Tag Christianity

Mountain Bullies

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It’s almost universal to human experience that big and strong people bully smaller and weaker people.  Those with position, influence and power use what they have to take advantage of those who don’t have what they have.  Centuries ago, David imagined in Psalm 68:15-16 that even the mountains do the same:

“O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan;
            O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan!
Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain,
            at the mount that God desired for his abode,
            yes, where the LORD will dwell forever?” – Psalm 68:15-16

The mountains of Bashan, of which Mount Hermon is the tallest, are northeast of Israel and are much taller than Mount Zion, where God had chosen to be most fully present with His people.  In David’s picture, size is what matters: the bigger mountains hate the smaller mountains, even knowing that God is there.  The big bully the small, and perhaps they do so because they know God is there.

Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

Likewise, people who are well-off in this world often look down on Christians, God’s chosen people.  It is rare for the rich, famous, or powerful to publicly testify about Christ, and so we often get excited when athletes, celebrities, or politicians make their faith public.  We say to each other, “did you hear so-and-so is a Christian?”  It can make us feel like it’s more reasonable and accepted to follow Christ when this happens.  It feels good to identify with the rich and powerful.

But what if this rarity of seeing faith in the rich and powerful is intentional on God’s part?

Throughout Scripture God doesn’t identify with the rich and powerful; He identifies with the widow and orphan, with the lonely and outcast.  He favors the weak and the exploited.

In 1 Corinthians 1:26, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”  The first century isn’t much different than to today: the “wise”, powerful and noble rarely testified about Christ.  Next Paul wrote: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are…”

Why?  “…so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.”

Back to Psalm 68, where we found the mountains of Bashan ridiculing God’s mountain of Zion, David ends with these verses:

“Ascribe power to God,
            whose majesty is over Israel,
            and whose power is in the skies.
Awesome is God from his sanctuary;
            the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people.
Blessed be God!”

I’ll rejoice over a public Christian testimony wherever it comes from, but I remember that God doesn’t need the help of the movers and shakers of this world.  His power is “in the skies” – way above the mountains that bully His Mount Zion.  He is glorified more when His power enables the weak to love Him and love their neighbor.

We might sometimes feel alone and ignored, like we’re not part of the “in crowd” or successful, but that might mean we’re God’s type of person!  No celebrity endorsement required.

“Ascribe power to God”

Christianity Isn’t Vegas

Todd R 1 Comment

The sign above is posted near the doors on the way out of the sanctuary in my church.  It is a reminder that sharing Christ with the world is not a task only for those who travel away from home to do it as a full-time job.  It is not a task only for those who go into a “hostile” culture.  It is a task for all who would follow Him, but it is not an easy task.

In Matthew 10:27, during a speech about enduring shame and persecution, Jesus tells His disciples: “What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.”  For every disciple from then until eternity, this is an encouragement to public Christianity.  The world, including your neighborhood, workplace, and everywhere you go, is the mission field.

What has Jesus taught you “in the dark”?  In your private Bible study and prayer?  In books, blogs, podcasts, or anything else you do in private?

Proclaim on the housetops, though words and actions, how God has blessed you privately.  Don’t keep Him in the dark, but bring Him into the light.

There was an ad slogan that said “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but Christianity is not Vegas.  What happens in church or in private, shouldn’t always stay in church or in private, and when you’re done reading this post, you just may be entering the mission field.

God is Awake!

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Sometimes even Christians with strong faith may look at the evil and problems of the world and wonder where God is.  Does He care?  And if He does care, why isn’t He doing something about the state of our world?  If God is a God of love, why doesn’t He protect His people, and if God is a God of justice, why doesn’t He punish evil?  God may seem so distant and unconcerned with our problems that He might as well be sleeping.  We may feel like calling out in these words from Isaiah 51:9 and 10 –

“Awake, awake, put on strength,
O arm of the LORD;
awake, as in days of old,
the generations of long ago.
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,
who pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to pass over?”

We know the stories of God’s power and strength from our knowledge of the Bible.  We know how He acted in “days of old.”  We know how He humiliated the gods of Egypt during the exodus, represented here by “Rahab.”  But where is He now?  When we are discouraged, we may think He is asleep.  However, He is not asleep, so what’s going on?

When Isaiah says, “awake, awake,” it is because his awareness of God has grown dim, not because God actually sleeps.  Like Isaiah we can be more or less aware of God at different times.  We also may be more or less aware of particular attributes of God.  At times, we may “feel” God’s love, or mercy, or power, but not all of these at once.  Often, when good things happen, we are aware of His love, and when bad things happen, we are aware of His justice.  When times are uneventful, we may forget He is involved at all.  He doesn’t seem to us like the God we read about in the Bible.  Our knowledge of Him is incomplete and inconsistent.

When Isaiah said to God “awake, awake” he was prophesying to Israelites facing exile.  Israelites who might forget the power of the Lord.  But Isaiah told them that they must know that all of God is always with them.  God is able to fulfill His purposes.  God is awake and cares about them, but in their present circumstances this would be hard to believe.  Likewise, our circumstances often make us see an incomplete picture of God.  We are all in exile in this world, and there is much to question.  Injustice and violence.  Calamity and disaster.  Blasphemy and apostacy.  Sin and hypocrisy.  Where is God?

At these times, it is essential to remember the times God acted on behalf of His people, and on behalf of us!  It is essential to remind ourselves of God’s character.  Our God declared Himself to Moses as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”[1] When will He show Himself as such?  As God said to Habakkuk: “the righteous shall live by his faith”[2] Faith that the full impact of God’s love and justice may be delayed, but it will not be delayed forever.  Even when God seems to be asleep, He is not.  God is awake!

