Who Were the Samaritans?

This image is courtesy of 'whodisan215' on flickr.com

It has come to my attention that there is a certain amount of confusion about who the Samaritans were (or are). We know about the Samaritans mostly because of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). Some people are also aware that the woman at the well was a Samaritan (John 4:7-30). Probably even fewer are aware of the story of the ten lepers, at least one of which was a Samaritan (Luke 17:12-19).
The real question is, who were the Samaritans? Bible scholars generally point to 2 Kings 17:22-34. This tells of a time when God was displeased with Israel and Judah, and so allowed them to be conquered by Assyria, and led away as captives, but the Assyrians moved other people into the city of Samaria (capital of Israel), but lions came in and terrorized them. The Assyrians, being somewhat superstitious, decided that the God of Israel had protected the Israelites from the lions, but, for whatever reason, the gods of the people currently living in Samaria could not (it didn’t even occur to them that maybe they were false gods and couldn’t protect against anything). So, they got some of the Israelites to teach these new inhabitants the ways of the God of Israel, so that the lions would quit eating them. These people continued to worship and sacrifice to their own gods, but, for whatever reason, God apparently decided that was okay, and redirected the lions. To be honest, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me: if the lions were eating them because they weren’t Jews, making a show of Jewish faith, while still holding to their other religion, why would God protect them? Maybe because at least they acknowledged Him as ‘a’ God, and that, by showing them a portion of His power (which was still way more than the power of any of their gods), then maybe they would someday come to the realization that He was the one true God. Keep in mind that 2 Kings does not refer to these people as ‘Samaritans.’
Now the modern day Samaritans, the descendents of those mentioned in the Bible, say that, in ancient times, there was a dispute amongst the priests in the temple, and that one priest, named Eli, usurped the High Priest position, and that the followers of the true High Priest became outcasts from Israeli society, while the majority of Israel followed Eli. In other words, the Samaritans are the true Israel, while the rest of the people that call themselves Israel have been led astray. Because God was not displeased with them, they were not carried away by the Assyrians, and were left in Samaria. The Samaritans believe in the Law of Moses, and follow it. They do not believe that the rest of the Tanakh is divinely inspired, however.
The bottom line is, we have two groups of people with relatively minor differences in what they believe, that manage to tolerate each other, but not accept each other as being their own kind. When Jesus walked the earth, they did not associate with each other at all, as evidenced by the statements made by the Samaritan woman at the well. Whether that was because the Samaritans were not true Jews, as a matter of genealogy (the Samaritans of that day did not worship any other gods), or whether it was because the Samaritans actually practiced a purer form of Judaism, really doesn’t matter. Jesus made it pretty clear by the way He talked about Samaritans in parables, the way He talked to the Samaritan woman at the well, the way that He healed Samaritan lepers—even though He said that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24)—that He did not consider them to be ‘filthy half-breeds.’ They were simply souls that needed Him, just like the rest of us (maybe I shouldn’t say ‘just like’ the rest of us, because he didn’t call them dogs, the way he did other people who were not ‘of Israel’). (By the way, if it bothers you to be called a dog, let me point out Ecclesiastes 9:4.)

Do You Agree?

Several years ago, I was riding with three other people, on my way to church, and we witnessed a hit-and-run accident. Each of us made a note of the license plate number of the car that was at fault, we called for police, and called an ambulance for the victim, and ended up showing up late for church. The accident became embroiled in a jurisdictional dispute, and no one came to take our statements for several weeks. When they did come, they wound up with four different license plate numbers. The first three turned out to be completely fictitious—those numbers had never been issued by the state. The fourth turned out to be a vehicle that was reported stolen several hours before the accident. No wonder he didn’t stick around to talk to the police. The four license numbers were close to the same, but three of them were remembered incorrectly. Does this make us liars? No, of course not, none of us intentionally provided false information. For most intents and purposes, it didn’t really make any difference—after all, the vehicle in question was a stolen car, even the correct license plate number didn’t help track down the people that caused the accident. Sometimes details just aren’t important.
Some people have made a big deal about differences in the four gospels. If they were all accurate, shouldn’t they all say the same thing? On the other hand, if they all said the same thing, what would be the point of having four of them?
For the most part, the inconsistencies are minor: I’ve posted before about the different accounts of who went to the tomb on Sunday morning; there is also an account in Matthew 20:30 that says Jesus healed two blind men, and another account in Mark 10:46 that says Jesus healed a blind man; Mark says that Jesus prophesied that “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30) and that, in fact, the cock crew once after Peter’s first denial (Mark 14:68), and again after the third (Mark 14:72), Matthew says the rooster only crowed one time (Matthew 26:34, 74) (I’ve even known people to really stretch the point by comparing the prophecy in one gospel to the fulfillment in the other), Mark 15:27 says that Jesus was crucified with a thief on either side, Luke, being less sure of what the other two men were convicted of, simply refers to them as malefactors (Luke 23:33). Details. Does it really matter if Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with a group of other women? Does it really matter if Jesus healed one blind man or two? Does it really matter if the rooster crowed once or twice? I have to admit, I think Mark’s version of the story is more powerful: Here is Peter, caught up in the moment, and at his first denial, the rooster crows one time. At some level of Peter’s consciousness, that had to have registered as a red flag, but he was so concerned about the immediate situation, that he didn’t stop to think about what the significance of a rooster crowing might be. It happens every morning, doesn’t it? But there was that nagging thought that there was a particular significance to this particular rooster. After the third denial, the rooster crowed again, and for whatever reason, the people around him decided to drop the issue. With the pressure off of him, Peter realized what it meant, and even realized that if he had been paying attention, he could have stopped himself after the first denial.
What’s really interesting is that the minor differences in the accounts shows that these men wrote down the best of their recollections, or the best they knew of what they had learned from the actual witnesses; they didn’t sit down together and concoct a story—then the four gospels would all say exactly the same thing. Critics of the gospels point out that when Jesus appeared before Caiaphas, the High Priest, that, as bad as Caiaphas wanted to see Jesus put to death for something, he couldn’t get two witnesses to agree on anything (Mark 14:59). Now if this man, who wanted to convict Jesus, wouldn’t go to trial with witnesses that didn’t agree, how dare we, as Christians, expect people to believe gospels that don’t agree? Unfortunately, the Gospels only record one of the accusations made against Jesus, that, He said, if the temple be destroyed, He would build it again in three days; to people who didn’t understand what He was saying, that would have sounded more like the ravings of a lunatic than a criminal that needed to be put to death. I suspect that the real problem here is that they would have like to have had Him convicted of insurrection, but when one accused Him of saying that Jews shouldn’t pay tribute money, another witness spoke out and pointed out that He said, “Render to Caesar…” This is the sort of contradiction that Caiaphas was complaining about, not minor details that wouldn’t have made any difference. Jesus called that straining at a gnat.

