A Little On the Dumb Side!

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to bring you twelve wooden staffs, one from each leader of Israel’s ancestral tribes, and inscribe each leader’s name on his staff.  Inscribe Aaron’s name on the staff of the tribe of Levi, for there must be one staff for the leader of each ancestral tribe.  Place these staffs in the Tabernacle in front of the Ark containing the tablets of the Covenant, where I meet with you.  Buds will sprout on the staff belonging to the man I choose.  Then I will finally put an end to the people’s murmuring and complaining against you.”  So Moses gave the instructions to the people of Israel, and each of the twelve tribal leaders, including Aaron, brought Moses a staff.  Moses placed the staffs in the Lord’s presence in the Tabernacle of the Covenant.  When he went into the Tabernacle of the Covenant the next day, he found that Aaron’s staff, representing the tribe of Levi, had sprouted, budded, blossomed, and produced ripe almonds!  When Moses brought all the staffs out from the Lord’s presence, he showed them to the people.  Each man claimed his own staff.  And the Lord said to Moses: “Place Aaron’s staff permanently before the Ark of the Covenant to serve as a warning to rebels.  This should put an end to their complaints against me and prevent any further deaths.”  So Moses did as the Lord commanded him.  Then the people of Israel said to Moses, “Look, we are doomed!  We are dead!  We are ruined!  Everyone who even comes close to the Tabernacle of the Lord dies.  Are we all doomed to die?”  Numbers 17:1-13

If there is one consistent theme in Scripture about the people of God it’s their inconsistency (with a few notable exceptions).  It’s like that New Year’s resolution you make about eating less, working-out more, and avoiding driving past Krispy Kreme; the vow lasts until the next temptation arrives.  And so it goes.

The next temptation for Israel was always grumbling about the way they were led; the target of their grumbling was all about the leader, Moses, a humble man. But over and again God had demonstrated Moses was the leader.  Even with a dead stick budding, blooming, and producing ripe almonds, all in the space of one night[1], demonstrating God’s leadership choice, God’s gracious miracle only produced fear in the hearts of the people.  And fear will destroy any faith!

Such is the point of this account.  Time after time God’s people were in a crisis and God rescued them from danger; each time there was immediate relief, but the return to fear and grumbling (with its accompanying unbelief, or lack of faith) arrived within nanoseconds. 

And so it goes…even today.

This problem is not a particularly Jewish thing; it’s endemic to humanity.  It started with the first sin in the Garden of Eden.  Adam and Eve took a bite, realized their separation from God, heard the Lord approaching, and they hid!  They hid because of their shame, knowing (as fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil suggests), that they were now less than they were created to be, and had separated themselves from God.  And what were they hiding from?  The Lord, the solution to their problem.  And what did they do about it when busted for their sins?  They offered excuses trying to deflect their responsibility to others:

      Eve:  The serpent tricked me 

      Adam:  Lord, the woman YOU made, gave me that bite.  And so it goes.

For You Today 

The question of the day (and of the ages) is…when we’ve seen how that worked-out for Adam and Eve, why do we join them in that foolishness?  All it produces is more fear and grumbling.  When fear arises, it kills your faith.  Wouldn’t it save a myriad of trouble and heartache to live in faith, and let it destroy your fears?

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

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library.

Title Image Pixabay.com  Images without citation are in public domain or cited via weblinks.  

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©  

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[1] It takes one year after a bush has matured (3-4 years) to produce the first crop – see Nav Athwal article Forbes

Communion

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Friday, August 3, 2018

So anyone who eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.  That is why you should examine yourself before eating the bread and drinking the cup.  For if you eat the bread or drink the cup without honoring the body of Christ, you are eating and drinking God’s judgment upon yourself.  That is why many of you are weak and sick and some have even died.  But if we would examine ourselves, we would not be judged by God in this way.  Yet when we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned along with the world.  1 Corinthians 11:27-32^(NLT)

Preparation is the word that comes to mind for each worship service.  There are the questions of detail, such as:  are the bulletins printed; are the soloist and readers practiced; will the communion steward have it all in place?  But these questions pale in comparison to the one about which Paul was concerned: 

Have we taken time to be holy?

A normal response might be that it’s only Friday…Sunday is still a few days away.  And that would be a reasonable statement if the ritual of Eucharist, the actual consuming of the bread and cup, were the main issue; but that is hardly the case. 

