4 Reminders from the Total Eclipse

I may have originally downplayed it, but once the eclipse happened on August 21^st I think I realized how significant the event really was. It got cooler. It became nighttime for a few minutes in the middle of the day. Crickets chirped and animals responded and then there was the corona – there are no words! We were looking straight into the direction of the sun for two and a half minutes. I have never seen anything like that before. What’s more is that it happened in my backyard while my daughter was celebrating her 10^th birthday. It was a day to remember forever.

Here are 4 things that keep going through my head about “The Great American Eclipse”:

1. “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4). I don’t know about you, but I felt very insignificant and small as I considered my place in the universe. The expanses of the heavens lie beyond human understanding and we cannot reach or see their beginning and end. And yet God spoke them into existence with the words of His mouth in a mere moment. I am nothing. The same God who made the cosmos and all that exists in the material universe took on flesh and came to earth and died for me.

2. “All flesh is grass, and all of its loveliness is like the flower of the field” (Isaiah 40:6). Our earthly life is temporary. While the ages roll on generations come and go from the earth. I read that 1918 was the last time such an eclipse travelled across the continental United States. The adults that witnessed that have now passed on to eternity. Supposedly it has been hundreds of years since the last time that eclipse happened in my backyard. It was no backyard then, but was seen only by the forest and any animal or bird that happened to notice. While our life blooms like a flower and then fades away, God’s creative work continues.

3. “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). For a moment all human beings were equal. The color of our skin did not matter. Our political views, social status, cultural background – all the things that separate us – for a few minutes they ceased to exist. I was not only mindful of the equality of humanity in the world today, but the equality of humanity for all time.  I thought about how thousands of years ago there were people living on this planet who saw the same moon that I saw block the same sun. I felt closer to mankind for a moment. I felt the way I am supposed to feel about humanity all the time.

4. “Look to the heavens and see; And behold the clouds—They are higher than you” (Job 35:5). This earth is fraught with problems. We are preoccupied with them. Life is a series of joys and exaltations, struggles and disappointments. There are good times and bad times and we are in a rat race and we have forgotten the things that really matter. We don’t look up enough. We do not appreciate the stars. We have a God that is far above the clouds, whose ways and thoughts are higher than ours. There is strength in looking upward. There is peace in knowing that beyond the sun and moon there is a God who is incontrol, who loves us and who has saved us. We need to look up more. If we want to see awe and majesty and divine splendor we don’t have to wait for an eclipse day to do that. We can see it every day.

A Day is coming when we will all look up. But on that Day, nothing will block out the Son. Maranatha!

Sometimes you need to have a cow

A friend was telling me about the adoption of a calf that had been separated from its mother. The calf had been a twin, and the mother had chosen from the time of the birth of her offspring to care for the other sibling. But the weaker calf died, and once it was gone, the mother cow no longer wished to tend to the living calf. So the calf was adopted by the compassionate next door neighbor. A special place in the yard was fenced and the woman fed the calf straight from a bottle.

Over time this calf and its caregiver grew to be very close. Sometimes it was treated almost as if it were a human. It had also been periodically placed among the sheep and would make sheep sounds now and then. After a while a donkey was put inside the calf’s fence in order to keep the coyotes away. Finally, it was decided that another older cow needed to be placed inside the fence. Why? Because the calf had never seen a reflection of itself. It didn’t know if it was a sheep, a donkey, or even a human. It needed to be with one of its own kind. It needed an example cow. Sometimes you need to have a cow.

When God created the heavens and the earth, He made the animals to be creatures after their own kind. They each had the seed within themselves to reproduce offspring and raise them to adulthood. Animals of similar kind congregated and became communities of creatures with a common identity and specific design. It was in God’s plan for every creature to know its kind and fulfill the purpose for which it had been created.

Human beings were created in the same way. The only difference was that they were also made with an eternal spirit, fashioned after the image of God. Ironically, they lost their identity and purpose and forgot who they were. So God created a new community. He fenced them in. And then He sent Jesus. Even then God’s people did not understand. It was only after the Son of God had died that they realized He had come to save them and to be their example. Jesus had been brought into the confines of the human world to save mankind from itself. He came to solve man’s identity crisis. He came to show the reflection of God and to be the ultimate example of the potential of men.

