A Difficult Thing

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were traveling from Gilgal.  And Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to Bethel.”  But Elisha replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I will never leave you!”  So they went down together to Bethel.  The group of prophets from Bethel came to Elisha and asked him, “Did you know that the Lord is going to take your master away from you today?”  “Of course I know,” Elisha answered. “But be quiet about it.”  Then Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to Jericho.”  But Elisha replied again, “As surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I will never leave you.”  So they went on together to Jericho.  Then the group of prophets from Jericho came to Elisha and asked him, “Did you know that the Lord is going to take your master away from you today?”  “Of course I know,” Elisha answered.  “But be quiet about it.”  Then Elijah said to Elisha, “Stay here, for the Lord has told me to go to the Jordan River.”  But again Elisha replied, “As surely as the Lord lives and you yourself live, I will never leave you.”  So they went on together.  Fifty men from the group of prophets also went and watched from a distance as Elijah and Elisha stopped beside the Jordan River.  Then Elijah folded his cloak together and struck the water with it. The river divided, and the two of them went across on dry ground!  When they came to the other side, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me what I can do for you before I am taken away.”  And Elisha replied, “Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit and become your successor.”  “You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah replied.  “If you see me when I am taken from you, then you will get your request.  But if not, then you won’t.”  As they were walking along and talking, suddenly a chariot of fire appeared, drawn by horses of fire.  It drove between the two men, separating them, and Elijah was carried by a whirlwind into heaven.  Elisha saw it and cried out, “My father! My father! I see the chariots and charioteers of Israel!”  And as they disappeared from sight, Elisha tore his clothes in distress.  Elisha picked up Elijah’s cloak, which had fallen when he was taken up.  Then Elisha returned to the bank of the Jordan River.  He struck the water with Elijah’s cloak and cried out, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?”  Then the river divided, and Elisha went across.  When the group of prophets from Jericho saw from a distance what happened, they exclaimed, “Elijah’s spirit rests upon Elisha!”  And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him.  2 Kings 2:1-15

Elisha would not be separated from his mentor, Elijah.  That is so like Ruth clinging to Naomi, a fierce determination to faithfully serve what God has given you.  Three times Elijah told his protégé to wait behind; three times Elisha answers with his lifelong commitment to serve God by staying close to the shadow of Elijah.  In the end it was only a chariot on fire with Heaven’s glory that could separate them.

What do we make of this event, and its place in God’s Word to us?  If you’re dissecting the event to make sense of the miracles, or wondering what part the prophets of Bethel and Jericho play, or what kind of material it would take to produce Elijah’s miracle-generating robe…we’re likely placing more weight on the miracles than on the Giver of miracles.  The main sense I see in this whole account of Elijah’s last days is the shift of God’s work that falls on the shoulders of Elisha.  He asked for a double-share of the spirit of his teacher.  Elijah called it a difficult thing.  There are two ways to take that; either it was a tricky thing for Elijah to produce it for Elisha, or a double prophet’s portion would bring a very difficult life to Elisha.  Elijah left it all in God’s hands; if that was God’s will, Elisha would see it.

For You Today 

If you’ve sat at the feet of some Godly teacher(s), you have sensed something of what God wants to do with your life.  Dare you ask for a difficult thing?

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(s) courtesy of via Wikimedia.org

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

Key to Nowhere

 

Friday, December 10, 2021

What sorrow awaits you who lounge in luxury in Jerusalem, and you who feel secure in Samaria!  You are famous and popular in Israel, and people go to you for help.  But go over to Calneh and see what happened there.  Then go to the great city of Hamath and down to the Philistine city of Gath.  You are no better than they were, and look at how they were destroyed.  You push away every thought of coming disaster, but your actions only bring the day of judgment closer.  How terrible for you who sprawl on ivory beds and lounge on your couches, eating the meat of tender lambs from the flock and of choice calves fattened in the stall.  You sing trivial songs to the sound of the harp and fancy yourselves to be great musicians like David.  You drink wine by the bowlful and perfume yourselves with fragrant lotions.  You care nothing about the ruin of your nation.  Therefore, you will be the first to be led away as captives.  Suddenly, all your parties will end.  The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his own name, and this is what he, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, says:   “I despise the arrogance of Israel, and I hate their fortresses.  I will give this city and everything in it to their enemies.”  Amos 6:1-8

