Contagious Faith

Monday, September 18, 2023

It was by faith that Moses’ parents hid him for three months when he was born. They saw that God had given them an unusual child, and they were not afraid to disobey the king’s command.  It was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter.  He chose to share the oppression of God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin.  He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward.  It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger.  He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who is invisible.  It was by faith that Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover and to sprinkle blood on the doorposts so that the angel of death would not kill their firstborn sons.  It was by faith that the people of Israel went right through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground.  But when the Egyptians tried to follow, they were all drowned.  Hebrews 11:23-29

The entire life of Moses is encapsulated in the word “faith”.  And yet the story of Moses’ life is not primarily about one man’s faith, but rather how faith is honored by God’s validation, and passed along to others who need to know a faithful God.  Moses is the story of contagious faith.

A man who helped pass along the faith to me when I was still in elementary school described how one “acquires” faith as more like plunging-into, rather than grabbing it, as you would pick up a baseball bat.  This is because a bat becomes your possession; plunging-into faith means you’re surrounded by it, possessed by its essence, and carried along where it will lead.  Read the Exodus account, and you will see that is so in the way Moses led and encouraged Israel.

The process with Moses grew and tested his faith throughout his life.  Born to Hebrew parents, released to God’s care in a basket floating down the Nile, found and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, and raised in the palaces of Egypt’s dynasty as a prince, Moses eventually discovered his heritage and turned his back on the riches of Pharaoh’s kingdom, in favor of the suffering he would find with slaves.

This image, and how the writer to the Hebrews casts it, brings into view one further analogy from baseball’s core:  keeping your eye on the ball.  Anyone who has ever had a baseball coach has heard those words.  When you step up to the plate for your turn at bat, it’s with the intention of hitting the ball so you can run the bases.  It is easy to get distracted with the crowd cheering (or booing).  The catcher will engage you in conversation if he can, to keep you from concentrating on hitting the ball.  The pitcher hides the ball until the moment of release, so you can’t see what he’s up to.  The sun can get in your eyes, or the waving trees beyond the fence can draw your attention from the one task for which you’ve practiced, learned, and are standing there facing nine opposing players…to smack that ball into the middle of next week.  And it won’t happen if you don’t keep your focus on that little white ball with red-stiches holding it together, screaming towards home plate at 80-90 miles-per-hour.  Keep your eye on the ball!

For You Today 

Keep your eye on the ball.  This is what faith whispered in Moses’ ear when the crunch time arrived.  Would it be a life of luxury, served on a gold platter in Pharaoh’s house…or a hard walk in slave sandals?  The “ball” in this case was a question that every person on planet earth must answer eventually:  Who are you going to serve?  If you want to serve Pharaoh, with this world’s approval and treasures, you will not serve the King of Glory.  Jesus has the last word on that:

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”  Luke 16:13

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. 

Images without citation are in public domain.  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

When God Lets the Arrow Fly

Monday, May 8, 2023

When Pharaoh finally let the people go, God did not lead them along the main road that runs through Philistine territory, even though that was the shortest route to the Promised Land.  God said, “If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.”  So God led them in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.  Thus the Israelites left Egypt like an army ready for battle.  Exodus 13:17-18

When God directed Moses to lead his children out of bondage in Egypt, it would have been so easy to march them directly to Canaanland, and let the party begin!  That would have been the way I would have planned the trip.  

It’s about 775 miles from Egypt to Israel, so they could have walked straight there in two months.  But they didn’t cross the Jordan river for 40 years.  Evidently there was a lot more to Israel becoming God’s people, than just 10 plagues and a visit by the death angel, before they would be ready for the prosperity of the Promised Land.

There is much I do not understand about how the sovereignty of God, intersects with the free-will of human beings.  However, the Israelite forty-year layover in the desert[1] is a great teacher of how we can navigate being free-will beings created by a sovereign God.  It all comes down to using the free-will we’ve been gifted, to cooperate with the sovereignty of God’s plans, rather than just do what pleases us.  After all, it is God’s sandbox, and we are visitors, whom God wants to adopt as family.  It pays to be on one’s best behavior!

