A letter from Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches crossed my desk recently. In it, he defined five “pathways” which he says is what the Bible calls the NCC and its member communions toward. Those five are:
Peace
Poverty
Planet Earth
People’s Rights
Pluralism and Unity
Funny, that looks more like the priorities of PETA or the International Socialist Workers’ Party. Edgar prattles on for four insufferable pages on these five “pathways” (what a warm and fuzzy way of saying “priorities”). Not surprisingly, he can only cite one Scriptural passage (Luke 4:13).
At the same time, I’m reading J. Scott Horrell’s book From the Ground Up: New Testament Foundations for the 21st Century (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004). Horrell teaches systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary and ordained in the Baptist General Conference. It’s not a great book, but it is pretty good (especially chapter three, “Centered in Christ, Decentralized in the World”). Horrell identifies Worship, Learning, Fellowship and Evangelism/Missions as four “living functions” of the church (gosh, that doesn’t sound as pretty as Edgar’s “pathways”).
The really big difference between Edgar and Horrell is how Horrell’s chapter on these “living functions” is awash with Scripture. I lost track around thirty such references.
When held up to the light of Scripture, it’s clear that the NCC is simply a silly, trivial organization. Edgar’s letter, and website (http://www.middlechurch.net/) well-demonstrates that the so-called mainline denominations are sidelined, and sidelined by their own trivial pursuits. It’s a tragedy of misdirected effort.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
TransMin Separation "Forces Churches to Choose"
An Inland Empire paper reports today:
Move forces churches to choose
AMERICAN BAPTISTS: Now Inland congregations will decide where they stand on the gay-related split.
10:00 PM PST on Monday, October 30, 2006
By BETTYE WELLS MILLER
The Press-Enterprise
The Pacific Southwest Region of American Baptist Churches in the USA will formally withdraw from the denomination on Wednesday because of disagreements over homosexuality and authority of scripture.
What that means for Inland churches may not become clear for months, however, some Inland pastors said.
American Baptist congregations will remain part of the Valley Forge-based denomination until they each submit a letter announcing their withdrawal, said the Rev. Joe DeRoulhac, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Redlands.
Some congregations may be dually aligned with the denomination and Transformation Ministries, the association of churches that replaces the Pacific Southwest Region, he said.
"No one ever anticipated this sort of thing happening, but it has," DeRoulhac said.
Delegates from almost 300 churches in Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii voted overwhelmingly in April to support the regional board's proposal to leave the denomination. The board voted in May to sever ties with American Baptist Churches in the USA and announced the formation of Transformational Ministries, an association like-minded American Baptist churches. Bylaws of the new organization were approved at a general meeting in Alhambra earlier this month.
Regional officials advocated splitting from the denomination because, they said, national leaders have not moved to stop the ordination of openly homosexual clergy or to halt the appointment of gays to major positions of responsibility.
American Baptist churches are independent and autonomous, responsible for articulating their own doctrine. The denomination has about 1.5 million members in 5,800 churches in the United States.
DeRoulhac said the Redlands church will not leave the denomination and has notified Transformation Ministries that it will withdraw from that regional body.
About 30 churches have expressed interest in forming a new association that would be affiliated with the denomination and administratively related to the Los Angeles region, he said.
Some Inland churches have not decided what they will do.
First Baptist Church in Banning is considering its options, said the Rev. Tate Crenshaw.
"We probably will have a decision by the first of the year," he said. "We're looking at where we're going as a church."
The congregation supported the region's withdrawal from the denomination, he said.
First Baptist Church in Riverside has decided to leave American Baptist Churches effective Jan. 1, 2007, the Rev. Joe Lutz said.
"I have been an American Baptist all my life," Lutz said. "It seems strange that I will not be one anymore. But my primary allegiance isn't to American Baptist Churches, it's to Jesus Christ and what he calls the church to be."
Lutz said leaving the denomination and affiliating with Transformation Ministries will not produce much change in what the Riverside congregation has been doing.
"We're still a Baptist church, we believe Baptist theology, and we will operate as a Baptist church," he said. "The positive change is, we've made our decision ... we can do the ministry we feel called to do in this community and not be distracted by the debates and conflicts of previous years."
Neither the Rev. Dale V. Salico, executive minister of Transformation Ministries, nor the Rev. A. Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches in the USA, returned calls seeking comment Monday.
In a previous statement on the denomination's Web site, Medley alluded to numerous splits among Baptist denominations throughout American history.
"Though not uncommon in Baptist life, such actions grieve the heart of God and our Lord Jesus Christ," he wrote.
Reach Bettye Wells Miller at 951-268-9547 or bmiller@PE.com
Move forces churches to choose
AMERICAN BAPTISTS: Now Inland congregations will decide where they stand on the gay-related split.
10:00 PM PST on Monday, October 30, 2006
By BETTYE WELLS MILLER
The Press-Enterprise
The Pacific Southwest Region of American Baptist Churches in the USA will formally withdraw from the denomination on Wednesday because of disagreements over homosexuality and authority of scripture.
What that means for Inland churches may not become clear for months, however, some Inland pastors said.
American Baptist congregations will remain part of the Valley Forge-based denomination until they each submit a letter announcing their withdrawal, said the Rev. Joe DeRoulhac, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Redlands.
Some congregations may be dually aligned with the denomination and Transformation Ministries, the association of churches that replaces the Pacific Southwest Region, he said.
"No one ever anticipated this sort of thing happening, but it has," DeRoulhac said.
Delegates from almost 300 churches in Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii voted overwhelmingly in April to support the regional board's proposal to leave the denomination. The board voted in May to sever ties with American Baptist Churches in the USA and announced the formation of Transformational Ministries, an association like-minded American Baptist churches. Bylaws of the new organization were approved at a general meeting in Alhambra earlier this month.
Regional officials advocated splitting from the denomination because, they said, national leaders have not moved to stop the ordination of openly homosexual clergy or to halt the appointment of gays to major positions of responsibility.
American Baptist churches are independent and autonomous, responsible for articulating their own doctrine. The denomination has about 1.5 million members in 5,800 churches in the United States.
DeRoulhac said the Redlands church will not leave the denomination and has notified Transformation Ministries that it will withdraw from that regional body.
About 30 churches have expressed interest in forming a new association that would be affiliated with the denomination and administratively related to the Los Angeles region, he said.
Some Inland churches have not decided what they will do.
First Baptist Church in Banning is considering its options, said the Rev. Tate Crenshaw.
"We probably will have a decision by the first of the year," he said. "We're looking at where we're going as a church."
The congregation supported the region's withdrawal from the denomination, he said.
First Baptist Church in Riverside has decided to leave American Baptist Churches effective Jan. 1, 2007, the Rev. Joe Lutz said.
"I have been an American Baptist all my life," Lutz said. "It seems strange that I will not be one anymore. But my primary allegiance isn't to American Baptist Churches, it's to Jesus Christ and what he calls the church to be."
Lutz said leaving the denomination and affiliating with Transformation Ministries will not produce much change in what the Riverside congregation has been doing.
"We're still a Baptist church, we believe Baptist theology, and we will operate as a Baptist church," he said. "The positive change is, we've made our decision ... we can do the ministry we feel called to do in this community and not be distracted by the debates and conflicts of previous years."
Neither the Rev. Dale V. Salico, executive minister of Transformation Ministries, nor the Rev. A. Roy Medley, general secretary of American Baptist Churches in the USA, returned calls seeking comment Monday.
In a previous statement on the denomination's Web site, Medley alluded to numerous splits among Baptist denominations throughout American history.
"Though not uncommon in Baptist life, such actions grieve the heart of God and our Lord Jesus Christ," he wrote.
Reach Bettye Wells Miller at 951-268-9547 or bmiller@PE.com
Saturday, October 28, 2006
The Life of Jacob, Part Five
I was computer-deprived yesterday, so this Saturday edition of DD finishes my five-part on the life of Jacob. Reading it again reminds me of the limits on publishing a sermon. At one point, I gave Jacob a kind of grizzled old man accent; another place, a Yiddish accent. We all read the Blessing of Aaron togteher to "bless one another." And then there's the ad-libs! Oral communication is very different from written communication! The dates are when the messages were given at the First Baptist Church of Temple City. For more, see www.templecitybaptist.org. If you are really interested, email me regarding the PowerPoints I did for these messages: glenn@templecitybaptist.org. Shalom!
Finishing Well
(Genesis 46-50)
Part Five of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 22, 2006
So now we come to the end of the story of Jacob. First, we saw him born, a fraternal twin to Esau, and given a name that means “Cheater.” We saw him live up to that name when he cheated his brother not once but twice. We saw him get cheated by his father-in-law Laban. We saw him afraid of Esau’s thirst for vengeance.
But we saw another man emerge from Jacob. A man God had his hand on, and to whom God made promises. We saw his faith grow slowly. Then the great crisis occurred, and we found Jacob wrestling with God on the bank of the Jabbok River. We saw God touch him in a way that would forever change him, and God gave him a new name that means “God-Striver”, the name Israel.
That was in Genesis 32. Then a large portion of Genesis is given over the amazing story of Jacob’s next to youngest son, Joseph. Joseph’s story fills Genesis 37-50, and is so beautifully told that some have called the Joseph story “The World’s First Novel.” Jacob becoming a supporting character in the Joseph story: the doting father who makes Joseph his “favorite” and gives him a richly ornamented robe, the “coat of many colors” as it’s called in the King James Version. Then we see him as the grieving father when it appears that Joseph is dead. (You may recall that his jealous brothers sold him into slavery to a caravan on their way to Egypt and faked his death to fool their father.)
Then he is the astonished father. About 20 years after mourning Joseph, he learns that he Joseph is still alive. The severe drought that was affecting the land of promise forced them to pack up and move to Egypt, under the protection of Joseph, who had become kind of Prime Minister of Egypt under Pharaoh.
Every twist in the road leads to another turn, and this was no exception. The family of Jacob—the growing tribes of Israel—goes off to Egypt for protection. This protection would turn into slavery within a generation. Then God raised up Moses to lead them out—some 400 years later. But that’s another story.
What we want to do is look in the closing chapters of Genesis and see the kind of man Jacob became in his later years. Did his experience with God last? Was Jacob a different man?
I know a man. He had a thriving ministry and was one of the best-known evangelical pastors in the Northeast. In his late 40s, though, he threw it away on a sordid affair—this from a man who had written books on Christian marriage and who had led countless marriage seminars. He resigned in disgrace.
He confessed it all to his wife and his closest friends. They had a little house in Loudin, New Hampshire, and the nearest evangelical church was the church I pastored in Laconia. That’s how I came to know them.
They spent about a year in a kind of spiritual exile there. I was their pastor. They would travel frequently, seeing old friends all over the country.
Near the end of the year, I was invited along with about five others to their home. What we had in common is that we were all in our 30s—the “next generation” of leadership. He talked at length about their experiences, his repentance, and what he prayed the Lord would allow him to do with the remainder of his life.
Two things he said that day have especially stayed with me. First, he emphasized the importance of finishing well. Many start well, but few finish well. He was someone who, halfway around the track, and totally fallen down and was grateful to God for the chance to get up again. He was passionate that we not fall also, and that we would finish the race well.
The second thing he said was that his prayer was that, if God granted him health, that his 80s would be the most productive period of his life. You must understand: he was only about 55 when he said this. He was taking the long view.
God worked patiently in his life, much the same way He’d worked patiently in Jacob’s life. My friend had had his own version of wrestling with God, and had also known God’s touch, which both breaks us and heals us.
Let’s look at some pictures of Jacob in his latter days. Let’s look at the last years of Jacob in terms of advice he would give us as someone who’d seen God at work in the years of his life. Here’s one who didn’t start well, but who finishes well. Very well.
I think the first piece of advice he would us is
Listen to God (Genesis 46:2-4)
Hearing that Joseph was alive, he began moving his people—his sons and their wives all and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—toward Egypt. They moved from Hebron to Beersheba, where Jacob’s father Isaac had lived most of his life. And there God spoke to him. Look at Genesis 46:2-4:
2And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, "Jacob! Jacob!" "Here I am," he replied.
3"I am God, the God of your father," he said. "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. 4I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph's own hand will close your eyes."
Some people in their later years tend to hang back and say, “I did my part. Now I’m going to take it easy and let others do it all.”
There is a balance here. As we age, we have to make room for the next generation. More than that, we have an obligation to pass on everything we know. Young people aren’t so much interested in our knowledge as our experience. Nothing beats experience!
Sometimes we even go into a passive mode when it comes to God. Every year thousands of elderly people from New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio move there to retire. Vast retirement communities, far larger than Leisure World or Sun City are all over Florida; places where men play golf and women play bridge. No wonder some people call Florida: “God’s waiting room.”
The Lord doesn’t want us to just wait out the clock. He still speaks! Peter quoted the prophet Joel in Acts 2:17:
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
The coming of the Spirit means that God has a place and a plan for the sons and the daughters, the young and the old. “Your old men will dream dreams!” I love it!
And in Jacob’s night vision, God tells him to have no fear; that His covenant promise to turn his family into a great nation would come to pass, and that he would die in the presence of his son Joseph.
No matter what age you are, if your ears are open, listen! God is speaking to you. Take the time to listen.
Bless All (Genesis 47:7-9)
Then Jacob is reunited with his son Joseph. Imagine the scene: the clean-shaven, well-dressed, very Egyptian looking Joseph and his gray-bearded, scruffy-looking father.
Joseph has a plan. Knowing that his father’s family were all shepherds, he had his eye on a section of the Nile delta called Goshen as a good place for them to settle. So he arranges for five of the brothers to go before Pharaoh and ask for permission to settle there, which he granted. Then Joseph brought out Jacob. Let’s read the story in Genesis 47:7-9:
7Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, 8Pharaoh asked him, "How old are you?"
9And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers." 10Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence.
There are two things very striking here: first, isn’t the humility of Jacob just amazing? If you’ve been here for all five messages, you can really see the contrast. Jacob had always been such a self-centered rascal. Now he appears content and he sees himself in perspective. “You think I’m something? You should have know my dad, or my grandpa. Those guys really lived a long time. Me? I’m a nobody. They were real menschen.”
The second striking thing is the fact that we’re told on the way in and the way out, he blessed Pharaoh. He blessed Pharaoh! Here’s this old, old shepherd, coming in on his walking stick, still limping from that night he wrestled God. There on the marble throne of Egypt sits the most powerful man on earth, the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Hebrews 7:7 says, “The lesser person is blessed by the greater.” Jacob is unimpressed by Pharaoh. His palace and his robes do not impress him. But he is grateful that his family would be allowed to settle in the fertile area of Goshen. And he remembers the God’s promise given to his grandfather Abraham: “Those who bless you I will bless.” Perhaps those were the very words of blessing Jacob blessed Pharaoh with.
To bless is a beautiful thing. This is the same Jacob would stole his brother’s blessing. Now he stands before this world ruler and gives him a blessing, something he was stingy with before. The lesson for us is to bless freely, to speak words of blessing that lift people up, and to do so as one who serves a God who loves to bless.
A blessing is never a wish: it’s a prayer announced. The most famous blessing is the Bible is found in Numbers 6:24-26:
24" `"The LORD bless you and keep you;
25the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
26the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace." '
Be generous with your blessings as well! Bless all…the mothers and the fathers and the brothers and the sisters; bless your fellow Jesus-followers. Bless the teachers and the bosses and the people at the store. Bless the Pharaohs and the nobodies, because in God’s sight, there are no nobodies.
