Let My People Go

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

After this presentation to Israel’s leaders, Moses and Aaron went and spoke to Pharaoh.  They told him, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go so they may hold a festival in my honor in the wilderness.”  “Is that so?” retorted Pharaoh.  “And who is the Lord?  Why should I listen to him and let Israel go?  I don’t know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.”  Exodus 5:1-2

If you’ve hung around God’s people for a minute or two you’ve heard how Israel was in bondage to the Egyptians, and God sent Moses to lead them away from slavery to the Promised Land.  If you’re a believer, you’ve also probably shaken your head over the way Pharaoh was so hard-hearted (and hard-headed). 

These two verses give us God’s Heavenly understanding about why Pharaoh was so cruel…and why people of all generations do such mean stuff.  The bottom line of it all is when God said (through Moses) let my people go.  Pharaoh answered with a defiant scowl:  Is that so….why should I listen…I don’t know the Lord…and I won’t let Israel go.  Pharaoh wouldn’t listen or obey, because he had no clue Who he was dealing with, or the consequences. 

The Psalmist understood this well:

Why are the nations so angry?  Why do they waste their time with futile plans?
The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one.  “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.”  But the one who rules in heaven laughs.  The Lord scoffs at them.  Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury.  Psalm 2:1-5

I’ve known some angry and violent people, a few who directed that hostility towards me.  I’ve looked into the defiant eyes of those who would have taken my head off with little (or no) remorse.  I have seen hatred which I could only describe as demonic.  I’m not an exorcist…I don’t even like movies that deal with that stuff…but I’ve seen too much to deny that spiritual evil is real.  One such violent man was part of my life during early ministry days.  After wreaking havoc on our church for a few months, his alcoholic stupor and violence ended with him committing suicide in a police standoff.  I’m no psychiatrist, but this was more than booze, and much more than angst over life’s smaller questions.  This was a man who had shaken his fist at God for so long…so angry…that anger led him to the brink of despair, and, finally over that brink into the abyss.  His last act of pulling the trigger was desperation, the mark of one who had lost all hope.  Why do the heathen rage?  Why are the nations angry?  Why is life filled with such an absence?  A void?  A tasteless treadmill of nothing? 

Let’s do the math…it is entirely the lack of knowing the Lord.  Pharaoh wasn’t the only one…name any serial-killer in history…start with Cain, make your way through Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and all the conquerors of history, Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Stalin, Hitler, Tojo, et al.  What is the thread that binds all that violent behavior?  They didn’t know the Lord of Heaven.  They would not bow before anyone but their own thrones.

Knowing the Lord is more than knowing about God; rather it is a personal relationship of friendship, based on understanding God’s love, and responding appropriately.  Cain is the chief poor example.  When he killed his brother out of envy, God’s love for Abel was assaulted.  God’s love for Cain held him responsible:

You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out!  Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. Genesis 4:7a

For You Today 

Let’s finish Moses’ words:  Let my people go….to worship God.

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

Rehab Russell

 

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval.  Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.  2 Timothy 2:15

This verse is my life’s verse.  It chose me, I didn’t choose it.  It was first given to me by my Mom and Dad, written by my mother’s hand as an inscription on the flyleaf of my first Bible.  Later (and continually) that verse showed up in ways too numerous to recount in a short devotional.  Those ways were ambushes to my lazy streak, and gifts of encouragement to my “timid Timothy” ways.  That verse is not my “slogan” – it is my life-saving guide and reminder of the trust Jesus has in me, and that which I must forge on the inside of my character.

We will post more about that next week…which leads me to what’s been going on the past three months, and what’s ahead this week for Rehab Russell…and (perhaps) an encouragement for you.