When the prophet spoke nobody listened, especially the religious and political leaders.  That was the way it was (and sadly, still is) with prophets.    Listen to the words of Jesus to the Pharisees:

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites!  For you build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed, and you decorate the monuments of the godly people your ancestors destroyed.  Then you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would never have joined them in killing the prophets.’  “But in saying that, you testify against yourselves that you are indeed the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.  Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started.   Snakes!  Sons of vipers!  How will you escape the judgment of hell?    Matthew 23:29-33

Amos tried to tell the religious/political leaders in Jerusalem they were merely a caricature of leadership.  Instead they dwelt in pomp and circumstance, leading the nation to desolation and judgment.  They wouldn’t listen, and captivity was waiting in the wings.  The keys of leadership they held were rusted and useless. 

Scripture demands that the church must be about making disciples of Christ.  While there are many different methods to employ in a “not-one-size-fits-all” world, when you find Scripture’s demands pushed-aside in favor of consistent bowing to the latest cultural trends, you will also find the ship eventually breaking-apart. 

My tribe, The United Methodist Church, has been embroiled in a half-century battle to keep the ship together.  Leadership, vested in bishop’s council, annual conferences, judicial methodology, and tons of paperwork, have managed to push aside adherence to the demands of Scripture to be holy as the Father in Heaven is holy.  Instead, there is bowing at the altar of relevance.  Instead of thus saith the Lord as the preamble to our marching orders, it is the latest cancel culture thinking that guides the Great Ship of Zion.  Like those Israelites in times of the judges who clamored for a king, the 21^st century church worships at the altar of inclusivity, while the keys of the kingdom rust in the shed.

For You Today

There is a counter-culture movement today, just as there was an answer to the Pharisees’ reign of power in Jesus’ day.  It was led by Paul, Peter, and a motley crew of nobodies that God used to change the world. 

Let’s let Paul’s heartfelt plea to the Roman Christians be the clarion call to believers, and particularly for leaders, Methodists included, especially those who would not see the great force for good and holy allegiance to the will of God, circle the drain:

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.  Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.  Romans 12:2

Keys to nowhere, or Keys to the Kingdom; that’s the choice…every day!

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

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

For another post on this topic see the Orchard of Driftwood

Holding the Light Without Fear

 

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Acts 7:44-56

“Our ancestors carried the Tabernacle with them through the wilderness.  It was constructed according to the plan God had shown to Moses.  Years later, when Joshua led our ancestors in battle against the nations that God drove out of this land, the Tabernacle was taken with them into their new territory.  And it stayed there until the time of King David.  “David found favor with God and asked for the privilege of building a permanent Temple for the God of Jacob.  But it was Solomon who actually built it.  However, the Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands.  As the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.  Could you build me a temple as good as that?’ asks the Lord.  ‘Could you build me such a resting place?  Didn’t my hands make both heaven and earth?’  “You stubborn people!  You are heathen at heart and deaf to the truth.  Must you forever resist the Holy Spirit?  That’s what your ancestors did, and so do you!  Name one prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute!  They even killed the ones who predicted the coming of the Righteous One—the Messiah whom you betrayed and murdered.  You deliberately disobeyed God’s law, even though you received it from the hands of angels.”  The Jewish leaders were infuriated by Stephen’s accusation, and they shook their fists at him in rage.  But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand.  And he told them, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand!”

One reality that has always gripped me about the way Stephen spoke is the complete lack of concern for what happens, as long as he’s faithful in delivering this testimony of Christ; he was speaking before, and to, a group that had the power to punish him, make his life miserable socially or economically; they had the power to pronounce him a spiritual leper to the rest of Israel, or even put him to death; Stephen cared nothing for any of that.  His purpose of speaking Christ’s message, bubbling forth like the prophets of old, was all that mattered.