McJob

Most of you have probably heard this already, but the term ‘McJob’ has been added to the dictionary. Not the dictionary on this computer, of course, spell check is telling me that’s not a word. The McDonald’s Corporation got pretty upset about the term. To be honest, I can see their point; at the same time, I understand why people associate McDonald’s with what used to be called a dead-end job. It’s really not fair to McDonald’s. There are opportunities at Mickey D’s, it’s just that a lot of the people who gravitate to fast-food type jobs are exactly the type of people who don’t make the most of their opportunities. A couple of guys that I knew in high school got jobs at McDonald’s working after school and on weekends, and looked for opportunities to advance within the organization. When they graduated high school, they were offered assistant manager positions, which they accepted. It didn’t take too long for them to become managers. Of course, if everybody who ever worked at McDonald’s took advantage of the opportunities available to them, there would be no one to flip burgers. And even if you aren’t interested in making fast food a career, working at McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Taco Bell or whatever will give you actual work experience. Think about it for a minute, if you were in a position to hire someone to do a job (any job outside of the food service industry), and it came down to two applicants, both have high school diplomas, but one of them worked at a fast food joint after school and on weekends and had a good reference from the manager, while the other one has no work experience at all; which one would you hire? Obviously you’d want to hire the person with the good work reference, even if that work experience has nothing to do with what they would be doing working for you. It’s equally obvious that someone who worked fast food but didn’t have a good reference isn’t going to get the job, either. If you can’t handle a ‘McJob,’ why should I believe that you can handle a real job? That may seem unfair, wait, I’m getting discriminated against because I treated my McJob like a McJob? Well, yes, to be blunt, if your only work experience is a McJob, and that’s all I have to go by to judge what kind of work I can expect from you, then, yes, if you treat your McJob like a McJob, then I’m not going to trust you with a real job.Jesus said that “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10). I think that a lot of times we get ourselves into trouble because we treat little things as though they were not important. I have even heard some people say that there are two rules in life: 1) Don’t sweat the petty stuff 2) It’s all petty stuff. What, nothing matters? I will admit that a lot of the stuff that we get caught up in really doesn’t matter at all in the long run. You’ve probably seen the bumper sticker that says, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” There’s also another one that doesn’t seem to be nearly as popular that says, “He who dies with the most toys still dies.” It’s not about what you have in your hot little hands when you go to the grave, it’s about what you have waiting for you on the other side. Jesus also said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth…” (Matthew 6:18). True riches stem from the rewards given by God for the things that we have allowed Him to do through us here on earth. Can you imagine getting to Heaven and finding that there are countless people that made it in because of something that you did? Maybe these aren’t even people that you personally shared the gospel with, maybe someone that you encouraged when they were discouraged, gave a ride to when they needed it, asked a thought-provoking question that led to them thinking about where they would spend eternity. Those are the little things that are really important.

Words and Conversations

There’s an old standard gag in sitcoms (it may date back to Vaudeville, I don’t know) where two people are having a having a conversation about two different things, but they both think that they are talking about the same thing. One my favorite examples of this was done on a show called Barney Miller about thirty years ago. The title character was a police captain in charge of the detectives in the12th precinct of New York City. One of the characters in the show was a Detective Fish, played by Abe Vigoda, who must have been the oldest detective on the New York City police force (in fact, Fish was forced to retire during the show’s run). Frequently on the show they would touch on his health problems. In one episode, Barney discovers that they have rats in the building, and calls an exterminator. When the exterminator shows up, he seems like somebody that should have retired a long time ago. While the exterminator is doing his inspection, a call comes in, and everyone leaves, except Fish. Fish gets a call from his doctor; some test results have come back, and they think that Fish may have kidney stones. They want to do more tests to see how big the stones are, to determine the best course of treatment. While Fish is on the phone, the exterminator finishes his inspection, and comes to make his report. He waits at a respectful distance until Fish hangs up the phone, and then sidles up and says, “You’ve got quite a problem.” Of course, Fish, getting off the phone hearing about kidney stones, thinks that this other man is addressing his kidney stone problem, instead of the rats. “Don’t I know it,” Fish says, and sizing up the other man, “I suppose you’ve seen this sort of thing before?” “Oh, sure, many times.” “What’s it like?” “Well, when they’re small, they come, they go, you don’t even notice, but when they’re big, they’ll tear you apart.” The look on Abe Vigoda’s face is pure comedy gold.
Of course, that’s a sitcom, that could never happen in real life. Couldn’t it? We have a tendency to develop filters. We don’t mean to, and often we aren’t even aware that we have done it, but, like Pavlov’s dog, we end up with trained responses. Certain words or phrases will set us off, because of associations that the other person may not even be aware of. Sometimes, as in the example above, what should have been obvious (the exterminator is talking about the problem that he was hired to assess and take are of) isn’t so obvious, because a recent experience is affecting our thought processes (getting a phone call about a medical problem makes it hard to think about anything else for awhile). I was at a worship service once where a visitor showed up, and it was obvious that he had been drinking. The pastor asked us to sing, “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus,” and this visitor stood up. It was fairly obvious to me that he heard the words, “Stand up” and thought he was supposed to stand up. It was equally obvious to the pastor, having done a lot of street evangelism, and having had to deal with less-than-sober people in his services, that this man thought he had something to say. The pastor told this man to sit down, that he wasn’t going to let him speak, the man looked absolutely dumbfounded. He opened his mouth to explain or to argue, and the pastor had him thrown out. Now, I will admit that I may have misread the situation; maybe this guy really intended to disrupt our worship services, but it looked to me like he just didn’t really understand what was going on. And by the way, if you think that I’m blaming the pastor for his reaction, keep in mind that I might have been able to resolve the situation more amicably if I had pointed out what the situation looked like to me, but I didn’t.
I think that we all need to strive for understanding, and we need to work at getting our own personal little connotations get in the way. What someone says, doesn’t always mean what we think it means, and sometimes we allow ourselves to get upset before we understand what they meant, and that just makes it all the more difficult.

Creation

I heard a comment the other day that the creation account in Genesis is ‘ridiculous’ because the herbs and grasses and trees were created the day before the sun was. This is true, plants were created on day three, and the sun and moon on day four. That’s an interesting point, and, to be honest, that slipped by me before. On the face of it, that does seem some kind of odd, to say the least. My first instinct was to reply that plants don’t need light every day, just because they were created 24 hours before the sun, doesn’t really mean that there was a problem. That didn’t seem right to me; there had to be a better answer, and not just because I don’t believe that the days in Genesis were necessarily the 24-hour days that we have now. Of course, any of us that have read about people growing illicit marijuana plants indoors under artificial light, realize that you don’t need sunlight for plants to grow, you just need light. God created light on day one…
Another comment about Creation was made that in Genesis chapter 1 it says that on the sixth day God created man, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. This would have been two days after God created plants, as mentioned above. But, in chapter two, it says that God created Adam first, and then created ‘the garden’, and created Eve later. Why does Genesis 1 say that God created man and woman at the same time, two days after creating plants, and then Genesis 2 says that God created man first, then plants, and then the woman? Let me point out first that Genesis 1 doesn’t say that God created man and woman at the same time, only on the same day. Granted, it’s declared in one verse in the first chapter, but spread out over several verses in chapter two, which can create the impression that little or no time has passed between the creation of man and woman in the first chapter, while also creating the impression that a great deal of time has passed between the two in the second chapter. Notice that there is no mention of nightfall between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve (although Adam did sleep—prophecy of general anesthesia?). As far as the creation of plants, chapter 1 says He created the plants, chapter 2 says He planted a garden; that’s not the same thing (ask anyone who’s ever planted a garden). So, chapter 1 gives us a general overview of Creation, but then chapter 2 gives us details about the creation of man.
Side note: I mentioned general anesthesia earlier; of course, God didn’t have to use general anesthesia to remove Adam’s rib, He could have used local anesthesia and kept it extremely local. When I heard about this as a kid, it made sense to me, because I didn’t know about local anesthesia. As an adult, I realize that part of the reason that the surgeons who prefer general is that it keeps the patient from moving around. That wouldn’t be a problem for God, either. So why did God put Adam to sleep? I don’t know, but I’m sure it seemed like the best idea at the time. If I had to guess, my best guess that God knew Adam well enough to know that Adam would have serious issues at watching his side open up, and a part of himself come out, and then watching the wound miraculously heal. It might have given him nightmares for life.
Another criticism: After Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, and then heard God’s voice, they hid themselves. God called out, “Where art thou?” What kind of omnipotent God loses track of His creation? How could He not know where Adam and Eve were? Generally, I don’t hear that criticism from parents, because we, as parents, understand that. When we know our children are doing something they shouldn’t, we will frequently ask questions that we know the answers to, to try to encourage them to confess. Just because He asked the question, it doesn’t necessarily follow that He didn’t know the answer. I’ve heard that in law school, they teach prospective lawyers that they should never ask a question unless they already know the answer. God never does, either.