Pass the Baton (Genesis 48-49)
In chapters 48 and 49 of Genesis, we see the old and infirm Jacob. Joseph brings his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to see their grandfather. And he blesses them. Then in chapter 49, he calls all his sons in and blesses them all, all twelve one at a time.
Not only was he blessing them, he was passing the baton of the blessing onward. It was so important that they would love the God who had shown so much love to Jacob, far more than he could have imagined, infinitely more than he deserved.
We cannot guarantee what the next generation will do with the faith. Whole centuries of carelessness toward God have been part of the story of God at work. Eras of apostasy and denial of Biblical truth have plagued and interrupted the plan of God. But God is faithful, and He sees to it that the plan is never cancelled. His will must prevail.
You see that in the blessing Jacob gives his son Judah, in Genesis 49:10:
The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler's staff from between his feet,
until he comes to whom it belongs
and the obedience of the nations is his.
It was from Judah that King David was from; it was from Judah that Jesus, the true ruler of all nations, came. God’s plan will come to pass!
Finally, at the very end of chapter 49, we read of the death of Jacob, and the lesson for us is…
Face death with faith (Genesis 49:29-33)
29Then he gave them these instructions: "I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan, which Abraham bought as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite, along with the field. 31There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried, and there I buried Leah. 32The field and the cave in it were bought from the Hittites."
33When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people.
Death is not a natural part of life. We were designed to live forever. But until Christ comes again, it is a reality of life.
Jacob was prepared to die. He had his own “plot”, not at Forest Lawn or Rose Hills, but in the cave at Machpelah, near Hebron in southern Israel. The tombs there are preserved in a structure built by King Herod to the present day. After making his burial requests known, “he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people.”
He died, knowing that he was both going to his rest, and on a journey. He’d spoken of the years of his life as being both “few and difficult.” Now, the struggle is over. The glimpse he had of God’s face when he wrestled with him was over. As Paul put it, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) This world dissolved at God’s presence came into full view. All the promises were true. And if in heaven you can cry, he cried for joy.
Jacob’s story is not the story of a perfect man. It’s the story of a deeply flawed man that God loved and pursued all his life. It’s our story too. We can be stubborn, stupid and slow, and yet God still loves us and comes after us.
As we close, I’m going to ask that we take a minute or two of complete silence. In that time, just come before God and say, “Where am I in the story?” Are you still trying to run your life on your own terms? Maybe instead you’re right in the middle of your own wrestling match with God. Are you blessing others? Are you passing on your faith to the next generation? Are you facing death with faith? (Those questions are on your message outline to assist you in your reflection.) I’ll lead us in prayer and then we’ll give you time to pray and think before moving to our offering and closing.
Finishing Well
(Genesis 46-50)
Part Five of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 22, 2006
So now we come to the end of the story of Jacob. First, we saw him born, a fraternal twin to Esau, and given a name that means “Cheater.” We saw him live up to that name when he cheated his brother not once but twice. We saw him get cheated by his father-in-law Laban. We saw him afraid of Esau’s thirst for vengeance.
But we saw another man emerge from Jacob. A man God had his hand on, and to whom God made promises. We saw his faith grow slowly. Then the great crisis occurred, and we found Jacob wrestling with God on the bank of the Jabbok River. We saw God touch him in a way that would forever change him, and God gave him a new name that means “God-Striver”, the name Israel.
That was in Genesis 32. Then a large portion of Genesis is given over the amazing story of Jacob’s next to youngest son, Joseph. Joseph’s story fills Genesis 37-50, and is so beautifully told that some have called the Joseph story “The World’s First Novel.” Jacob becoming a supporting character in the Joseph story: the doting father who makes Joseph his “favorite” and gives him a richly ornamented robe, the “coat of many colors” as it’s called in the King James Version. Then we see him as the grieving father when it appears that Joseph is dead. (You may recall that his jealous brothers sold him into slavery to a caravan on their way to Egypt and faked his death to fool their father.)
Then he is the astonished father. About 20 years after mourning Joseph, he learns that he Joseph is still alive. The severe drought that was affecting the land of promise forced them to pack up and move to Egypt, under the protection of Joseph, who had become kind of Prime Minister of Egypt under Pharaoh.
Every twist in the road leads to another turn, and this was no exception. The family of Jacob—the growing tribes of Israel—goes off to Egypt for protection. This protection would turn into slavery within a generation. Then God raised up Moses to lead them out—some 400 years later. But that’s another story.
What we want to do is look in the closing chapters of Genesis and see the kind of man Jacob became in his later years. Did his experience with God last? Was Jacob a different man?
I know a man. He had a thriving ministry and was one of the best-known evangelical pastors in the Northeast. In his late 40s, though, he threw it away on a sordid affair—this from a man who had written books on Christian marriage and who had led countless marriage seminars. He resigned in disgrace.
He confessed it all to his wife and his closest friends. They had a little house in Loudin, New Hampshire, and the nearest evangelical church was the church I pastored in Laconia. That’s how I came to know them.
They spent about a year in a kind of spiritual exile there. I was their pastor. They would travel frequently, seeing old friends all over the country.
Near the end of the year, I was invited along with about five others to their home. What we had in common is that we were all in our 30s—the “next generation” of leadership. He talked at length about their experiences, his repentance, and what he prayed the Lord would allow him to do with the remainder of his life.
Two things he said that day have especially stayed with me. First, he emphasized the importance of finishing well. Many start well, but few finish well. He was someone who, halfway around the track, and totally fallen down and was grateful to God for the chance to get up again. He was passionate that we not fall also, and that we would finish the race well.
The second thing he said was that his prayer was that, if God granted him health, that his 80s would be the most productive period of his life. You must understand: he was only about 55 when he said this. He was taking the long view.
God worked patiently in his life, much the same way He’d worked patiently in Jacob’s life. My friend had had his own version of wrestling with God, and had also known God’s touch, which both breaks us and heals us.
Let’s look at some pictures of Jacob in his latter days. Let’s look at the last years of Jacob in terms of advice he would give us as someone who’d seen God at work in the years of his life. Here’s one who didn’t start well, but who finishes well. Very well.
I think the first piece of advice he would us is
Listen to God (Genesis 46:2-4)
Hearing that Joseph was alive, he began moving his people—his sons and their wives all and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—toward Egypt. They moved from Hebron to Beersheba, where Jacob’s father Isaac had lived most of his life. And there God spoke to him. Look at Genesis 46:2-4:
2And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, "Jacob! Jacob!" "Here I am," he replied.
3"I am God, the God of your father," he said. "Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. 4I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph's own hand will close your eyes."
Some people in their later years tend to hang back and say, “I did my part. Now I’m going to take it easy and let others do it all.”
There is a balance here. As we age, we have to make room for the next generation. More than that, we have an obligation to pass on everything we know. Young people aren’t so much interested in our knowledge as our experience. Nothing beats experience!
Sometimes we even go into a passive mode when it comes to God. Every year thousands of elderly people from New York and Pennsylvania and Ohio move there to retire. Vast retirement communities, far larger than Leisure World or Sun City are all over Florida; places where men play golf and women play bridge. No wonder some people call Florida: “God’s waiting room.”
The Lord doesn’t want us to just wait out the clock. He still speaks! Peter quoted the prophet Joel in Acts 2:17:
In the last days, God says,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
The coming of the Spirit means that God has a place and a plan for the sons and the daughters, the young and the old. “Your old men will dream dreams!” I love it!
And in Jacob’s night vision, God tells him to have no fear; that His covenant promise to turn his family into a great nation would come to pass, and that he would die in the presence of his son Joseph.
No matter what age you are, if your ears are open, listen! God is speaking to you. Take the time to listen.
Bless All (Genesis 47:7-9)
Then Jacob is reunited with his son Joseph. Imagine the scene: the clean-shaven, well-dressed, very Egyptian looking Joseph and his gray-bearded, scruffy-looking father.
Joseph has a plan. Knowing that his father’s family were all shepherds, he had his eye on a section of the Nile delta called Goshen as a good place for them to settle. So he arranges for five of the brothers to go before Pharaoh and ask for permission to settle there, which he granted. Then Joseph brought out Jacob. Let’s read the story in Genesis 47:7-9:
7Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, 8Pharaoh asked him, "How old are you?"
9And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers." 10Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence.
There are two things very striking here: first, isn’t the humility of Jacob just amazing? If you’ve been here for all five messages, you can really see the contrast. Jacob had always been such a self-centered rascal. Now he appears content and he sees himself in perspective. “You think I’m something? You should have know my dad, or my grandpa. Those guys really lived a long time. Me? I’m a nobody. They were real menschen.”
The second striking thing is the fact that we’re told on the way in and the way out, he blessed Pharaoh. He blessed Pharaoh! Here’s this old, old shepherd, coming in on his walking stick, still limping from that night he wrestled God. There on the marble throne of Egypt sits the most powerful man on earth, the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Hebrews 7:7 says, “The lesser person is blessed by the greater.” Jacob is unimpressed by Pharaoh. His palace and his robes do not impress him. But he is grateful that his family would be allowed to settle in the fertile area of Goshen. And he remembers the God’s promise given to his grandfather Abraham: “Those who bless you I will bless.” Perhaps those were the very words of blessing Jacob blessed Pharaoh with.
To bless is a beautiful thing. This is the same Jacob would stole his brother’s blessing. Now he stands before this world ruler and gives him a blessing, something he was stingy with before. The lesson for us is to bless freely, to speak words of blessing that lift people up, and to do so as one who serves a God who loves to bless.
A blessing is never a wish: it’s a prayer announced. The most famous blessing is the Bible is found in Numbers 6:24-26:
24" `"The LORD bless you and keep you;
25the LORD make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
26the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace." '
Be generous with your blessings as well! Bless all…the mothers and the fathers and the brothers and the sisters; bless your fellow Jesus-followers. Bless the teachers and the bosses and the people at the store. Bless the Pharaohs and the nobodies, because in God’s sight, there are no nobodies.
Pass the Baton (Genesis 48-49)
In chapters 48 and 49 of Genesis, we see the old and infirm Jacob. Joseph brings his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to see their grandfather. And he blesses them. Then in chapter 49, he calls all his sons in and blesses them all, all twelve one at a time.
Not only was he blessing them, he was passing the baton of the blessing onward. It was so important that they would love the God who had shown so much love to Jacob, far more than he could have imagined, infinitely more than he deserved.
We cannot guarantee what the next generation will do with the faith. Whole centuries of carelessness toward God have been part of the story of God at work. Eras of apostasy and denial of Biblical truth have plagued and interrupted the plan of God. But God is faithful, and He sees to it that the plan is never cancelled. His will must prevail.
You see that in the blessing Jacob gives his son Judah, in Genesis 49:10:
The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler's staff from between his feet,
until he comes to whom it belongs
and the obedience of the nations is his.
It was from Judah that King David was from; it was from Judah that Jesus, the true ruler of all nations, came. God’s plan will come to pass!
Finally, at the very end of chapter 49, we read of the death of Jacob, and the lesson for us is…
Face death with faith (Genesis 49:29-33)
29Then he gave them these instructions: "I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan, which Abraham bought as a burial place from Ephron the Hittite, along with the field. 31There Abraham and his wife Sarah were buried, there Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried, and there I buried Leah. 32The field and the cave in it were bought from the Hittites."
33When Jacob had finished giving instructions to his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people.
Death is not a natural part of life. We were designed to live forever. But until Christ comes again, it is a reality of life.
Jacob was prepared to die. He had his own “plot”, not at Forest Lawn or Rose Hills, but in the cave at Machpelah, near Hebron in southern Israel. The tombs there are preserved in a structure built by King Herod to the present day. After making his burial requests known, “he drew his feet up into the bed, breathed his last and was gathered to his people.”
He died, knowing that he was both going to his rest, and on a journey. He’d spoken of the years of his life as being both “few and difficult.” Now, the struggle is over. The glimpse he had of God’s face when he wrestled with him was over. As Paul put it, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) This world dissolved at God’s presence came into full view. All the promises were true. And if in heaven you can cry, he cried for joy.
Jacob’s story is not the story of a perfect man. It’s the story of a deeply flawed man that God loved and pursued all his life. It’s our story too. We can be stubborn, stupid and slow, and yet God still loves us and comes after us.
As we close, I’m going to ask that we take a minute or two of complete silence. In that time, just come before God and say, “Where am I in the story?” Are you still trying to run your life on your own terms? Maybe instead you’re right in the middle of your own wrestling match with God. Are you blessing others? Are you passing on your faith to the next generation? Are you facing death with faith? (Those questions are on your message outline to assist you in your reflection.) I’ll lead us in prayer and then we’ll give you time to pray and think before moving to our offering and closing.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
The Life of Jacob, Part Four
A New Name
(Genesis 35:9-15)
Part Four of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 15, 2006
Last week we looked at the central event in the life of this man Jacob. Jacob was born a cheater, right down to the meaning of his name. He cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance and his blessing to the point that Esau wanted to kill him. So he ran away to the home territory of his clan, a place called Paddan-Aram, where he married the daughters of a man who was even more of a cheater than he was, the man Laban. Life under Laban’s thumb was so hard that he fled back to Canaan, where Esau still lived.
By then, Jacob was a wealthy man: two wives, 10 children, servants and vast flocks. Jacob wanted to give enough presents to Esau to turn his anger away. As it turned out, Esau had decided to let bygones be bygones. Jacob didn’t have to fight Esau. Instead, He had to fight God!
That’s what we shared about last week: how God met Jacob by the Jabbok River (that would be in modern northwest Jordan) and wrestled with him there. God was intent on breaking Jacob from his self-sufficiency. Jacob always had an angle he was working, always had a scheme to pull, always had a plan. God wanted to use this man. After all, his grandfather was Abraham, the man God had given this great promise (Genesis 12:2-3):
2"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
For this blessing to come about, Abraham needed a family. Genesis tells us again and again how the promises God made hung on by a thread. Sarah was infertile for most of her life; Isaac nearly died and almost didn’t marry, and in Jacob’s generation, infighting nearly wiped out the line of promise.
But with Jacob, the promise was on its way: when he wrestles with God, 10 of his 12 sons have been born. They will be the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel.
One thing that happened the night that we kind of skipped over last week because I wanted to come back to it today, and that’s the new name God gave Jacob that night. I want to revisit that and expand upon that and show its relevance to us and our faith today.
Let’s start back in Genesis 32 right in the middle of the smackdown by the river. Let’s look again at Genesis 32:24-29:
24So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
27The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
28Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
29Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
Now we need to read the context carefully. Here, Jacob’s opponent is simply called “a man.” In Hosea 12, is says that he wrestled God. Jacob affirms that he was wrestling God Himself by naming the place Peniel, “Face of God.” As I said last week, the only way to win when you wrestled with God is by losing! (Remember: “Let the Wookie win!”)
In the midst of the struggle, Jacob realizes that this is no mere human who jumped out of the darkness. This wasn’t just a wilderness thief, because Jacob asks for the “man” to bless him. Pay attention to the dialogue:
MAN:
"Let me go, for it is daybreak."
JACOB:
"I will not let you go unless you bless me."
MAN:
"What is your name?"
JACOB:
"Jacob"
MAN:
"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
JACOB:
"Please tell me your name."
MAN:
"Why do you ask my name?"
Then he blessed him there.
Twice the matter of names comes up: Jacob’s name—and his new name, Israel, and the mysterious Man’s name, which is never given.
Now, it seems clear to me that the Man is the Angel of the Lord, in Hebrew, ha-malach Yahweh, the mysterious being who comes and goes in a number of places in the Old Testament. Since the word “angel” can mean messenger in general, there’s no barrier to “the angel of the LORD” being God the Son—the Lord Jesus here on earth in a temporary appearing. This mystery was hidden in the Old Testament, so the Man refused to tell his name. Instead, he asks Jacob for his name.
