Crossing the Rubicon...with HOPE

Friday, April 21, 2023

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control.  Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.  So you must live as God’s obedient children.  Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.  You didn’t know any better then.  But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.  For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”  1 Peter 1:13-16

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river in 49BC he was returning from battlefield victories in Gaul (modern France), in response to the Roman senate’s summons and order to disband his army.  By Roman law it was a capital crime to lead any army into Rome.  Caesar carefully considered the consequences, and conferred with his officers.  According to the Roman historian Suetonius, Caesar remarked, “Even yet we may draw back, but once cross yon little bridge, and the whole issue is with the sword.”  Caesar is reported to have concluded the risk was worth taking and said:  Let the die be cast…he led his men across the river.[1]

Julius Caesar led a thousand soldiers across a bridge to begin a five-year civil war, culminating in the crowning of Julius as Rome’s dictator for life…albeit a life shortened by daggers.  How you come to power is, at least connected, and often the basis upon how your power ends.  Caesar was a warrior at heart, and brought the sword to everything he did.  His power was achieved by fear-producing threats, killing, and treachery; his eventual demise was the fruit of that sword.

Fast-forward fifty years and the cradle in Bethlehem was the crossing of another, vastly different and ultimately-important Rubicon, the point of no return for Heaven’s lamb.  Crossing that river to Calvary’s hill also declared war…on the Gates of Hell.  This war would not be fought with swords, or legions of flesh and blood, but rather the sword of the Spirit, and allegiance to the blood of the Lamb.

Moses asked a vital question of the people of God…who is on the Lord’s side?  The issue of faith has always been (and still is) decided by a Rubicon question.  To be a believer, one who trusts fully in Jesus Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, and second coming, is to cross faith’s river with hope ONLY in Him.  And that kind of trust is a point of no return.  It shuts the back door of choices, and throws wide the door of moving forward – the bridge burning behind you.  For those who choose to trust Christ loosely, keeping ties with the old life, and options open, Scripture has a warning:

But some of you do not believe me.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning which ones didn’t believe, and he knew who would betray him.)  Then he said, “That is why I said that people can’t come to me unless the Father gives them to me.”  At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.  Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you also going to leave?” Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go?  You have the words that give eternal life.  We believe, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”  

John 6:64-68

For You Today 

The bottom line about being a disciple of Jesus is you either cross the Rubicon of faith with hope only in Christ, or you don’t.  There are not two horses to straddle!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   Yahweh  and  The Marriage of Belief & Behavior  and   The Sacrifice of Self-Control 

Title Image:  via Pixabay.com   Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] A Daily Dose of History – Article January 10, 2023

Ready

Friday, April 24, 2020

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control.  Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.  So you must live as God’s obedient children.  Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.  You didn’t know any better then.  But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.  For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”  1 Peter 1:13-16

It wasn’t long ago that I heard news of the passing of my 9^th grade English teacher, Joe Gulizio.  His students referred to him as Jumping Joe, because when it came time for the annual faculty vs. student basketball game, for a 5’9” guy, he could mix it up with the biggest and best of them.  He also had an amazingly accurate two-handed “set-shot”.   

For an English nerd he was quite the athlete.  Given my love of any sport where you could catch, kick, throw, hit, or bounce a ball, I admired Mr. Gulizio.  I also kind of feared being around him.  He made me do things like stand in front of the class to give a book report.  I once pretended to be sick for a whole week because I knew my turn was coming up.  In my weakened condition on the first day back, there was little mercy from behind the teacher’s throne; Mr. Brownworth, welcome back…you can now give your report.  It probably would’ve hurt less if it wasn’t for that smile silently bellowing, I’ve been in touch with your parents, you slacker…get up here and squirm.  I didn’t hate the book; actually, I loved it.  I just hated standing in front of people who were expecting me to talk.  My way of avoiding my distaste for doing that was to avoid preparing for it, hoping the day wouldn’t arrive.  I think Jumping Joe knew that…what a sadist!

Sixty years is a long time to arrive at the understanding that Mr. Gulizio was teaching much more than English literature in 1961; he was bent on forming strong character.  Jumping Joe was teaching me to be ready.  He wanted my head to be in the game, prepared and focused on thinking, learning, speaking up, and remembering that life isn’t just a ball game (which isn’t a bad background for a future preacher). 

So, there is a definite parallel between 9^th Grade English Lit and life as a believer.  Peter’s admonition to the church was to be ready, prepared for the spiritual battle of your lives!  And, to do that, it was, as Peter’s friend and co-laborer, Paul wrote, necessary to put on the armor of a Christ-warrior:

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.  Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.  For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.  Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil.  Then after the battle you will still be standing firm.  Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness.  For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared.  In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.  Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion.  Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.   Ephesians 6:10-18

For You Today

Our spiritual battles are no different than Peter’s or Paul’s.  Every day we are faced with an enemy that would rob us of our joy, our witness, and our faith.  The choices for life as a disciple of Jesus Christ are only two – faithful or not faithful. 