Who Is Responsible?

I heard an interesting news item on the radio this morning. It seems that some people are calling for a boycott of Caterpillar, because they have found out that Caterpillar bulldozers have been used by the Israeli military to raze buildings suspected of housing terrorists. Of course, the word ‘suspected’ raises concerns. I think that if Israel could demonstrate that these structures were definitely sheltering terrorists, then most people wouldn’t have a problem with it (of course, some people have a problem with anything Israel does, no matter how well-justified that nation’s actions might be). My question, though, is, should we expect Caterpillar to find out what people intend to do with their heavy equipment before selling it? Is that really their responsibility? If Israel wanted to buy bulldozers to build roads, should Caterpillar have a problem with that? If Israel bought such equipment on the premise of building roads, should the company then say, no, we think you’re going to destroy homes, so we won’t sell you what you want. No, after the fact, perhaps it is appropriate to point out to Caterpillar that they may be complicit in behavior that some of its customers do not approve, if it continues to sell to the Israeli government.
I remember a few years back, there was a movie called “Runaway Jury” starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman. The premise of the movie is that Dustin Hoffman is a lawyer representing families of victims of a shooting incident. Basically, somebody who legally shouldn’t have even been able to buy a gun, managed to, and went on a rampage. Now, the gun dealer who broke the law by selling this guy the gun was convicted in criminal court, and put away, but now the families are suing the gun company, because they knew that this dealer was selling an awful lot of guns and they should have suspected that at least some of those sales were less-than-legal, and stopped selling to him. So again, if I think one of my customers might be doing something unsavory with my product, then I should stop selling to him. What if this one dealer simply had a good location near a lot of hunters and gun collectors? Squeezing him out of business with no real evidence of wrongdoing would leave the company open to a lawsuit, wouldn’t it?
To some extent, I feel the same way about the tobacco industry. If the evidence supports the theory that smoking is dangerous (and I believe it does), then shouldn’t we just outlaw tobacco altogether, rather than sue tobacco companies? I realize that it gets a little complicated. Outlawing tobacco might create a whole new industry of cigarette bootlegging. We can’t even keep Cuban cigars out of this country… Also, tobacco is a little different than the other examples, because there is evidence that Big Tobacco has deliberately suppressed evidence of the hazards of smoking.
To be honest, though, the way things are going, I’m a little surprised that no one has yet tried to sue Ford, because they had a loved one die in a car crash; actually, considering the Pinto, maybe that’s a bad example. What I mean, though, is that if your daughter gets hit by a drunk driver and killed, do you sue the manufacturer of the drunk’s car? Should the manufacturer have done a background check to see if the person was a heavy drinker before selling him the car? Don’t we, as individuals, have to take responsibility for our own decisions? If someone does something wrong, then that person should be held accountable. If someone else enabled them to do whatever it was that they did, then, yes, the enabler should share some of the accountability, but, there’s got to be a limit. There’s difference between selling someone a bulldozer who has a legitimate need for such an item to build roads, and selling someone a bulldozer to tear down houses (although, if the buildings really do contain terrorists, maybe not so much—both activities have to do with safeguarding the lives of the citizenry).

The Church Will Be Raptured When...

There is a certain amount of controversy concerning the ‘rapture’ of the church. Paul talks about there will be a time when the dead in Christ shall rise, and we that are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet them in the air. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye… A lot of churches don’t really talk about the rapture of the church, and, in fact, the word rapture doesn’t appear in Scripture anywhere, but the description of the event is there.
Now, some theologians describe themselves as pre-tribulation, meaning that they believe that the rapture will happen before the Great Tribulation, some are post-tribulation, meaning that the rapture happens after, and there are some that believe that the rapture will happen during the tribulation.
Now, it seems to me that post-trib is the correct belief. A lot of that stems from the fact that it seems to me that it is the church that goes through tribulation. I realize that a lot of the pre-tribs believe that there will be some that have come to know Christ before the rapture, but aren’t really living the Christian life when Christ comes, so they get left behind; and these are the people that form the church that goes through tribulation—an atonement for not being ready when Christ comes. I look at that, and I kind of like the idea; if I’m slipping a little when the time comes, I get a second chance (it will, of course, be much tougher, but, then again, I would have an added resolve of having seen the rapture and knowing that this time I really have to get it right). To be honest, though, I just don’t buy it. When Jesus told us the parable of the five foolish virgins, He makes a point of saying that the foolish virgins took no oil for their lamps, so when the bridegroom came, they weren’t ready. When they went and bought oil, and got ready, they were too late, the door was shut. In other words, they weren’t ready when they needed to be, but when they got ready, they found no place of repentance. God gives us second chances on many things, but it doesn’t appear to me that being ready for the rapture is at all negotiable.
It also occurs to me that Jesus introduced some people to John in the book of Revelation that He said came through great tribulation. We kind of get the sense that there is a time coming when the church will be persecuted on a global level, and that all Christians living then will suffer tribulation. While I can’t say for certain that will never happen, perhaps it will, I also can’t help but think that the great tribulation may very well have already started. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not trying to say that I personally have suffered tribulation, but I know that there are Christians in other countries, where Christianity is not prevalent, that have. I also know that the early church suffered great tribulation. The argument against the great tribulation having already started is that, if that were the case, John himself would have been one of the ones that Jesus introduced him to, and certainly should have recognized many of the others. At the same time, the two unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus should have recognized Jesus, too.
Still, I don’t think it is that important whether you believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, a post-tribulation rapture, or even a mid-tribulation rapture, as long as you are ready whenever the rapture happens. Now, if you are pre-trib, and think that you get a second chance after the rapture, and let that affect the way you live now, then you may be in trouble.