Every day in our world I meet people who are going through life without understanding who they are and why they are here. You see, it is entirely possible for you to exist in a pen. You can be fed with milk from a bottle. You can grow and mature into adulthood. You can live a long life and experience health and all of the blessings of the physical world. But if you don’t know what you are supposed to be, if you don’t have the right example, then you will never really know who you are.

That little calf needed a cow. And we needed Jesus. And we still need Him.

“As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he arose and followed Him.” – Matthew 9:9

Parents: Stop Wimping Out and Lead Your Children!

I have many conversations weekly with numbers of parents who are currently in the same place we are in our home – trying to raise Christian children in a world that is less and less friendly to those who love the Lord. I hope every parent will read this prayerfully. This is not aimed at any family I know in particular. I write this as humbly as I know how and as I do so, I solicit your prayers as both a preacher and a parent. I need help: from God, from older mentors, and from other parents of children who are still living at home. Having said all of this, I would like to be blunt.

Parents, will you please stop wimping out and make the firm commitment to lead your children? I don’t know what has happened since I was a boy, but I find that kids are having way too much say-so these days when it comes to the decisions that are being made at home. Maybe it is because parents are too preoccupied with their occupations and the human rat race. Maybe it is because parents have listened to too many modern day child psychologists. Maybe it is because parents are just getting too lazy and are failing to follow through with needed discipline. Maybe it is because parents are not making the commitment to put God and His kingdom first.

Case in point: I am coming into contact with more and more parents who are letting the children decide what the family will do over spiritual matters. Probably no less than 10 times over the last year parents have talked to me about their family’s spiritual goals and decisions and have made the following statements:

1. We decided to let the kids choose which church we would attend.

2. We know that congregation is not doing what is right, but our kids are so involved in the youth group and we hate to take them away from their friends.

3. Our kids really like that church and so we want our kids to have a good church experience so that they will want to go when they are older.

4. I know we miss services and events quite often for ball games, but we don’t want to make our kids hate church and we don’t want to let the coach or the team down. Our kids have made a commitment to the team.

I could list many more statements I have heard that are similar to these. But what is the real problem here?

Parents, you have both a right and a responsibility to make the correct spiritual decisions for your children. If the kids don’t like the decisions you make, too bad. This is not a democracy. For a while, dad and mom are king and queen. They will learn to do what is right by obedience. Even Jesus had to suffer and submit to His Father by obedience (Heb. 5:8-9).

I am not afraid that my kids will hate church because I never let them miss. I am not afraid that they will hate church because the church doesn’t cater to their whims. I am not afraid that my kids will hate church because they miss a ball game to go to VBS. But I am afraid that one day, because I have not led them, that they will not know that God must be first in all things. And I am afraid, that one day they will leave the church, because I wimped out when I should have been stronger than they knew how to be. I am afraid, that I will be guilty of provoking my children to wrath, because I did not bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).

Parents, I am not the authority on parenting. But God is. Step up and lead your kids! It is not your job to acquiesce to their request. But it is your job to lead them in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:24).

“For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them.” – 1 Samuel 3:13

A Preacher's Thoughts on Easter

When I think of Easter I think of growing up and hunting eggs with my family. I remember all of those Sunday mornings I woke up to see my new candy-filled, Easter basket on the kitchen table. There are pictures of me sitting out in our lawn in California in my diaper eating a huge hollow chocolate bunny. They are horrific. I think the only way they got me clean after that was by hosing me down. I remember going to our friends’ house one Sunday after church and playing with a new rabbit they had received as a gift after we had eaten lunch and searched for eggs. I remember an 88 year-old widow lady from our church, my secret pal when I was about 10, who had bought me a new shirt to wear for church one Easter Sunday. I wore it and sat next to her. I was so thankful for her and for the shirt. Easter for children is about candy, egg hunting, and fun times with family and friends.

When I grew up and got behind a pulpit, Easter took on a different meaning for me. It was the day I could expect the biggest crowd of the year in our building. I began to think of ways I could make the biggest impact on visitors and the people in the church who were not faithful in their attendance. I learned each year by trial and error how to preach meaningful lessons that would hopefully bring people back another Sunday. I have been excited, nervous, stressed, and have felt just about ever other human emotion you can imagine in anticipation of the pulpit opportunity an Easter Sunday brings.