Now, it’s obvious that he’s not asking because he doesn’t know. He wants Jacob to say his name aloud for a reason. Jacob means “cheater” or “trickster.” What a name for a child! He’d done everything to live up to this name. It’s almost as if the Man wanted Jacob to say his name aloud as a way of asking him a question: “Jacob, you say? You really want to go through life known as a Cheater?” Then he moves him on:
"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
ISRAEL! The cheater was given a new name: Yisrael—He who strives with God. Jacob emerges from that night broken, but victorious; limping, but blessed—and with a new name: Israel.
In Genesis 35:9-15, that new name is again affirmed. Let me read that with a few comments:
9After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram, God appeared to him again [that is, sometime later than the wrestling match by the Jabbok river] and blessed him. 10God said to him, "Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel." So he named him Israel.
[This time, the name is given in a purely positive context: it’s almost a coronation name, like a king taking a new name when being crowned.]
11And God said to him, "I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body. 12The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you." 13Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him.
[The new name is part of the blessing promised to Abraham and Isaac.]
14Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. 15Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel.
[This was a return to Bethel. The last time he was here, his faith was immature and he tried to bargain with God. His worship and his faith now is mature and true.]
The new name marked a new era in God’s work in Jacob’s life. We have many people in this congregation who have received a new name. Most women still take their husband’s last name as a way of marking the new beginning represented by their marriage. We also have many immigrants here who chose a new name when they came to America—also a mark of new era in their lives.
Someone who gave me great insights into the faith early on was the great Chinese evangelistic Nee Tuo-Shing. “Tuo-Shing” is most often translated as Watchman, so in the west he is known as Watchman Nee. But it wasn’t his birth name: that was Nee Shu-Tsu. He took the name “Tuo Shing” (Watchman) when after he sensed God’s call to be an evangelist. The new name was a mark of the new era in his life.
Renaming is common in the Bible. Apart from Jesus, the two main personalities of the New Testament are Peter and Paul. “Peter” is translation of a new name Jesus gave Simon bar-Jonas: Cephas in Aramaic or Petros in Greek, meaning the Rock. “Paul” was the adopted Roman name of a Jewish man who was born as Saul.
New names aren’t all that uncommon in the Bible. Sarai became Sarah; Abram became Abraham; Jacob became Israel; Joseph bar-Levi became Barnabas. And in each case, it was because God saw them not just as they were, but as they could be.
Jacob was a cheat, but God saw him as he could be: one who strives with God and overcomes. To overcome with God is to so struggle with Him to the point that God touches us and transforms us and we truly become new people. This comes into sharp focus in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Does God have the power to change lives? You bet! The restoration of His creation is the great theme of God’s work down the years.
There is a great scene in The Passion of the Christ that has no basis in Scripture, but I love it anyway. Jesus is bearing the cross, staggering through the streets of Jerusalem. At one point he and his mother come face to face and Jesus says something so wonderful that the first time I saw it, it made we well up with tears and jump for joy at the same time. He whispers to her amid all His pain and says, “Mother, behold I make all things new.” Yes! Yes! That’s exactly what I think was going through the mind of Jesus as He went to the cross. His sacrifice there made it possible for all things to be made new. It would start unseen, in the hearts and lives of people those who put their trust in Him. One day it will lead to a New Heaven and a New Earth, as the Bible promises, “I make all things new.”
Mel Gibson (God bless him, I hope he makes a full recovery) didn’t pull that line out of the air. It’s a quote from Revelation 21:5: “I am making everything new!”
And the new name is a token, a promise of newness of life. There’s a wonderful passage in Isaiah 62:2-4, where God uses the idea of a new name to show His promises to His people:
2The nations will see your righteousness,
and all kings your glory;
you will be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.
3You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD's hand,
a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
4No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah [My Delight is in Her],
and your land Beulah [Married];
for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
Deserted. Desolate. All alone. But now loved and accepted. That’s the Good News of Jesus in a few words. Go to a New Testament passage like Ephesians 2. At vs. 11, we read:
11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)--12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
“In Christ”: that’s our new name. That’s why we are sometimes called “Christians.” Jump down to vs. 19:
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household…
Jacob knew what it was like to know that God had special plans for him, but not to actually know God. He knew what it was like to be a “foreigner” in God’s household.
But one night, God touched him, changed him and gave him a new name. Like a newborn child, Jacob didn’t understand it all, but he knew that all things changed—that he was a new person, a new creation, a man with new hopes and new plans and even a new name. He knew this all came from God and that the rest of his life would all be about loving and serving the Lord. Was he Jacob? Yes, but his Jacob history would no longer define who he was. He was Israel now.
In ancient times, stones were sometimes used as invitations. If you received a white stone, you knew you were being invited to a joyous occasion. And if that white stone had a name, it would be a special name, a kind of code name indicating your status as a love one.
Jesus says something so beautiful in Revelation 2:17:
To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.
What’s your name? Remember that God asked Jacob what his name was. God is asking you the same question today. We answer, and then the Lord says, “I have a new name for you. It’s a secret. But it’s wonderful. It’s the name that I thought of when I created you, before your parents picked a name for you. It’s a name of newness and joy and hope and life. It’s a name My Son paid for by His death on the cross.”
Do you know for certain that Jesus is the Lord of your life, that all your sins and forgiven? Have you received from God the hope only He can give?
There are several baskets of white stones around the sanctuary today. (No names on them—only God knows the names!) Before you leave today, I want to encourage you to go and pick out a white stone today as a reminder of the love Jesus has for you—His invitation to come to His celebration. One of these baskets is up here, and if you want to come and join Jesus’ forever family, let me encourage you to come here, to this basket, as way of showing your love for the one who went to the cross for you. He wants you to be part of His family starting today!
(Genesis 35:9-15)
Part Four of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 15, 2006
Last week we looked at the central event in the life of this man Jacob. Jacob was born a cheater, right down to the meaning of his name. He cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance and his blessing to the point that Esau wanted to kill him. So he ran away to the home territory of his clan, a place called Paddan-Aram, where he married the daughters of a man who was even more of a cheater than he was, the man Laban. Life under Laban’s thumb was so hard that he fled back to Canaan, where Esau still lived.
By then, Jacob was a wealthy man: two wives, 10 children, servants and vast flocks. Jacob wanted to give enough presents to Esau to turn his anger away. As it turned out, Esau had decided to let bygones be bygones. Jacob didn’t have to fight Esau. Instead, He had to fight God!
That’s what we shared about last week: how God met Jacob by the Jabbok River (that would be in modern northwest Jordan) and wrestled with him there. God was intent on breaking Jacob from his self-sufficiency. Jacob always had an angle he was working, always had a scheme to pull, always had a plan. God wanted to use this man. After all, his grandfather was Abraham, the man God had given this great promise (Genesis 12:2-3):
2"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
3I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."
For this blessing to come about, Abraham needed a family. Genesis tells us again and again how the promises God made hung on by a thread. Sarah was infertile for most of her life; Isaac nearly died and almost didn’t marry, and in Jacob’s generation, infighting nearly wiped out the line of promise.
But with Jacob, the promise was on its way: when he wrestles with God, 10 of his 12 sons have been born. They will be the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel.
One thing that happened the night that we kind of skipped over last week because I wanted to come back to it today, and that’s the new name God gave Jacob that night. I want to revisit that and expand upon that and show its relevance to us and our faith today.
Let’s start back in Genesis 32 right in the middle of the smackdown by the river. Let’s look again at Genesis 32:24-29:
24So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
27The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
28Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
29Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
Now we need to read the context carefully. Here, Jacob’s opponent is simply called “a man.” In Hosea 12, is says that he wrestled God. Jacob affirms that he was wrestling God Himself by naming the place Peniel, “Face of God.” As I said last week, the only way to win when you wrestled with God is by losing! (Remember: “Let the Wookie win!”)
In the midst of the struggle, Jacob realizes that this is no mere human who jumped out of the darkness. This wasn’t just a wilderness thief, because Jacob asks for the “man” to bless him. Pay attention to the dialogue:
MAN:
"Let me go, for it is daybreak."
JACOB:
"I will not let you go unless you bless me."
MAN:
"What is your name?"
JACOB:
"Jacob"
MAN:
"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
JACOB:
"Please tell me your name."
MAN:
"Why do you ask my name?"
Then he blessed him there.
Twice the matter of names comes up: Jacob’s name—and his new name, Israel, and the mysterious Man’s name, which is never given.
Now, it seems clear to me that the Man is the Angel of the Lord, in Hebrew, ha-malach Yahweh, the mysterious being who comes and goes in a number of places in the Old Testament. Since the word “angel” can mean messenger in general, there’s no barrier to “the angel of the LORD” being God the Son—the Lord Jesus here on earth in a temporary appearing. This mystery was hidden in the Old Testament, so the Man refused to tell his name. Instead, he asks Jacob for his name.
Now, it’s obvious that he’s not asking because he doesn’t know. He wants Jacob to say his name aloud for a reason. Jacob means “cheater” or “trickster.” What a name for a child! He’d done everything to live up to this name. It’s almost as if the Man wanted Jacob to say his name aloud as a way of asking him a question: “Jacob, you say? You really want to go through life known as a Cheater?” Then he moves him on:
"Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
ISRAEL! The cheater was given a new name: Yisrael—He who strives with God. Jacob emerges from that night broken, but victorious; limping, but blessed—and with a new name: Israel.
In Genesis 35:9-15, that new name is again affirmed. Let me read that with a few comments:
9After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram, God appeared to him again [that is, sometime later than the wrestling match by the Jabbok river] and blessed him. 10God said to him, "Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel." So he named him Israel.
[This time, the name is given in a purely positive context: it’s almost a coronation name, like a king taking a new name when being crowned.]
11And God said to him, "I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will come from your body. 12The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you." 13Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him.
[The new name is part of the blessing promised to Abraham and Isaac.]
14Jacob set up a stone pillar at the place where God had talked with him, and he poured out a drink offering on it; he also poured oil on it. 15Jacob called the place where God had talked with him Bethel.
[This was a return to Bethel. The last time he was here, his faith was immature and he tried to bargain with God. His worship and his faith now is mature and true.]
The new name marked a new era in God’s work in Jacob’s life. We have many people in this congregation who have received a new name. Most women still take their husband’s last name as a way of marking the new beginning represented by their marriage. We also have many immigrants here who chose a new name when they came to America—also a mark of new era in their lives.
Someone who gave me great insights into the faith early on was the great Chinese evangelistic Nee Tuo-Shing. “Tuo-Shing” is most often translated as Watchman, so in the west he is known as Watchman Nee. But it wasn’t his birth name: that was Nee Shu-Tsu. He took the name “Tuo Shing” (Watchman) when after he sensed God’s call to be an evangelist. The new name was a mark of the new era in his life.
Renaming is common in the Bible. Apart from Jesus, the two main personalities of the New Testament are Peter and Paul. “Peter” is translation of a new name Jesus gave Simon bar-Jonas: Cephas in Aramaic or Petros in Greek, meaning the Rock. “Paul” was the adopted Roman name of a Jewish man who was born as Saul.
New names aren’t all that uncommon in the Bible. Sarai became Sarah; Abram became Abraham; Jacob became Israel; Joseph bar-Levi became Barnabas. And in each case, it was because God saw them not just as they were, but as they could be.
Jacob was a cheat, but God saw him as he could be: one who strives with God and overcomes. To overcome with God is to so struggle with Him to the point that God touches us and transforms us and we truly become new people. This comes into sharp focus in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Does God have the power to change lives? You bet! The restoration of His creation is the great theme of God’s work down the years.
There is a great scene in The Passion of the Christ that has no basis in Scripture, but I love it anyway. Jesus is bearing the cross, staggering through the streets of Jerusalem. At one point he and his mother come face to face and Jesus says something so wonderful that the first time I saw it, it made we well up with tears and jump for joy at the same time. He whispers to her amid all His pain and says, “Mother, behold I make all things new.” Yes! Yes! That’s exactly what I think was going through the mind of Jesus as He went to the cross. His sacrifice there made it possible for all things to be made new. It would start unseen, in the hearts and lives of people those who put their trust in Him. One day it will lead to a New Heaven and a New Earth, as the Bible promises, “I make all things new.”
Mel Gibson (God bless him, I hope he makes a full recovery) didn’t pull that line out of the air. It’s a quote from Revelation 21:5: “I am making everything new!”
And the new name is a token, a promise of newness of life. There’s a wonderful passage in Isaiah 62:2-4, where God uses the idea of a new name to show His promises to His people:
2The nations will see your righteousness,
and all kings your glory;
you will be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.
3You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD's hand,
a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
4No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah [My Delight is in Her],
and your land Beulah [Married];
for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.
Deserted. Desolate. All alone. But now loved and accepted. That’s the Good News of Jesus in a few words. Go to a New Testament passage like Ephesians 2. At vs. 11, we read:
11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)--12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
“In Christ”: that’s our new name. That’s why we are sometimes called “Christians.” Jump down to vs. 19:
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household…
Jacob knew what it was like to know that God had special plans for him, but not to actually know God. He knew what it was like to be a “foreigner” in God’s household.
But one night, God touched him, changed him and gave him a new name. Like a newborn child, Jacob didn’t understand it all, but he knew that all things changed—that he was a new person, a new creation, a man with new hopes and new plans and even a new name. He knew this all came from God and that the rest of his life would all be about loving and serving the Lord. Was he Jacob? Yes, but his Jacob history would no longer define who he was. He was Israel now.
In ancient times, stones were sometimes used as invitations. If you received a white stone, you knew you were being invited to a joyous occasion. And if that white stone had a name, it would be a special name, a kind of code name indicating your status as a love one.
Jesus says something so beautiful in Revelation 2:17:
To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it.
What’s your name? Remember that God asked Jacob what his name was. God is asking you the same question today. We answer, and then the Lord says, “I have a new name for you. It’s a secret. But it’s wonderful. It’s the name that I thought of when I created you, before your parents picked a name for you. It’s a name of newness and joy and hope and life. It’s a name My Son paid for by His death on the cross.”
Do you know for certain that Jesus is the Lord of your life, that all your sins and forgiven? Have you received from God the hope only He can give?
There are several baskets of white stones around the sanctuary today. (No names on them—only God knows the names!) Before you leave today, I want to encourage you to go and pick out a white stone today as a reminder of the love Jesus has for you—His invitation to come to His celebration. One of these baskets is up here, and if you want to come and join Jesus’ forever family, let me encourage you to come here, to this basket, as way of showing your love for the one who went to the cross for you. He wants you to be part of His family starting today!
See No Evil?
An article appears today on Front Page about American religious leaders making a wrong-headed pilgrimage to Lebanon in order to blame Israel for daring to defend itself. I was disheartened to see Roy Medley among the muddle-minded theo-left clerics there to blame the only democracy in the Middle East for standing up to Islamo-Fascists crazies. Does anyone here still remember the Holocaust? It's a sad day when leaders of so-called mainline denominations willingly line up with the Nazis of the 21st century.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
The Life of Jacob, Part Three
Make Sure You Lose
(Genesis 32-35)
Part Three of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 8, 2006
There’s a classic bit of comic relief in the original, 1977 “Star Wars” movie. The little trashcan shaped robot, R2D2 is playing 3-D chess with the seven-foot tall ape-like Wookie called Chewbacca—and the little guy is beating the big hairy guy. Han Solo warns R2D2 and his shiny golden robot companion, C-3PO (the one with the English butler accent), that Wookies have bad tempers and have been known to tear apart those who beat them, so C-3PO nervously says to R2D2, “My advice: Let the Wookie win!”