The Chastening Rod

In the movie Michael Clayton, George Clooney plays the title role, a lawyer who works for a big law firm in New York City, but more than a lawyer, he’s a fixer. At the beginning of the movie, he gets a call in the middle of the night that one of the law firm’s clients has had an accident, upstate. Michael Clayton gets in his car, drives upstate, meets with the client, finds out that the accident was a hit-and-run, and tries to make sure that the client has the best local legal representation he can arrange. The client gets very frustrated, because he doesn’t feel that the accident was his fault (and he has several justifications as to why this accident was not his fault), and Michael Clayton doesn’t seem to be ‘fixing’ the situation to his satisfaction. The bottom line is, the client wants Clooney’s character to simply make the hit-and-run go away; but there is no legal way to do that. He’s looking to Clayton to, not only protect him from any legal ramifications, but to assuage his guilty conscience. It simply does not work that way.
I think that many times we look to God in very much the same way. We get ourselves into a mess, and then repent, and pray about it, and expect God to just make it all go away. Don’t misunderstand me, there have been times when I have made mistakes so severe that I have gotten myself worked up into a lather thinking that my situation was dire, but God had already adjusted people’s attitudes so that my consequences were not nearly so severe as I had expected. Unlike a lawyer, God can soothe an aching conscience; even if the sin that was committed was one that we, as human beings, would probably deem ‘unforgivable.’ One sin is very much like another to God. There are unforgivable sins, but it is much harder to reach a place of being beyond God’s reach than one might expect.
“But I thought God was a loving God? Shouldn’t He absolve me of the consequences of my actions when He forgives me?” Let me ask you this: Didn’t your parents love you, when you were growing up? (and if the answer to that question honestly is ‘no’ then think about other kids that you knew whose parents loved them) Did they let you slide when you misbehaved, or did they punish you? If they really loved you, then they punished you because they wanted you to learn from your mistake. They wanted you to at least grow up to be a good person, didn’t they? Maybe they didn’t do everything that they could have or even should have, because they were only human, but didn’t they want you to grow to be more upright? Wasn’t that because they loved you? The Bible tells us that loving parents will correct their children. Let me hasten to point out that the Scripture has been used as an excuse to beat sons and daughters severely. Any correction should be meted out with love and compassion, while at the same time being severe enough to be memorable, but not scarring.
The Bible says that God punishes the ones He loves. He wants us to learn, and grow in Him, and to be all that we can be (more so than the Army does). He will try to teach us without chastisement, if He can, but if we don’t learn, and continue to act out, then He will get more severe. The severity of His punishment will always be in proportion to our actions, though (even if it doesn't seem like it at the time).

Temptations

In Matthew chapter 4 (and Mark 1, starting at verse 13), we are told that Jesus was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. To summarize, Jesus fasted for forty days and nights, and Satan suggested that Jesus turn stones into bread. Jesus responded with Scripture, “Thou shalt not live by bread alone.” So Satan hit Jesus with Scripture, telling Him to prove Himself by throwing Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, quoting Psalms 91, “He shall give His angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.” But Jesus responded, quoting Deuteronomy again, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Satan then offered Jesus the whole world, if Jesus would bow down and worship Satan. Jesus’ response to that was to tell Satan to leave, quoting, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” (Maybe I’m missing something here, but it appears that Jesus is actually quoting Exodus 34:14 and Deuteronomy 8:19 together)
There are a few points that I want to make with this. First, some people have criticized because the quotes in the gospels don’t match up exactly with the Scriptures in the Old Testament. Actually, they are pretty close. Keep in mind, though, that the Old Testament was written in Ancient Hebrew, but the New Testament was written in Greek. So the same phrase, translated from Hebrew to English, is going to be permutated slightly when translated from Hebrew to Greek to English. The actual phrase didn’t change; the wording is just slightly different. Think about it, when you read Psalms 91:11-12, don’t you get the same sense that you do when you read Matthew 4:6? Don’t they say the same thing, even if they aren’t worded quite the same? One could make an argument that, since both were translated into English at the same time, the translators could have compared notes, to make sure that they did match. Certainly they could have, but that would have required collusion. Technically, that might not have been considered collusion, because there would not have been an attempt to defraud, but the translators clearly wanted to avoid even the appearance of collusion to defraud.
It seems to me that some people misinterpret what Jesus was saying when He said, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” Some people seem to think that Jesus was ordering Satan to leave Him alone. After all, Jesus was God manifest in the flesh; Satan was tempting Him, and Jesus was saying, don’t do that. I have to believe, though, that if Jesus had ordered Satan to leave, the conversation would have ended right there, but it didn’t. So what was Jesus saying? He was saying that He wasn’t going to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the temple, because that would be tempting God. In other words, Satan was trying to get Jesus’ flesh (which was, after all, fully human) to tempt God. There will be times when God will put us in potentially dangerous situations if for no other reason than to try our faith, but that doesn’t mean that we should just cavalierly place ourselves in harm’s way, based on the promise that He will protect us.
My final point, and this is the point that is usually made from this account, is that Satan tried to use Scripture against Jesus. It didn’t work, of course, because Jesus knew exactly what each verse in the Bible meant. There are some things in there that we have not been given full understanding of, yet. There are some people out there that will try to use Scripture to convince us of things that just aren’t Bible. As contradictory as that may sound, it is absolutely true. I would also like to make the point, though, that Satan offered three different temptations, and he only used Scripture for one of them. Most of the time, the nonsense that we get hit with isn’t even Scripture. Don’t misunderstand me, there are a lot of things that aren’t Scripture that aren’t wrong. We know a lot about hygiene, for example, that the people living in Biblical times didn’t know. You won’t find any mention of germs, bacteria, or viruses in Scripture. Of course, now that we know those things, we recognize that a lot of the things that God told Ancient Israel to do were not just religious rites, they were good hygienic practices. So, sometimes things outside the Bible help us to understand the Bible better. But, sometimes, things outside of Scripture, or even things in Scripture, but taken out of context, can make what is Scripture seem to be, well, questionable. In cases like that, the Word of God takes precedence—always and forever.

Like a Lamb to the Slaughter

There’s an old story about a minister in a small town. This is one of those towns where everybody knows everybody, even to the point of you know when somebody misses church, even if they don’t go to the same church you do. Anyway, this minister was out picking up some things at a store on a Friday night, and a man came stumbling by the store, extremely inebriated. Now the clerk in the store didn’t attend church at all, but knew that the drunk out on the sidewalk attended the church where this minister was the pastor. “Gee, preacher, isn’t that one of your disciples?” The pastor let out a sigh, and said, “He must be one of my disciples, ‘cause he sure isn’t one of the Lord’s”
Two important points to the story: One is that the reverend didn’t distance himself from his congregant just because the parishioner had fallen off the wagon; of course, he didn’t try to justify it, either. The other is that there will always be people that try to find fault with Christians, with Christianity in general, and with the Bible. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? William Shakespeare wrote a number of plays around the time that King James had the Bible translated into English. All of Shakespeare’s works continue to be performed and published using the same words that the Bard wrote, even though some of those words have changed meaning. As far as I know, no person has even suggested that we should try to update Shakespeare to make his works easier to understand. There is one version of the works of William Shakespeare, and there have been no changes made (a little editorializing here and there, but the words themselves have not change). No one tries to edit Shakespeare, but many people try to edit God.
I have heard some criticism of the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 53:7, which states, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.” The problem is that, although Isaiah prophesied (twice in one verse) that Jesus would be oppressed and afflicted, that He would not open His mouth. Yet we know that Jesus did have a conversation with Pontius Pilate at His trial, so, the question is, how did Jesus have a conversation with Pilate without opening His mouth?
Let me start by saying that maybe Jesus’ trial before Pilate was not what Isaiah was referring to. We also know that Pilate initially refused to try Jesus, and sent Him instead to Herod. Herod attempted to try Jesus, and, quite frankly, he was much more amenable to Christ than Pilate was (even after Pilate’s wife said to leave “that just man” alone). When Jesus was taken before Herod, He refused to speak to Herod at all. In the natural, that seems pretty stupid. If Jesus were just a flesh and blood con artist, he probably could have come up with some trick, some illusion, some argument to convince Herod to let him go, but He refused to even talk to Herod. Before Herod, where Jesus had the best chance of walking away from this alive, He opened not His mouth. Perhaps that’s all Isaiah meant.
I have to consider something else, though: Isaiah compares the Messiah to a lamb brought to the slaughter, or a sheep taken to be shorn, and says that He didn’t speak any more than they would. Does anyone believe that a lamb or a sheep wouldn’t bleat under those circumstances? Wouldn’t the animal have to open its mouth to bleat? Perhaps Isaiah is simply using an expression that has been lost to us in the intervening years. It doesn’t seem feasible that Isaiah intended to be taken literally, the comparison doesn’t make any sense. If Isaiah simply meant that, just as there is not going to be anything to come out of the mouth of a sheep led to slaughter that will change its fate, so, too, Jesus wasn’t going to let anything come out of His mouth that would alter the outcome of His trial, either. He had something important to do, and He was going to do it.
The real problem is that some people read the Bible out of contention, and some people read the Bible to learn from it. If you read it just to find fault with it, you will; if you read to learn from it, then you will, also. If you have trouble understanding some part of it, seek God about it.