I’m getting set to receive a Cardioverter-Defibrillator implant tomorrow.  This little gem is a combination of pacemaker (which is supposed to whip my under-performing heart pump into compliance), and a defibrillator (think hospital Emergency Room; think Surgery table with half-a-dozen professionals in scrubs.  One of the docs is holding paddles attached to a charger.  In my musing the paddles are poised over Russell’s chest getting ready to wake-up my ticker and tell him it’s not cool, this decision to call it a day).  The device they’re going to implant in my chest will be a personal hospital ER team and electric chair, all contained in a 6-ounce plastic computer/mini-reactor with twelve sensor leads surrounding my heart muscle which started beating about three-quarters of a century ago.  I keep musing on how loud the little voice will sound coming from within my chest cavity...CLEAR!  And…how, pray tell, did they fit the little doctor man inside that device?  I want to know!  Interesting ride through this life, ain’t it?

For the past few months that ride has been a stationary recumbent bicycle in the rehab unit 40-minutes at a time.  Don’t let the name fool you, “recumbent” doesn’t mean lay-back-nappy-time; it’s more wear-your-bones-to-the-nub-pedaling-for-your-life time.  I’ve logged a couple hundred miles on that thing and never left the hospital’s rehab unit.  One comes to think of it as the HAMSTER OLYMPICS…pedal like a fool…don’t move an inch.

And isn’t it the interesting/challenging times in life that cause you to think a little more deeply about this life?  I know it has been that way with me for the past several months since the doctor told me my heart pumps only 20% of the blood it ought to be pumping.  The deeper thinking you do with such information tells me there isn’t much that stands between me and hearing “CLEAR”!

For You Today

So…if the message isn’t as CLEAR as it could be today, let me CLEAR the debris out and speak CLEARLY.  It shouldn’t take the threat of a room full of medical first-responders to get you connected to God.  That’s something we are all hard-wired to work-on every day, to talk about with Him every waking hour, and keep the hub of your spiritual life from collecting cobwebs.  After all, as Peter the Apostle put it, bring your cares to Him…because He cares for YOU![1]  There is no more important or CLEAR call on your life every day.  Is there?

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

[1] Title and Other Images:  Russell Brownworth (own work)   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

For other posts on this text see The Making of a Good Servant and Recycled Sermons

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[1] Loose “Brownworth” translation of 1 Peter 5:7

The Car that Teaches Us to Pray

 

Wednesday, June 9, 2021

Never stop praying.  1 Thessalonians 5:17

As the old saying has it, if I had a nickel for every time that car broke down I’d be a rich man.  More accurately, I’d at least have an extra hundred bucks in my pocket, if you added-in the money saved on repair parts.

It didn’t matter whether it was a Ford, Chevy, or Dodge, it was mine – and it was my first – and I had mobility.  (Well, up until I got at least a mile from home and found myself stranded…again.)

One night that Oldsmobile taught me to pray like an apostle…without ceasing!  I’m fairly certain memory serves me correctly, that I was on my way to work; so this wasn’t a frivolous joy ride.  It was dark, no street lights, and it was that less-travelled road.  The muffler hitting the pavement was the first clue things were happening pretty much in their usual order – leave home, pause, get stuck…again!

A brief look with the flashlight told me this was going to be another day in paradise.  An hour later paradise included three skinned knuckles, elbows aching, shoulders refusing to lift one more time, and a muffler still hanging down on the ground.  It was time for serious help.  So I began praying, Lord, help me with this thing…I don’t like it here in the dark, on the ground, and that thunder in the background is getting closer.  I promise….(well, never mind all the things I promised God that evening – I’m sure I didn’t follow through with most of them).

The prayer was followed by an overwhelming sense of guilt, the kind a teenage boy (or a 74-year-old man) feels when he’s praying for a two-ton car to begin cooperating with his feeble mechanical skills, and the boy (or old man) hasn’t checked-in with God in months…or years.  It’s like remembering that rich uncle when you’re down to your last dollar…you haven’t even called him the past decade, but now you need what he’s got, and you’re ready to get chummy…even downright nephew-ie, as you ask him for a “loan”.  As in a woeful prayer life, you haven’t exactly been nephew-ing without ceasing, but you’re going to ask anyway.

