Ctrl+Z: Whatever happened, happened

*image courtesy of thesaint at stock.xchng

I was thinking today about mistakes.  I hate mistakes, especially the ones you just can’t fix.  For example, I was in downtown Richmond this afternoon and unwittingly parked illegally.  It was a “No Parking Zone,” but only from 4-6pm.  I saw the sign, thought I was out of the tow zone, and even backed up one parking meter to get further away from that scowling white sign with its slashy circle of scorn.  Alas, I was apparently in the tow zone, and it was 4:15.

Of course.

Now, there’s no going back.  I have no defense.  There’s no wiggle room, there’s no making up for it, there’s no making it all go away.  Instead, sixty of my hard-earned dollars will be painting a bench somewhere downtown or helping to pay some civil servants salary, probably the one who wrote my ticket.

Thankfully, we have the universal reset button: Ctrl+Z.

Yes, the “undo” feature started as a handy ability on word processing that has now spread to nearly every program I encounter.  Accidentally delete a paragraph?  Undo!  Accidentally delete the pictures of your kid’s first birthday?  Ctrl+Z!  It’s truly an amazing function, and has become so ubiquitous that sometimes it’s hard to remember that it only works on computers.

I’ve often wished that life had an undo function.  I’ve wished that I could simply stroke a few keys and find myself five minutes in the past, or maybe a whole day, with the chance to do it all over again.  Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I’d know how I failed the try before, and could do it again and again until I got things juuust right.

Until Google/Apple/Facebook/Skynet/Big Brother finds a way to implement an actual undo button for life, or we all find ourselves sucked into/uploaded into the cloud, we have to live with our analog mistakes.  Now, this is a biblical blog (biblog? no, sorry, that’s dumb), so you might think this is where I pull out the Jesus card like this…

Jesus is the Eternal Undo Button!

But, you’d be wrong.  And that’s ok, because you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and darn it people like you.

No, that’s not the point I’m going to make.  Ok, that’s half true.  Jesus does take away your guilty standing as a rebel against the King of the Universe, don’t get me wrong.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean a cosmic “undo” for all those who believe.  Sometimes, there are long-lasting effects of sin in your life that simply won’t go away.  (Note I used “won’t” not “can’t.”)

It goes like this…

When you put your faith and trust in Jesus, a few things could happen: God could remove all traces of a particular sin in your life, including guilty standing, temptation to repeat, and negative consequences. Or, God could remove the guilt of your sin but not the consequences of your sin.  You see, the guilt part is integral to salvation.  In fact, it’s what you’re believing when you put your trust in Jesus: that He can and will forgive you of your sins and restore your right standing before God if you will believe.

The other stuff, is not as sure.  I’m sure you know or have heard of someone who came to Jesus and immediately put down their drugs, promiscuity, Disney movies, and all other forms of evil in their lives without ever looking back.  They experienced no withdraw symptoms, never had a second thought, and could march right back into the bar/strip club/theme park without fear of relapse.  Praise God, He is still at work and does mighty things for the glory of His Name!

However, sometimes God chooses, for reasons we don’t know, to not deliver someone as radically and instantaneously.  I would argue that this is the norm.  God gives us the words of Paul to put off the old self and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22-23).  Therefore, we are urged to work together with God through the power of the Holy Spirit to strive towards obedience in this particular area.

Also, sometimes the consequences of our sin will not be removed.  God has built into the fabric of the universe a cause and effect system that goes beyond physics.  What we plant is what we will harvest (Galatians 6:7-9).  This is the biblical counter to “what goes around comes around” or karma.  The difference is that God can override this, and it doesn’t apply to our eternal state if we are in Christ.  What it does apply to is our life in the here and now.

Lead a promiscuous life and you might end up with a disease.  God can heal you of that, but it’s neither a guarantee nor the norm.  God may bless you with a wonderful marriage down the road with a pure and holy sex life, but you may not ever get certain images out of your head.  Murder someone, and God can and will forgive you for your sin.  That doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t go to jail.  Lie through all your B.C. years, and people might have a hard time believing you when get all truthful on them.