Easter is different for the preacher. The reality is that after the largest crowd of the year in the morning, the lowest crowd of the year is that evening (see also Mother’s Day). It is ironic that this man-made holiday, which supposedly seeks to elevate the Christ, is really more about people, their families, and their traditions. If you are a preacher you really have a choice to either be happy that you had an opportunity to preach the gospel to more people than usual, or you can let yourself be disillusioned by the people who are somewhat disingenuous. You could become depressed when you see Christians who are usually faithful Sunday nights cater to their unfaithful families for a day because you know they are just trying to keep everyone happy and together.

I am personally confident that there is a reason why God never ordained specific religious holidays for the New Testament church. For one thing, God knows that man’s nature is to change the original intent of any religious observance to suit himself. The Israelites did this with every holy day in the Mosaic system at one time or another. They were often disciplined for it, and eventually God completely wiped the old covenant away by bringing His Son to the cross. It is merely my own opinion, but I believe that in the Christian age God has refused to give men an opportunity to celebrate a specific religious holiday regarding Jesus. He knows man will always abuse it and change it. In the meantime, we have made new religious holidays anyway. And for each person, these holidays mean something different.

What you need to know about Easter, or Christmas, or any other religious holiday that man has created, is that you are not obligated to observe it. At the same time, you need to respect what these holidays mean to those who observe them and respect their right to act according to what they know. Romans 14 teaches us that while we know certain days mean something to some and nothing to others, we ought not to offend anyone who esteems one day greater than another. Trust me, whenever I have written or taught about man-made religious holidays I have always approached the subject with trepidation. I am hugely in the minority. My views on Easter and Christmas and other religious holidays are largely unpopular. I understand that teaching what the Bible says about those things is going to be an eye opener for many. It may even offend them or cause them to struggle to understand the point I am actually wanting to make. And when this happens everything else I may have been trying to accomplish with those I want to influence for Jesus and the church can be lost in the shuffle. Even today, if I post this some people will have to argue with what I have said here. They are too convicted in their own thoughts about it. They won’t be able to stand it. These struggles I face are all a part of being different from the world.

But Bible facts are Bible facts. There are no “high days” for Christians. Not when everything we do or say is supposed to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus (Col. 3:17). Not when every Sunday has been set aside by God for worship and the commemoration of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Not when there is zero authority from the text to observe a day that is not in the text. Not when the apostles never observed them. Not when the church of the Bible never observed them. Not when God never asked for them to be observed.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE Easter. Though instituted by man, it is to me a reminder of what my Lord did for me, and I am thankful that a great portion of the world is still remembering that, even if it is just for a day. This holiday also ushers in the spring, warmer temperatures, and the beginning of new life after several months of death, and no doubt this is spiritually analogous for people in the northern hemisphere as to what God can do on the other side of the grave. Did I mention I also LOVE jelly beans? Easter is jelly bean season! There is a whole aisle in Walmart dedicated to different kinds of jelly beans! And beyond all of this I am going to have an opportunity to talk to people about Jesus for a Sunday who I might otherwise never get to meet.

I remember years ago in my younger preaching years talking to a man who rarely attended church services. He had just gone to an Easter service the week before at a neighboring congregation. He said the preacher got up and berated all the people who only come twice a year. The visitor’s response was that he was never going back again. He said, “And he wonders why I don’t come! Well who would want to come and hear about what is wrong with them all of the time? I need encouragement. I already know what is wrong with me. I don’t need the reminder the one time I actually get up enough courage to come to church.”

Funny, isn’t it, how we humans are? The reality is that we desperately need God. We need His word every day. We need to be faithful. And we need to actually be able to distinguish between man-offered religion and God-ordained religion. Easter is a true reminder that we are struggling in this world as a people to follow God. In the background is the remembrance of the event that changed the world, and in the foreground is the fact that many people don’t even know that God never asked us to celebrate Easter at all. It could be said that the world has not been changed by the death, burial, and resurrection as much as it needs to be changed. Jesus died that we might all die to ourselves, and yet because of our lack of attention to His Word and our desire to do things our way, we still find ourselves in a place of confusion as to what we are actually supposed to be practicing in the name of the Lord.