Jumping Joe Gulizio would say, it’s your turn; he must have been quoting Jesus.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO 

Title Image:  Pixabay.com      Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on 1 Peter see Standing in the Sweet Spot and The Sacrifice of Self-Control

The Sacrifice of Self-Control

[i]

Friday, April 28, 2017

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control.  Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.  So you must live as God’s obedient children.  Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.  You didn’t know any better then.  But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.  For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”    1 Peter 1:13-16^(NLT)

The apostle Peter is a most ironic choice by God to be a teacher of self-control.  If you consider his track record, every time Peter opened his mouth he seemed to wander off the reservation and insert his foot: 

·       Peter said he would die for Jesus; in the end he denied he even knew him.

·       Peter’s immediate response when the soldiers came for Jesus in Gethsemane was to whip out a sword to fight for the one who had said turn the other cheek.

·       Peter promised a lot; he even proclaimed a correct answer to Jesus’ question that he was Messiah, but when crunch time came he wimped like the rest of us.

So much for self-control!

Yet, on Pentecost Day we find Peter preaching to at least 5,000 at the Temple, and becoming the little rock Jesus nick-named him.  Peter was to be the de-facto leader of the early church; a man with little self-control became one of the most dramatic examples of putting all in the hands of God.  Tradition has it that he was crucified as Jesus was, but thought it was improper to take the same position as his Lord, and asked to be placed on his cross upside-down.

Two quotations I’ve come to love may offer some of the best advice I’ve ever heard when it comes to being disciplined, or having self-control, and how to go about it:

Maxie Dunnam:  Spiritual formation is that dynamic process of receiving through faith and appropriating through commitment, discipline, and action.[ii]

Faith happens between the ears and heart; appropriating what faith tells you to do is a matter of putting it into action in your life.  It may start small, but ends up big as commitment, discipline and action.

Charles Reade:  Sow an act and you reap a habit.  Sow a habit and you reap a character.  Sow a character and you reap a destiny.[iii]

Peter’s disciplined friend Paul simply said that we reap what we sow ^{(Galatians 6:7).}  The “acts” Charles Reade held up are those areas of self-discipline you want to cultivate.  It begins with an intentional step, based on the faith conviction that you must live a certain way.  That sown seed of faith becomes a habit, which eventually becomes your character, where you don’t think about it anymore, you simply continue.  That character is your destiny or legacy.

For You Today

If there is a problem with self-discipline in your life, turn it upside down and crucify whatever is preventing you from giving glory to God.  Your character and legacy depend on what you will do with your first step today.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO

NOTES

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 ^I Title image: Masaccio [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[ii] Maxie Dunnam quoted on Great Thoughts Treasury

[iii] Charles Reade quoted on Brainy Quotes

Yahweh

Friday, February 27, 2015

The Lord is my strength and my song; he has given me victory.  This is my God, and I will praise him—my father’s God, and I will exalt him!  The Lord is a warrior; Yahweh is his name!       Exodus 15:2-3 (NLT)

“You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.  Exodus 20:7 (NLT)

Moses stammered at the burning bush over the thought of going back to Egypt.  He whined, at least tell me your name; how can I tell them a God with no name sent me?  And the voice in the fire spoke it, I AM. 

The children of God in Israel still revere that name so highly they approach the use of the name of the Lord with such reverence they won’t even write all of it down.  From ancient times they wrote the name without the vowels.  “Jehovah” became “J H V H”. 

We are accustomed to the King James Version of Exodus 20:7, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain….  So what does it mean to take the name in vain, or to “misuse” the name? 

There is a unique word-play we don’t hear in English.  JHVH (pronounced Ya-Way) is the Lord’s name.  "Vain” is emptiness and is shawe' (pronounced Sha-Way).  When you make the name empty you use it not according to His purposes…in vain!  Yahweh becomes Shawheh. 

In 1940 the Australian census recorded 127,000 people of a particular denomination.  But, in all the churches of that denomination, Australia only had a total of 37,000 on membership rolls.  Seven of ten who claimed the church were unknown to the church.  We call that a profession of faith without possession of faith!

But the issue about the Lord’s name isn’t just a roll call – rather it’s calling down shame on the name.  In our culture we hardly flinch when someone blasphemes the name of God, either by using his name as profanity, or ridiculing even the existence of God.

In 1939’s “Gone With the Wind” Rhett Butler spoke the famous line to Scarlett O’Hara that used the first slang “cuss” word in American movies.  In today’s culture we’ve brought God into the mix.  These days we ask Him to damn things constantly and nobody gives it a second thought.

We shame the name of Yahweh to be shawe’ – we make it empty and meaningless.

So what IS honoring the name?

Honoring the name of God has less to do with writing it without vowels or speaking it in hushed tones; it has everything to do with living a life worthy of that name.  The big fisherman, Peter, gave us a picture of what it is like to honor the name: 

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control.  Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.  So you must live as God’s obedient children.  Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires.  You didn’t know any better then.  But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.  For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”  1 Peter 1:13-16 (NLT)

John, the aged and beloved apostle, picked up on that theme in The Revelation when the vision God gave him showed the people gathering around the throne in glory:

Who will not fear you, Lord, and glorify your name?  For you alone are holy.  All nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous deeds have been revealed.”  Revelation 15:4 (NLT)

For You Today

The NAME – it can be Shawe’ (empty) or it can be Yahweh (strong and holy).

Bring honor to the Name of our Lord today in all you say and do.

After all, Christian, you do bear your Father’s name.