Sometimes, you have to let the Wookie win. Sometimes, you have to know when to “fold ‘em”, to quit, and to say that enough’s enough. No time is that more true than when you find yourself trying to fight with God. There’s a saying: Your arms are too short to box with God. That’s the situation that Jacob has here in Genesis 32-35.
We have to set up the story by looking at Jacob’s life thus far. We saw that while God had His hand on Jacob, Jacob was a schemer. He was always trying to do it his way. He scammed Esau out of both his birthright and his blessing, so he set off for the distant region of Paddan Aram (today, the border region of Syria and Iraq), the ancestral homeland of his people, both to flee from Esau’s rage—his brother was mumbling about killing him—as well as to find an acceptable wife from his clan, just as his own father had done before him. There he meets the family of Laban, who is more of a cheater than even Jacob. He fools him into marrying both of his daughters, Leah and Rachel, and basically makes him his wage slave for 20 years. While Jacob’s family and wealth grows, he is worn down by Laban’s demands and finally flees, going back to the land that one day would be called Israel.
But that means going right back to where Esau lives. That was the brother that 20 years ago wanted to kill Jacob for the way he’d been mistreated and cheated by Jacob.
Now, this is not just a soap opera from the 19th century BC. This is the story of God working in a man’s life. God was at work in Jacob’s life. We saw that back in chapter 28, where Jacob has a dream at a place he would call Bethel, the House of God. God showed him that the promises He’d made to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac were for Jacob as well. God said He would make Jacob’s family into a great nation, a nation that would bless the whole world.
But Jacob’s faith was unsteady and uncertain. Again and again he shows an independent, self-sufficient streak that gets him into trouble.
There’s a passage in Proverbs, Proverbs 3:5-6, that tells us God’s intent for our lives:
5Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
That what God wants in your life: trust in Him, not in yourself. God wants you to give Him recognition in all areas of your life, and He promises then to bless you, to “make your path straight.”
Jacob was nowhere near this level of faith and trust. He was scared, and as we’ll see, he does his best to look out for himself until one faithful night.
What happened to change Jacob so much? We’ll find it all in the night Jacob wrestled God.
The mystery begins in the haunting words of Genesis 32:1-2:
1Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. 2When Jacob saw them, he said, "This is the camp of God!" So he named that place Mahanaim.
Mahanaim means “two camps.” Why does he name the place Two Camps? From Jacob’s point of view, One Camp was what he had: a caravan of servants, flocks and family, now aided by Another Camp, a camp of angels. That must have been a great comfort to Jacob. He was facing his angry brother, so it must be nice to think you have angels on your side.
But Jacob was still immature in his faith. He still thought of God as a Big Helper in the Sky, not as the Lord of Glory who wants to use him and also make him a good and godly man.
Jacob sent messengers ahead to talk with Esau. He was hoping to ease his way back with gifts and servants, but the message came that Esau was on his way—with 400 men! So what does he do? He divides his flocks and family into Two Camps, two groups, and sends another groups with more gifts to try to appease his brother. Two Camps! He was imitating on the earthly level what God had showed him from the spiritual level. Jacob was still trying to do God’s job along with his own. Well, Jacob sent them all on ahead, crossing the Jabbok brook, and he stayed behind—the very last person that Esau would encounter. Look at vs. 22-23:
22That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.
We see Jacob here in a different mode than we have seen him before—panic mode. Esau is a tough guy. Now what?
This was the night God had been preparing Jacob for his whole life. This was the night that God would wound Jacob, for a very good reason. Look at vs. 24-25.
24So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.
Out of the blue—a “man” wrestles with him until daybreak. It seems like a draw until—blink! —He touched Jacob’s hip socket—OUCH!
The “man” is God Himself in human form. (Vs. 28 says he struggled with God, and in vs. 30, Jacob says he saw God face to face. So when we talk about Jacob wrestling an angel, it isn’t quite right. He was in an all-night WWF fight with God Himself, in human form.)
What’s the reason? Why did God mug Jacob? Why does God sometimes wrestle us down? Ever feel like God’s wrestling you?
Many years ago, a prospective student asked A.H. Strong, president of Rochester Theological Seminary, if there wasn’t some way to accelerate his course of study. His response:
“Oh, yes, but it depends on what you want to be. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years. When God wants to make a squash, He takes a few months.”
Jacob was about 60 years old when he finally wrestled with God. God brought him to this moment with great patience. God has brought you here up to today with great patience as well. We’re all hard cases with God, but remember God’s goal: to make us like His Son Jesus in our love for God and our love for people. This wasn’t Jacob’s character, and it’s not our character by nature. One way or another, God will pursue us.
When God gets us in these moments of desperation, crisis and struggle, I have observed two things:
He has us there to prepare us for something else, something greater. God always has a “next step” for us.
But we cannot see what that purpose is yet—we are in the dark about what His purpose is at the time!
Jacob was literally in the dark when God wrestled him. That’s exactly where God so often meets us to change us—in dark times. Look at vs. 26-28:
26Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered.
28Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Do you get the feeling that this all a set up? That the “man” was holding back? Anybody who can turn a hip joint into Jell-O with a touch could have put Jacob away in an instant.
The real point was not to whip Jacob—it was to change him. “You’re name’s Jacob? The Cheater? The King of the Sting? Not anymore. You’re Israel now—God’s Fighter. And this is how you win in a fight with God—by holding on, even in the dark, not by winning. You held on. That’s enough.”
This is how he overcame—he held on to God in the dark. And that’s how it works for us as well—we breakthrough in growth when we simply hold on to God in the dark. Do you want God to do a real work in your life? To take you from where you are to the next step? To see real maturity break out in your life? Then I tell you, you must hold on to God in the dark.
Some of you have been through these times. You know how dark the dark can be. And you know that you overcame not by winning but simply by holding on to God in the dark. When the wound is deepest, make the embrace the tightest. When the night is darkest, then wrestle the mightiest. Hold on to God in the dark.
I think of the McDonough family. They were in the church in worked in when I was in seminary. The dad, Condon, told me that before their son Brandon was born, they were a family that happened to be Christian. But their son’s Down’s syndrome caused them to reassess their lives. They held on to God in the dark. And as Condon puts it, they went from being a family that happened to be Christian to being a Christian family.
What happens in that dark place is that God gives us the blessing of Peniel—the blessing of seeing the face of God.
Read vs. 29-30:
29Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
30So Jacob called the place Peniel, [“Face of God”] saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
The blessing is this: I have seen God! Peniel is when you and God have a face-off, and you blink. Peniel is when you see God at work in your life. Peniel is almost always discovered in the dark. Peniel happens when you “let the Wookie win.”
That’s when Jacob was a changed man—a permanently changed man. Look at vs. 31-32:
31The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon.
That morning, Jacob was dead and Israel was born. He was a changed man. He would never be the same again. His limp was the necessary touch of God marked on his life for the rest of his days. Israel would memorialize this even in their eating habits. More important is the fact that the night by the Jabbok, Jacob learned that he could no longer be the independent, self-sufficient, act now, think later, kind of guy he’d been.
From the wreckage of this battle emerges a new man: a gentle, tender, thoughtful, godly man. A man who confesses his wrong to his brother Esau. A different man.
If you must wrestle with God, be sure to lose! Let God win! There is a beauty in this kind of brokenness. I have know saints who are chronologically mature, but nearly useless to God because they’re never been broken. They may have gone through the dark, but they did not hold on. They ran when the hand of God reached for their hip socket! They tried to win when they were wrestling with God.
But sometimes I meet people, some of whom have walked with God just a few years, some truly seasoned saints, in whom I see the beauty of brokenness.
Let me give you an example. Ravi Zacharias was raised in a Christian family in India—or as he calls his homeland, the land of 330,000,000 gods. Today, Ravi is perhaps the world’s best and best-known apologist for the Christian faith, author of dozens of books and has lectured in over 50 countries. At age 17, he gave his life to Christ. But the pressures put on him by his father, by his poor grades in school, and by the Hindu culture around him caused him to attempt suicide.
Lying in his hospital bed, a friend came in one day and read from the Bible. He frankly didn’t want to hear it; he wasn’t sure anymore what was truth and what wasn’t. They read from John 14. Vs. 6 he knew: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” But what really caught his attention was vs. 19: Because I live, you also will live.
That hospital bed was his Peniel. Listen to his own words:
Again, I wasn’t sure what all that meant. I pieced together God’s love in Christ, the way that was provided because of Christ, and the promise of life through Him—and on that hospital bed I made my commitment to put my life in His hands…
When I was able to leave the hospital, I was a new person. No, I didn’t have everything figured out. But Christ was part of my life, and the change was more dramatic than I could ever have imagined.
Ravi learned what Jacob had: he held on in the dark, and saw a miracle in his life: the hand of God.
Interesting. The next day, Jacob came limping and there was Esau—who just embraced and forgave Jacob for all the wrong he’d done him 20 years before. I love what Jacob says to Esau in Genesis 33:10. “To see your face is to see the face of God.” Jacob’s swagger is gone. His humility is real. He’s a man who’s been touched by God and who is a changed man.
After a while, he makes his way to Bethel, the place where had a dream of a stairway from heaven. It was Jacob who told the others to get rid of all the idols they’d brought with them and who built and altar and sacrificed to the Lord. And God appeared to him, this time in a vision, not a dream, and reaffirmed his new name (35:10):
God said to him, "Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel." So he named him Israel.
Today God wants to meet you here and show His face to you. He wants to remind us of the beauty of brokenness. He wants to call us to the next level, the next step.
Today we have two stations for prayer set up. On this side, we have a tent set up to remind us of the Mahanaim—the Two Camps. That stands for being self-sufficient. On the other side we have the cross. That stands for Peniel, the Face of God.
In our closing time, I’d invite you to take action. If you say, “Lord, I know I’m way too self-sufficient for my own good, I don’t trust in you with all my heart, I don’t acknowledge you in all my ways,” then good to Mahanaim and admit that to God. Confess your stubborn independence.
Then move over to Peniel. God wants to show you His face, His love. The cross of Jesus is the greatest demonstration of His love ever. Let Him touch you, wound you and heal you. He wants to transform you. He wants you to enter into the fullness of His will and plan for your life.
Instead of a closing pray, I’ve asked Matt and the worship leaders to sing softly, and give you the time you need—to come up and to let God touch you, heal you and maybe even give you a new name. Let’s worship and pray…
(Genesis 32-35)
Part Three of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 8, 2006
There’s a classic bit of comic relief in the original, 1977 “Star Wars” movie. The little trashcan shaped robot, R2D2 is playing 3-D chess with the seven-foot tall ape-like Wookie called Chewbacca—and the little guy is beating the big hairy guy. Han Solo warns R2D2 and his shiny golden robot companion, C-3PO (the one with the English butler accent), that Wookies have bad tempers and have been known to tear apart those who beat them, so C-3PO nervously says to R2D2, “My advice: Let the Wookie win!”
Sometimes, you have to let the Wookie win. Sometimes, you have to know when to “fold ‘em”, to quit, and to say that enough’s enough. No time is that more true than when you find yourself trying to fight with God. There’s a saying: Your arms are too short to box with God. That’s the situation that Jacob has here in Genesis 32-35.
We have to set up the story by looking at Jacob’s life thus far. We saw that while God had His hand on Jacob, Jacob was a schemer. He was always trying to do it his way. He scammed Esau out of both his birthright and his blessing, so he set off for the distant region of Paddan Aram (today, the border region of Syria and Iraq), the ancestral homeland of his people, both to flee from Esau’s rage—his brother was mumbling about killing him—as well as to find an acceptable wife from his clan, just as his own father had done before him. There he meets the family of Laban, who is more of a cheater than even Jacob. He fools him into marrying both of his daughters, Leah and Rachel, and basically makes him his wage slave for 20 years. While Jacob’s family and wealth grows, he is worn down by Laban’s demands and finally flees, going back to the land that one day would be called Israel.
But that means going right back to where Esau lives. That was the brother that 20 years ago wanted to kill Jacob for the way he’d been mistreated and cheated by Jacob.
Now, this is not just a soap opera from the 19th century BC. This is the story of God working in a man’s life. God was at work in Jacob’s life. We saw that back in chapter 28, where Jacob has a dream at a place he would call Bethel, the House of God. God showed him that the promises He’d made to his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac were for Jacob as well. God said He would make Jacob’s family into a great nation, a nation that would bless the whole world.
But Jacob’s faith was unsteady and uncertain. Again and again he shows an independent, self-sufficient streak that gets him into trouble.
There’s a passage in Proverbs, Proverbs 3:5-6, that tells us God’s intent for our lives:
5Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
That what God wants in your life: trust in Him, not in yourself. God wants you to give Him recognition in all areas of your life, and He promises then to bless you, to “make your path straight.”
Jacob was nowhere near this level of faith and trust. He was scared, and as we’ll see, he does his best to look out for himself until one faithful night.
What happened to change Jacob so much? We’ll find it all in the night Jacob wrestled God.
The mystery begins in the haunting words of Genesis 32:1-2:
1Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. 2When Jacob saw them, he said, "This is the camp of God!" So he named that place Mahanaim.
Mahanaim means “two camps.” Why does he name the place Two Camps? From Jacob’s point of view, One Camp was what he had: a caravan of servants, flocks and family, now aided by Another Camp, a camp of angels. That must have been a great comfort to Jacob. He was facing his angry brother, so it must be nice to think you have angels on your side.
But Jacob was still immature in his faith. He still thought of God as a Big Helper in the Sky, not as the Lord of Glory who wants to use him and also make him a good and godly man.
Jacob sent messengers ahead to talk with Esau. He was hoping to ease his way back with gifts and servants, but the message came that Esau was on his way—with 400 men! So what does he do? He divides his flocks and family into Two Camps, two groups, and sends another groups with more gifts to try to appease his brother. Two Camps! He was imitating on the earthly level what God had showed him from the spiritual level. Jacob was still trying to do God’s job along with his own. Well, Jacob sent them all on ahead, crossing the Jabbok brook, and he stayed behind—the very last person that Esau would encounter. Look at vs. 22-23:
22That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.
We see Jacob here in a different mode than we have seen him before—panic mode. Esau is a tough guy. Now what?
This was the night God had been preparing Jacob for his whole life. This was the night that God would wound Jacob, for a very good reason. Look at vs. 24-25.
24So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.
Out of the blue—a “man” wrestles with him until daybreak. It seems like a draw until—blink! —He touched Jacob’s hip socket—OUCH!
The “man” is God Himself in human form. (Vs. 28 says he struggled with God, and in vs. 30, Jacob says he saw God face to face. So when we talk about Jacob wrestling an angel, it isn’t quite right. He was in an all-night WWF fight with God Himself, in human form.)
What’s the reason? Why did God mug Jacob? Why does God sometimes wrestle us down? Ever feel like God’s wrestling you?
Many years ago, a prospective student asked A.H. Strong, president of Rochester Theological Seminary, if there wasn’t some way to accelerate his course of study. His response:
“Oh, yes, but it depends on what you want to be. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years. When God wants to make a squash, He takes a few months.”
Jacob was about 60 years old when he finally wrestled with God. God brought him to this moment with great patience. God has brought you here up to today with great patience as well. We’re all hard cases with God, but remember God’s goal: to make us like His Son Jesus in our love for God and our love for people. This wasn’t Jacob’s character, and it’s not our character by nature. One way or another, God will pursue us.
When God gets us in these moments of desperation, crisis and struggle, I have observed two things:
He has us there to prepare us for something else, something greater. God always has a “next step” for us.
But we cannot see what that purpose is yet—we are in the dark about what His purpose is at the time!