Just because we’re Christians doesn’t mean that we’re somehow exempt from the real world.  There are still consequences to our actions.  God may choose to supernaturally override the norm, but don’t count on it in every case.  We don’t have an “undo” button for life, and this is the only shot we get on this earth.  We will be judged for what we do here, and there will be no going back.

Whatever happened, happened.

Bible in 90, Day 08: A Father’s Dilemma

Leviticus 1-14

*image courtesy of doriana_s at stock.xchng

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.  ~ Deuteronomy 6:4-9

One of the heaviest burdens I carry as a father is the spiritual state of my boys.  My wife is my first priority, but I know without a doubt where her faith lies, and that she is eternally saved by grace through her faith in Jesus Christ.  My boys, however, are not yet saved.  They are young still, but it haunts me daily that they do not yet know Jesus personally and are not yet Christians.

Every father worries about his kids in some way or another.  No doubt Aaron had great concern for his four sons.  But like all fathers, he had to come to grips with the fact that they stood before God on their own.  I’ve mentioned on this blog before that God has no grandchildren.  Every person must give an account of their own actions to God.  This is hard for a father to accept because we desperately want to protect our children and keep them from harm.  Most of us would gladly take the heat in place of one of our kids.

In a stunningly tragic passage from today’s reading, two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, were punished for their sins against God (Leviticus 10).  We don’t know what exactly is meant by “unauthorized fire” (literally in Hebrew, “strange fire”), but it’s clear from God’s response that they had violated some aspect of the requirements recently laid out for the priests.  In a moment that is gut wrenching for any dad reading, Moses tells Aaron not to mourn the death of his two sons.  They knew what was expected by God, and they had sinned in some way.  They stood before God, and were judged according to their own actions.  Aaron could not allow this tragedy to cause him to sin and incur God’s wrath himself.

I can’t imagine how he must have felt.

It’s interesting that with the preliminaries of this article floating through my head, I sat down to dinner tonight and found myself in the midst of an intensely spiritual discussion with my boys.  We started out talking about Grandaddy and how he’s going to have to have another surgery in a few weeks.  We talked about how our bodies sometimes breakdown, kind of like our toys do when they get old or we don’t take good care of them, or sometimes they just break!  I saw a teachable moment for my boys, and went into discussing how illness and death are the result of sin being in the world.  I read Genesis 3 to them and we discussed Adam and Eve and the first sin and how it lead to their eventual death.  I read Romans 6:23 and talked about the payment we earn when we work hard at sin.  I asked Tripp (my 3 year-old) if what I was saying was making sense to which he quite enthusiastically said, “No!”

Somehow I wasn’t surprised.

However, Corbin (4½ year-old) my got a sad/scared look on his face and said that when he dies and Jesus makes him alive again he wants to come to his house, meaning our place here in Crewe.  So I read John 14:1-7 to him and talked about the many rooms in heaven that Jesus is preparing for all those who believe in him.  I read Romans 10:9 to him, and told him that we love him and Tripp very much and that’s why we teach them about Jesus because we want them to be in heaven with us one day.

It’s very hard for me to teach my 4½ year-old these hard and sometimes scary truths.  But I know that one day my little preschooler will stand before a righteous God (hopefully after a long, long life) and give an account for his actions and his faith.  I want him to be ready.  For an agonizing span of about 5 minutes, I began to think that tonight might be the night Corbin got saved.  He knows what sin is, and he knows he’s a sinner.  He knows (mostly) that sin leads to death.

I don’t think he’s got the rest yet, and it was painful to realize that the conversation had gone as far as it could tonight.  It’s that terrible dilemma that I find myself in, where I so desperately want someone to understand and believe the gospel, but I can’t make them do either.  I have to let the Holy Spirit do His work.   I am glad that he’s a few steps closer to understanding his personal guilt before a Holy God and his need for a personal Savior, Jesus.

I’m excited about the days ahead, and yet I’m still filled with that dread knowing that his eternity is not yet secured.  It pushes me to take advantage of every chance I get to tell my boys about Jesus, about their sin, about their need for Jesus, and about His wonderful gift of eternal life by grace through faith (Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:8-10).