When it comes to how that behavior shapes our relationship with God, I have this image of an archer with a bow, pointed at a target…the arrow flies, released by the archer.  God is the archer; we are the arrows.  The target to which God points each of us, is the place closest to God’s heart.  He wants us to hit the bullseye (so to speak), and lodge there.  The purpose is blessing.  God wants us close to the source of the universe’s wealth of wisdom and well-being.  He wants what’s best for us.  The problem for we arrows, having been released from the bow string, is we have freedom to be blown about by gusts of winds, or objects (all kinds of sins against hitting the target). 

While God’s eye is never off the arrows he releases, our free will is a type of sovereignty over the moments we are granted to live.  We are pointed at the right target; we have free will to choose how we respond to the direction we’re given. That direction is clearly stated in the prophecy of Micah 6:8:

No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. 

The arrow God releases into this vastness of free will invariably chooses to do what is wrong, love power, and walk arrogantly and selfishly, despising God.  And God allows that.  (Full Stop)

The full weight of sovereignty of humankind over their destination is a gift of God to His loved creation.  But the weight of that gift’s incredible value is the corresponding accountability of consequence for corrupting the gift against the holiness of God.  (Again – Full Stop)  We despise God’s sovereignty with our free will, and the result is spiritual Chernobyl.

For You Today 

You have freedom; choose wisely how to cooperate with God today.

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

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There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:   An Uncertain Path  and  Cloud by Day - Fire by Night   

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] Read all of the Exodus story, from Moses at the burning bush, to the miraculous rescue of God’s people at the Red Sea, and provision of God through 40 years of wandering in the desert.

Without Vision Nations Crumble

 

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Where there is no vision, the people perish:  but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.  Proverbs 29:18^(KJV)

The reason the apostles were all willing to die for Christ (and most of them WERE martyred) is they had a clear vision of the cross.  They knew God had been crucified on Calvary, but He was alive again!  The vision of a Lord who not only ruled life but death as well, gave them the power to live and die as conquerors. 

·       It was a clear vision of living in freedom that caused a ragtag bunch of slaves to follow a former murderer named Moses out into the desert. 

·       It was a clear vision of God's holiness that caused Isaiah to fall on his knees and cry out, Woe to me...I  am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes  have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.  ^{Isaiah 6:5} 

·       It was a clear vision of an irresistible call of God that caused a young shepherd-boy named David to stand against Goliath. 

·       It was a clear vision of the need of grace in the life of each one of us that caused Jesus to set Himself towards Jerusalem, submit to  the emotional pain of Gethsemane, the evil purposes of a sham trial, and the excruciating penalty of judgment for all our sins on that old rugged cross. 

My friends, if you can get ONE CLEAR VISION of what your life is to stand for, your days will never be the same.  In Christian circles we call that finding God's will. 

I've been told so many times by sincere, seeking people, I'm certain God wants me to do SOMEthing.  I just wish I could know what His will is.   Beloved, you're no different than anyone else who's ever wanted to know God's will.  The fact is God Himself wants you to know it.  Often we are so less willing to DO God's will than He is willing to share it with us, so that we aren't in a position to hear His will if He shouted it in our ears.  There are conditions to knowing God's will, but...

YOU CAN HEAR AND UNDERSTAND GOD'S DIRECTION FOR YOUR LIFE IF YOU WANT TO; AND IT WILL OPEN YOUR EYES! ^[1]

For You Today

If knowing God’s will for your life is the most important responsibility He’s given you, isn’t it the clearest mandate you need to seek that will, above all else, until He reveals it to you?

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

[1] Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

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[1] Russell Brownworth, Learning and Doing (a sermon)

Trusting the Tracks

 

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Jeremiah wrote a letter from Jerusalem to the elders, priests, prophets, and all the people who had been exiled to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar.  This was after King Jehoiachin, the queen mother, the court officials, the other officials of Judah, and all the craftsmen and artisans had been deported from Jerusalem.  He sent the letter with Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah when they went to Babylon as King Zedekiah’s ambassadors to Nebuchadnezzar.  This is what Jeremiah’s letter said:  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem:  “Build homes, and plan to stay.  Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce.  Marry and have children.  Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren.  Multiply!  Do not dwindle away!  And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile.  Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says:  “Do not let your prophets and fortune-tellers who are with you in the land of Babylon trick you.  Do not listen to their dreams, because they are telling you lies in my name.  I have not sent them,” says the Lord.  This is what the Lord says:  “You will be in Babylon for seventy years.  But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again.  For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord.  “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.  In those days when you pray, I will listen.  If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.  I will be found by you,” says the Lord.  “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes.  I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.”