Jacob was literally in the dark when God wrestled him. That’s exactly where God so often meets us to change us—in dark times. Look at vs. 26-28:
26Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." 27The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered.
28Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Do you get the feeling that this all a set up? That the “man” was holding back? Anybody who can turn a hip joint into Jell-O with a touch could have put Jacob away in an instant.
The real point was not to whip Jacob—it was to change him. “You’re name’s Jacob? The Cheater? The King of the Sting? Not anymore. You’re Israel now—God’s Fighter. And this is how you win in a fight with God—by holding on, even in the dark, not by winning. You held on. That’s enough.”
This is how he overcame—he held on to God in the dark. And that’s how it works for us as well—we breakthrough in growth when we simply hold on to God in the dark. Do you want God to do a real work in your life? To take you from where you are to the next step? To see real maturity break out in your life? Then I tell you, you must hold on to God in the dark.
Some of you have been through these times. You know how dark the dark can be. And you know that you overcame not by winning but simply by holding on to God in the dark. When the wound is deepest, make the embrace the tightest. When the night is darkest, then wrestle the mightiest. Hold on to God in the dark.
I think of the McDonough family. They were in the church in worked in when I was in seminary. The dad, Condon, told me that before their son Brandon was born, they were a family that happened to be Christian. But their son’s Down’s syndrome caused them to reassess their lives. They held on to God in the dark. And as Condon puts it, they went from being a family that happened to be Christian to being a Christian family.
What happens in that dark place is that God gives us the blessing of Peniel—the blessing of seeing the face of God.
Read vs. 29-30:
29Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
30So Jacob called the place Peniel, [“Face of God”] saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
The blessing is this: I have seen God! Peniel is when you and God have a face-off, and you blink. Peniel is when you see God at work in your life. Peniel is almost always discovered in the dark. Peniel happens when you “let the Wookie win.”
That’s when Jacob was a changed man—a permanently changed man. Look at vs. 31-32:
31The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon.
That morning, Jacob was dead and Israel was born. He was a changed man. He would never be the same again. His limp was the necessary touch of God marked on his life for the rest of his days. Israel would memorialize this even in their eating habits. More important is the fact that the night by the Jabbok, Jacob learned that he could no longer be the independent, self-sufficient, act now, think later, kind of guy he’d been.
From the wreckage of this battle emerges a new man: a gentle, tender, thoughtful, godly man. A man who confesses his wrong to his brother Esau. A different man.
If you must wrestle with God, be sure to lose! Let God win! There is a beauty in this kind of brokenness. I have know saints who are chronologically mature, but nearly useless to God because they’re never been broken. They may have gone through the dark, but they did not hold on. They ran when the hand of God reached for their hip socket! They tried to win when they were wrestling with God.
But sometimes I meet people, some of whom have walked with God just a few years, some truly seasoned saints, in whom I see the beauty of brokenness.
Let me give you an example. Ravi Zacharias was raised in a Christian family in India—or as he calls his homeland, the land of 330,000,000 gods. Today, Ravi is perhaps the world’s best and best-known apologist for the Christian faith, author of dozens of books and has lectured in over 50 countries. At age 17, he gave his life to Christ. But the pressures put on him by his father, by his poor grades in school, and by the Hindu culture around him caused him to attempt suicide.
Lying in his hospital bed, a friend came in one day and read from the Bible. He frankly didn’t want to hear it; he wasn’t sure anymore what was truth and what wasn’t. They read from John 14. Vs. 6 he knew: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” But what really caught his attention was vs. 19: Because I live, you also will live.
That hospital bed was his Peniel. Listen to his own words:
Again, I wasn’t sure what all that meant. I pieced together God’s love in Christ, the way that was provided because of Christ, and the promise of life through Him—and on that hospital bed I made my commitment to put my life in His hands…
When I was able to leave the hospital, I was a new person. No, I didn’t have everything figured out. But Christ was part of my life, and the change was more dramatic than I could ever have imagined.
Ravi learned what Jacob had: he held on in the dark, and saw a miracle in his life: the hand of God.
Interesting. The next day, Jacob came limping and there was Esau—who just embraced and forgave Jacob for all the wrong he’d done him 20 years before. I love what Jacob says to Esau in Genesis 33:10. “To see your face is to see the face of God.” Jacob’s swagger is gone. His humility is real. He’s a man who’s been touched by God and who is a changed man.
After a while, he makes his way to Bethel, the place where had a dream of a stairway from heaven. It was Jacob who told the others to get rid of all the idols they’d brought with them and who built and altar and sacrificed to the Lord. And God appeared to him, this time in a vision, not a dream, and reaffirmed his new name (35:10):
God said to him, "Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel." So he named him Israel.
Today God wants to meet you here and show His face to you. He wants to remind us of the beauty of brokenness. He wants to call us to the next level, the next step.
Today we have two stations for prayer set up. On this side, we have a tent set up to remind us of the Mahanaim—the Two Camps. That stands for being self-sufficient. On the other side we have the cross. That stands for Peniel, the Face of God.
In our closing time, I’d invite you to take action. If you say, “Lord, I know I’m way too self-sufficient for my own good, I don’t trust in you with all my heart, I don’t acknowledge you in all my ways,” then good to Mahanaim and admit that to God. Confess your stubborn independence.
Then move over to Peniel. God wants to show you His face, His love. The cross of Jesus is the greatest demonstration of His love ever. Let Him touch you, wound you and heal you. He wants to transform you. He wants you to enter into the fullness of His will and plan for your life.
Instead of a closing pray, I’ve asked Matt and the worship leaders to sing softly, and give you the time you need—to come up and to let God touch you, heal you and maybe even give you a new name. Let’s worship and pray…
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The Life of Jacob, Part Two
Life Sure Gets Complicated
(Genesis 28-31)
Part Two of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 1, 2006
“Life sure gets complicated once you get past 18.” I remember a song on the radio with that line when I was a kid. Man, I wanted to get past 18 and on my own so bad, I didn’t believe it. Once I was out on my own, things would get a lot easier—so I thought. I would do what I wanted when I wanted and it would be easy. I would get an education and a job and make a lot of money. It would be simple.
Wrong! Life does get complicated. Jacob’s story unfolds as one thing leads to another. He moves, he marries, he has a family, he realizes that his father-in-law is cheating him, his brothers-in-law want to kill him, so he ends up on the run again, coming back to the land where his brother, Esau also wants to kill him. Sounds like fun. Sounds the like the plot of a telenovella.
Last week we began to look at the life of Jacob because Jacob’s story tells us things that can give us great insight into how God works in us to enable us to grow up spiritually. Last week we saw that while God had His hand on Jacob, Jacob was a schemer. He scammed Esau out of both his birthright and his blessing, so he sets off for the distant region of Paddan Aram, the ancestral homeland of his people, both to flee from Esau’s rage—his brother was mumbling about killing him—as well as to find an acceptable wife from his clan, just as his own father had done before him.
According to Romans 8:29, God’s desire is that we to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son.” That is, that we would love God and love His will and love people the same way that Jesus did when He was among us. God wants to work in us to become a fully formed follower of Jesus. Jesus Himself taught what that fully formed state looks like: it’s when we love God fully and love people truly. So far, Jacob has shown very little interest in God and has shown that he really only loves himself. But God is at work in Jacob’s life.
In the story of Jacob, we see God at work, to change him and woo him and draw him into a deep and real relationship with himself. He does that, so often, in and through the complications of life. Sometimes we think and act as if the Lord is neutral about things like work and love and marriage and family strife—that God only shows up at church. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is at work all the time, and loves to use the complications of life to form us and to shape us into the kind of person who shows His glory and grace and who turns to Him and gives Him the praise for the things He has done.
So God is at work in Jacob’s life. In this section, these four chapters, we’ll see God at work in Jacob’s life in two distinct ways. First, we’ll see how God makes certain promises to Jacob. God has a plan, and he revealed just enough of Jacob’s part in the plan to get his attention and to start him thinking about God’s place in his life. Now, it was only a start, and Jacob had a long way to go, but it was a beginning.
The second way that God went to work in Jacob’s life was through his relationship with his new father-in-law, Laban. I wish I could say it was because Laban was a great mentor to him, but that’s not the case. Instead, Laban is just as much a con man as Jacob. As a matter of fact, he may even be a better con man. Laban tricked, used and abused Jacob until Jacob couldn’t take it anymore.
What happened with Jacob is a perfect illustration of one of the iron laws of life: the law of sowing and reaping. The apostle Paul puts it this way in Galatians 6:7-8:
7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Jacob had sowed deception, so he would be deceived; Jacob had sowed trickery for gain, so he would be ripped off. In Laban, God gave Jacob a taste of his own medicine.
First, let’s see how God meets and makes some key promises to Jacob. That’s in chapter 28. First, before he takes off for Paddan Aram, his father Isaac gives him a blessing (vs. 3-4):
3May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. 4May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham.
Abraham was Jacob’s grandfather, and the memory of God’s promises to Abraham was becoming more of a family tradition than a living reality for Jacob. Still, these were the words were ringing in Jacob’s ear when he left.
He left from Beersheba, in the far south of the land on his journey to Paddan Aram, about 300 miles away. 30 miles was considered about the most you could go in one day. I want you to imagine Jacob leading a donkey laden with supplies. He pushes hard that first day, probably leaving before dawn and going into the night, until he’s so tired he has to stop. Instead of 30 miles, he’s walked almost 40 miles that day—a long, long way for a guy who had been a homebody. That’s when God speaks to him a second time—this time, not through his father’s blessing, but in a dream.
Look at Genesis 28:10-18:
10Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. 11When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
16When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."
18Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.
This has been called the vision of “Jacob’s Ladder”, though the NIV is right to translate what Jacob saw as a “stairway.” (More about the “stairway” later.) Above this stairway, he sees the Lord who makes the same promises to him that He’d made in years past to Abraham and his father Isaac—just like the blessing Isaac had given him.
Now there’s an upside and a downside to this vision. The upside is that the reality of God and His promises have been stamped on Jacob’s heart to a greater extent than ever before. The downside is that Jacob reacts in a way that shows that he still has a primitive, almost pagan, idea of God Himself.
Look at what he says. First, he think that’s he’s kind of stumbled on a heavenly gateway. (Kind of like the TV show “Stargate SG-1”.) So he ends up giving the village a new name, Bethel, which means The House of God.
Second, he makes a vow to God that has all the marks of a pagan vow. Look at vs. 20-22:
20Then Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21so that I return safely to my father's house, then the LORD will be my God 22and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth."
God, IF you go with me, watch over me, give me food and clothes, enable to come back THEN you’ll be my God and I will be a tither! Isn’t that nice of Jacob!
What Jacob experienced here isn’t all that different from what a middle school student may experience at camp. It’s a spiritual high. It has a huge impact. But that high isn’t matched by a deep knowledge of God and His ways. So we play “Let’s Make a Deal” with God. If you give me this, then I’ll do that for you.
But this is not God’s way. It may be the way of the pagan gods, but not the one true God. Again: he tells Jacob that He has a plan, and that Jacob has a role to play in that plan. This was not an offer; it was God’s sovereign plan. Jacob didn’t get that yet, and it would be a long while before he would.
Onward, to the north, Jacob journeys. In chapter 29, he reaches Paddan Aram. He meets a woman from his clan named Rachel, and he falls in love at first sight.
Rachel’s father is Laban, who is also Rebekah’s brother. This Laban is a cunning character. Look in Genesis 28:14-15:
14Then Laban said to him, "You are my own flesh and blood."
After Jacob had stayed with him for a whole month, 15Laban said to him, "Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be."
OK, a month’s enough; you can’t stay here for free, boy. He was a son in Isaac’s house, but in Laban’s house, he becomes a servant.
Jacob says, OK, that’s reasonable. Wages? What I really want is that cute daughter of yours, the young one, Rachel (not Leah, the older one, one the one with the bad eyes). So I’ll work for you for seven years, then I get her. Deal?
Laban agrees. Seven years pass. They have a big wedding feast. They have a big wedding night. And then in the morning, who does Jacob wake up in bed with? With bad-eyes Leah! Spitting mad, Jacob goes to Laban who calmly says, “It’s not our custom to marry off the younger before the older, so it’s a package deal. In another week, you can have Rachel as your wife as well. Oh, and by the way, that means you owe me seven more years of work.”
Now if I’d been Jacob, I think I would have said, “I’ve been here for SEVEN YEARS. Don’t you think you should have mentioned this little custom before now?”
But this is Jacob reaping what he’d sown. He tricked his own father, pretending to be the older son, Esau; now Laban tricked Jacob by having Leah pretend to be the younger daughter, Rachel. And he ends up being Laban’s virtual slave for 14 long years.
Laban wasn’t doing this for Jacob’s spiritual development, but God was. Laban was unloading an undesirable daughter and getting Jacob’s labor in return. But God was behind the scenes. God was using Laban’s greed and lack of character to build Jacob’s character. Hardship has the potential to make us better people. Jacob was learning that actions have consequences. He was learning patience. He was learning responsibility. He was learning self-control. Think about that when you think of the Labans in your life.
Now in chapter 29 and 30, we’re told of the births of many of Jacob’s children. And even as his family increases, his flocks increase. The 14 years are up, but Laban manages to keep Jacob around for about six more years. His flocks grow to be more numerous and healthier than Laban’s.
So it’s no surprise to read in chapter 31 than Laban’s own sons are resenting Jacob. Look in Genesis 31:1:
Jacob heard that Laban's sons were saying, "Jacob has taken everything our father owned and has gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father."
He must have had a flashback to his brother, Esau. These guys are seeing their own inheritance winding up in Jacob’s sheep pens. So he brings Leah and Rachel together and they form a bold plan: to flee with the children, the servants and the flocks to Canaan, back to the land Jacob had come from. And so they do.
When Laban found out, he pursued them. He wanted to keep Jacob as his slave and good luck charm. He knew that God had prospered Jacob, and that through Jacob, Laban had prospered as well. But just before they caught up with Jacob and the whole caravan God warned Laban in a dream not to mess with Jacob—not harm him or even to say anything about him. When he saw Jacob, Laban said he was just there to say good-bye to his daughters and grandkids, and he and Jacob made a covenant not to harm one another.
Laban was also looking for some missing idols, little household “gods” as they are called in 30, that Rachel had taken without Jacob’s knowledge. She was still pretty pagan in her beliefs and she probably took them because she believed they would guarantee her fertility (she’d had only one child, Joseph, as compared to Leah’s five sons and one daughter). She cleverly managed to keep them idols hidden until Laban gave up looking for them.
So Jacob and family are safely away from Laban and his sons. They are rich by ancient standards. But they are now on the outskirts of Canaan, and that meant Esau was nearby. The central event in the life of Jacob was yet to come. He will wrestle with God and his life will be revolutionized. But that’s next week. You don’t want to miss that!
Is God at work in your life? There is no question that He is. The only question is what you’re doing with His work—how you’re responding to His work.
Over the years, maybe you sensed God’s hand on you. You have a sense that God’s been there at some crucial points in your life. You’ve had your own “Bethel” times, times when you’ve sensed him near.
But at the same time, you’ve also run into your Labans—people and circumstances that have made you wonder if God even cares at all for you. Like Jacob, you didn’t realize that God sent the Labans as well. God uses the hard times, and hard people, to draw us near to Him.
But God’s been there the whole time. Jesus Himself has been there the whole time. Interesting—Jesus once mentioned the story of Jacob’s dream and He said something amazing about it. In John 1 He tells Nathaniel that before they’d even met, He’d seen him, like in a vision, reading under the fig tree. He was so amazed that he said to Jesus, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel!”