Let’s always remember that no one lives on borrowed faith.  Each man and woman must stand before God in judgment one day.  Let’s let this spur us on to tell others about Jesus’ salvation, especially our kids.

Originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 63: Lions and Fires and Prayers, oh my!

Daniel 1-8

image courtesy of memoossa at stock.xchng

So today we covered about a month’s worth of Sunday school lessons.  We read about Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing the king’s choice food so as not to defile themselves.  We saw Daniel interpreting dreams for Nebuchadnezzar.  We held our breath as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were throw into the fiery furnace.  Daniel had a sleep-over with some lions because he had prayed to God even though it was against the law.  We scratched our heads as the hand appeared and wrote on the wall.

What did that look like anyway?

What’s interesting to see is the confidence and boldness in these four Hebrew men throughout these various ordeals.  To refuse the king’s food was to take a serious risk of seeming defiant.  I’m sure that disobedient refugees were not treated well by the royal court.  Daniel made a bold claim that he could interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, and had he not made good on his claim we know he would have died for it.  The penalty for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s allegiance to the Lord and refusal to bow before the image Nebuchadnezzar had made was brutal, yet they survived.

Perhaps my favorite moment of brash on the part of Daniel is in chapter 5 when he responds to Belshazzar’s questions about his reputation and ability to interpret the handwriting on the wall.  Belshazzar promises Daniel a robe, a gold chain, and a position of high political power in the land if he can interpret the writing.  Daniel’s response is quite forthcoming: You can keep your stuff!  But I will tell you the meaning of the words.

Um… Daniel… that’s the king

This was not the first king Daniel had ever tangled with.  He’d had dealings with Nebuchadnezzar, as we read earlier, and possibly two other kings whose reigns were fairly short.  Belshazzar was also not the last king he would deal with on not-so-friendly terms.  However, Daniel knew that his true King was more powerful than any earthly king.  In truth, the Lord was the source of the authority and power these kings had attained.

We don’t have to fear people either.  If we are in Christ, then we are children of the King of the universe.  No earthly power holds any real sway over us.  What’s the worst they can do to us?  Kill us?  That didn’t seem to bother Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They figured that God could save them from the flames of the furnace, but even if He didn’t, they wanted Nebuchadnezzar to know that they would not worship anything or anyone but God, even if it meant death.  We should serve Christ regardless of the consequences, knowing that either God will save us from the consequences, or that the consequences are not enough to keep us from being faithful to our King.

Let’s remember the example of these Hebrew men who were surrounded by a pagan culture.  Let’s not fear man, but rather, let’s fear God.  For man can only kill the body, but God can kill both the body and the soul (Matthew 10:28).  Let’s honor God, trusting Him to either deliver us from the fire, or to deliver us through the fire into His presence.

originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 33: I would not say such things if I were you!

2 Chronicles 23-35

*image courtesy of bewinca at www.sxc.hu

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.”  (Galatians 6:7)

The story of Sennacherib has always fascinated me (2 Chronicles 32).  I’ve often wondered how a man could be so arrogant, so spiteful, and so blind.  While trying to intimidate the king and the people of Judah, he spews out blasphemy like few people recorded in the Bible.  He has the audacity to compare the God of the Jews to the false gods of the other nations he has conquered.  Of course, in his sin-warped mind, he probably saw no difference.  He probably thought of Yahweh as just another inferior god whose people would be easily enough subdued.  He says in v. 17, “As the gods of the nations of the lands have not delivered their people from my hand, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.”

I would not say such things if I were you!

The Chronicler tells us that Sennacherib was directly trying to insult the Lord and to speak against Him!  What boldness!  What arrogance!  If you read the account of this event in Isaiah 36-37, especially 37:21-38, you discover that God has a direct answer.  He informs Sennacherib that all his mighty exploits and conquests were the result of His doing, not the king.  God then lets him know that he will not enter the city, or even fire an arrow into it.  The battle belongs to the Lord, and He already knows the outcome!  As expected, the word of the Lord comes true when Sennacherib’s army is wiped out by an angel, he goes home, and is eventually killed by his own sons while worshiping his false god.

