians 2:16-17 Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

You see, all those sacrifices and festivals and such of the Old Testament were pointing to Christ. An unblemished lamb to be slaughtered back then foreshadowed Jesus, the sinless man becoming a sacrifice. And so now we celebrate/ memorialize the third day when Christ rose from the dead, which is Sunday.

Now, about this 4th commandment… should we just discard it as irrelevant? May I offer my opinion? Let me share my perspective.

The Bible says that God created everything in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Now Almighty God does not need to rest does He? No. Thus, He rested as an example to us.

By the way, I happen to believe the week we all live by is a simple but blessed witness to God’s design. Have you ever wondered why we don’t just have a 4 day week? Or an 11 day week? And what about this 24 hour stuff??!!  Why not a 17 hour day? Or a 31 hour day? Oh marvelous time! How could we ever seriously think time is an arbitrary phenomenon? Everything around us points to God! Hallelujah!

Okay, so God rested as an example to us. And if we rest from our everyday distractions, what do you suppose we might do? Go for a walk and hear some birdsongs? Play at the park on the soft green grass? Sit in the sunlight to be warmed by the sun? Go fishing? Pick some cherry tomatoes from our garden? Watch for shooting stars in the night sky?

Taking a break and resting allows us time to enjoy what God has made, does it not? And if we stop and take notice and comprehend and enjoy what God has made, we just might experience some thankfulness well up inside us. And I can’t help but believe our Lord loves our “Wow!”s and “Awesome!”s and our “That’s amazing!”s that result from a thankful and appreciative heart.

God has been and is so good to us. Surely some time should be spent appreciating and enjoying what He has made, and proclaiming as such too. This is what I think the essence of the Sabbath day is. If we love God, wouldn’t we recognize all that He has done for us and be thankful everything? And how could we recognize all this unless we un-crowd our mind with the busyness of life/ work?

And the second part of the command, regarding the part “keep it holy”… recall that holy means to be set apart as pure, not defiled… untainted. In our times of rest and enjoying the things around us, for us to thank God as the source really honors Him, don’t you think so? For example, take the rainbow… if you see a rainbow, what comes to mind and fills your thoughts? Leprechauns? Pot of Gold? Homosexuals? Or sunlight refracting through misty water droplets? Or how about Noah’s flood and God’s promises?

Wanting to honor God as the source, let’s look at the source for rainbows…

Genesis 9: 13: I (God) set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant (promise) between Me and the earth.

I suggest we give God the credit for the wonderful things we experience in our lives here on earth… let us not taint it with dishonorable things. Using rainbows you can see the sad progression:

Once upon a time, God flooded the entire earth. Afterwards, He made a rainbow to be a sign of His promise never to flood the entire earth again. Some time later, men forgot this original promise and seeking to make sense of the rainbow, they noticed when they tried to get close to it to examine it, and it would disappear. Ah… must be something magical and mysterious… if only we could see what lay at the foot of a rainbow… must be something important if we’re not able to get to it…. Perhaps some copious amounts of gold are there! Aha… and those other inexplicable things we have experienced are the cause! Oh but such foolish thinking must be dealt with, so the scientists discovered the truth. Yes sir, the how (not the why) of a rainbow is
easily explained… the sun shines on the water droplets and voila! And reading about such things a Mr. Baker decided instead to use it in flag form for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on 6/25/1978. The different colors represent diversity! Woo Hoo! This is just an example…

So to sum it up in conclusion, I would say that although we are not bound to keep the Sabbath, it is still good to rest at times. And in such times really thank God for His goodness by enjoying things, and giving Him the untainted and undiminished credit and loving praise for all we have by His sustaining hand.

So what are ya‘ll planning to do next? Comments and questions welcome!

Peace,
Jim

Greetings Everyone,

I hope all is well for ya’ll. As my pot-o-coffee brews this mornin’, I thought I might get started on this week’s topic of thought. I find myself rushing too often when faced with an end-of-the-day bell. This way I have more time, heh heh.

We’ve been revisiting the 10 Commandments on this Google group to see what they can teach us about ourselves. Those old commandments we first learned as a child seem archaic. And it is true that these words in the Bible are thousands of years old. Ahhh, but what is time to an Eternal God such as ours? Here’s an ASYGR group “Word of the Day” for you:

TRANSCENDENT: universally applicable or significant

Ain’t no such thang as out of style with transcendent, homeys! Can you all think of some examples of transcendent things? How about non-transcendent? Oh, I got one…. Parachute pants. Man what was I thinking, blowing $75+ on a pair!!!

Okay, so please recall the 1st Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” And also the 2nd Commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.”

The angle I have been taking on the commandments is how they manifest true love for God and our fellow man. Why this angle? Because true believers will manifest love for God and for their fellow man. And this love is not an emotion, but the kind of love that is self-sacrificial borne of deep deep convictions. And you want to know something? This 3rd command on the table today shines a bright light on our dark areas…

Exodus 20:7 You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him (or her) unpunished who takes His name in vain.

So, you may have thought (as I did) in times past that this commandment means don’t say “Godd*****” or “Jesus Christ!!” or such expressions. I would suggest this is a valid way to look at this command. But frankly, this is a shallow understanding.

Here’s an exercise to uncover meanings: Pick out the obvious main words; Take, name and vain. Now find out what those main words are saying to better understand the command. Ready?