Well, that night afforded the strangest response from God – two really.  The first was when I picked that car muffler off the ground one more time, and CLANK – it went right back in place.  A few thousand wraps with the roll of wire I kept in the trunk to hold this behemoth Olds-98 together, and there you have it…ready to roll!  The second response from God was when I actually said the words out-loud on the back roads that night…thank you, God.  I really was thankful, but God’s next words were what changed everything for this non-church-attending, sometimes-believing (but never in a fanatical sort  of way), teenager.  I know I didn’t hear the words in an audible way, like Moses at the burning bush, but He seemed to speak directly to my heart without words.  I know it was God, because Russell, as slow on the uptake as he was around God-things, could not have come up with this; the Lord said thus:

It’s all good, son…this time.  But, listen…if you keep practicing prayer like you do maintenance on your car, your voice is going to fade on this end.  Russell, I don’t want our relationship to fall apart like that jalopy…so how about we talk more often?

For You Today

It’s like my late friend Donna used to say, I got so much to talk to Him about, I just never get around to saying ‘Amen’. 

If you haven’t heard from Heaven lately, it may be that jalopy needs a little TLC.  So, maybe it’s time to get with it before the prayer muffler hits the pavement?

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^©

When the Light Dawns

 

Thursday, December 31, 2020

Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world.  If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”  The Pharisees replied, “You are making those claims about yourself!  Such testimony is not valid.”  Jesus told them, “These claims are valid even though I make them about myself.  For I know where I came from and where I am going, but you don’t know this about me.  You judge me by human standards, but I do not judge anyone.  And if I did, my judgment would be correct in every respect because I am not alone.  The Father who sent me is with me.  Your own law says that if two people agree about something, their witness is accepted as fact.  I am one witness, and my Father who sent me is the other.”  “Where is your father?” they asked.  Jesus answered, “Since you don’t know who I am, you don’t know who my Father is.  If you knew me, you would also know my Father.”  John 8:12-19

There is, undoubtedly, a disconnect between knowing about someone and knowing someone.  I know a lot about Abraham Lincoln.  However, despite what my grandchildren think about how old I am, I never knew him.  In the same way, I never knew George Washington, Copernicus, Nero, or Adam. 

This disconnect, between knowing about and the intimacy of knowing is the hinge upon which much misunderstanding hangs, and particularly so in the church of Jesus Christ.  Many people know about Jesus and have read about God.  Less know Him intimately.  The Pharisees were religious leaders and common sense says they should have had an intimate knowledge of God.  Yet, Jesus’ final words to them in this exchange is an indictment of their religion ABOUT God attempting to replace relationship WITH God.  It speaks of the Pharisees’ spiritual blindness., which was at the foundation of why these religious leaders were an ill-fit for their job. 

Everything, literally, in matters of faith, is dependent on knowing God intimately.  You cannot pray, give, work-for, worship, or be a witness in any adequate sense until there is a vital and growing relationship with God.  This is “first base” in having a walk which is worthy of being called a child of God. 

In baseball it is elemental to step up to the plate and be ready for the pitcher to throw the ball in your direction.  Being “ready” means you’re committed to swinging your bat at the ball to hit it onto (or over) the playing field.  That is the first “step” in being a hitter, as surely as it is the basic understanding about stepping up to a relationship with God.  Just as a player makes himself available to enter the game, one who would begin to know God steps up to the place where God throws the ball of relationship.  God did that with Moses, calling from a burning bush; Moses stood on holy ground that day.[1]  God did it with young Samuel, calling him in the middle of the night; Samuel answered, speak LORD, your servant is listening.[2]

All the people we read about in Scripture who got to know God intimately did so because their hearts were open to God’s ways, and their minds focused on staying ready to be used.  Because God does not change in character it is no different today for you and me. 

For You Today

Getting to know God (and not just about Him) is all about starting with Jesus.  He is the one who stands at home plate, waiting for your appearance.  Knowing God comes from investing your life (past, present, and all eternity) in knowing Jesus.  That’s when He who is the light of the world will begin to make sense to your heart and soul.  You won’t be just another Pharisee knowing about God; you’ll know him as one friend knows another.

And here’s the bottom line:  It’s your turn at the plate; are you ready?