Then Jesus says, in John 1:50-51:
50Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." 51He then added, "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
Did you catch that? Jesus is saying that He is the stairway between heaven and earth, the stairway that Jacob saw in his dream, the One with the angels going up and down. He is the way, the one mediator between God and mankind.
And Jesus is the connection, the stairway, the mediator for you today. God wants you to know His best. He gave His best when He sent His Son. He is watching over every aspect of your life. He wants you to know Him as loving Lord and as Heavenly Father. God has a plan just for you. Don’t miss it!
(Genesis 28-31)
Part Two of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
October 1, 2006
“Life sure gets complicated once you get past 18.” I remember a song on the radio with that line when I was a kid. Man, I wanted to get past 18 and on my own so bad, I didn’t believe it. Once I was out on my own, things would get a lot easier—so I thought. I would do what I wanted when I wanted and it would be easy. I would get an education and a job and make a lot of money. It would be simple.
Wrong! Life does get complicated. Jacob’s story unfolds as one thing leads to another. He moves, he marries, he has a family, he realizes that his father-in-law is cheating him, his brothers-in-law want to kill him, so he ends up on the run again, coming back to the land where his brother, Esau also wants to kill him. Sounds like fun. Sounds the like the plot of a telenovella.
Last week we began to look at the life of Jacob because Jacob’s story tells us things that can give us great insight into how God works in us to enable us to grow up spiritually. Last week we saw that while God had His hand on Jacob, Jacob was a schemer. He scammed Esau out of both his birthright and his blessing, so he sets off for the distant region of Paddan Aram, the ancestral homeland of his people, both to flee from Esau’s rage—his brother was mumbling about killing him—as well as to find an acceptable wife from his clan, just as his own father had done before him.
According to Romans 8:29, God’s desire is that we to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son.” That is, that we would love God and love His will and love people the same way that Jesus did when He was among us. God wants to work in us to become a fully formed follower of Jesus. Jesus Himself taught what that fully formed state looks like: it’s when we love God fully and love people truly. So far, Jacob has shown very little interest in God and has shown that he really only loves himself. But God is at work in Jacob’s life.
In the story of Jacob, we see God at work, to change him and woo him and draw him into a deep and real relationship with himself. He does that, so often, in and through the complications of life. Sometimes we think and act as if the Lord is neutral about things like work and love and marriage and family strife—that God only shows up at church. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is at work all the time, and loves to use the complications of life to form us and to shape us into the kind of person who shows His glory and grace and who turns to Him and gives Him the praise for the things He has done.
So God is at work in Jacob’s life. In this section, these four chapters, we’ll see God at work in Jacob’s life in two distinct ways. First, we’ll see how God makes certain promises to Jacob. God has a plan, and he revealed just enough of Jacob’s part in the plan to get his attention and to start him thinking about God’s place in his life. Now, it was only a start, and Jacob had a long way to go, but it was a beginning.
The second way that God went to work in Jacob’s life was through his relationship with his new father-in-law, Laban. I wish I could say it was because Laban was a great mentor to him, but that’s not the case. Instead, Laban is just as much a con man as Jacob. As a matter of fact, he may even be a better con man. Laban tricked, used and abused Jacob until Jacob couldn’t take it anymore.
What happened with Jacob is a perfect illustration of one of the iron laws of life: the law of sowing and reaping. The apostle Paul puts it this way in Galatians 6:7-8:
7Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Jacob had sowed deception, so he would be deceived; Jacob had sowed trickery for gain, so he would be ripped off. In Laban, God gave Jacob a taste of his own medicine.
First, let’s see how God meets and makes some key promises to Jacob. That’s in chapter 28. First, before he takes off for Paddan Aram, his father Isaac gives him a blessing (vs. 3-4):
3May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. 4May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham.
Abraham was Jacob’s grandfather, and the memory of God’s promises to Abraham was becoming more of a family tradition than a living reality for Jacob. Still, these were the words were ringing in Jacob’s ear when he left.
He left from Beersheba, in the far south of the land on his journey to Paddan Aram, about 300 miles away. 30 miles was considered about the most you could go in one day. I want you to imagine Jacob leading a donkey laden with supplies. He pushes hard that first day, probably leaving before dawn and going into the night, until he’s so tired he has to stop. Instead of 30 miles, he’s walked almost 40 miles that day—a long, long way for a guy who had been a homebody. That’s when God speaks to him a second time—this time, not through his father’s blessing, but in a dream.
Look at Genesis 28:10-18:
10Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. 11When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
16When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."
18Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.
This has been called the vision of “Jacob’s Ladder”, though the NIV is right to translate what Jacob saw as a “stairway.” (More about the “stairway” later.) Above this stairway, he sees the Lord who makes the same promises to him that He’d made in years past to Abraham and his father Isaac—just like the blessing Isaac had given him.
Now there’s an upside and a downside to this vision. The upside is that the reality of God and His promises have been stamped on Jacob’s heart to a greater extent than ever before. The downside is that Jacob reacts in a way that shows that he still has a primitive, almost pagan, idea of God Himself.
Look at what he says. First, he think that’s he’s kind of stumbled on a heavenly gateway. (Kind of like the TV show “Stargate SG-1”.) So he ends up giving the village a new name, Bethel, which means The House of God.
Second, he makes a vow to God that has all the marks of a pagan vow. Look at vs. 20-22:
20Then Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21so that I return safely to my father's house, then the LORD will be my God 22and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth."
God, IF you go with me, watch over me, give me food and clothes, enable to come back THEN you’ll be my God and I will be a tither! Isn’t that nice of Jacob!
What Jacob experienced here isn’t all that different from what a middle school student may experience at camp. It’s a spiritual high. It has a huge impact. But that high isn’t matched by a deep knowledge of God and His ways. So we play “Let’s Make a Deal” with God. If you give me this, then I’ll do that for you.
But this is not God’s way. It may be the way of the pagan gods, but not the one true God. Again: he tells Jacob that He has a plan, and that Jacob has a role to play in that plan. This was not an offer; it was God’s sovereign plan. Jacob didn’t get that yet, and it would be a long while before he would.
Onward, to the north, Jacob journeys. In chapter 29, he reaches Paddan Aram. He meets a woman from his clan named Rachel, and he falls in love at first sight.
Rachel’s father is Laban, who is also Rebekah’s brother. This Laban is a cunning character. Look in Genesis 28:14-15:
14Then Laban said to him, "You are my own flesh and blood."
After Jacob had stayed with him for a whole month, 15Laban said to him, "Just because you are a relative of mine, should you work for me for nothing? Tell me what your wages should be."
OK, a month’s enough; you can’t stay here for free, boy. He was a son in Isaac’s house, but in Laban’s house, he becomes a servant.
Jacob says, OK, that’s reasonable. Wages? What I really want is that cute daughter of yours, the young one, Rachel (not Leah, the older one, one the one with the bad eyes). So I’ll work for you for seven years, then I get her. Deal?
Laban agrees. Seven years pass. They have a big wedding feast. They have a big wedding night. And then in the morning, who does Jacob wake up in bed with? With bad-eyes Leah! Spitting mad, Jacob goes to Laban who calmly says, “It’s not our custom to marry off the younger before the older, so it’s a package deal. In another week, you can have Rachel as your wife as well. Oh, and by the way, that means you owe me seven more years of work.”
Now if I’d been Jacob, I think I would have said, “I’ve been here for SEVEN YEARS. Don’t you think you should have mentioned this little custom before now?”
But this is Jacob reaping what he’d sown. He tricked his own father, pretending to be the older son, Esau; now Laban tricked Jacob by having Leah pretend to be the younger daughter, Rachel. And he ends up being Laban’s virtual slave for 14 long years.
Laban wasn’t doing this for Jacob’s spiritual development, but God was. Laban was unloading an undesirable daughter and getting Jacob’s labor in return. But God was behind the scenes. God was using Laban’s greed and lack of character to build Jacob’s character. Hardship has the potential to make us better people. Jacob was learning that actions have consequences. He was learning patience. He was learning responsibility. He was learning self-control. Think about that when you think of the Labans in your life.
Now in chapter 29 and 30, we’re told of the births of many of Jacob’s children. And even as his family increases, his flocks increase. The 14 years are up, but Laban manages to keep Jacob around for about six more years. His flocks grow to be more numerous and healthier than Laban’s.
So it’s no surprise to read in chapter 31 than Laban’s own sons are resenting Jacob. Look in Genesis 31:1:
Jacob heard that Laban's sons were saying, "Jacob has taken everything our father owned and has gained all this wealth from what belonged to our father."
He must have had a flashback to his brother, Esau. These guys are seeing their own inheritance winding up in Jacob’s sheep pens. So he brings Leah and Rachel together and they form a bold plan: to flee with the children, the servants and the flocks to Canaan, back to the land Jacob had come from. And so they do.
When Laban found out, he pursued them. He wanted to keep Jacob as his slave and good luck charm. He knew that God had prospered Jacob, and that through Jacob, Laban had prospered as well. But just before they caught up with Jacob and the whole caravan God warned Laban in a dream not to mess with Jacob—not harm him or even to say anything about him. When he saw Jacob, Laban said he was just there to say good-bye to his daughters and grandkids, and he and Jacob made a covenant not to harm one another.
Laban was also looking for some missing idols, little household “gods” as they are called in 30, that Rachel had taken without Jacob’s knowledge. She was still pretty pagan in her beliefs and she probably took them because she believed they would guarantee her fertility (she’d had only one child, Joseph, as compared to Leah’s five sons and one daughter). She cleverly managed to keep them idols hidden until Laban gave up looking for them.
So Jacob and family are safely away from Laban and his sons. They are rich by ancient standards. But they are now on the outskirts of Canaan, and that meant Esau was nearby. The central event in the life of Jacob was yet to come. He will wrestle with God and his life will be revolutionized. But that’s next week. You don’t want to miss that!
Is God at work in your life? There is no question that He is. The only question is what you’re doing with His work—how you’re responding to His work.
Over the years, maybe you sensed God’s hand on you. You have a sense that God’s been there at some crucial points in your life. You’ve had your own “Bethel” times, times when you’ve sensed him near.
But at the same time, you’ve also run into your Labans—people and circumstances that have made you wonder if God even cares at all for you. Like Jacob, you didn’t realize that God sent the Labans as well. God uses the hard times, and hard people, to draw us near to Him.
But God’s been there the whole time. Jesus Himself has been there the whole time. Interesting—Jesus once mentioned the story of Jacob’s dream and He said something amazing about it. In John 1 He tells Nathaniel that before they’d even met, He’d seen him, like in a vision, reading under the fig tree. He was so amazed that he said to Jesus, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel!”
Then Jesus says, in John 1:50-51:
50Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." 51He then added, "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
Did you catch that? Jesus is saying that He is the stairway between heaven and earth, the stairway that Jacob saw in his dream, the One with the angels going up and down. He is the way, the one mediator between God and mankind.
And Jesus is the connection, the stairway, the mediator for you today. God wants you to know His best. He gave His best when He sent His Son. He is watching over every aspect of your life. He wants you to know Him as loving Lord and as Heavenly Father. God has a plan just for you. Don’t miss it!
Monday, October 23, 2006
The Life of Jacob, Part One
I recently did a series on the life of Jacob, which I'll share here. Use as you see fit, to God be the glory!
The Gambler
(Genesis 25-27)
Part One of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
September 24, 2006
Today we start a five-week look at the life of Jacob, the man whom God renamed Israel and who gave that name to the nation and the people who are so much at the center of the plan of God in the Scriptures.
Now, why would we take five weeks to look at Jacob’s life? I could give you a lot of answers. One is that we have his whole life story told us, from before he was born till death. Another is that he is the last of the three great patriarchs of the Bible, after Abraham and Isaac.
But real reason I want to look at Jacob is the lessons we can learn from his life. You see, nobody so tricky and miserable has such a life change as that of Jacob; nobody so deceptive ends up as such a truth teller. Nobody as self-centered ends up so giving. That’s the lesson of Jacob, and it’s as contemporary as can be. It speaks to us today as followers of Jesus.
Through Jacob’s story we can gain great insight into how God works in us to enable us to grow up spiritually. When you come to God, when you give your life to Jesus as Lord, Jesus as the one who went to the cross for you and then rose up from the dead for you, God is just getting started with you. According to Romans 8:29, God’s desire is that we to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son.” That is, that we would love God and love His will and love people the same way that Jesus did when He was among us.
That’s not the way we come out of the box, though. That’s not the way we are by nature.
We start out as self-centered and self-consumed. We are, as Martin Luther said, curved inward toward ourselves.
God isn’t content to leave us like that. He is at work in the lives of all His children to become more and more like His firstborn, Jesus. And we can see how God works on display in the life of Jacob.
Now, the whole story of Jacob is scattered over 25 chapters of the book of Genesis, so there’s no way we can do that in detail in five weeks. We have to do a lot of picking from here and there. What I want to do this week is just show the character of Jacob as is—his human nature without a bit of God’s work in the man’s heart. If I had to give him a name, it would be The Gambler. You see, Jacob was a con man, a trickster, a grifter.
Genesis 25 tells of the death of Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham. Then we’re told about the descendants of his son Ismael, the father of today’s Arabic peoples. Then we go to the birth of the twin sons of Isaac, the favored son of Abraham. In vs. 19-26, we read:
19This is the account of Abraham's son Isaac.
Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean.
21Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The LORD answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 22The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, "Why is this happening to me?" So she went to inquire of the LORD.
23The LORD said to her,
"Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger."
24When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.
What a strange story! It’s helpful to know the meaning of the names Isaac gave to the two baby boys. Esau means “Hairy.” He also got the nickname “Edom” which means “red.” But what’s really odd is his brother. Here’s a newborn with his hand clutching his brother’s heel, so he gets the name Jacob, which means “heel-grabber.” And in the Hebrew of the time, “heel-grabber” has the idea of “Schemer” or “Tripper.” He was born to scheme, to gamble and to trick. And he did.
The first scam Jacob pulled is recorded right away, in Genesis 25:27-34. Let me sum it up for you. We’re told that Esau was an outdoorsman, and a hunter. On the other hand, Jacob was a homebody. We’re also told that while mom liked Jacob, dad liked Esau, which will set everybody up for a world of hurt. Anyway, we’re told that Esau came in one day hungry and saw that Jacob, who’d spent all morning watching the Food Network, was trying out a new recipe for a savory red stew. (Red lentil bean and lamb stew is still a favorite among the Arabs of the area.) Esau took one sniff and said, “Man, lemme have some of that stuff! I’m starving!”
Ever seen those commercials, “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” Jacob asks Esau, so what would you do for my creamy red stew? Would you, for example, sign over your rights as firstborn son to me for this delicious delight? And incredibly, Esau does.
You may think that couldn’t happen, or that Esau would never part with something so valuable. But according to Genesis 25:34, he “despised his birthright.” Ever know somebody who did everything they could to irritate their parents for no other reason than knowing that it would bother them? This seems to be a pattern with Esau. Over in Genesis 26:34-35, we read about Esau’s wives, and it’s interesting:
34When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah.
So Esau’s no innocent bystander here. He could be a real jerk. The difference between him and Jacob was that Jacob was a very smart jerk. He cheated Esau out of his birthright, which meant that Jacob would be the head of the family and would receive at least twice the inheritance of his brother, even though Esau was the older brother.
But Jacob wasn’t finished with Esau, and here’s where the fact that dad (Isaac) favored Esau while mom (Rebekah) favored Jacob led to a second scam that would have even longer lasting implications.
Before we get into that story, though, take a moment and consider. God had already told Rebekah that “the older will serve the younger.” God had a plan, and part of that plan was to choose Jacob to be the leader. The plan was to proceed through Jacob and his descendants.