Excuse Me for Doing What's Important

Knowing what’s important and going for it. That’s what really matters, and we should all be doing that. Sometimes we let little things take us off track. I can’t do that, what would my boss think? Of course, if your boss doesn’t approve of you doing what really matters to you, then maybe it’s time to find a new job. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about preaching the gospel instead of doing your job. I’m not. At the same time, though, if you invite a coworker or two to church, and the boss starts thinking that you are evangelizing when you should be working, then he has a right to be concerned, but he shouldn’t fire you over that. Still, a little bit of wisdom may keep the boss from even becoming concerned. Of course, if you don’t have wisdom, spend some time in prayer, seeking God about that.
Sometimes we see someone in need, but the little bit of money we’ve got was supposed to buy dinner. Do we help that person, knowing that it may mean missing a meal? To be honest, that’s something that you should pray and seek God about, because there are a lot of people out there that have no qualms about pretending to be in need in order to gain cash to spend on whatever the heck they want. You don’t need to be missing a meal for someone like that. Of course, most of could probably stand to miss a meal or two, anyway. At the same time, do you really think that God can’t make up a meal for you?
I don’t feel good. Well, sometimes we get really sick, and honestly just can’t do what we should be doing. That happens. Sometimes, though, we start stressing about something that needs to be done, and develop a stress headache, and then say to ourselves, “Well, I can’t do that, now, I’ve got a headache. Isn’t what you’ve got to do more important than that?
What will my friends think? Does it really matter? Granted, none of us really wants to be ostracized by our friends, but, at the same time, we don’t want our friends to go to Hell. If we don’t live a proper example in front of them, how will they know? Keep in mind, that at least some of them will never pick up a Bible and read it on their own, but if they manage to see a little bit of Jesus in us, that might just get them interested enough to learn a little. A lot of people have never actually seen true Christianity. They’ve seen people that go to church on Sunday, and live the rest of the week like they don’t even believe in God, and they’ve seen people that want to tell them how to live, but don’t live that way themselves (or, sometimes, they really do live the life, except that they are so doggone judgmental of everyone else—accent on the ‘mental’ part); that’s not what Christianity is about. That’s part of the reason that your friends may give you a hard time about trying to live for God. They are going to think that’s what you are about, because their natural expectation is that you’re going to be just like that. Don’t be like that. Jesus said that if you aren’t gathering with Him, then you are scattering abroad. There are an awful lot of so-called Christians that do an awful lot of scattering abroad. I think you’d be better off having a heavy stone chained around your neck and thrown into the middle of the ocean…
Look, there is never going to be a shortage of excuses to not do what you really know needs to be done. Personally, I think excuses are like armpits: Most people have a couple, and they generally stink.

The Evolution Revolution

This may be a little different, today. That’s okay, a little something different now and again makes for a nice change; a breath of fresh air, you might say.
The subject of evolution (as opposed to creationism) has come up. If you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you probably know (or at least could make a reasonable assumption, based on other things that I have written) that I am a creationist. I don’t really have anything against evolution, I think that it’s probably the best guess that the scientific community could come up with, given the available evidence. I do get a little annoyed when people try to pass evolution off as fact. It’s called the theory of evolution for a reason. Scientifically, it is not considered proven fact. Now, some would have us believe that it’s so close to being a proven fact that we shouldn’t worry about that, but, really it’s still just a theory.
Now, the book of Genesis tells us that God formed man from the dust of the earth, and breathed the breath of life into him, and Adam became a living soul. I will admit, that sounds a little on the superstitious side, even to me, and I believe it happened just like that. Now you might be able to convince me that the account in Genesis is largely metaphorical, that really God placed microbes in the mud, and guided those microbes to combine in wondrous ways, and over the course of several millennia, eventually human form took shape. I will admit, that if God had tried to explain that to Moses, Moses’ head probably would have exploded, because he just didn’t have the background to understand it; so okay, maybe God simplified the explanation for Moses’ benefit. As I said, I don’t really believe that, but I will concede the possibility.
Now, as far as evolution by the process of natural selection, let’s consider for a moment. To be honest, I have read a number of explanations of how evolution is supposed to happen, but they almost always seem to be explaining intelligent design rather than natural selection. Almost without exception, they will say something along the lines of, something happened to the environment of some poor creature, forcing a mutation, which led to an evolutionary change. That’s fine, if we have some intellect in charge of making sure that poor creatures don’t go extinct just because of changes in the environment (other than man, of course). But how does a change in the environment force an evolutionary change? The simple answer is that it doesn’t. What the evolutionists are really trying to say at this point is that mutations happen every so often, but usually, those changes do not result in a net benefit for the species undergoing mutation. When an environmental change coincides with a mutation, then that mutation may (or may not) benefit the mutated being. Of course, theoretically, the mutation doesn’t have to coincide with an environmental change in order to be effective. For example, theoretically, giraffes developed long necks because that mutation made it possible for giraffes to eat leaves from higher up in trees, where there was less competition for food.
One thing that biologists seem to over look (or perhaps there is a mechanism at work that I am not aware of) is the fact that mutations are almost always represent recessive traits. In other words, in order for an evolutionary change to happen, each of the new species has to inherit the mutant trait from both parents. For example, suppose that a man is born with six fingers on each hand. That may or may not be an evolutionary advantage, but, in order for him to pass on that trait to his children, he would almost certainly have to find a woman that also had six fingers on each hand to be the mother of his children. Or failing that, perhaps one of his offspring has children by another individual with six fingers; some of those children may inherit the six-finger trait from both parents, even though one parent only has five fingers on each hand and is only carrying the trait. This makes it fairly obvious that true evolutionary changes are extremely rare. Many biologists figure that there is about one evolutionary change per species per 10,000 years (of course, a lot depends on how complex an organism one is referring to. Single-celled creatures are considered to be considerably more prone to mutation simply because their DNA is so much simpler). Now, maybe I’m overestimating the biologically complexity of the human body, but it seems to me that it would have taken a whole lot longer for us to have evolved through natural selection that scientists generally figure the world has been around. It’s generally believed that the earth is about 4 .6 billion years old. At 10,000 years per change, that puts us at a result of less than half a million changes. When you stop to consider that they don’t believe life formed on earth for the first 1.5 billion years, our evolutionary timeline gets even shorter.
As I said before, the theory of evolution is the best scientific explanation that exists currently. Some people have a bad tendency to refer to natural selection as Darwinism, on the grounds that it was first proposed by Charles Darwin. The theory has been modified several times in the years since Darwin, though. Keep in mind that when Darwin first proposed natural selection, it was considered to be scientific fact that heavier-than-air craft could never fly, and that the atom would never be split. We have learned a lot since Darwin, and sometimes it seems that we still know so little.