As I look to this Sunday, I am promising myself that I am going to be thankful. I will not concentrate on local Easter gimmicks from big city churches. I will not be cynical and judge the hearts of the people who I may not see again for 6 months. I will not be a 21^st century scribe and pretend that I have everything figured out when others do not. Instead I am going to take this opportunity to love God, and to love people, and to pray that this one day will lead to many other days of faithfulness to the One who bled and died for all men.

Easter, even if it is man-made, definitely does one thing that is absolutely undeniable and beyond human comprehension. It reminds us that God’s love cannot be quenched. In a world lost and spiraling away from God in the sickness of sin and death – there is still a day remembered – yes, even set aside because Jesus died and rose again. It is an absolute fact. Jesus came. He lived. He loved. He died. He arose. He ascended. And the world knows it. And the world, as long as it remains, will always know it.

“He is not here, but is risen…”- Luke 24:6

Believe the Best

God believes in people. He believes in people even though they sin against Him, reject Him, and ultimately fail to be like Him. But God believes in people because He created them. And a Father always wants to believe in His children.

We tend to be the same way with our children. We give our children a longer leash than anyone else in our lives. We do this because we know they have to grow and we understand that in their maturation process they are going to make mistakes.

What if we took the same approach to believing in others as we take with our children? What if we allowed people to have their own personality, their own weaknesses and strengths, and their own opinions about those things which were not matters of faith? If we could do this the church would be better, happier, and more love and peace and joy would abound in our fellowship.

Unfortunately we often don’t practice brotherly love. One of the last things Jesus told His disciples was, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”  Jesus knew that not only was this best for the hearts of all believers, it would be what distinguished them from the world.

Why is it then that we seem to judge our brethren more harshly than anyone else? While Paul taught the Corinthians to work out matters amongst themselves, and to examine themselves individually and collectively and to deal with sin in the church, the overtone of the whole experience still expressed the need for humility and grace and love. Why is it that from time to time we stereotype our brethren, think the worst of the best people, and tend to write off the people with whom we worship as soon as they do something we don’t like or approve?

The church everywhere could be benefited with a heaping dose of humility. In a world so full of sin and strife the church is supposed to be a refuge. We can stand for truth without being hall monitors. We can preach the saving gospel without always making the worst kind of assumptions about people, especially when we have scarcely sacrificed any of our time and energy to truly understand them.

If you want the church to grow, if you want it to be full of peace and comfort, if you want it to be a place where joy and love abound – then you need to believe in the people. Don’t go to church, be the church. Don’t be a part of a click, but get out of your comfort zone and fellowship with the whole body. Learn about your brethren, their lives, their circumstances, their dreams, and their challenges. See how God is working through them, and look for something in them that you know you need yourself.

Sitting next to you in the pew or across the building somewhere are the people who are the salt of the earth. They are the best of this world, so believe the best about them. They are the blood-bought people of God. They are the faithful followers of Jehovah. They are the people who truly make up your spiritual and eternal family. They deserve the benefit of the doubt. They deserve your love and affection. They deserve your time and effort. They deserved to be loved with the love of Christ.

To my church family: I love you.  I believe in you. And I am happy to call you, “brethren.”

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” – 1 John 4:7

Committing to the Covenant

God is a covenant making God. He is good. He blesses. He promises. He delivers. In fact, God is so perfectly good and so completely holy that it is sometimes hard to fathom why He would be willing to make covenants with mere men. God is not like man (Num. 23:19). He never breaks a promise. He never fails to keep His part of the covenant. Nevertheless, because He is a loving God He makes covenants. He has not only made covenants with men, but He has even made covenants with all of creation (Genesis 9:9-17).

Since God offers covenants in benevolence and mercy and love, they ought to be embraced! It is  time for the rest of us to realize that God expects us to accept our part of the covenant. The truth is that we struggle with covenants because we know upfront we are going to break them. We know we are fragile and weak and many times we even fail to please our own spirit. So we look at God's contractual offer and we often turn away, feeling that we'd better not commit to anything like a covenant, especially when it involves the One who is going to judge our souls. But to err on the side of caution - is still to err!