When Paul wrote in Galatians that God cannot be mocked, he meant more than just words.  Certainly, anyone bold enough to openly mock God, such as Sennacherib and his servant Rabshakeh did, will face His judgment.  But do we mock God with our lives, while claiming to honor Him with our lips (Isaiah 29:13)?  We may not stand before the people of God and openly blaspheme His character, but do we deny Him with our actions?

God cannot be mocked.

Paul goes on to tell us that we will reap whatever we sow (Galatians 6:7-10).  That is to say, whatever we plant in our lives, we will harvest later.  I have  a garden in my backyard.  This season, my wife planted all kinds of seeds – cantalope, tomatoes, green beans, corn, squash, and peas.  Guess what we collected for the next few months?  Yep – cantalope, tomatoes, green beans, corn, squash, and peas.

If you plant watermelon seeds, in a few months you will be eating watermelon.  If you plant corn, you will eat corn.  If you plant sin, you will harvest destruction.  If you plant to please the Spirit, you will harvest eternal life.  And here’s the thing, all those seeds didn’t really look like much to start with.  We put a little tiny white thing in some dirt, and for a few weeks, it didn’t do a thing!  But after a little more time passed, we knew what were the green beans and what were the squash.  It might not seem like there’s consequences for sin in this worlds sometimes, but give it some time.  If the consequences don’t come here on earth, they’ll come later.

Let’s not plant sin in our lives.  Let us plant that which pleases the Spirit of the Holy God.  He wants what’s best for us, and so we are best to heed His commands and warnings.  Let’s not mock God, in word, or in deed. Let’s not profess the name of Jesus with one breath, and curse our brother with the next.  Let’s not claim to be children of God in the morning, and live like children of Satan that night.  Let’s let our actions match our passions and so not deceive ourselves, God cannot be mocked.

originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 30: Ignorance is no excuse

1 Chronicles 10-23

*image courtesy of my buddy Billy at www.sxc.hu

There was an interesting story today that on the surface can be kind of puzzling.  In 1 Chronicles 13, we read the story of Uzzah’s death after touching the Ark.  At first glance, it appears kind of harsh.  The Ark was being carried along, and everybody’s celebrating before God.  Suddenly, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out to steady the Ark so it wouldn’t fall off the cart.  The next thing ya know, he’s been struck dead by God!

Harsh much?

So here’s the thing, this whole situation was wrong from the start.  It seems like everything was going along great and then some guy dies, right?  Wrong.  If you read down to 1 Chronicles 15, you’ll find out that David did some homework while the Ark stayed at the house of Obed-Edom and discovered why Uzzah was killed.  They had not consulted the Lord on how to transport the Ark.  Only the Levites were supposed to carry the Ark (Numbers 4:15; Deuteronomy 10:8).  No one, not even the Levites were to touch the Ark directly.  The Levites only touched the poles that were slid into rings on the side of the Ark, thus never touching the Ark itself.

If David had sought the Lord in the first place, the Ark would have been properly carried by the Levites.  It never would have sat on a cart, and thus would have never been in jeopardy of falling off.  Uzzah would have never reached out his hand to steady it, and thus would not have died that day.

This gets back to the idea of the right worship of God (see Day 8).  Combine this with the concept of God’s revealed will, and you can see what went wrong today.  There was a right and wrong way to worship God for the Israelites.  God had very specific commands on this (as we saw in Leviticus).  In addition, these commands and expectations were clearly laid out in the Law for all to see.  It was negligence of the Word of God which lead to the tragedy we read about today.

The same can happen to us today.  If we neglect God’s Word, the Bible, we can find ourselves in a mess we never saw coming.  We may find ourselves facing the judgment of God for treating something lightly which we didn’t even know about.  We may think skipping out on some taxes is no big deal since we haven’t read and heeded Romans 13:1-5.  We may come to the Lord’s Supper with no thought toward the condition of our heart because we have not read 1 Corinthians 11:27-32.