A second, quite sobering reality, is the ending of the story; they dragged Stephen to the edge of town, picked up stones and bludgeoned him to death.  This was no “fluff” Hallmark movie with a fairy tale ending; this was life as a Christian, lived to the faithful max! 

Stephen’s final words echoed two of the seven words of Jesus from the cross, both prayers that God would receive his spirit when it left his body, and the other that his false accusers/executioners would be forgiven:

As they stoned him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  He fell to his knees, shouting, “Lord, don’t charge them with this sin!”  And with that, he died.  Acts 7:59-60

It is one thing to speak out a truth to the powerful…because you know it’s the truth, and you can do no less.  It’s something entirely different to beg God for the forgiveness of the ones who won’t hear the truth and reject it so violently they put you to death for it. 

But that is what Jesus did; and that is what Jesus’ disciple Stephen did.  It is what those committed to truth do.

For You Today

The strangeness of the times in which we live should give us plenty of break from whatever “normal” used to be in our lives – enough time to reflect on what is required of a Christian to be counted faithful in God’s eyes when it comes to what we’ve done with the light we’ve been given.

If the light we’ve been giving is the message of Jesus Christ, and we are judged on the basis of what we’ve done with what we’ve been given…can our standard be any less than what compelled Stephen to hold up that light in the face of evil without fear?

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 Acts 7 see Shooting the Messenger and A Sermon to the Stubborn and Discarded and 

Sometimes It's Hard to Sing a New Song

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Monday, November 11, 2019

Sing a new song to the Lord, for he has done wonderful deeds.  His right hand has won a mighty victory; his holy arm has shown his saving power!  The Lord has announced his victory and has revealed his righteousness to every nation!  He has remembered his promise to love and be faithful to Israel.  The ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.  Shout to the Lord, all the earth; break out in praise and sing for joy!  Sing your praise to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and melodious song, with trumpets and the sound of the ram’s horn.  Make a joyful symphony before the Lord, the King!  Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!  Let the earth and all living things join in.  Let the rivers clap their hands in glee!  Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth.  He will judge the world with justice, and the nations with fairness. Psalm 98:1-9

If you’re suffering through physical or emotional pain from the middle of a great loss, it’s difficult to even entertain the notion that rejoicing and singing a new song is possible.  And if you’re a Christian believer, a follower of Jesus Christ, the guilt of feeling that way becomes an additional burden.  What’s a sufferer to do?

New things are big things, aren’t they?  Just in my lifetime the advent of computers, man stepping on the surface of the moon, civil unrest leading to civil rights (think Obama), communications jumping from a 5” screen to 90” (with color, no less), and now a president who is at odds with everybody, and an oversight committee blinded to anything that doesn’t lead to impeachment.  Against that backdrop the Psalmist is telling me to sing a new song, shout loud praises, and celebrate righteous judgment with the whole creation. 

There’s a word for that….WHAT?

I believe Israel’s prophets and Jesus’ apostles might have wondered about that word.  Consider the circumstances of those who devoted themselves to God most excellently:

Old Testament prophets:

     ·      Joel and Amos were clubbed to death with sticks

     ·      Micah was executed by Israel’s King Joram

     ·      Habakkuk was stoned to death

     ·      Ezekiel and Zechariah were killed with swords

     ·      Isaiah was put to death with a saw blade; they cut him in two.

New Testament apostles:

     ·      Peter and Andrew were crucified

     ·      Matthias was stabbed to death by a crowd

     ·      James the less was clubbed and stoned

     ·      Paul was beheaded

     ·      Only John (of the original 12) died of natural causes, but only after he lived in exile working in the coal mines of Patmos

In Scripture we are often reminded that the “just” (those who trust Christ) live their lives in faith, not by what they can see, hold, or spend.  Singing a new song, or rejoicing in what you can’t see, is seeing with God’s eyes.  It is seeing through the pain and anguish life sometimes brings, trusting in God’s ultimate goodness and purpose.