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

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Title image:  Russell Brownworth (own work)  W  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For other posts on this text see An Uncomfortable Answer from the Whirlwind and Heart's Desire  

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[1] Exodus 3:1-5

[2] 1 Samuel 3:1-10

 

What the Angel Said

Thursday, March 26, 2020

From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.  Hear my cry, O Lord.  Pay attention to my prayer.  Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  But you offer forgiveness, that we might learn to fear you.  I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him.  I have put my hope in his word.                             Psalm 130:1-5

The readings for this day include passages from Ezekiel and Revelation, both of which have the small scrolls as centerpiece.  Both the prophet and the beloved apostle are told to eat the scroll; both remarked that it tasted as sweet as honey.  In Ezekiel’s vision the message is a funeral kind of dark:

Then I looked and saw a hand reaching out to me.  It held a scroll, which he unrolled.  And I saw that both sides were covered with funeral songs, words of sorrow, and pronouncements of doom.  Ezekiel 2:9-10

In John’s meeting with the angel the message is even more foreboding; for him, once the sweet-as-honey scroll is eaten, it turns his stomach sour:

[the angel] said, “There will be no more delay.  When the seventh angel blows his trumpet, God’s mysterious plan will be fulfilled.  It will happen just as he announced it to his servants the prophets.”  Revelation 10:6b-7

Both the apostle and prophet speak of God’s judgment.  And the Psalm for today connects each of us with that coming judgment; our dilemma is that every person is accountable for our behavior before Almighty God:

Lord, if you kept a record of our sins, who, O Lord, could ever survive?  Psalm 130:3

Who could ever survive God’s judgment?  It’s a very good question; it’s a question with only one answer – nobody survives the holiness CT scan.  

Frankly, if you see a guy on the street corner holding a sign that says REPENT, what do you think; what do you do?  For most of us, you almost don’t see the guy or his sign.  In complacency we shed messages like that and move along to the dental appointment or trip to the mall.  But Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, as well as Paul, the New Testament apostle, tell us God scans the entirety of our lives, including what we do, say, or even think[1].  Every attitude and action of rebellion against God’s will is written on those scrolls.  Every time God brings a message across the screen of our lives, and we fail to remember, like the Psalmist remembered and repented, that we are imperfect creatures, not perfect Creator, another entry shows up in the log.  No one survives such scrutiny!

But the Psalmist holds the one thread of hope in all that; God offers forgiveness!

Lenten season is a time for that hope’s renewal, a time to remember who we are, and that to which we’re called to be – children of the Most High God.  It is a time to be penitent and be renewed, trusting in God’s promise to save those who reject evil in all its forms, turning to the Christ of the cross in faith.

Repentance is not a popular pill to swallow.  It tastes bitter and goes against the grain of our sin nature to confess we are not God.  But true repentance is unlike Ezekiel and John’s little scrolls – honey to the taste, but when it was all settled into the fabric of a man’s being, it turned their whole existence sour!  True repentance may be a little bitter going down, but it opens up an eternity of health lived in sweet reunion with God.

For You Today

Like addictions of any kind, it is the sweet (but false) promise of the next dose of our sins that keep pride in the way of our repenting, and having a joyful, forgiven, free-to-love and serve life.  Sweet and sour are both on the menu; as always, which one will we choose?

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 another post on Romans 3:  see A Light Shines in My Heart or The Scroll

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[1] See Isaiah 53:6 and Romans 3:10

A Snake on a Pole

Monday, March 9, 2020

Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom.  But the people grew impatient with the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses.  “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained.  “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink.  And we hate this horrible manna!”  So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died.  Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.  Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.”  So Moses prayed for the people.  Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole.  All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!”  So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole.  Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!  Numbers 21:4-9

There’s an easy leap in this morning’s text to a lot of imagery connected with the New Testament Gospel message.  There is a snake-problem like Adam and Eve experienced; sin is often represented as something willing to bite and devour. There is the pole representing the cross.  When people look to the cross for their salvation they’re healed from sin’s penalty. 