One of the more trustworthy aspects of travelling by train is that the tracks always lead to the destination.  If you lay down tracks from Charlotte to Memphis the train will always move faithfully between those two cities.  One of the more certain terrors of travelling by train is if someone has messed with the tracks. 

The people of Jeremiah’s day must have figured someone messed with the tracks.  They were God’s favored, the chosen people; now they were defeated captives down in Babylon.  Someone had messed with the tracks of God’s promised people.

If you rewind the story a bit you find that it was God’s own people who had messed with the tracks of their journey.  They had forgotten who they were, a nation to be held close to God’s heart, obedient, faithful, and different from all others on earth.  And so the defeat by Babylonian invaders, the fall of Jerusalem, and being held as slaves in a foreign kingdom was their own doing; talk about a derailed train ride!

Against that backdrop, Jeremiah, God’s prophet, mostly viewed as an enemy because he had warned it was coming, and from a pit that was his jail cell, takes quill in hand and writes to the captives.  His message:  It’s all good, folks; hold on; this is all part of God’s good plans for you; trust the tracks; keep truckin’.

Good plans, Jeremiah?  Son, have you been in the new wine again?  We are captives, slaves, and our whole army lies bloodied and decomposing on the battlefield.  We lost, and we are doomed…what do you mean, good plans?

Ultimately God was in the process of purifying the thoughts of people who had decided they could lay tracks in any direction they wanted.  They’d come unglued in terms of honest lives, cheating one another.  They’d left off taking seriously their commission to honor and worship Jehovah God with their lives; instead, they began acting more like their worldly neighbors.  They plotted course for proclaiming their own greatness rather than trusting the tracks God had given them.  God’s tracks led straight to the Temple and the presence of God; the tracks they were laying down were for the far country.

Defeat at the hands of the Babylonian marauders was not just political, it was theological, a mirror held up for Israel (and the rest of the world) to see how derailed God’s people can get, and the consequences that inevitably follow.  This was not only a good plan, it was God’s best plan for purging the kind of thought which imagines the wages of sin can be changed.

Ultimately the good plan of God brought just what Jeremiah wrote, hope, the one innermost emotional soul nutrient which makes human existence possible.  Without hope no person (or nation, or species) can continue long.  God’s good plan showed Israel their only hope was in the God who had taken them from Egypt’s captivity into the land of promise.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph was still on the throne, and the tracks that led to that throne room hadn’t changed location.

For You Today

We are still amid Covid-19’s pandemic, a captivity of sorts.  Asking where it came from might be like Jeremiah’s flock wondering how they could’ve been blind-sided by the Babylonians.  The answer is the same – it’s still God’s good plan for us.  The antidote is more than vaccines and masks; it’s time to get back to trusting the tracks.

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

For another post on Numbers 22 see God's Plan and I Know the Plans I Have for You  

 

Telling the Story

 

Monday, June 15, 2020

Psalm 105:37-45

The Lord brought his people out of Egypt, loaded with silver and gold; and not one among the tribes of Israel even stumbled.  Egypt was glad when they were gone, for they feared them greatly.  The Lord spread a cloud above them as a covering and gave them a great fire to light the darkness.  They asked for meat, and he sent them quail; he satisfied their hunger with manna—bread from heaven.  He split open a rock, and water gushed out to form a river through the dry wasteland.  For he remembered his sacred promise to his servant Abraham.  So he brought his people out of Egypt with joy, his chosen ones with rejoicing.  He gave his people the lands of pagan nations, and they harvested crops that others had planted.  All this happened so they would follow his decrees and obey his instructions.  Praise the Lord!

If you’ve ever slowly walked through a graveyard, taking the time and thoughtful tour, you’ve also come away wondering about the rest of the story of the lives that lay buried there.  You wonder what it was like to be that person, what joys, pains, sorrows and good times are also interred beneath the stone in the cold earth.  I’ve seen a few lengthy epistles on a few headstones that tried to get as much of the story as possible carved in stone.  But how can you get a person’s life summarized in 100 words or less, or, for that matter, in 1,000 pages?

That was the opener for the conversation between my best friend and me several days ago.  We were headed for yet another doctor’s appointment, and the pensive question bit into the silence as we drove; how can you tell a person’s entire story?  Of course, being the professional clergy in the conversation, my stock answer came tumbling out before I even considered; nobody can tell another’s story – we write our own obituary with the way we live, every thought, action, relationship, gift, and conversation.  Our conversation lasted all the way to Winston.