Take:  Means to use, to claim, to stand by, to identify with, to bind oneself by, etc. So, imagine this example… I say I’m a Redskins fan, so I take the Redskins as my own, defending them in this hostile land of Baltimore Raven fans. I buy and wear Redskins apparel, I know the players and coaches on the team, I watch the games on TV, etc. So I have great understanding of the Redskins, I’ve invested time in them; I’ve “taken” the Redskins as my own.

Name: Now “name” really means so much more than a Jim, Joe, Jane, or Jill. If you haven’t already done so in your thinking, you need to see “name” as the representation of everything about the bearer of that name.

You know, nowadays we pick names because they sound cool or because they have some sentimental meaning. But back then, names were given as description or reality of that person. For example, “Moses” means drawn out of water (Exodus 1:10). Other examples include “Adam” meaning earth and “Eve” meaning mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20). And Whis’ given name “Lloyd” means grey… entirely appropriate I would say, heh heh!

So just imagine all the wondrous and rich meanings of the Lord’s name; His character, His attributes, and anything else that He has revealed about Himself by His word in His autobiography, the Bible. The Lord’s name is a big deal!

Vain: Means shallow, superficial, empty, marked by futility and ineffectiveness, having no real value, worthless.

Solomon had a bunch to say about vanity in the book of Ecclesiastes. I can’t help but think how some people who have everything they could ever want (like Solomon did) are subconsciously trying to find more meaning in life via things bigger than their possessions and themselves… things like… transcendental things 😉

Now we are ready to piece it all together: 3rd Commandment…

Do not “identify with” “everything God’s name represents” in “shallowness”.

To do so gives Christianity a bad name… To do so is irreverent. To do so is trifling. To do so is to give lip-service… and may I be so bold to say this… to do so is hypocritical. Frankly, I say this because it is easy not to think about it. Self-deception and Hypocrisy go hand in hand. How do we truly love God when we claim to be His and yet don’t even know Him because we haven’t taken the time to read and comprehend what He has already said? What in the world are we following then? O’ Lord, let us not be hypocritical and self-deceived!

If we truly love God, we wouldn’t want to say or do anything that would that would bring disrepute on His name would we? This is the essence of the 3rd command.

Questions/ comments welcome!

Peace,
Jim

Hi Ya’ll,

Hard to believe it is February already! And what a way to kick it off, so to speak, with a memorable Super Bowl. Hope you all enjoyed yourselves too.

So, this week I want to talk about the 2nd Commandment given at Mount Sinai by God to Moses approximately 3,400 years ago, (circa 1445 B.C). If you want to crack open your Bible and read it too, go to…

Exodus 20:4-5a You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…

Okay, so what are idols?

They are objects of worship.

Okay, so what is worship?

To worship is to revere, to give your devotion to, to bow down to, to offer praise for, etc.

So really, we are not to worship anything that takes the place of God in our lives. This sounds pretty simple and easy to comprehend, but there are some far-reaching issues here…

In terms of love, forsaking idols and their worship means we remain faithful to our God. He Himself likens idolatry to adultery. The Israelites over and over and over and over again forsook God and embraced idols. The OT recounts many times such painful abandonment of the one true God for other false gods.

God’s people, the priests even, forsook God. Now imagine this; the wonderful temple in Jerusalem, where God manifested His glory from time to time, where the Ark of the Covenant was housed, where the unimaginable treasures were stored, so on and so forth… Okay. Here’s a prophet named Ezekiel. God is giving Ezekiel real-time visions of what is going on at the great temple of Almighty God in Jerusalem. Then this:

Ezekiel 8:16-17 Then He (God) brought me (Ezekiel) into the inner court of the Lord’s house. And behold, at the entrance to the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about 25 men (24 priests and the High-priest) with their backs to the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east; and they were prostrating themselves (bowing) eastward toward the sun. He (God) said to me, “Do you see this, son of man? Is it too light a thing for the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they have committed here, that they have filled the land with violence and provoked Me repeatedly?…”

The whole order of the priesthood, the spiritual shepherds and teachers of the people, were worshiping the created sun, not the Creator of the sun. Not good! Very not good!

Israel to this day is suffering from their apostasy…

Think of other idols or misrepresentations of the true God or anyone or anything that people have bowed down inwardly towards… The Greeks had a lot; Aphrodite, Apollo, Dionysus, etc. The Romans had a lot; Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Cupid… and even the Caesars were worshipped!

There are yet other idols… the Indians, the Mayans, the Eskimos, the Druids, the Vikings had their own deities in the form of earthen spirits and all manner of birds, beetles and fish.

Closer to home we got people who “idolize” money, celebrities, religious leaders, sex, drugs, music, and on and on and on. But you know what an even closer form of idolatry is?

Self-worship.

Yessiree! Good ‘ole me! How does self-worship present itself? Have you heard…

“Ain’t no one gonna tell me what to do!”
“I’m looking out for number one.”
“I’m the boss of my life.”

The sin of pride demands we elevate ourselves. And such things as self- denial shall not be spoken of! We deserve a break today, for I want it my way!

Pride is so deeply embedded and hidden in our character to be noticed easily. It is a bit more noticeable in our reactions to when we are not getting what we want.

What does Jesus say about our loving ourselves so much?

Luke 9:23-24 And He (Jesus) was saying to them all (the disciples), “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he (or she) must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it.”

Wow! What say ye?

Peace,
Jim