Blood White

 

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Then one of the twenty-four elders asked me, “Who are these who are clothed in white? Where did they come from?”  And I said to him, “Sir, you are the one who knows.”  Then he said to me, “These are the ones who died in the great tribulation.  They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white.  “That is why they stand in front of God’s throne and serve him day and night in his Temple.  And he who sits on the throne will give them shelter.  They will never again be hungry or thirsty; they will never be scorched by the heat of the sun.  For the Lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd.  He will lead them to springs of life-giving water.  And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”  Revelation 7:13-17

It has always fascinated me, this strange image welling-up in my mind of white robes, having been cleansed by blood.  Blood creates a stain that is hard to remove.  And that is as it should be.  Scripture tells us that the life of every creature is in the blood.[1]  It is fitting that life should not be easily washed away.

As a side note on a callous attitude towards life in this nation (and in much of the world’s countries) today, life is too easily discarded.  There is a mood of violence in our land, and it makes my blood go sour to ponder just how far we have travelled from Pilgrims escaping the persecution of religious intolerance four hundred years ago, to the daily doses of murder and manslaughter in our day. 

Jesus told his disciples that in this life they would have tribulation.[2]  That is so for everyone who follows Christ.  There are always difficult decisions to make.  We are called to a life of obedience, and that requires accepting some things beyond our comfort zone, and rejecting those things which our natural appetites crave.  But, the toughest of all is standing against the tide and swell of public opinion when they come crossways with clear Scriptural mandates.

One of the most difficult pills to swallow is how lightly we tread around the choice to abort life.  In the name of personal freedom, the laws of this land permit infanticide.  This stands in direct opposition to the teachings and commands of the great Life-giver, Jesus Christ, who said:

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.  John 10:10

The callous attitude which disposes of life is not going away.  Scripture points to a time of awful tribulation, where lust for power will supercede virtue and kindness.  Death will be the penalty for lack of conformity to the rule of human idolatry.  Those who openly worship Christ will be terminated.  What we see today in barbaric displays of abortion, genocide, terrorism, and travesties of justice will be minor playground skirmishes compared to the Great Tribulation.  But that is on earth.  In heaven a different story is being worked out.  Evangelist Leighton Ford wrote the following about his son Sandy:

During the months following Sandy's death, to cope with my grief and sense of loss, I kept a journal.  Through a series of "conversations" with Sandy, I continued to express my grief and bring our relationship to a close.   In one of those chats, I said, 

"Sandy, you've been dead two months earthtime."  

"I feel as if I have been alive forever, Dad.  It's a lot like one big long today."  

"It's not a matter of time, Sandy, except that time heals. It's more a matter of nearness.  I guess I'm concerned that as our time goes on, we will lose any sense of nearness."  

"But why, Dad?  You're moving closer to eternity every day. You're no longer moving from, but to me!  And besides, the 'Wall' between is so thin -- you would laugh if you could see it."  

"I think more of you than when you were at Chapel Hill."  

"Sure!  I know you do.  I hear those thoughts."  

"Night, son!  Enjoy the stars!"  
"It's morning here, Dad.  Enjoy the light!"

My friends, only the nearness of Jesus can provide the kind of peace that can be called eternal.  The world is looking for peace, talking of peace, and imagining peace can be had on a worldwide scale; they are wrong.  But there is a peacemaker who is coming.

For You Today

Peace is an eternal thing that is offered by the Prince of Peace, one person, one human heart at a time.  It is offered to you.  It is for those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.  And it means the eternal presence of Jesus.  Are you washed in the blood?

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

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

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[1] Leviticus 17:14

[2] John 16:33

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Jeremiah's Message from the Garbage Dump

 

Thursday, January 21, 2021
This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy a clay jar.  Then ask some of the leaders of the people and of the priests to follow you.  Go out through the Gate of Broken Pots to the garbage dump in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and give them this message.  Say to them, ‘Listen to this message from the Lord, you kings of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem!  This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says:  I will bring a terrible disaster on this place, and the ears of those who hear about it will ring!  “‘For Israel has forsaken me and turned this valley into a place of wickedness.  The people burn incense to foreign gods—idols never before acknowledged by this generation, by their ancestors, or by the kings of Judah.  And they have filled this place with the blood of innocent children.  They have built pagan shrines to Baal, and there they burn their sons as sacrifices to Baal.  I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing!  So beware, for the time is coming, says the Lord, when this garbage dump will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.  “‘For I will upset the careful plans of Judah and Jerusalem.  I will allow the people to be slaughtered by invading armies, and I will leave their dead bodies as food for the vultures and wild animals.  I will reduce Jerusalem to ruins, making it a monument to their stupidity.  All who pass by will be astonished and will gasp at the destruction they see there.  I will see to it that your enemies lay siege to the city until all the food is gone.  Then those trapped inside will eat their own sons and daughters and friends.  They will be driven to utter despair.’  “As these men watch you, Jeremiah, smash the jar you brought.  Then say to them, ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says:  As this jar lies shattered, so I will shatter the people of Judah and Jerusalem beyond all hope of repair.  They will bury the bodies here in Topheth, the garbage dump, until there is no more room for them.  This is what I will do to this place and its people, says the Lord.  I will cause this city to become defiled like Topheth.  Yes, all the houses in Jerusalem, including the palace of Judah’s kings, will become like Topheth—all the houses where you burned incense on the rooftops to your star gods, and where liquid offerings were poured out to your idols.’”  Then Jeremiah returned from Topheth, the garbage dump where he had delivered this message, and he stopped in front of the Temple of the Lord.  He said to the people there,  “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says:  ‘I will bring disaster upon this city and its surrounding towns as I promised, because you have stubbornly refused to listen to me.’”  Jeremiah 19:1-15

The state of Judah and Israel, along with its people, smelled like Ben-Hinnom, the garbage dump outside Jerusalem.  Metaphorically, it was like the dumpster behind an abortion clinic…it smelled of death, and nothing living could survive there long.