And then the Psalmist showed up in today’s lection, Israel’s epitaph:  Every bit of what happened was so Israel would obey God’s laws and will.  And, doesn’t that put meat on the bones of captivity, bondage, suffering, plagues, Passover, wilderness, and all the story since Eden?  Doesn’t it sum up the story of humankind from the very moment of creation?  God, the loving Creator and parent of us all, did everything with us to lead us to Him, His will, and a relationship with Him!

I have considered my bride’s question since the moment it pierced the quiet ride we were having, and it led my mind back to when I was 19 and my Dad had that conversation with me as I was getting ready to leave my parent’s home and form a new household with Elizabeth.  Dad only told me two things, the first being when the difficult times came. those would be ours to work out; the leaving and cleaving clause in those marriage vows meant accepting responsibility and the work necessary to making a marriage last and also count.  The second thing Dad told me was like the Psalmist’s summary:  everything your Mom and I have tried to do for and with you was so you will be closer to God.  Dad did say one other thing, but he said it with a smile; that was:  and, remember, you can always come home for a visit…a VISIT.  (I got it….the leaving was a one-way-door).

I think it’s an inescapable question that flows from considering the worth of your story.  It’s a question that most people on the longer side of 5 or 6 decades of living (or more) must entertain.  Let’s face it, when you get near that threescore and ten thing, you can’t avoid thinking about the next chapter.  Life is brief, moves quickly, and disappears like a wisp of wind.  Or, as Dad was also fond of saying in his later years, I ain’t buying any green bananas.

In the interest of tying today’s thoughts and Israel’s story together with your story and mine, remember that Israel’s story (as told by the Psalmist) was all about God’s presence and providence.  It was rescue, relationship, and remembering.  And this is exactly the summary of why Jesus came – he died to rescue us, and draw us into an eternity of relationship, and he doesn’t want us to ever forget that.

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, we are mindful that our story does matter.  We care that people know we lived, and that our lives counted.  Help us to live so as to leave obedient footprints following after you.  Help us to make our life’s stories impossible to tell without seeing Your holy child, Jesus, on every page.

For You Today

Do you recall the pizza commercial line that asked the question:

So, what do YOU want on your tombstone?  

You’re answering that question every day!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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

For other posts on Psalm 105 see Hanging Out with Dad and Let the Whole World Know  

You Want Me to Go WHERE?

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Early the next morning Joshua and all the Israelites left Acacia Grove and arrived at the banks of the Jordan River, where they camped before crossing. Three days later the Israelite officers went through the camp, giving these instructions to the people: “When you see the Levitical priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, move out from your positions and follow them.  Since you have never traveled this way before, they will guide you.  Stay about half a mile behind them, keeping a clear distance between you and the Ark.  Make sure you don’t come any closer.”  Then Joshua told the people, “Purify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do great wonders among you.”  In the morning Joshua said to the priests, “Lift up the Ark of the Covenant and lead the people across the river.”  And so they started out and went ahead of the people.  The Lord told Joshua, “Today I will begin to make you a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites.  They will know that I am with you, just as I was with Moses.  Give this command to the priests who carry the Ark of the Covenant: ‘When you reach the banks of the Jordan River, take a few steps into the river and stop there.’”  So Joshua told the Israelites, “Come and listen to what the Lord your God says.  Today you will know that the living God is among you.  He will surely drive out the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites ahead of you.  Look, the Ark of the Covenant, which belongs to the Lord of the whole earth, will lead you across the Jordan River!  Now choose twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one from each tribe.  The priests will carry the Ark of the Lord, the Lord of all the earth. As soon as their feet touch the water, the flow of water will be cut off upstream, and the river will stand up like a wall.”  So the people left their camp to cross the Jordan, and the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of them.  It was the harvest season, and the Jordan was overflowing its banks.  But as soon as the feet of the priests who were carrying the Ark touched the water at the river’s edge, the water above that point began backing up a great distance away at a town called Adam, which is near Zarethan.  And the water below that point flowed on to the Dead Sea until the riverbed was dry.  Then all the people crossed over near the town of Jericho.  Meanwhile, the priests who were carrying the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant stood on dry ground in the middle of the riverbed as the people passed by.  They waited there until the whole nation of Israel had crossed the Jordan on dry ground.  Joshua 3:1-17

About forty years prior to this account of crossing the Jordan, Israel had a similar experience.  In the exodus from Egypt[1] the fledgling nation was being pursued by Pharaoh’s army.  They were trapped between mountains on two sides, the Red Sea in front, and a professional killing force closing from the rear.  In panic the people cried out, and God saved them by blowing a clear path through the deep waters; the people walked to safety on dry land.