In the New Testament, in Romans 9, Paul uses the story of Jacob and Esau to illustrate the fact that God is free to makes His choices anyway we wants to. It had nothing to do with who did what; it had everything to do with God’s sovereign choices, or what the Bible sometimes calls, God’s election.
You may think that you’re a difficult person for God to work with. If so, you’re in very good company with Jacob. For some people, following God seems fairly easy. John, the apostle who wrote the gospel, seems kind of that way. Yet there was a time that Jesus nicknamed John and his brother James the “sons of thunder”—and it wasn’t because of their easy-going nature. They could be angry and resentful, and Jesus gently teased them about it through the nickname he gave them. This was the same John, the only apostle to stay faithful to Jesus by being there when he was dying on the cross; the same John who saw the visions of the book of Revelation, the same John who wrote again and again, “God is love.” No, even for John, there was something bent in him that God wanted to straighten, and that God did straighten. That’s the way it really is with all of us, to one degree or another. We’re all in need of being transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.
So back to Jacob and his second great scam, there in Genesis 27. It was mom’s idea. It seems like all the women of Genesis are pretty tough-minded gals. Again, remember that the Lord had told Rebekah that Jacob was the one favored by God in the big plan. But like so many before and after, she wondered if God’s plan couldn’t use a little human help.
Here’s the story. Isaac is old, really old, about 137, and his eyesight’s pretty much gone. (Remember, this is before things like cataract surgery.)
So he’s stuck inside the tent and he calls for Esau. Here’s what it says in Genesis 27:1-4:
1When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for Esau his older son and said to him, "My son."
"Here I am," he answered.
2Isaac said, "I am now an old man and don't know the day of my death. 3Now then, get your weapons--your quiver and bow--and go out to the open country to hunt some wild game for me. 4Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat, so that I may give you my blessing before I die."
Isaac knew two things. The first was that he was old, blind, and he didn’t know how long he would live. After all, 137 is OLD! (That, by the way, was the same age his half-brother Ishmael had died at, so maybe that was on his mind.) The second was that Esau had given up his birthright. But there was something he could still do for Esau: he could give him his blessing. So he tells him to go out and hunt down some wild game, prepare it for him, and he would give Esau his blessing.
This may seem kind of strange until you understand some things about the culture of the time. A blessing had the same force as a “last will and testament.” A blessing of that kind was also considered a covenant, and covenants were almost always conducted as part of a meal. What would be more fitting than a meal of game taken by Esau for Esau’s covenant blessing?
Now, here’s where things get interesting. Rebekah overheard what Isaac said to Esau, so she went to Jacob and told him. She hatched a plot to steal even the blessing from Esau. She would fix a meal from the flock they already had; Jacob would dress in Esau’s clothes so the old man would catch the smell of a hunter on him. And when Jacob pointed out that unlike his hairy brother, he was pretty smooth, so Rebekah covered Jacob’s hands and neck with goatskins.
So in comes Jacob pretending to be Esau. “Back so soon?” asks Isaac. Then Jacob tells a whopper: “The Lord your God gave me success.” The old guy was suspicious: this kid sounds like Jacob! But he smelled Esau’s clothes, and felt his hairy hands, so he must have figured his hearing was going along with his eyesight, so he blessed him.
The blessing is recorded in Genesis 27:27-29:
"Ah, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field
that the LORD has blessed.
28May God give you of heaven's dew
and of earth's richness--
an abundance of grain and new wine.
29May nations serve you
and peoples bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers,
and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed
and those who bless you be blessed."
The blessing Isaac extended was designed to basically reverse the loss he’d experienced by selling his birthright. But it went to Jacob instead. And later, when Esau did show up, the real Esau, then he could not, under the laws and the customs of the time, reverse the blessing. Instead, Isaac told Esau that he and his descendants would experience harshness and oppression.
You can imagine the anger in Esau as he realizes he’s been cheated again. And in vs. 41 we’re told what Esau was saying: "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob." Both Isaac and Rebekah agree that Jacob should flee from the land. They send him off to the ancestral homeland of their family, to an area called Paddan Aram. In modern times, this is the border region between Syria and Iraq. This is the same region in which Rebekah was born and from which Abraham had come before coming into the Promised Land. Jacob would go there to find a wife from their clan and to marry her there.
Sadly, while Rebekah thought that Esau would cool off after “a while”, he ended up being there for 20 years. And ironically, during that time, Rebekah would die—and Isaac would still be alive, all those years later.
So that’s where we’ll pick up Jacob’s story next week: running for his life, because his trickery had caught up with him.
So let’s think application to us here. What are you like, and what in you does God want to change, and to straighten out? If you’re alive and breathing, I guarantee you that God wants to do some spiritual surgery on your life. How does that happen?
Well, I think that we can identify two main ways God works in us to become more and more the fully formed follower of Jesus He wants us to be, and to be more and more like Jesus, with the family resemblance of the family of God. The first is responding to the circumstances of life in a way that exercises dependence on God as opposed to self-reliance. That’s what so much of the story of Jacob is about, and we’ll come back to it in the weeks to come.
The second is described in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Paul is referring to another Old Testament story: the story of Moses. I won’t go into detail on that, I just want to make one point: it’s contact with God that transforms us. We shine with God’s light when we take off our mask, our veil, and God’s presence changes us.
That will be the next step for Jacob. God will meet him and begin the process of transforming him.
God as well wants to touch you today at the point of your deepest need. Look inside: you know the things in you that are broken, bent and in need of healing. And God knows them too, and better than we do.
As we close, I’m going to ask us all to come quietly before the Lord and to listen to His call. To listen to the Spirit as He shows us our need, the bent and broken things in you, the things we all have that need to be changed, and ask Him to shows us God’s solution. Let’s come quietly before the Lord before we close in prayer.
The Gambler
(Genesis 25-27)
Part One of the Series Struggling With God—
Lessons from the Life of Jacob
September 24, 2006
Today we start a five-week look at the life of Jacob, the man whom God renamed Israel and who gave that name to the nation and the people who are so much at the center of the plan of God in the Scriptures.
Now, why would we take five weeks to look at Jacob’s life? I could give you a lot of answers. One is that we have his whole life story told us, from before he was born till death. Another is that he is the last of the three great patriarchs of the Bible, after Abraham and Isaac.
But real reason I want to look at Jacob is the lessons we can learn from his life. You see, nobody so tricky and miserable has such a life change as that of Jacob; nobody so deceptive ends up as such a truth teller. Nobody as self-centered ends up so giving. That’s the lesson of Jacob, and it’s as contemporary as can be. It speaks to us today as followers of Jesus.
Through Jacob’s story we can gain great insight into how God works in us to enable us to grow up spiritually. When you come to God, when you give your life to Jesus as Lord, Jesus as the one who went to the cross for you and then rose up from the dead for you, God is just getting started with you. According to Romans 8:29, God’s desire is that we to be “conformed to the likeness of his Son.” That is, that we would love God and love His will and love people the same way that Jesus did when He was among us.
That’s not the way we come out of the box, though. That’s not the way we are by nature.
We start out as self-centered and self-consumed. We are, as Martin Luther said, curved inward toward ourselves.
God isn’t content to leave us like that. He is at work in the lives of all His children to become more and more like His firstborn, Jesus. And we can see how God works on display in the life of Jacob.
Now, the whole story of Jacob is scattered over 25 chapters of the book of Genesis, so there’s no way we can do that in detail in five weeks. We have to do a lot of picking from here and there. What I want to do this week is just show the character of Jacob as is—his human nature without a bit of God’s work in the man’s heart. If I had to give him a name, it would be The Gambler. You see, Jacob was a con man, a trickster, a grifter.
Genesis 25 tells of the death of Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham. Then we’re told about the descendants of his son Ismael, the father of today’s Arabic peoples. Then we go to the birth of the twin sons of Isaac, the favored son of Abraham. In vs. 19-26, we read:
19This is the account of Abraham's son Isaac.
Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean.
21Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The LORD answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 22The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, "Why is this happening to me?" So she went to inquire of the LORD.
23The LORD said to her,
"Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger."
24When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.
What a strange story! It’s helpful to know the meaning of the names Isaac gave to the two baby boys. Esau means “Hairy.” He also got the nickname “Edom” which means “red.” But what’s really odd is his brother. Here’s a newborn with his hand clutching his brother’s heel, so he gets the name Jacob, which means “heel-grabber.” And in the Hebrew of the time, “heel-grabber” has the idea of “Schemer” or “Tripper.” He was born to scheme, to gamble and to trick. And he did.
The first scam Jacob pulled is recorded right away, in Genesis 25:27-34. Let me sum it up for you. We’re told that Esau was an outdoorsman, and a hunter. On the other hand, Jacob was a homebody. We’re also told that while mom liked Jacob, dad liked Esau, which will set everybody up for a world of hurt. Anyway, we’re told that Esau came in one day hungry and saw that Jacob, who’d spent all morning watching the Food Network, was trying out a new recipe for a savory red stew. (Red lentil bean and lamb stew is still a favorite among the Arabs of the area.) Esau took one sniff and said, “Man, lemme have some of that stuff! I’m starving!”
Ever seen those commercials, “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” Jacob asks Esau, so what would you do for my creamy red stew? Would you, for example, sign over your rights as firstborn son to me for this delicious delight? And incredibly, Esau does.
You may think that couldn’t happen, or that Esau would never part with something so valuable. But according to Genesis 25:34, he “despised his birthright.” Ever know somebody who did everything they could to irritate their parents for no other reason than knowing that it would bother them? This seems to be a pattern with Esau. Over in Genesis 26:34-35, we read about Esau’s wives, and it’s interesting:
34When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah.
So Esau’s no innocent bystander here. He could be a real jerk. The difference between him and Jacob was that Jacob was a very smart jerk. He cheated Esau out of his birthright, which meant that Jacob would be the head of the family and would receive at least twice the inheritance of his brother, even though Esau was the older brother.
But Jacob wasn’t finished with Esau, and here’s where the fact that dad (Isaac) favored Esau while mom (Rebekah) favored Jacob led to a second scam that would have even longer lasting implications.
Before we get into that story, though, take a moment and consider. God had already told Rebekah that “the older will serve the younger.” God had a plan, and part of that plan was to choose Jacob to be the leader. The plan was to proceed through Jacob and his descendants.
In the New Testament, in Romans 9, Paul uses the story of Jacob and Esau to illustrate the fact that God is free to makes His choices anyway we wants to. It had nothing to do with who did what; it had everything to do with God’s sovereign choices, or what the Bible sometimes calls, God’s election.
You may think that you’re a difficult person for God to work with. If so, you’re in very good company with Jacob. For some people, following God seems fairly easy. John, the apostle who wrote the gospel, seems kind of that way. Yet there was a time that Jesus nicknamed John and his brother James the “sons of thunder”—and it wasn’t because of their easy-going nature. They could be angry and resentful, and Jesus gently teased them about it through the nickname he gave them. This was the same John, the only apostle to stay faithful to Jesus by being there when he was dying on the cross; the same John who saw the visions of the book of Revelation, the same John who wrote again and again, “God is love.” No, even for John, there was something bent in him that God wanted to straighten, and that God did straighten. That’s the way it really is with all of us, to one degree or another. We’re all in need of being transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.
So back to Jacob and his second great scam, there in Genesis 27. It was mom’s idea. It seems like all the women of Genesis are pretty tough-minded gals. Again, remember that the Lord had told Rebekah that Jacob was the one favored by God in the big plan. But like so many before and after, she wondered if God’s plan couldn’t use a little human help.
Here’s the story. Isaac is old, really old, about 137, and his eyesight’s pretty much gone. (Remember, this is before things like cataract surgery.)
So he’s stuck inside the tent and he calls for Esau. Here’s what it says in Genesis 27:1-4:
1When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for Esau his older son and said to him, "My son."
"Here I am," he answered.
2Isaac said, "I am now an old man and don't know the day of my death. 3Now then, get your weapons--your quiver and bow--and go out to the open country to hunt some wild game for me. 4Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat, so that I may give you my blessing before I die."
Isaac knew two things. The first was that he was old, blind, and he didn’t know how long he would live. After all, 137 is OLD! (That, by the way, was the same age his half-brother Ishmael had died at, so maybe that was on his mind.) The second was that Esau had given up his birthright. But there was something he could still do for Esau: he could give him his blessing. So he tells him to go out and hunt down some wild game, prepare it for him, and he would give Esau his blessing.
This may seem kind of strange until you understand some things about the culture of the time. A blessing had the same force as a “last will and testament.” A blessing of that kind was also considered a covenant, and covenants were almost always conducted as part of a meal. What would be more fitting than a meal of game taken by Esau for Esau’s covenant blessing?
Now, here’s where things get interesting. Rebekah overheard what Isaac said to Esau, so she went to Jacob and told him. She hatched a plot to steal even the blessing from Esau. She would fix a meal from the flock they already had; Jacob would dress in Esau’s clothes so the old man would catch the smell of a hunter on him. And when Jacob pointed out that unlike his hairy brother, he was pretty smooth, so Rebekah covered Jacob’s hands and neck with goatskins.
So in comes Jacob pretending to be Esau. “Back so soon?” asks Isaac. Then Jacob tells a whopper: “The Lord your God gave me success.” The old guy was suspicious: this kid sounds like Jacob! But he smelled Esau’s clothes, and felt his hairy hands, so he must have figured his hearing was going along with his eyesight, so he blessed him.
The blessing is recorded in Genesis 27:27-29:
"Ah, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field
that the LORD has blessed.
28May God give you of heaven's dew
and of earth's richness--
an abundance of grain and new wine.
29May nations serve you
and peoples bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers,
and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed
and those who bless you be blessed."
The blessing Isaac extended was designed to basically reverse the loss he’d experienced by selling his birthright. But it went to Jacob instead. And later, when Esau did show up, the real Esau, then he could not, under the laws and the customs of the time, reverse the blessing. Instead, Isaac told Esau that he and his descendants would experience harshness and oppression.
You can imagine the anger in Esau as he realizes he’s been cheated again. And in vs. 41 we’re told what Esau was saying: "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob." Both Isaac and Rebekah agree that Jacob should flee from the land. They send him off to the ancestral homeland of their family, to an area called Paddan Aram. In modern times, this is the border region between Syria and Iraq. This is the same region in which Rebekah was born and from which Abraham had come before coming into the Promised Land. Jacob would go there to find a wife from their clan and to marry her there.
Sadly, while Rebekah thought that Esau would cool off after “a while”, he ended up being there for 20 years. And ironically, during that time, Rebekah would die—and Isaac would still be alive, all those years later.
So that’s where we’ll pick up Jacob’s story next week: running for his life, because his trickery had caught up with him.
So let’s think application to us here. What are you like, and what in you does God want to change, and to straighten out? If you’re alive and breathing, I guarantee you that God wants to do some spiritual surgery on your life. How does that happen?
Well, I think that we can identify two main ways God works in us to become more and more the fully formed follower of Jesus He wants us to be, and to be more and more like Jesus, with the family resemblance of the family of God. The first is responding to the circumstances of life in a way that exercises dependence on God as opposed to self-reliance. That’s what so much of the story of Jacob is about, and we’ll come back to it in the weeks to come.
The second is described in 2 Corinthians 3:18:
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
Paul is referring to another Old Testament story: the story of Moses. I won’t go into detail on that, I just want to make one point: it’s contact with God that transforms us. We shine with God’s light when we take off our mask, our veil, and God’s presence changes us.
That will be the next step for Jacob. God will meet him and begin the process of transforming him.