UPDATE: It occured to me, belatedly, that I should have included a plug for Ben Stein's new movie, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," that opens Friday, April 18th. Let me also point out that, although Ben Stein is noted for having been a game show host, he is a Harvard graduate, and a very intelligent man (perhaps in spite of his education). I am sure that he and I would disagree on many things, but I have a lot of respect for him, and I think that this is a movie that everyone should see (although I reserve the right to change my mind after I see it).

Prejudice and Pride

Michelle Obama has taken a lot of heat because of a comment that she made. She said, “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.” I suspect that, not being a politician, merely the wife of one, she didn’t stop to think how that would sound before she said it. Had she simply said, “I have never been more proud of my country,” I don’t think anyone would have taken issue with it.
The Bible talks a lot about pride, but generally talks about pride in a negative way: more or less the first cousin of arrogance (see Job 40:12, Psalms 10:2-4, 59:12, 73:6, 101:5, Proverbs 6:17, 8:13, 11:2, 13:10, 16:18, 29:23, Isaiah 9:9, 13:11, 25:11, 28:1-3, Jeremiah 13:9, 49:16, 50:31-32, Daniel 4:37, Hosea 7:10, Obadiah 1:3, Zephaniah 2:10, Malachi 4:1, Mark 7:22, Romans 1:30, 1 Timothy 3:6, 6:4, James 4:6, 1 John 2:16. Certainly that kind of pride is a negative thing. If I am proud of myself because I think that I have done some great thing, that’s a bad thing. If I am proud of my son because his team won the big game, that’s different. I can only find one place in Scripture where the term ‘proud’ is used that it might even be construed as being a good thing: In Psalms 31:23, it says, “O love the LORD, all ye His saints, for the LORD preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer,” and, to be honest, that could go either way. Is this a continuation of the same thought, as in the faithful are proud to do God’s will (not taking pride in themselves, of course, but taking pride in God) or is this compare and contrast, as in comparing the preserving of the faithful with the ‘reward’ of the proud? We know that rewards are not always good things (see Luke 23:41).
There are places in Scripture where it describes pride as a good thing without using that word. In Acts 5:41, it says that the disciples rejoiced that were counted worthy to suffer for Jesus’ name. That’s a little different than how we normally think of pride, but I submit that it is a form of pride, just the same. Part of the difference here is that they did not take pride in what they did, they took pride in what happened to them as a result of their faithful work. At the baptism of Christ, the Father spoke from Heaven, saying that He was pleased with Christ (See Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22). It seems to me that it was an expression of Fatherly pride. Also, at the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, there was a similar outpouring of Fatherly pride.
Now Jesus was our perfect example, and God would like to be proud of us in much the same way, as a father is pleased with well-behaved children. In Hebrews 13:16 it says, “But to do good and communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” This gives us a hint as to how to make God proud of us. To do good may sound a little vague, but searching through the Scriptures, we can get an understanding of the good that God would have us to do. Communication isn’t difficult, but with whom? With our spiritual leaders, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also to those that we would see won to Christ. I don’t mean to suggest that every time you speak to someone that you know if not a person of faith that you should give them a Bible study on salvation, generally that’s just casting pearls before swine, but you should seek to tend to their needs, and try to look out for their best interests (including salvation). If you are at work, unless you work for a church or other religious institution, you aren’t getting paid to evangelize. That doesn’t mean you can’t evangelize, but how much are people going to listen to somebody who preaches all day, and doesn’t get his work done? Or maybe he gets it done, but in a sort of haphazard way. If your coworkers are constantly picking up your slack because you have something more important to do, they are only going to resent your presence, and they aren’t going to listen to anything you have to say. It isn’t that you don’t have something more important to do, you do, but, if you aren’t getting your job done, you aren’t evangelizing, either.

Some Words Are Just Words

There has been a lot of talk in political circles lately about hope and change. Personally, I hope we get some change, but, my hope is not in the politicians. I’m not convinced that any of them actually have the best interests of the country in mind, but I believe that God does. I also believe that God can influence our next president to do things that are good for the country, even though politicians frequently resist the leading of God. My trust is in God, not in politicians.
I have been criticized in the past for having hope. Some people are so cynical that they believe that any person of any real intelligence should ‘know better’ than to have hope. Some people of faith seem to think that hope runs counter to faith. I hope to demonstrate that both of those positions are erroneous.
The word hope appears in over a hundred verses of the Bible. A lot of those times, it is describing false hope, but, in many cases it is talking about actual hope. Psalms 31:24 talks about hope in God, as do Psalms 33:18-22, 38:15, 39:7, 42:5, Proverbs 10:28, 14:32, Ecclesiastes 9:4, Isaiah 38:18, Jeremiah 14:8, 17:7, Joel 3:16, Acts 2:26. Apostle Paul talks about the hope of the resurrection in Acts 23:6 and 24:15, the hope of the promise in Acts 26:6-7, the hope that Abraham had in Romans 4:18, the hope of the glory of God in Romans 5:2, how to build hope in Romans 5:4, being saved by hope in Romans 8:24-25, and rejoicing in hope in Romans 12:12. He calls God the God of hope in Romans 15:13, and he says in 1 Corinthians 15:19 that if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. Think about that for a minute: he is talking about having a hope in the life to come. He is also talking about that our reward isn’t in this life. Sometimes one little thing goes wrong, and we get all upset. “I thought God was supposed to take care of us!” He does. But, that doesn’t mean that we are always going to live on easy street. Sometimes God puts us through things just so that other people can see how Christians react. He talks about the hope of salvation in 1 Thessalonians 5:8.
I think that it’s pretty safe to say that hope is a very real part of Christianity. It is not something to replace faith, but to supplement it. Any of the believers that object to the use of the word are just being overly word conscious.
I, personally, have a bad habit of referring to luck. I have been trying to avoid saying it lately, because some people object to it, and I understand that. To me, “Good luck” is just an expression. I don’t really believe in luck, although the Bible does say that time and chance happens to all men. Sometimes things just happen by chance. I don’t think luck has anything to do with it, but at the same time, I don’t really object to using the phrase, “Good luck,” as a way of saying that I hope nothing bad happens to you. I suppose that there is a better way of saying that, but a lot of people just kind of turn off when you say something that sounds really religious, like, “May God’s blessings be upon you.” There are some people that I would be willing to say that to, but not all that many.
I’m sure that there are some that will say, “Oh, but when you use a phrase like that, you are letting them know immediately that you are a Christian. It could open up a door to share your faith with them.” Yeah, good luck with that.

Update: I corrected a typo above. I meant to say 'supplement' (meaning something added to complete a thing), but accidentally typed 'supplant' (meaning to usurp the place of). Talk about one mistake undermining the entire intent of the post! Sorry about that.

