While gearing up for a study through the Book of Judges I was doing a review of the Bible up until Judges. I wanted to get a flavor of the historical context of the events, as well as the spiritual vibe of the people being written about. It doesn’t take long, whether reading Genesis through Joshua, or just Judges by itself, to see a pattern of people loosing faith in God. Not because of what God does or doesn’t do, but because of the people and their choices. This idea of trust or faith struck me in light of Genesis 2 and 3. It struck me because I’ve never seen these events in this light before. Maybe I’m just slow. (Some would say there ain’t no maybe about it!) What struck me in Genesis 2 and after is this; where there is faith, there is life and relationship with God. Where there is no faith, there is no life, there is death, and there is separation from God.

When God told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He told them that if they did that they would die. They wouldn’t die imemdiately, but literally it says “dying you shall die.” It was only the sixth day of creation when this happened. They didn’t know what death was. I’m sure it sounded bad, but they really didn’t know what death was. They hadn’t seen anything die yet, plant, animal, or human. They had to trust God. They had to take him at Him at His word. They had to put their faith in Him. As long as they did this they would live without dying. They would have perfect and unhindered relationship with Him. That is a beautiful thing. I’m still learning what that is for myself. The point is though that it begins with faith. Where there is faith there is life.

We don’t know how long it was until the events of Genesis 3 transpired but I can’t imagine it was too long after chapter 2. While Eve was tricked into it and Adam did it voluntarilly, they both decided to take their faith away from God and put it into the words of the Serpent. The result? Eventual death and a diminished relationship with God. Where there is no faith, there is no life.

Cain had no faith and was rejected by God.

The world left its faith in God, and all but 8 people died.

Abraham had faith in God and was the father of a nation. Life.

The nation lost its faith and they were slaves. Moses came with faith and the word of God, and they lived.

Again the nation had no faith when they got to the land, and only two who walked out of Egypt walked into the promised land some 40 years later.

Under Joshua the nation’s faith was like a yo-yo. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost.

Joshua’s death is the opening of the book of Judges and the people ask God, “Now who’s going to lead us?” ingoring the obvious that God was their leader.

Judges covers a few hundred years of history and there is a pattern that emerges that is true in our lives today. It goes like this. Sin, servitude, suplication, salvation, and spiral. The people sin, they pay the price in servitude, they realize they screwed up and make suplication to God, God saves them, that generation dies off and the next one comes ups and sins, and the spiral repeats. Why? Because of a loss of or, at best, a lack of faith. Where there is faith, there is life. Where there is no faith, there is no life.

One question arrises that I won’t get into here. Is the reverse true? Where there is no life, there is no faith. Hm. Plug that into the equation of your own life, your own church, your own relationship with God and see what you come up with. Then get back to me on that.

Here are my teaching notes from Hath God Said - Jehovah's Witnesses.

When I sat down to write up this thought that I had I didn’t intend it to be a political commentary. It very could be if you want to read it that way. I won’t focus on that but if you want to read it once, then reread it with those goggles on, it could have some interesting implications. Thought I’d paste that here before the meat of the thing.

I’m studying for a one-off study this weekend on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Between books I like to hit one or two topical things. Relevant things that have come up and need addressing. A few weeks ago the Jehovah’s Witnesses came by and left a flier on my door. Without going into my whole study here and now, I thought it would make good fuel for a new once-in-a-while-series called, “Hath God Said…” Not an attack series on the evil and wicked cults, but an equipping series to help people out of their deception and into light.

As a lead off I’m going to talk about Genesis 3:1-5 where Satan tempts Eve, hence the name, “Hath God Said…” Part of Satan’s verbal assault is to say that God is just afraid that if they ate the fruit of the tree that Adam and Eve will be like God, “knowing good and evil.” This puzzled me for the longest time as a Christian because, on one hand I thought, “So what?” On the other hand I thought, “What does it even mean to know good and evil?” And here’s the kicker. Satan wasn’t lying when he said that because in 3:22 God confirms it saying that Adam and Eve have “become like us, to know good and evil.” What does it mean that God knows good and evil? If we can figure that out we can know what it meant for Adam and Eve.

The Hebrew word for “know, knowing” used here can mean a few different things. To know as a result of experience. That can’t be it here because if God has experienced something evil first had He would no longer be holy. The word can mean to know because you have learned a thing. That can’t be it either because God can’t learn anything, He already knows all that there is to know. It can mean to know in the sense that you understand the concept. That wouldn’t seem to apply because Adam and Eve already knew conceptually that they were to obey (good) and to disobey (evil) would be bad with consequences.