Let us not be guilty of the sin of neglect.  Much of God’s will for our lives is spelled out clearly in the pages of Scripture.  Let us make reading and study of the Word a habit, as this 90 day challenge is striving to do.  Let us seek the Lord’s instructions, and the Holy Spirit’s empowerment to live them out (Ephesians 5:8-10; Galatians 3:10).

Bible in 90, Day 28: The Bad Samaritan

2 Kings 15-25

*image courtesy of alitaylor at www.sxc.hu

Today we witnessed the down-hill tumble of both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.  It wasn’t pretty.  If you’ve tried at all to keep up with which king was in which kingdom (which ain’t easy!), you may have noticed that all the kings of Israel were judged as wicked, and only some of the kings of Judah were judged as doing what was right in the sight of the Lord.  They both trace back to Jeroboam (the wicked king of Israel who set up the golden calves in Bethel and Dan, 1 Kings 12:25-33), or David.  Because of Israel’s idolatry, worship of false gods, and wicked kings, the kingdom fell first.  We also witnessed the birth of the people who would later become known as the Samaritans (1 Kings 17:1-6, 24-41).

In 722 B.C., Shalmaneser, king of Assyria deported the people of Israel to other lands, and brought people from other lands into Israel’s land.  This was to keep the people subdued.  When God’s anger struck the new settlers in Israel, Shalmaneser had some of the Israelite priests return to the land to instruct the people in how to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.  The people accepted some of these teachings, but continued worshiping other gods and simply blended the belief systems.  The Israelites left in the land also began intermarrying with these new people.  Thus, a new group of people arose who were both ethnically mixed, and religiously mixed.  This is why the hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans existed by the time of the 1st century (John 4:9; Luke 10:25-37).

First Kings 17:7-23 tells us that all this happened because Israel had sinned against the Lord.  The kingdom of Judah, unfortunately, doesn’t learn anything by watching this happen.  Even after the amazing reforms of Josiah (2 Kings 22-23), Judah still went after other gods and worshiped with idols.  God is a patient God.  He gave chance after chance after chance to both kingdoms in Israel.

And still they rebelled.

God sent prophets to warn the people.  He promised blessing if they would follow Him, and yet they rebelled.  He threatened cursing if the would not follow Him, yet they rebelled.  He sent disasters on them, trying to get their attention and draw them back to Himself, yet they rebelled.  Finally, he sent Israel off into captivity as He promised He would (Deuteronomy 28).  Even then, Judah did not listen.  In the end, Judah went into captivity at the hands of the Babylonians, just as God had foretold (2 Kings 20:12-21).

Let us heed God’s warnings in our lives.  Let’s not let sin so entangle us that we lose sight of who we are in Christ, and just how righteous He is.  Paul told the Corinthians that there were those who were weak and ill, even dead, because of sin in their lives (1 Corinthians 11:27-32).  Just as God sent warning after warning before taking Judah out of the land and into captivity, sometimes God may have to take a Christian out of the world to put an end to their sin and shameful blaspheming of Christ’s name.  Let us not be those who have to suffer the punishment of God before we repent.  Let us heed the warnings and turn back to Jesus in repentance, casting ourselves on His mercy.

Bible in 90, Day 25: Stupid kids!

1 Kings 7-16

*image courtesy of jan-willem at www.sxc.hu

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!”

How many times do we ignore this as kids?  How many times do we ignore it now?  We always think we know better.  And the younger we are, the more we think we know!

This was certainly true of Rehoboam.  Even though he was forty-one years old when he became king, he made a bone-headed move, typical of a man half his age (1 Kings 12).  He had just become king, and the people came to him seeking a bit of relief from the hard labor his father, King Solomon, had put them under.  Here was a great chance for the new king to gain favor in the sight of his people.  He consulted the elders, the men who had been Solomon’s advisers.  They counseled him to answer them favorably and so gain their allegiance.  He then made the mistake of rejecting this counsel and sought the advice of his friends.

Stupid move.