God is a Jealous God

I understand that Jessica Biel is doing a remake of “Easy Virtue.” I can’t swear as to how close this will follow the original movie, but in the original movie, Biel’s character, Larita, has an abusive drunk for a husband, but there is a local artist who tries to convince her to leave her husband and run away with him. The husband becomes convinced that she is having an affair with the artist, and kills him, and divorces her. His defense, of course, is that killing the artist was a crime of passion. Most of the film is about what happens to Larita after the fact; she goes to France, where no one knows her, and no one thinks of her as a less-than-virtuous woman who had an affair (this is where the title, “Easy Virtue” come from). I personally found it interesting that the divorce court jury deliberations mostly consisted of, “Well, of course she did it; that drunken lout of a husband, and that handsome artist, she must have done it.”
It’s kind of interesting that, although a crime of passion is not legally recognized as a defense, it is occasionally used by defense lawyers to try to get a lesser sentence. That is, if a husband catches his wife cheating and kills her, or her lover, juries generally consider that to be less criminal than if he planned out a murder, say, for money. Generally, we understand when someone finds out that his or her spouse has been unfaithful, and then gets violent during that moment of passion.
My point is that jealousy, at least under certain circumstances, is an emotion that we understand, that we, in general, can identify with. Now, if I’m jealous of someone else because he has a young wife who is better looking or more passionate than mine (or both), that’s wrong. If I’m jealous because my wife is spending a lot of time with a man who is younger, better looking, and more passionate than me, well, maybe I have good reason to be jealous (and maybe I don’t—after all, I should be able to trust her, right? And yet…). Envy is generally listed as one of the seven deadly sins, but not jealousy. I would imagine that most thesauruses list envy and jealousy as synonyms, but only because if I’m jealous of someone else’s marriage, or house, or job, then that’s envy. If I’m jealous that my spouse may be seeing someone else, that’s not envy.
There are a number of times in the Bible where the relationship between us and God is compared to a marriage (Jeremiah 3, Matthew 9:15, Matthew 22, Matthew 25, John 3:29, Revelations 21:9). It seems very clear to me that God ordained marriage as an image of the kind of relationship that he wants to have with us. It should be a relationship of mutual love and trust. Historically, though, we haven’t done a very good job of upholding our end of the bargain. The situation described in Jeremiah 3 didn’t stop with the Old Testament. We’re under a New Covenant, I understand that, but God hasn’t changed, and people haven’t changed. We still have the same faults and foibles that Ancient Israel had. We, as Christians, still commit basically the same sins that our Jewish forbearers did.
Having said all of that, some people have been very critical of the fact that God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15, Joshua 24:19, Ezekiel 39:25, Nahum 1:2). God shouldn’t be jealous, jealousy is a bad thing, that’s a negative emotion. Jealousy in the sense of envy is a negative emotion, but jealousy in the sense of protection what is rightfully yours is not. To those that would say God shouldn’t be jealous, I have to ask the question, shouldn’t God be jealous? Haven’t we given Him good reason to be jealous? Shouldn’t we be more careful to be faithful to God, so that He doesn’t have to be jealous?

Zipporah

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been left stranded on the island of misfit toys. Whenever I feel that way, I pray about it, and God reminds me of some of the reasons why I belong on the island of misfit toys. Nobody’s perfect, especially not me. Some of the people in the Bible seem like they shouldn’t have been there at all, and yet, God knew the hearts of these people, and He knew where they belonged.
Zipporah is one of those people. For those of you who don’t know, Zipporah was Moses’ wife. When Moses was forty years old, he came to the realization that he was where he was to deliver the Children of Israel. I’m not sure that he really wanted to, but he knew that was why God put him where he was. To make a long story short, Moses ran away. He went and joined himself to a group of Midianites living in or near Ethiopia. One of these was a wise old man named Jethro who had a daughter named Zipporah. Moses lived with the Midianites for forty years. God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, and sent Moses back to Egypt, and Moses went, taking his wife and children with him. If Moses was reluctant, Zipporah was even more so. These were her people only by marriage; I don’t think she had ever been to Egypt before, and she certainly wasn’t familiar with Hebrews (other than Moses). Somewhere in between Midian and Egypt, God reminded Moses that He had commanded circumcision for all Israeli males, back during Abraham’s time. Moses, living “among the heathen” as it were, had never circumcised his own son. Zipporah really didn’t know anything about this; it was not the custom of her people, and as far as she was concerned, it was just mutilating a baby. And Gershom wasn’t a baby any more. God threatened to kill Moses, and Zipporah performed the circumcision herself. I think it’s safe to say that her religious conversion was complete at this point. She became very angry with Moses at this point, but she stayed with him, and I don’t believe there’s any record of another disagreement between the two of them after that (I’m sure there were some, just not major enough to write down). Later on, Moses’ sister Miriam criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah on the grounds that she was not an Israeli. God struck Miriam with leprosy, but then healed her at Moses’ request.
Of course, the mere fact that God sided with Zipporah against the prophetess Miriam is a good indication of where Zipporah’s heart was. I think it’s also important to look back over her life and see what she had to go through to get to that point. If God had demanded circumcision for Moses’ sons while they were still in Midian, she probably would’ve had a much harder time accepting it. As it was, it seemed that God had to go against Moses to get her to follow the commandments that God had given the Israelites. Could God have used Moses to deliver Israel while Moses had an unbelieving wife? God is God, He can do anything, but Moses was skittish enough about what he had to do with his wife’s support; imagine what it would have been like for Moses if he spent his days arguing with Pharaoh and his nights arguing with Zipporah. Really, God did Moses a favor by almost killing him.
The most important thing that we have to look at in Zipporah’s life is that she started out living one kind of life, and ended up living a completely different lifestyle. There’s no real indication that she even realized that the way she was living wasn’t going to cut it. God had to deal with her pretty strongly to get her attention. She was not as flexible as she really should have been, but it ended up being okay. We need to be flexible, ready to do what God would have us to do, able to change as the need arises. There’s a song that they play on the radio, one of the lyrics is, “The way it always was, is no longer good enough.” It’s important to understand that, you may have been comfortable with your lifestyle for years, but then God has something else in mind for you. But I don’t want to change. Miriam didn’t want to leave Midian; Moses didn’t want to leave Pharaoh’s palace, Lot’s wife didn’t want to leave Sodom (how could you not want to leave Sodom? She had grown comfortable there), but it’s not about being comfortable.