The wilderness complaining of Israel against the leader, Moses, and their God, Yahweh, is a loaded question for the ages:  Did you bring us out here to die?  And the answer is decidedly YES in the New Testament; Jesus told his disciples (followers):

Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.  Luke 9:23

So, then there’s a huge connection that follows at the end of the passage.  God gave Moses instructions to place a replica of a snake on a pole and set it up so everyone would know where it is.  When bitten by a snake (sin), they must simply look at the pole (turn to the cross) to be saved.  This is a conditional forgiveness, extended to those who will turn to God by faith.  It isn’t being part of the group, like the Israelites were born into Abraham’s tribes.  It isn’t a matter of having trudged along with the wanderers or slaughtered so many pigeons or lambs on a certain holy day.  The essence and reality of their salvation was to be a simple act of humility, bowing not towards what they have done, but Whom they trust. 

And so it is today; to connect with God isn’t a matter of insider knowledge or blessing by the preacher.  Knowing God can’t be found in studying all the religions or following movements.  It certainly won’t be found in the wisdom of men, no matter how impressive the credentials.  Knowing God is only found in humbly turning to what God has said He is, and the evidence of what He has done in Jesus Christ on a cross; Jesus’ gift of his shed blood for our sins is the healing place. 

For You Today

Snake on a pole – Savior on a cross; God paints us pictures, so we won’t miss the point.  Like the old song has it, Look and live, my brother; look and live!

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 on Numbers 21:4-9 see Fall, Repent, Repeat

The Riddle of Chicken and Egg

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with mockers.  But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night.  They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season.  Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.  Psalm 1:1-3[1]

I’m inclined to believe what Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote[2] about how things evolve in the human motivation towards good and evil:

At first, art imitates life. Then life will imitate art.  Then life will find its very existence from the arts.  

Of course, there’s a lot of debate about the arts and how such may influence culture.  Does a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone shooting everything in sight cause young minds to turn towards shooting up their schools?  Does Johnson & Johnson’s 82 billion dollar[3] a year opioid sourcing (or any of the other, perhaps less successful or less known drug cartels) cause young people to get hooked on the death of brain cells?  Is it life imitating art, or the other way around? 

My short answer is that life comes first.  But, for this fallen world, the seed of the egg is inherent of the chicken.  We inherited our sin nature, and just like apple seeds produce apple trees, so whatever is done produces like kind.

In Genesis we learn of God’s creative ways.  In the beginning there was nothing, and God began to speak things into existence.  He created vegetation, animals, fish, reptiles, and birds, as well as the human race.  In each of these is the capacity (seed) for reproduction. 

Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit.  These seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came.”  And that is what happened.  Genesis 1:11

“From which they came.”  Seed comes from the plant; chicken first, egg follows!  Frankly, art only happens because there is cognitive intelligence to create.  That demands there be intelligent chicken to produce an egg.  To be otherwise, an egg first, there would have to be an eternal god of plants, or eggs, birds, fish, reptiles, and humans (not to forget the eternal universe itself), each creating the first egg of each.  Elsewise the whole notion of an eternal and sovereign God is nonsense. 

So, why the confusion?  Creation first; egg follows, each producing its own kind. 

One other thought here about the confusion:  the confusion, or even invention of an egg-first theory is our excuse for bad behavior. 

Huh?  What?  Explanation, please.  OK, I’ll try.

Since we are created beings with free will, when our behavior is less than what Sovereign God approves, we always look for someone or some thing to blame.  Adam blamed Eve; Eve pointed to the serpent, and Cain just didn’t want to talk about it. 

In the case of violent films, drug pushers, and a whole host of other influences in modern (and ancient) cultures (including my mother dropped me on my head when I was a baby), these become handy excuses for our unacceptable choices. 

Sometimes the simplest explanation is just too painful…but so is admitting our sins.

For You Today

It’s Lent…a time for confessing our sins, not excusing how we got them.

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

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

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[1] For more posts on Psalm 1 see The Struggle Between Good and Evil

[2] "Fyodor Dostoevsky." AZQuotes.com. Wind and Fly LTD, 2019. 29 December 2019

[3] Biospace report