Then there is this one. To know in the sense that you are able to discern, decide, or discriminate something. Discriminate like sorting colors into bins or boxes or something. “This one is red, this is blue, this is green, this is blue…” You just know. To decide “this one is good, this one is bad.” To discern “I can tell that this one is good, I can tell this one is bad because I know.” I believe this is the kind of knowledge we are talking about when it refers to God, and Adam and Eve. This is what Satan was referring to when he tempted Eve. In other words,

“You will not surely die, but you will be like God, deciding for yourselves, discerning for yourselves, discriminating for yourselves what is good and evil.”

The reality is that God is the one who decides what is good and what is evil. He defines what is good and what is evil. He knows what is good and evil because He defined them for us to live by. Satan’s temptation to Eve was, “You can decide for yourselves what is good and evil.” What happens when what we decide is good or evil contradicts what God decides what is good and evil? Who is right? Obviously God’s definition is the one that trumps all others. When we begin to decide what is good and evil and that doesn’t line up with what God says, the result is always sin. The result of sin is always separation from God. I think you can see where this is going. This is exactly why relative truth is self contradictory.

What does this have to do with the Jehovah’s Witnesses? However good intentioned the originators of the Witnesses were, they bought into the same thing Eve did. They have reinterpreted and reapplied God’s word. They have decided for themselves what God meant. JWs aren’t being deceptive. Rather, they have been deceived, just like Eve. Jesus said we can know the truth, and the truth will set us free. That is the goal of the study this weekend.

Here are my teaching notes from "What is a disciple?"

Paul, writing to the believers in Galatia, says in Galatians 4:19, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you,” In Romans 7:3-4 Paul says, “So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another--to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.” (emphasis added).

It’s interesting how sexual and intimate Paul can be in his language. In other places he said that he considered himself a nursing mother to the new baby believers. Marriage, sex, labor pains, fruit. Fellow believers, especially you pastors out there, have you ever thought about it like that? The “labor in birth” dynamic hit home for me this past week, and indeed these past several years. I’ve always conceptually understood it, but never really experienced it. At least I never connected the dots. (I can be a little slow sometimes.)

I’ve been in bad moods before. I’ve been generally depressed or down before. We all have. But this past week, and the weeks before that for that matter, I’ve had unusually intense “grumpies”. They have been increasing in their intensity. It’s no fun for anyone. The Lord must have spoken to me this morning because the thought came out of nowhere (or so it felt). “These are labor pains.” The last few days have been particularly intense. One moment I’m ticked at God, life, everything. I want to quit. God is stupid. I want everyone and everything to just go away. The next moment I love everyone, God is so awesome and merciful, and I’m ready to stick it out and go one step further. Jess was in labor for about 29 hours with Jonah. Labor involves contractions. Waves of pain and waves of rest. It gets pretty intense toward the end (I had the fingernail scars in my hand to prove it for a while!). That’s what my own God-oriented mood swings have felt like, and it’s all centered around the idea of our church growing.

I so want to bear fruit to God. I feel sort of ashamed to admit this but, as far as I know, I’ve never led anyone to the Lord. No one has ever come forward after a teaching. I’ve never prayed with anyone who has made a decision to surrender their lives to Jesus for the first time. While I have been used to encourage believers, grow believers up, even rededicate believers to the Lord, so far as I know I’ve never born fresh fruit to God. And it just eats at me sometimes. I know, I know, some water, some sew, some reap. The context of those statements has to do with missionaries and teachers. The pastor, as I understand it, is supposed to do all three as he leads the church.

I find myself pastoring a church of about 50 people in a town of 35,000+ people (Forest Grove and Cornelius) on the suburban edge of a metro area of millions. Drugs are rampant like everywhere else. Families are broken like everywhere else. People need Jesus like everywhere else. Yet we aren’t reaching them (cue depression). Sunday comes, we sing, I teach, Sunday goes. Don’t get me wrong. People are growing, people are changing, and I thank God for that. I love our people. I’m so very thankful for our people and their faithfulness to the Lord. But there’s no new (fresh) fruit. My hope of hopes is that the church is pregnant, that the quality growth we are seeing internally will one day translate outward into new lives. It’s like a pregnant lady towards the end who feels like “I just want this thing out of me!” That’s what I feel like. I just want our church to pop!