Fred Noonan

Do you know who Fred Noonan was? No, he wasn’t Ricky and Lucy’s neighbor, that was Fred Mertz. Most people don’t know who Fred Noonan was, and a lot of people don’t even realize that there was such a person.
Almost every American knows who Amelia Earhart was, and even knows of her final fate. She departed Miami, Florida on June 1st, 1937 with the intention of flying around the world. She flew to South America, then to Africa, then to India, Southeast Asia, and then New Guinea. She took off from Lae, New Guinea on the 2nd of July, having traveled most of the way around the world, with her next scheduled stop at Howland Island in the Pacific, just north of the equator. She never made it. The US Coast Guard Cutter Itasca was on station near Howland, to try to guide her in. They were able to establish radio contact, but not visual contact. Radar hadn’t been invented yet, and the Itasca was unable to guide her in without knowing where she was. At least at one point of their communications, her radio signal was very strong, so she was close, but evidently not close enough.
What does this have to do with Fred Noonan? Allow me to make a comparison between Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh (not that I would be the first to do so). Lucky Lindy is noted for the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight. Notice the use of the word, ‘solo.’ Lindbergh was alone on the flight that he is famous for. Earhart did quite a bit of solo flying (including a non-stop transatlantic flight, 5 years after Lindy), but you never hear the word solo applied to her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. That’s because she didn’t fly alone; she had Fred Noonan with her as navigator.
The point is, usually when you hear about Amelia Earhart, you hear about her, or your hear about her and her plane. Fred Noonan wasn’t piloting the plane; he was just giving her directions. Is he important to the story? That depends on who you talk to. To a lot of people, the story is about her, he’s just a supporting player, so it’s okay not to mention him. Some people think that he is important, because they are both dead, and his life was not any less important than hers, even though she is the one that acquired fame through her adventures in the air.
In John 20:1, we are told that Mary Magdalene went to the sepulcher, and finding the tomb empty, went back and told Peter and John, who then accompanied her back to the tomb. Now, Matthew 28:1 says that “the other Mary” was with Mary Magdalene, and they went to the sepulcher together. Mark 16:1 says that Mary the mother of James, and Salome were with Mary Magdalene. Luke 24 tells us that it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “other women.” Some people get very uptight about the fact that John didn’t mention any of these other women, Matthew tells us of another Mary (presumably the mother of James), but not Salome or Joanna… Some would say that the four gospel accounts contradict each other, even though John never says that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone. Someone said that, following that “weak” logic, I could say that Elvis Presley went with Mary to the tomb. I suppose you could say that, but, by the same token, following your logic, I could say that Elvis was on the plane with Amelia Earhart, too. He would have been two years old, and his surviving that flight would have been nothing short of miraculous, but, you know, as long as you want to be silly, I can be silly, too.

Hot Buttons

In politics there are certain issues known as ‘hot-button’ issues. These are things that resonate amongst a large percentage of the voters, and are usually somewhat controversial issues. For example, a lot of people feel very strongly about immigration: Some feel that we let way too many people into this country, and some feel that we should have an open border policy; a lot people feel very strongly about healthcare: Some feel that every American should have health insurance, even if the government has to pay for it, and some feel that they shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s healthcare (whether through higher taxes or higher insurance rates as insurance companies are mandated to cover those that can’t pay). Some people feel very strongly about capital punishment. Some feel very strongly about abortion. The war in Iraq stirs up strong feelings. Global warming. The list goes on.
I think most of us have hot-button issues of our own. Some people are bothered by all of the things I listed in the first paragraph, some aren’t bothered by any of them but are bothered by other things that I didn’t think of. It’s only natural that some things are going to get under your skin, and cause you act with less rationality than you normally would. That doesn’t make it right. Ephesians 4:26 says to be angry, and sin not. Getting angry is not a sin, in and of itself, but letting the anger (or any other strong emotion) control you, is. Does this mean that we should all becomes stoics? No, of course not. God gave us emotions for a reason. Jesus, our perfect example, even showed us His anger, on more than one occasion, but He committed no sin.
The point is, we have been delivered from sin. We don’t have to commit sin any more. We will, because we are human, and we make mistakes; but nothing can force us to sin. It’s almost like being delivered from sin means that we have no excuse for sinning. In Romans 8:38-39, Apostle Paul gives a list of things that cannot separate us from God. I have had people tell me that it is an all-inclusive list, that there is absolutely nothing that can come between us and God, once we have made the profession of faith, but, if you look, it doesn’t list one’s self, and it doesn’t list sin. Of course, none of the things on that list can make you sin, either, so, whatever is between us and God, is strictly between us and God. We cannot blame anyone else, we cannot blame our circumstance, our environment, our culture… God is greater than all of that.

Spiritual Gifts

Last night when I got home, I noticed that most of my neighbors had their “curbies” out by the street, reminding me that today is trash day. Which also reminded me that I needed to take out the trash. Last night the weather wasn’t very good, though, so I wheeled my curbie out to the curb before I went in the house, knowing that I wasn’t going to want to come back outside. I went ahead and bagged up my trash, and left it sit by the door, so that I could drop the trash in the curbie on my way to work this morning. I got up this morning, got ready for work, grabbed my stuff, grabbed the trash on the way out the door, and my curbie was gone. After a little research, I discovered that someone had wheeled my curbie back up to the house. Obviously, they thought it was stupid to have an empty curbie down by the street. I can’t blame them too much (although I kind of wonder who was looking in my curbie to start with—but I don’t really feel like my privacy was invaded, so I’m not too worried about it). Clearly, they were trying to help. It occurs to me that not everyone has the gift of helps.
Apostle Paul wrote about spiritual gifts on several different occasions. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, he lists gifts of healings, helps, governments, and diversities of tongues.
I think we all understand the concept of gifts of healings. Do they still exist? I believe that they do, but they are not nearly as common as they used to be. They certainly don’t seem to be nearly as prevalent in this day of modern medicine. I have heard of faith healers, of course, but I tend to believe that most of them are really just taking money from people that are either desperate or gullible or both.
The gift of helps is more common. Some people just find themselves helping other people. Most of the time, there doesn’t seem to be anything at all supernatural about it; they are just doing whatever they can to make things better for those around them. There are also a lot of people that try to help other people, and their intentions are good, but, in the long run, they really aren’t much help. That’s really how you can tell the difference.
The gift of governments? That’s a gift? It must be, the Bible says so. Unfortunately, those people almost never actually get involved in politics. Seriously, though, some people have a natural talent for organizing things, for making sure things get done.
The gift of diversities of tongues. That’s a really rare gift. It would really come in handy for someone doing missionary work, to be able to hold a conversation in a language that one has never studied, but, like I said, that’s really rare. There are some people that put a lot of stock in speaking in tongues as part of worship. I don’t think that’s what it’s about. Two chapters later, in 1 Corinthians 14:22, Paul says that tongues are a sign, not to them that believe, but to then that believe not. In the very next verse, though, he turns around and says that if all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad? If you stop and think about it, though, if somebody comes to visit on a Sunday morning, and one person is praising God in Russian, another in Greek, and another in Farsi, and so on, and our visitor doesn’t know or understand any of these languages, what is he going to think? What would you think, if you went to church and a whole bunch of people that you don’t know are speaking languages that you don’t know? Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t at least be tempted to call for the whitecoats to come and take these people away. On the other hand, though, what if you are praying and seeking God, and you’ve been praying and seeking God, and it just doesn’t seem like you are getting anywhere. Are my prayers even getting past the ceiling? If you haven’t been there, just wait, it happens to the best of us. So you’re praying and seeking God, and getting discouraged, and the thought comes to your mind, “Is God listening? Is God even real?” but you keep praying and seeking anyway, and at some point you break through, you know it, you feel, it, but there are some lingering doubts, and then you start speaking in a language that you don’t understand. You know what you’re saying, because the words are forming from your thoughts, but the words don’t make sense, even to you. Doesn’t that erase any doubt that you had? Don't you know, at that point, that it has to be God? That’s what tongues is about; it’s for those times when we, in the body of Christ, have unbelief.
Paul also told us in 1 Corinthians 14:12 that spiritual gifts are for the edifying of the church—the body of Christ. That applies to all spiritual gifts, not just the ones I have listed here.