Lick...and a Promise Theology

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

“So fear the Lord and serve him wholeheartedly.  Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone.  But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve.  Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates?  Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live?  But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.”  

Joshua 24:14-15

When you move from one part of the country to another you find colloquial sayings you’ve never before encountered.  My family experienced that nearly 50 years ago when we moved from suburban New York to rural Florida.  We had barely moved-into the parsonage, when Jean, a church member, brought us a paper bag full of her garden’s greens.  She said to Elizabeth:  It’s not much, but you can probably make a mess out of it.  My bride smiled and thanked Jean.  Her expression told me she didn’t have a clue why she was expected to make a mess with food.  To tell the truth, I wasn’t quite sure either.  A new pastoral family walks on thin ice with local customs, sayings, and other sacred cows. 

A lick-and-a-promise is one of those wonderment sayings.  Loosely defined, the “lick” is something of a half-hearted attempt to tidy-up some mess, and the promise is…well…something of an intention to do a better job later.

So, preacher, how does that have anything to do with what Joshua told the Israelites when they were about to cross the Jordan River?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  To explain choose today whom you will serve in the vernacular of Jean’s bag of greens, Joshua was telling the people of God that the moment they step in the Jordan’s waters it was time to leave lick-and-a-promise theology behind.  If you’re entering the Promised Land, you do so wholeheartedly!

When it comes to the New Life Christ offers, there’s no room for lick-and-a-promise thinking.  Here is a short-list of examples: 

·       Hope-so salvation.  Hoping is no substitute for faith

·       Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep prayers don’t cut it in the emergency room

·       Church on Easter and Christmas falls short of God’s holiness

·       Good News, unspoken to family, friends, or neighbors is spritual gluttony

Short-lists are somewhat like a lick-and-a-promise, but you get the idea.  God wants all of us, not the little bit we can fit-in before running off to do what really interests us. 

For You Today 

As Joshua told the assembled new nation of Israel, choosing to serve God means it would be better to do this one thing to the utmost of your strength, and be worn-out doing it, than a thousand other things that please you.  You don’t worship with a lick-and-a-promise, and then run out to the playground.

That’s what Jesus meant when he answered the Pharisee’s question about what God expects:

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  Matthew 22:37-38

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.  

 

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

A Prophet Speaking an Annoying Truth

[1]

Thursday, January 17, 2019

“Look at the shrines on every hilltop.  Is there any place you have not been defiled by your adultery with other gods?  You sit like a prostitute beside the road waiting for a customer.  You sit alone like a nomad in the desert.  You have polluted the land with your prostitution and your wickedness.  That’s why even the spring rains have failed.  For you are a brazen prostitute and completely shameless.  Yet you say to me, ‘Father, you have been my guide since my youth.  Surely you won’t be angry forever!  Surely you can forget about it!’  So you talk, but you keep on doing all the evil you can.”  Jeremiah 3:2-5(NLT)

Prophets aren’t just weird-looking old guys with beards, talking funny, like Yoda.  They have a way of getting under your skin with the most annoying, uncomfortable (but true) in-your-face kind of soul-blistering challenges.  Jeremiah was that, and more, to the Judean family of God.  He likened the dark days of the southern kingdom to the cloud that comes over a land when that nation leaves God in the rear-view mirror.  The land was a gift to them by God, and they prostituted their heritage to fit in with the rest of the world.  God was not pleased in the least!

Sound familiar?

The United States of America was born in a time when religious freedom was at stake; the price was blood, sacrificed on revolutionary fields.  This land yielded more than could have been imagined in riches, respect and power.  Following in Israel’s footsteps, acquiring and pandering to those riches has been our national obsession, as the image of God’s holiness fades in our national rear-view mirror.

Jeremiah made the point that his nation had not only traded in living a lifestyle of worship and fidelity to their covenant God, they were glib and unremorseful about it, shamelessly offering up nauseating prayers that suggested God should just look the other way this time, please. 

Somehow this land, blessed in its early years with the holiness of the Great Awakenings, and movements such as Wesley led, has become a secular culture, in many ways hostile to Christian thought or lifestyle.  

Washington still writes In God we Trust[2] on our money, the Congress still has a chaplain, churches dot the landscape like bugs at a picnic; we have the words right, but the music is not at all heavenly.  

Simply expressed, Jeremiah was lambasting Judah for talking the talk, but forgetting to walk the walk.  They had discarded the covenant, and they thought a simple, can’t we just forget about it this time, please, was not going to stave-off God’s judgment.  And Jeremiah was right; the enemy came, conquered, carried-off all the best of men, money and museum articles; they destroyed the temple, and God let it happen.

I do not claim to be a prophet after the manner of Jeremiah; I’m simply an observer of who Israel was, and what happened to them.  And for even someone of moderate intelligence, it’s not hard to see this country headed for the same ditch!

So…what’s it going to take to get God to look the other way?  That’s the wrong question.  More appropriately, we must ask, is it too late to turn back!  If there is still hope…and I believe there is…the right question is:  How shall we turn?  Jeremiah gave us the answer:

If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.  Jeremiah 29:13(NLT)

Wholeheartedly is how we come to Christ, serve Christ, and live in Him.  Anything less is a futile request to ask God to look the other way.  In the interests of common sense, even an earthly parent wouldn’t buy that.

For You Today

It’s a good day for all of us to do a wholeheartedness checkup.

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

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[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com

[2] Currency In God We Trust image:  Pixabay.com