Paul brings into the foreground that which is the meat of this meal – self-examination.  To self-examine is to ruminate on our lives, the substance of which is to be honoring to Jesus.  If we are in-Christ people, our living is to be consistent with the character of He who died for us.  It is the same way we think (and behave) when we take seriously honoring our father and mother.  Mom and Dad used to caution us to remember who we are…and Whose we are.  The family name is at stake when we are out in public, so behaving with respectability becomes Job #1.  When the family name of Jesus is at stake we do well to remember it is not only our behavior, but our attitude that can bring fame or shame to the entire family; it becomes an inside-out job!

Self-examination should not begin when the time of holy communion appears in the bulletin.  It is more an on-going, daily, never-ending attitude of watching-over the stuff of our lives; it is holding every action and thought up to the light of Christ’s love.

For a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, it matters what others think; I am responsible to all to not only preach with my words, but to preach with my life.  And you are no different if you call Him Lord.

Some people see the “ritual” of giving a great thanks to God for those little wafers or chunks of bread, and the grape juice or wine as perfunctory, a tedious segment of time on Sunday to be endured.  We want everything packaged professionally and quickly these days.  But that is so in error…and we pay a penalty I learned on a diet.

Several years ago I participated in a clergy health study that included all phases of well-being, diet, monitored medical stats, emotional health, and professional habits.  In the diet deliberations I found out I had been blowing-it, not just with what I consumed, but how I consumed it.  I’ve always been a gulp-it-down eater, blaming it on my time in the U.S. Army when they gave you eight-minutes to grab your tray, wolf down the meal, and vacate the Mess Hall to make room for the next eight-minute victim.  The dietician leading us made a big thing of helping us slow down and chew every bite slowly.  This was important because your brain is about 20 minutes behind your stomach in getting the message as to how full you really are.  If you stuff food quickly down the pipe, you’ll overdo every time.  When I tried slowing down I discovered something I’d been missing for a lot of years…taste!  When you chew long, and concentrate on the aroma, texture, flavor, and “finish” each bite creates in your meal, you can truly enjoy the time as a dining experience, rather than a check-off on the to-do list (or even your wanna-do list).

There is that about self-examination and holy communion; slow-down, look-deep, savor what the cross has done, and how your life reflects what the cross has done.  Put it in perspective, and then come, eat…sinners, there is grace at that table!

For You Today

If your church schedule is like ours, communion will appear in this Sunday morning’s bulletin.  But that’s just a printed piece of paper; the real thing happens (or not) every moment of your life in-Christ.

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

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Lead Us NOT into Temptation

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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

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And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.  Matthew 6:13^(NLT)

OK, so the Christmas and New Year holidays are behind us, but that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet; that chocolate-drenched Valentine thing is this coming Sunday.  And then you have Easter, and then…

Well, you get the drift; it’s always something.

You know where this is headed.  If you’re a person who owns a scale you’re already imagining what this devotion would look like lining your garbage can.

I’m not entirely certain an open fridge was the #1 thing Jesus had in mind when he taught his disciples to pray for strength against temptation …but it has to be close to the top! 

Our friends down at LG Electronics came up with that which is the ultimate challenge, for those of us who constantly fight the urge to splurge with a fork – a refrigerator with an 8” display telling you exactly what’s inside the behemoth icebox.  And if that isn’t enough, when you walk by it, the thing’s sensors see you and both doors open! 

Talk about the jaws of death! 

Well, take courage, because humans are not totally devoid of brains; enough wise people refused to purchase one of these contraptions, and, according to the website, the SmartFridge™ is now a discontinued item! 

Thank you, Jesus!

Now, if you’re not one of the wise ones, and you actually bought Delilah the food temptress, I have but one addendum to the Lord’s Prayer for you:

Stay out of the kitchen; don’t walk past the refrigerator!

And this is true for any kind of temptation. 

   ·       If you’re a smoker and you want to quit, trash the ash trays

   ·       If you’re an alcoholic and working on it, change your way home so you don’t pass the bars

   ·       If you’re into porn, and you know how badly this violates what God said about sexual purity, don’t allow yourself alone time with the computer

   ·       And if you can’t put down that phone or tablet so you can look into the beautiful eyes of a               living, breathing human being…

Well, you get the drift.

For You Today

God gave us good and wonderful gifts of life, beauty, food and other human beings with which to experience the fullness of relationship and joy.  And He meant for none of that to take over our lives as addiction.

So the next time you pray Lord, lead me NOT into temptation, hang out with God a little longer before you say “amen”. 

He just might tell you to disconnect that refrigerator and put it on eBay!

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

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[1] Title image: LG Refrigerators