Jeremiah’s message, something of a children’s sermon object lesson, was unmistakable; the broken pieces of a clay pot belonged on a rubble heap, useless – its purpose forever shattered.  God was telling his people they’d done this to themselves, become a shattered mess of what hopes and dreams they’d sinned-away by worshipping other gods, and even resorting to the unthinkable practice of child-sacrifice.  Disaster was about to be applied to the fragile clay pot of an unsuspecting nation.  A message like this could not have had a pretty reaction.  Indeed, Jeremiah’s future was probably sealed by this sermon.  It would be thirty years later that Jerusalem would fall, but the memory of God’s enemies is long.  The prophet’s message was fulfilled just a few years later as Jerusalem fell in BC 586.

I have long seen this as a shroud of warning to our country, once a beacon of life, now copying the practices of the garbage dump with opulence, hedonism, and children sacrificed to the god of convenience.

Today is the first full day of a new administration in our country.  Some have said that the new president’s most daunting challenge is to unify a divided population.  While that is an expected and somewhat laudable idea, I disagree.  You cannot unify (in any lasting or genuine sense) people who have antithetical values.  For Christians, guided by Holy Scripture, you cannot simply request that they accept darkness as light.  Opposites may attract, but eventually they negate each other.  When cold decides to coexist with hot the result is nauseating lukewarm.  Frankly, shades of gray (produced by the marriage of light and darkness) may do well in a charcoal drawing, but as a life principle, anything short of stepping into the light of God’s will is well-short of the mark.

For You Today

I do not approve of anarchy or the kind of bloody insurrection we have seen of late in Washington.  But neither can I keep from praying to God that we wake up to the smell of the garbage dump of Hinnom and turn away from the culture of death.

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 other posts on this topic see Broken Pieces and Shattered Beyond All Hope of Repair      

 

The Cry Heard in Ramah

 

Monday, December 28, 2020

After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.  “Get up!  Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”  That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, and they stayed there until Herod’s death.  This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet:  “I called my Son out of Egypt.”  

Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him.  He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance.  Herod’s brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:  “A cry was heard in Ramah—weeping and great mourning.  Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are dead.”  Matthew 2:13-18

Known as the slaughter of the innocents, Herod’s attempt to stamp out any possibility of claims to his throne is one of the more heinous acts recorded in history.  This blot on humanity is on the par of genocidal despots like Hitler, Stalin, or the Rwandan regime’s purging of the Tutsi’s in the 1990’s.

The estimated number of children ripped from their parents’ arms and annihilated range from less than 10, to as many as 144,000.  Considering the population of the area, the lower number is more likely.  But that does not lessen the murderous impact of evil.  When it comes to holding-on to power, bloodlust is a staple.

In our day it is no different.  We tend to dress up the pig for public scrutiny.  Abortion is called choice, or family planning, but it is what it is…infanticide.  Our maniacal culture has made it legal, convenient, and safe…but only for the adult.

Centuries before Jesus was born, the prophet Jeremiah looked at the destruction of his homeland from a jail cell.  The Babylonian king’s defeat of Jerusalem, and the captivity of its people that followed were a low ebb of God’s people’s history.  There was a cry in Ramah for the defeated ones.  Jeremiah’s prophetic voice rose from his prison pit and spoke a word of hope to the captives. 

But now this is what the Lord says:  “Do not weep any longer, for I will reward you,” says the Lord.  “Your children will come back to you from the distant land of the enemy.  There is hope for your future,” says the Lord.  “Your children will come again to their own land.  Jeremiah 31:16-17

Jeremiah was writing about the devastation of Mt Zion’s city, Jerusalem, and her inhabitants.  We all await the return of prisoners, and those in far away Babylon (Iraq) were the subject of Jeremiah’s prayers.

Fast forward 600 years, and, unbeknownst to Jeremiah, his words are applied to the mothers and fathers of Bethlehem, whose children became the extermination project ordered by King Herod.  But what word could comfort the mother holding the limp body of her little son, put to death by a Roman guard’s sword?  Jeremiah says your children will come again to their own land.

Enter the child whose parents left in the middle of the night, bound for Egypt.  It is 30 years later, and he is back.  And his promise is to proclaim what God will do, release the prisoners, and set the captives free.  Jesus would face the executioner, and the executioner’s consequences, nailed to cross beams on the town garbage dump.  And he would face death’s reality by descending into its very jaws and the gates of hell, and he would lead the captives back to their home.

Even his name, Jesus, means God saves.  It means the cry heard in Ramah will not go unanswered.

For You Today

For those who trust in Jesus, believing in His resurrection power, there is no Rachel syndrome, refusing to be comforted.  These are they about whom another prophet, Isaiah wrote, comfort, comfort my people ^{(Isaiah 40:1).} 

If there is any hurt in your heart that refuses to be comforted, strengthened, healed, and made to walk in the light, remember the cry heard in Ramah became the shouts of joy filling Jerusalem.  This is the way of our God!

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

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Title image:  By Domenico Ghirlandaio via Wikimedia Commons   W  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For another post on this text see When Life Gets Broken