The key to giving birth, the trigger if you will, is intensity in the contractions. Pastor Jim Cymbala once described a particular prayer meeting at The Brooklyn Tabernacle for his wayward daughter as a labor room. It was intense. It wasn’t emotionally manipulative, it wasn’t fake, it was sincere crying out to God both with volume and with tears for a lost sheep. I’ve been reading a book called The Kneeling Christian. (I’ve been reading it for years.) Chapter 7 is titled, Must I Agonize? Consider these excerpts.

Prayer is measured, not by time, but by intensity. Earnest souls who read of men like “Praying” Hyde are today anxiously asking, “Am I expected to pray like that?” They hear of others who sometimes remain on their knees before God all day or all night, refusing food and scorning sleep while they pray and pray and pray. They naturally wonder. “Are we to do the same? Must all of us follow their examples?” We must remember that those men of prayer did not pray by time. They continued so long in prayer because they could not stop praying.

Child of God, our heavenly Father knows all about it [how busy our lives are]. He is not a taskmaster. He is our Father. If you have no time for prayer or no chance of secret prayer, just tell Him all about it, and you will discover that you are praying!

But are there not endless opportunities during every day of ”lifting up holy hands“ - or at least holy hearts - in prayer to our Father? Do we seize the opportunity, as we open our eyes upon each new day, of praising and blessing our Redeemer? Every day is an Easter day to the Christian. We can pray as we dress. Without a reminder we shall often forget. In the corner of your looking-glass [mirror], stick a piece of paper bearing the words, ”Pray without ceasing.“ Try it. We can pray as we go from one duty to another. We can often pray at our work. The washing and the writing, the mending and the minding, the cooking and the cleaning will be done all the better for it.

There is so much more to this chapter. The question we must ask with regard to intensity is this; how badly do we want it? How badly do we want to be fruitful? How badly do we want to be an influence for Jesus in this community? It’s going to take intimacy with the Lord. It’s going to take endurance as we experience labor pains. It’s going to take intensity in prayer. Paul said that the end, the goal of those labor pains was ”Christ is formed in you.“ Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that what we are all after? Push on in prayer with intensity and urgency. Push on in your priorities. When a woman is in labor there is nothing else as important at that moment. Push on in your crying out to the Lord for this new life to come forth. The alternative is, well, there is no alternative.

Push!

One of the things I’ve wanted to do is, after I go through a book, to turn the study of that book into a devotional. Like one of those 30-day thingys. I started on one after I went through Acts and, like the Captain ADD that I am, I got side tracked. So perhaps I need a little inspiration. Here is the first one that I got through. I thought I’d post it as a demo and get some feed back.

Day 1 Acts 1:11
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”

Have you ever felt alone or abandoned? Have you ever expected one thing to happen only to have the exact opposite, the worst imaginable thing, occur? Welcome to the world of the disciples in Acts 1. They didn’t expect their Messiah to be executed, yet He was. They didn’t expect Him to rise from the dead, yet He did. They didn’t expect Him to float up into the sky after dying and coming back to life, yet there He went. The reality was, and is, that all of those events were foretold in the scriptures. The reason the disciples felt alone, abandoned and confused was because they had faulty expectations about the Messiah. More specifically, they expected the “conquering hero” Messiah, the Son of David, who would come and kick Rome out of their land, not the “suffering servant” Messiah, the son of Joseph (from Genesis), who would die for their sins. Tradition got in the way of their understanding of God’s word. However, not only did God tell His people about these events hundreds of years before they happened, Jesus told His disciples in person that these things were going to happen. And they still failed to get it.

Faulty expectations have a way of setting us up for failure. When we have wrong expectations of what it means to follow Jesus we can find ourselves feeling alone, abandoned, and confused. “Where is God?” “Why did this have to happen?” “I thought my life was supposed to be better with Jesus and it feels a whole lot worse.” Have you ever asked questions like these? I have. The disciples did. In fact, most of the people written about in God’s word, our “Bible heroes”, did too.

When we find ourselves at this point the most important thing we can do is set aside our own expectations and cling to God’s promises. Jesus promised to never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). Jesus promised to send the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to be with us just like Jesus was with His disciples (John 14:16-17). Jesus promised that if we abide in Him we will bear much fruit (John 15:1-8). Are you standing around looking up and asking God, “What is going on?” Take heart. Get into His word. Exchange your expectations for God’s promises. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Romans 12:2 NKJV)

Here are my teaching notes from Daniel 11-12.

Here are my teaching notes from Daniel 10.

Oh man! I taught for 1 hour and 11 minutes this morning! Totally didn’t intend to do that. And I only spent like 10 minutes on the prophecy part at the end. Sheesh! Anyway…

Here are my teaching notes from Daniel 9.

Here are my teaching notes from Daniel 7-8.