There are two common examples of our failure to commit that can be seen in every day living. They both involve the two greatest commitments a person can make during their lifetime. They are the two basic forms of marriage, spiritual and physical. We have the spiritual marriage of making a commitment to Christ through obedience to the gospel. We have the physical marriage that involves the public exchanging of vows to be once and for all obligated to our mate. In these two cases there are some common denominators that describe each individual's fear of commitment:

1. We are afraid we will regret the decision to give ourselves up completely.
2. We are afraid things will not turn out as we had hoped, that our expectations won't be realized.
3. We are afraid we will fail in our duties to the one to whom we have made the promise.
4. We are afraid we don't have enough experience or knowledge to perform our commitment as we should.

Remember this - God knows how weak we are. He knows how sinful we are. He knew Jesus would have to die for us even before He made us. He made us anyway. He wants us anyway. He loves us anyway. He is a gracious and merciful God! Do we not understand that God is not as interested in our ability to perform as He is in our desire to love Him completely?

Noah agreed to a covenant and then committed an egregious sin that broke up his family. Abram agreed to a covenant and then lied about who he was. Moses agreed to a covenant and then failed to give God the glory. David agreed to a covenant and then committed adultery and murder. All of these men broke the covenant, but they repented and turned back to God and God restored them. They are considered spiritual giants! God was willing to be patient and let them learn and grow until they could love the way He loves. God will do the same for us.

If we needed to be perfect to enter into a covenant with God, we would forever be lost and cut off from His holiness. God simply wants us to know the means by which we can enter the covenant, and then He wants us to enter the covenant with our whole heart. The rest we will figure out as we go. And if we stay humble, His grace will be there for us.

Stop making excuses about why you can't make a promise. Realize that it is in the covenant alone that love and hope and salvation and joy and relationship exist. Without covenants, without relationships, our lives would be meaningless and loneliness would abound. God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. So He made covenants. Now it is your turn. Make the commitment! Walk by faith! Enjoy the blessings of the covenants God has made available! Live your life in praise and glory to the God who offers covenants!

"Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments." - Deuteronomy 7:9

Control

Control: Some people think they have it, and most people want it. Well, forget about it. You never had it and you never will. The weather this past week humbled us all and reminded us how small we are. As I watched tree limbs crash in the woods behind our house, as I saw people slip and slide on the roadways, as I continued to get reports of people losing their electricity, as I called a friend each day who is sitting up at the hospital with his wife waiting for a better day for her and getting no answers from the doctors – I kept thinking about how powerless we all really are in this world.

We have created for ourselves straw houses that we believe are made of bricks. We have a false security, a carefully constructed façade. When it comes to sickness and death and tragedy, we pretend we are removed from it, that it will never happen to us. When it comes to future plans we make them as if nothing is going to change our ability to make them realities. When it comes to spiritual matters we put them on the shelf, falsely claiming that our sins aren’t that bad, that they don’t need to be dealt with immediately, and even if they are ruining our lives and our eternity we still will have plenty of time to deal with them later.

Wake up, people! God is in control! “He sends out His command to the earth; His word runs very swiftly. He gives snow like wool; He scatters the frost like ashes; He casts out His ice like morsels; Who can stand before His cold?” (Psalm 147:15-17). This weather event was nothing to Jehovah. As we slept and wondered if trees would fall on our homes, the majority of the rest of the world wasn’t even aware of any danger. And then there is our God, who somewhere through the vast expanse of space exists in His heavenly home, having created the entire universe with the breath of His mouth.

And yet it is God who cares the most. It is God who has visited us in our time of need. It is God who looks down from heaven and considers our ways and our thoughts and the meditations of our hearts. And the ironic part is that He is wondering when we will ever stop trying to have control and let Him be in charge when there has never even been one second in time when He wasn’t on the throne.

And so I will stand at the invitation song again this Sunday, if Sunday ever comes. And I will look out to several hundred people who either have the illusion that they are in control, or are simply just unwilling to stop trying to have control. This must be the case. Otherwise we would have revival. Otherwise we would have restoration. Otherwise we would have responses. Otherwise we would have repentance and baptism for the remission of sins.

It is time that we stop pretending. “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God…” (1 Peter 4:17).

“Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust…” – (Psalm 40:4).

“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself, is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.” – (Isaiah 12:2).