These were the guys he had grown up with.  These men were obviously not diplomats, or wise elders.  These were the guys he goofed off with all his young life.  They were not statesmen, they were not kings or king-makers, they weren’t even all that godly if we look at their response (check out the way some translations render 12:10! if memory serves me correctly, this is the gist of what they were saying! pretty crude).  These were the rough and tumble guys that had grown up as Rehoboam’s chums.  Not exactly the best place to go for godly counsel.  They give him terrible advice, and he follows it!  It goes quite badly for him, as you’ll remember, and ends up splitting the kingdom.

Thanks buddies!

One of the great ironies of all this is that, as we discussed yesterday, Solomon spent a lot of ink trying to teach his son to get wisdom (Proverbs 4:5, 7; 16:16; 23:23).  Obviously this pleading fell on deaf ears.  Perhaps this is why Solomon spent so much time reminding his son to get wisdom.  Perhaps he saw his foolishness early on in Rehoboam’s childhood.

But we do the same, don’t we?  We go to our friends “for advice” and really all we hope for is to hear what we have already decided to do.  Instead of seeking out those who have true wisdom, we go to those we know think like we do.  We may even read the Bible, but we bring our preconceived notions to it and read our desires into it instead of looking into the perfect law and letting it change our lives (James 1:22-25).

Instead, as we discussed yesterday, we should ask God for wisdom (James 1:5).  In addition, we should seek the counsel of godly people.  We younger folk need to be reminded that those older and more experienced than us have a wisdom we cannot yet even understand, a wisdom that comes from living life.  This is not to say that all older people are wise and all younger people are fools (1 Timothy 4:12).  Notice that we should seek the counsel of godly people.

Let us not be like foolish Rehoboam.  Let us seek wisdom from God and from those whom God has already gifted with wisdom through a long life of faithfulness to Him.  And then, by all means, let us heed this wisdom and not reject it!

• Sorry about yesterday’s post everyone!  I’m out of town for school this week and my wi-fi connection had a bad case of the hiccups last night.  I wrote the article for yesterday, pressed “Publish” and the only thing that made it was the title and the tags!  I’m going to go back and re-do it when I get back home and get a hardline connection again.

Bible in 90, Day 23: I so hate consequences

2 Samuel 12-22

In 2 Samuel 12, David is confronted by Nathan the prophet concerning his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah.  God lays out three punishments, which aptly fit David’s crime.  1) Because he used the sword to have Uriah killed, the sword would never depart from his house.  2) Because he slept with another man’s wife, another man would sleep with his wives.  But though David did this in secret, his punishment would be in broad daylight.  3) The son conceived during his affair with Bathsheba would die.

Today’s reading shows the unfortunate fulfillment of those prophecies.  The death of the child, the feud between Absalom and Amnon, the bloody fight for the throne that Absalom initiates, his subsequent violent death – all these are results of God’s punishment on David.  The second punishment is also centered on Absalom as he takes the ten concubines his father left behind when fleeing Jerusalem.  He puts tents on the roof of the royal palace and sleeps with the concubines in the sight of all the people.  This was not only a heinous sin on the part of Absalom, it was also a very strong claim to the throne on his part.  He was hijacking the harem of David, showing that David was incapable of protecting them and thus strengthening his claim to the throne.  Now, God had forgiven David’s sin (12:13), but that didn’t mean the consequences for those sins were removed.

I so hate consequences…

Don’t we all?  It is a fact that we will reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8).  This is not to say that God won’t sometimes override this.  However, we should not expect this as the normal course of things.  The alcoholic who gives his addiction over to Jesus and never goes back to it may still die of liver failure.  The murderer who repents, accepts Jesus, and secure forgiveness from God may still be executed or spend life in prison.

This knowledge may have the unfortunate effect of hampering us from seeking forgiveness.  Have you ever known you were guilty of sin, but didn’t want to fess up to it?  Maybe you were afraid of what the consequences would be.  Maybe you were just afraid of having to admit you had hurt someone with your actions.  Either way, the fear of consequences keeps us from confessing our sin.

Let us own up to our mistakes.  Let us confess our sins, not only to God, but to those we’ve sinned against on earth.  When we do, we will find that God is waiting to take us back like the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).