When we feel the need to cry “awake, awake” note what Isaiah said next in Isaiah 51:11, which says:

“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

God will save His people because He tells us He will.  It might not look like it on some (or many) days, but “the righteous shall live by his faith.”  Pray for God to teach us that His promises are enough, even when things don’t make sense. He is awake!

Amen.

[1] Exodus 34:6
[2] Habakkuk 2:4b

“The Sea was No More”

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  One of my favorite places to be is the ocean.  I love the roar of the waves and the feel of the sand.  I love catching waves with a boogie board or just bodysurfing.  Being in the ocean is my “happy place.”  But will it be that for me in heaven?  Will it be like that, only better, or will it be something completely different?

The Bible doesn’t provide us with a lot of specifics about what the afterlife will be like, but the Apostle John’s vision in Revelation 21:1 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”  Once upon a time, that last phrase – “the sea was no more” – bothered me a little bit.  How could one of my favorite things on earth not exist in heaven?

Two thoughts have gotten me over that, and I’m no longer bothered by it.

Chaos

First, that “the sea was no more” may not be literal.  What does that mean?  While the sea was part of God’s original creation and declared “very good”, later it is described as a source of chaos and evil, where Leviathan lives and the serpent emerges.  In ancient times, the sea was seen as chaotic and dangerous.  It was something to be feared and avoided.  In Canaan and other ancient societies, many believed there were gods over the sea and when the sea became stormy and unruly, it meant those gods needed to be appeased.  Therefore, when we see Moses parting the sea, or see Jesus calming the sea in a storm, or even walking on the sea, we are seeing God’s power over not only the chaos and disorder of the literal and the figurative sea, but also His power over the supposed Canaanite gods.  In that pantheon, Baal was the storm god and Asherah, the goddess of the sea, was his consort.  So, if “the sea was no more” is meant figuratively, John’s vision tells us that in heaven the sea will no longer be a fearful and dangerous symbol of chaos and death.  Whatever ‘gods’ we imagine rule the sea will be conquered.  The chaos that the sea symbolizes will not exist at all: the entire world will be ordered according to God’s perfect will and mankind’s work to make the whole earth like Eden.  “The sea was no more” is a good thing.

The second thought is that if God says a perfect world has no literal sea, I need to trust Him.  I don’t get to choose what’s in heaven and what isn’t, but God does and is infinitely more qualified to make that decision!  While the images of heaven we get in the Bible are obscure and difficult to understand, they do make it clear that heaven will be more amazing and glorious than anything we could imagine, or that we could achieve ourselves.  “The sea was no more” is a good thing again.

So, whatever your favorite things are here on earth, God has something much better in mind.  It will be the “very good” world He intended from the beginning, no matter what our expectations of it are or what we’d wish it to be.  It will the perfect “happy place” for all of God’s people.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”

Lessons from an Unlikely Idol

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The history of the kings of Judah can read like a back-and-forth between construction of idols by bad kings and the destruction of idols by good kings.  Hezekiah was one of the few good kings, and one reason is recorded in 2 Kings 18:4, which says:

“[Hezekiah] removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).”

Judah was meant to have only one God, the true God Yahweh, and to destroy anything that would lead them to idolatry.  Unfortunately, worshipping other gods in high places was not uncommon, and neither was worship of Asherah.  What’s interesting about this verse is the mention of this “Nehushtan.”  The origin of this bronze snake that Moses made comes from a story in the book of Numbers.

Photo by Michael Jerrard on Unsplash

As often happened while they wandered the wilderness, the people of Israel complained to God and Moses that they would have been better off if still in Egypt.  They hated the food God was providing and accused Him of leading them into the wilderness to die.  As discipline for this grumbling, “the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”[1]  The people repented and asked for the serpents to be removed, and Moses prayed for them.

The answer was that “Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”[2]  This serpent being lifted up was later identified in John 3:14 as a prelude to Jesus being lifted up on the cross, but in Hezekiah’s day it had become an idol, an object that took people away from worship of the true God and the then-future Christ.  Instead of being a symbol of salvation, the bronze serpent became a symbol of idolatry, which leads to damnation.

The story of the serpents ends there, and there is no mention that God told the people to keep this bronze serpent, or that God told them to give it a name.  This was probably the beginning of the problem, that Israel added to God’s intentions for it.

So, what are the lessons for us?

Nehushtan, the bronze serpent, was created at God’s command to be an aid to worship, a device for reminding His people of His provision for them, from above.  Instead, it became an idol.  What this tells us is that anything, even something once (or currently) used in worship, can become an idol.  Even things like private Bible study or public singing of hymns can be idols if we use them as ends in themselves and not as a way to worship our only God.  A thing can be an idol not because of what it is, but because of our attitude toward it.

Also, something that is an idol to one person might not be an idol to another.  The bronze serpent was not an idol to Moses, but it was to people in Hezekiah’s time.  So, if we know that something tempts us, that thing might not be a temptation for others, and vice versa.  Therefore, we should not be quick to judge others for doing things that bother us, but may not be a problem for them, and are not specifically prohibited in the Bible.

When Christ was raised up on the cross like the bronze serpent and was raised from the dead like those who survived the bites of serpents, He identified Himself as the only God and the only one worthy of our worship, but He also identified Himself as the merciful one who desires that we be merciful to each other.

Like ancient Israel, we all have Nehushtans in our lives that corrupt our worship, and like the good king Hezekiah, we must remove them from our lives to reform our worship.

[1] Numbers 21:6
[2] Numbers 21:9