None of the patriarchs, prophets, or apostles lived to see the fulfillment of God’s promises.  Come to think of it, neither have any of us. 

Jeremiah preached from a pit.  Paul spent his last years in prison.  John breathed coal dust until he was 90.  Isaiah watched as they brought the two man saw across his belly.  And countless Christians huddled in a frightened chaos as Roman soldiers opened the gates that meant the hungry lions were on the way.  Sing a new song?  Yup; that’s exactly what the Christians did when the lions were let loose…they went to heaven with a song of praise on their lips.

For You Today

Sometimes it’s hard to sing a new song; sing anyway.

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 quoted from The New Living Translation©

Judgment Day

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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

Training - 101

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Thursday, October 10, 2019

Jeremiah the prophet said to all the people in Judah and Jerusalem, “For the past twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, until now—the Lord has been giving me his messages.  I have faithfully passed them on to you, but you have not listened.  “Again and again the Lord has sent you his servants, the prophets, but you have not listened or even paid attention.  Each time the message was this:  ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing.  Only then will I let you live in this land that the Lord gave to you and your ancestors forever.  Do not provoke my anger by worshiping idols you made with your own hands.  Then I will not harm you.’  “But you would not listen to me,” says the Lord.  “You made me furious by worshiping idols you made with your own hands, bringing on yourselves all the disasters you now suffer.  And now the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says:  Because you have not listened to me, I will gather together all the armies of the north under King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, whom I have appointed as my deputy.  I will bring them all against this land and its people and against the surrounding nations.  I will completely destroy you and make you an object of horror and contempt and a ruin forever.  I will take away your happy singing and laughter.  The joyful voices of bridegrooms and brides will no longer be heard.  Your millstones will fall silent, and the lights in your homes will go out.  This entire land will become a desolate wasteland.  Jeremiah 25:2-11a

The people of God are a strange lot.  Apostle Peter calls us “peculiar”.  I know that means we are to be different, set-apart for God’s purposes.  We are to serve God wholeheartedly, never being distracted from that mission.  But we are also peculiar in the sense that we do some really dumb stuff.  Under the leadership of Moses, being brought out of Egypt’s captivity, God’s family had a tough time making a clean break with the ways of their Egyptian masters.  It’s understandable; they’d been in captivity for hundreds of years, and, frankly, slaves are not accustomed to independent and creative thinking.  When they finally made it to the land promised to their ancestors, it was not long before they returned to their former sins and forgot all about being God’s showcase of lovingkindness for the world. 

What’s worse, every time God sent a prophet to warn the unruly Kingdom Kids they ignored them…and when those prophets wouldn’t shut up about it all they would murder them.  It is no wonder we call Jeremiah the weeping prophet – he spent most of his adult life in a jail pit and never got the accolades of Moses or Abraham, even though it was his message to go back to that time and remember what true devotion to God looked like.  They forgot that getting off track leads to the slavery of staying off track.  And that trackless, mission-less wandering always leads to captivity. 

American memory also has a short lifespan.  Israel’s history dates back more than 4,000 years to Abraham; our recent experiment in liberty is less than 300 years old.  In terms of the learning curve, we’re still in Training – 101!  At present we are doing a great job of playing the class clown, bound to get left-back for another 40 years circling the wilderness.  Check the statistics on murder in the U.S., whether it is in the streets, or the abortion clinics.  Check out the commandments to sexual purity as opposed to what the modern day 9 Supreme Pharisees say is right and just.  

For You Today

The apostle Peter had his own problems staying on-track and faithful.  We so-called believers ought to hear his warning:

And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before.  It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life.  They prove the truth of this proverb:  “A dog returns to its vomit.”  And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”  2 Peter 2:20-22

When it comes to being godly, America is flunking kindergarten!  It is time for another Great Awakening before our love affair with returning to the vomit becomes permanent!

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©