Fast forward forty years and there was no imminent death threat from which to run, only the challenge of God’s command to move forward.  They were to cross Jordan and begin possessing the Promised Land, and God provided a dry walk across an overflowing spring-flooded river…again!

Generally speaking, it is never the Red Seas that trip us up; it’s natural to cry to God for salvation when pressed on either side, and no way out.  Rather it is the Jordan Rivers of ease that make us doubt.  Obeying God to move forward dredges up all sorts of excuses as to why we could just settle right here.  The plague of today is like the Red Sea – there are plenty of prayers going up!  The question becomes what will happen tomorrow when the Red Sea plague is defeated?

For You Today

There is only one right answer when God says MOVE NOW, and that answer requires no words…only the first step…that’s when you’ll see dry land ahead.

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

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

For another post Crossing on Dry Ground see Stand Still and See

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[1] Exodus 14

Judgment Day

[1]

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

“Now prophesy all these things, and say to them, “‘The Lord will roar against his own land from his holy dwelling in heaven.  He will shout like those who tread grapes; he will shout against everyone on earth.  His cry of judgment will reach the ends of the earth, for the Lord will bring his case against all the nations.  He will judge all the people of the earth, slaughtering the wicked with the sword.  I, the Lord, have spoken!’”  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says:  “Look! Disaster will fall upon nation after nation!  A great whirlwind of fury is rising from the most distant corners of the earth!”  Jeremiah 25:30-32

Jesus sent out the twelve apostles with these instructions:  “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel—God’s lost sheep.  Go and announce to them that the Kingdom of Heaven is near.  Matthew 10:5-6

For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God’s household.  And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God’s Good News?  And also, “If the righteous are barely saved, what will happen to godless sinners?”  1 Peter 4:17-18

Jeremiah (and all the prophets) spoke a word of doom to those who rejected God’s sovereignty.  The Gospel is an announcement of God’s forgiveness and desire to gather up the lost sheep.  Peter’s letter returns to the looming thunderclouds of Judgment Day, not just for the godless sinners, but beginning at the footsteps of the church.  This begs a big question:

Does the Gospel announce the end of Judgment, or does the proclamation of Judgment make the Gospel disappear?

Answer:  Yes!

What?  Wait a minute; how can two opposites swallow each other?  That’s like Will Rogers’ two snakes who grabbed each other by the tail; they ate each other and disappeared.  The next big question begged is:  How can this be?

The answer to all questions of this sort become easier when we understand that God judges evenly, never capriciously, always with love and justice in perfect harmony.  And so, the answer to the continual pointing of Old Testament prophets to judgment, and the New Testament Gospel pointing to grace which metes out forgiveness, is in where the Death Angel visits.  If you recall the Passover event in Exodus[2], God told Moses to instruct each household of the captive nation of Israel in Egypt to slaughter a lamb, placing its’ blood on the doorposts and lintels of the entrance to their homes.  When the Death Angel visited judgment on Egypt that night, those who trusted God’s instructions were saved.  For those Egyptian households that were not “under the blood” the firstborn child died.  It is a chilling thought, but our God is awesome and IS to be feared!  In addition, our God is loving and grace-filled, always offering forgiveness and salvation to anyone who will repent of sin.

So this is the message of Jeremiah (about judgment), and Matthew (about grace), punctuated by the Big Fisherman Peter’s warning to the household of faith (the church), it’s all about responding to the offer of grace to escape the judgment, and not being impertinent over having received the grace, but rather walking in careful obedience to the leading of God’s Holy Spirit. 

In other words, don’t forget you’ve been saved; live like it! 

For You Today

For good measure let’s hear Paul’s summary of the whole matter:

So we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may drift away from it.  For the message God delivered through angels has always stood firm, and every violation of the law and every act of disobedience was punished.  So what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak?  Hebrews 2:1-3

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

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com    Unless noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©

[2] Exodus 12