God as well wants to touch you today at the point of your deepest need. Look inside: you know the things in you that are broken, bent and in need of healing. And God knows them too, and better than we do.
As we close, I’m going to ask us all to come quietly before the Lord and to listen to His call. To listen to the Spirit as He shows us our need, the bent and broken things in you, the things we all have that need to be changed, and ask Him to shows us God’s solution. Let’s come quietly before the Lord before we close in prayer.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
More Than a Reasonable Truce in the Worship Wars
I write a column for the Temple City News, the local monthly paper circulated by the Chamber of Commerce. Here's my November column.
The last twenty years may go down in church history as the era of the worship wars. No shots were fired, but plenty of shouts were. Basically, in the worship wars, the traditionalists were lined up against the contemporarists. One faction saw worship being degraded into performance, while the other saw worship being rescued from irrelevance.
I thought I’d lay forth some propositions that hopefully lay this misguided war to rest. I write as someone who is worship ambidextrous. What I mean is that I can really worship in a highly liturgical setting as well as something that’s as free-flowing as a Friends meeting or a Pentecostal service.
1. We don’t understand worship if we think it’s about us. It’s not. It’s about God. It’s not a show.
2. The essence of worship is expressed love to God. That’s the heart of worship. Love of God is the Great Commandment, Part 1 (see Mark 12:28-30). In worship, believers express that love. Real worship should be occurring all the time. Gathered worship has its own unique place and power.
3. We all develop our worship language, and can learn new words. “Worship language” is a term my old friend Mark Hamilton introduced to me. By that we mean that patterns of worship we have become accustomed to. For some, that’s a diet of Fanny Crosby songs, for others it’s Bach, for others, it’s Maranatha Praise Band.
Just as we can learn a new language by a combination of effort, practice and desire, so we can learn a new worship language as well. It’s just lazy to refuse to grow because, “That’s what I was raised with.”
4. There is no virtue in worship that raises unnecessary walls for non-believers. When I teach our new member class at First Baptist, I actually show a picture of the “culture gap” that God has called the church to bridge. It’s interesting how much the book of Acts describes the importance of cross-cultural communication. In Acts, Jewish believers in Jesus first have to struggle with communicating the faith to Samaritans and then to utterly pagan Gentiles. If you follow the story carefully, new cultural clusters are brought into the fold: in the northern Levant area, then in what is now central Turkey, then the western Aegean area, then Macedonia-Greece, then Rome. Each new area required a contextualization of the Jesus message that was appropriate to the area without compromising His message.
Part of that must have included worship and musical style. Jewish styles had to yield to Greek and Roman styles, or the style would have gotten in the way of the message. The message was too important to compromise or to block by mere style.
5. I don’t have to have worship my way—as a matter of fact, it’s good that I don’t. If worship is about God and not me, and if worship style should not be a barrier to worship, then it follows that I don’t have to have to have worship my way—as a matter of fact, it’s good that I don’t! If it were always to my liking, then I would be saying that it is all about me!
But there’s another reason. According to Philippians 2:3, believers should “in humility consider others better than yourselves.” The needs of others, including the need to worship in their “native worship language”, comes before my need (or preference) every time! Always having things “my way” breeds selfishness and arrogance on my part. Sacrificing my preferences for others breeds humility and tender-heartedness instead.
So, when you worship, and it’s not your preferred worship language, praise God for the ones who are worshipping, and in a sense, worship through their worship. And when worship is in your worship language, pray for the forbearance of others. And that is not only a truce in the worship wars—it’s real worship!
The last twenty years may go down in church history as the era of the worship wars. No shots were fired, but plenty of shouts were. Basically, in the worship wars, the traditionalists were lined up against the contemporarists. One faction saw worship being degraded into performance, while the other saw worship being rescued from irrelevance.
I thought I’d lay forth some propositions that hopefully lay this misguided war to rest. I write as someone who is worship ambidextrous. What I mean is that I can really worship in a highly liturgical setting as well as something that’s as free-flowing as a Friends meeting or a Pentecostal service.
1. We don’t understand worship if we think it’s about us. It’s not. It’s about God. It’s not a show.
2. The essence of worship is expressed love to God. That’s the heart of worship. Love of God is the Great Commandment, Part 1 (see Mark 12:28-30). In worship, believers express that love. Real worship should be occurring all the time. Gathered worship has its own unique place and power.
3. We all develop our worship language, and can learn new words. “Worship language” is a term my old friend Mark Hamilton introduced to me. By that we mean that patterns of worship we have become accustomed to. For some, that’s a diet of Fanny Crosby songs, for others it’s Bach, for others, it’s Maranatha Praise Band.
Just as we can learn a new language by a combination of effort, practice and desire, so we can learn a new worship language as well. It’s just lazy to refuse to grow because, “That’s what I was raised with.”
4. There is no virtue in worship that raises unnecessary walls for non-believers. When I teach our new member class at First Baptist, I actually show a picture of the “culture gap” that God has called the church to bridge. It’s interesting how much the book of Acts describes the importance of cross-cultural communication. In Acts, Jewish believers in Jesus first have to struggle with communicating the faith to Samaritans and then to utterly pagan Gentiles. If you follow the story carefully, new cultural clusters are brought into the fold: in the northern Levant area, then in what is now central Turkey, then the western Aegean area, then Macedonia-Greece, then Rome. Each new area required a contextualization of the Jesus message that was appropriate to the area without compromising His message.
Part of that must have included worship and musical style. Jewish styles had to yield to Greek and Roman styles, or the style would have gotten in the way of the message. The message was too important to compromise or to block by mere style.
5. I don’t have to have worship my way—as a matter of fact, it’s good that I don’t. If worship is about God and not me, and if worship style should not be a barrier to worship, then it follows that I don’t have to have to have worship my way—as a matter of fact, it’s good that I don’t! If it were always to my liking, then I would be saying that it is all about me!
But there’s another reason. According to Philippians 2:3, believers should “in humility consider others better than yourselves.” The needs of others, including the need to worship in their “native worship language”, comes before my need (or preference) every time! Always having things “my way” breeds selfishness and arrogance on my part. Sacrificing my preferences for others breeds humility and tender-heartedness instead.
So, when you worship, and it’s not your preferred worship language, praise God for the ones who are worshipping, and in a sense, worship through their worship. And when worship is in your worship language, pray for the forbearance of others. And that is not only a truce in the worship wars—it’s real worship!
Saturday, October 21, 2006
TransMin Conference Ends on Hopeful, Even Triumphant, Note
The first annual conference of Transformation Ministries ended today on an upbeat and united note. This year's conference in Alhambra, the first since the pro forma break between the former ABC of the Pacific Southwest and the ABCUSA, was nearly twice the size of last year's conference in Bakersfield.
Yesterday I reported that the selection of Ken Hutcherson was part of the effort to draw a clear "line in the sand" between the old and new order. That line was made even clearer when delegates overwhelming approved the preliminary changes in bylaws needed to effect the legal separation of TransMin from Valley Forge. That, despite the churlish attempt of an retired attorney-delegate from FBC Claremont, CA, who tried to hijack and filibuster proceedings with a (his words) "laundry list" of objections. In essence, he wanted his church to have the ability to buy influence in an organization which he despises. (See more under SIMONY in your dictionary.)
The real line in the sand is that TransMin is building a truly missional fellowship of Baptist churches. No more mainline club member, be careful what you say, you may offend somebody, let's appoint a study group claptrap.
We heard an enthusiastic presentation on the National Association of Evangelicals as well as a (typical for Dale) well-reasoned and Biblically-based study on the NT roots of associationalism.
Near the very end, Tom Mercer of the mega-church High Desert Church of Victorville, CA, spoke briefly. "There's a lot I don't know," he said. But there were three things he did know:
1. The ABC was headed in the wrong direction: "...appointing tasks forces to discuss what God has already decided."
2. Doing a few things well was essential, and,
3. Right direction requires the right leadership, and that Dale Salico had his full confidence.
A grand conference, and my kudos to all involved.
PS. A note to my ABC readers across the country. Don't you wish your conferences where like this? I've served in four regions, and hosted a state confernece when I was in Ohio. Get this clear: you can't have this when you wallow in theological compromise and accomodation with the world. You work out the implications...
Friday, October 20, 2006
A Line in the Sand
TransMin Conference #2: October 20, 2006
For some pathetic reason, Dennis, the Barking Dog, McFadden felt the need to post this afternoon. To save myself from carpel tunnel, I quote:
On the second day of the first Annual Meeting for the newly formed Transformation Ministries, standing room only conferees heard keynote speaker Ken Huthcherson call for “unity without compromise” and exhort listeners to take church discipline seriously. Employing the incident of Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree he explained that to advertise the wares without the fruit was the basis for Christ’s condemnation.
Applying the text to today, he reminded the church leaders that if you have the trappings of religion such as congregations, organization, infra-structure and the like, you better deliver the goods as well. One listener told me that he saw the application as being one comparing the ABC to the barren fig tree cursed by God and reminding those of us in TM of the danger of following this fruitless pattern.
In the afternoon, Dr. Dale Salico, preached on 1 Peter 2:4-7. He asked who is the “living stone” and who are the “living stones” mentioned in the text. Contrary to his former understanding of this text, he found that Peter refers to the churches in the area, not to the individuals in the congregation. A proper understanding of the text assails the “heresy of the utter independence and absolute autonomy of the local church,” Salico declared.
According to the executive of Transformation Ministries, an over emphasis upon congregational autonomy is wrong because . . .
* It is contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible
* It debilitates the church’s mission
* It destroys pastors
In illustration of the final point, he screened a video clip from the movie Spider Man where the discouraged hero discards his outfit and abandons his mission. He encouraged those who were feeling like Spider Man to take comfort from 1 Peter 2:4-7 and to “come and let yourself be placed in the building among other churches as a spiritual house.
And now, the (say it like Paul Harvey) rest of the story.
After the session with Dale Salico, churches were grouped together either by size of ethnicity to discuss a proposed new covenant of relationships among TransMin churches--one that is very much within the stream of Baptist history and practice.
The PM program included Ken Hutcherson's last message, on the faith of the Canaanite woman entitled, "How Many Ouches Can You Take?" (In short, she got ouch after ouch from Jesus and His disciples until Jesus granted her request. This was to build her faith. How many ouches can you take?) A great conclusion to a great day.
But now a bit of hallway chatter significa. I learned that one reason Ken Hutcherson was invited was to (this is a quote) "draw a line in the sand" between the old ABC/PSW order and the new order. "Hutch" did do some of his own line drawing (see McFadden's comments in his second paragraph.) A quick Google search on Ken Hutcherson reveals the bare-knucked hatred that that his opponents (mostly gay activitists) have for Ken. He says he doesn't care and my impression is that...he really doesn't care. What he does very much is care passionately about what God thinks. Thanks, Hutch. And thanks to Dale and the crew for such a fine conference.
I will post again in mid-afternoon, Pacific time.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
TransMin Conference Starts on Inspiring Note
Report #1: October 19, 2006
The first night of the first conference of Transformation Ministries, the continuation of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest in its post Valley Forge life, started on a high note with a message by Dr. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church of Kirkland, WA. Ken challenged conferees to an immediate obedience to the command of Jesus.
Only the most indirect references were made to the protracted ABC/PSW crisis, which led the region to functionally separate from the national body earlier this year (the date the separation takes legal effect is Nov. 1). One reference came about spontaneously. When Executive Minister Dr. Dale Salico arose to welcome delegates and to introduce Ken Hutcherson (whom he has known since 1986), he said, "Welcome to the first conference of Transformation Ministries!" Normally that would be a throw away line, but instead conferees rose to their feet and delivered a three-minute standing ovation. Dale was obviously moved, but as befits his normal exercise of class, he did not milk the moment and proceeded with his introductions.
Stay tuned. Expect another report to be posted around 10 PM Pacific Friday night. More on conference happenings and hallway chatter.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
First Transformation Ministries Conference to Begin Thursday in Alhambra, California
Under the theme, "Extreme Makeover: Church Edition", the first conference of Transformation Ministries will begin Thursday, October 19 at the First Baptist Church of Alhambra, California.
[Readers of DD may need to be reminded that FBC Alhambra is Dennis ("His Barking Dog") McFadden's home church. His wife, Jeanette, is Children's pastor there. My friend and traveling companion to Israel, Dr. Lee Hamby is Senior Pastor. FBC Alhambra is literally across the street from Atherton Baptist Homes and is a grand total of five miles from where I type.]
Readers can check out more on the conference on the new website. The conference, in many ways, is no great departure from the PSW conferences in the past. For example ABFMS* missionaries Mike and Lori Mann will be featured.
I will try to report each evening after the conference (I get to sleep at home!) and will especially report on the Saturday business session (see relevant info here.)
*American Baptist Foreign Missions Society. DD does not use the Board of International Ministries nomenclature, nor refer to these as "American Baptist missionaries."
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Not Anti-Gay, but Pro-Marriage--in Boston
It's great to see Ray Pendleton, whom I had at Gordon-Conwell for counseling, involved in this. Call Tremont Temple a "small" church is also interesting; it, along with Park Street Church, are the two great lights of the gospel in downtown Boston. I wonder if we'll see our AWAB loving leaders in VF dropping in at Tremont Temple.
Group to rally opposition to gay marriage
Romney to speak at event targeting evangelical voters
The Rev. Ray Pendleton of Tremont Temple Baptist Church said ‘‘Liberty Sunday’’ hopes to strengthen a Biblical view of marriage. (Bill Brett for the Boston Globe)
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff October 15, 2006
In an attempt to motivate religious conservatives to go to the polls next month, a national organization of family values activists will join Governor Mitt Romney and more than 1,000 local churchgoers today to argue to evangelicals that the legalization of same-sex marriage here is threatening religious liberty throughout the country.
The event, dubbed ``Liberty Sunday" by its organizer, the Family Research Council, will be simulcast from the Tremont Temple Baptist Church , near Boston Common, to hundreds of churches. It will also be broadcast on several Christian television and radio networks as well as over the Internet. The council, which over the last two years has staged six similar events at other sites around the country, estimates a potential audience of 79 million, but says it is impossible to measure exactly how many people really tune in.
The council-sponsored broadcasts have become influential enough that Romney, a Republican who is exploring a run for the presidency in 2008, on Friday added the event to his schedule.
``The governor recognizes that this event is an important milestone in the effort to preserve traditional marriage in Massachusetts," said Romney's spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom . ``The governor will talk about the importance of marriage, and the fact that the debate over gay marriage is not so much a debate about adult rights as it is about the rights of children to be raised in a home with a mother and a father."
The event is timed with a little more than three weeks to go before the Nov. 7 mid term congressional elections, in which control of both the House and Senate is up for grabs and a new governor of Massachusetts will be elected. Republican strategists have become increasingly worried that conservative evangelicals, frustrated by a number of recent congressional scandals and a lack of progress on issues they care about, may not turn out to vote this fall in the same numbers as they have in recent elections.
Eight states -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin -- will be voting on constitutional amendments that would bar same-sex marriage. And two days later, on Beacon Hill, the Legislature is to vote on whether to advance toward the ballot a measure that would overturn same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the only state where it is legal.
``The governor is committed to doing what he can to get this issue on the ballot, so that people can be heard," Fehrnstrom said.
The Liberty Sunday event is provoking opposition from more liberal religious groups. The vicar of Old North Church, an Episcopal parish, is objecting to the use of an image of his church's steeple in the Family Research Council's promotional materials. A gay and lesbian group at Arlington Street Church , a Unitarian Universalist parish, will be sponsoring a candlelight vigil outside the Tremont Temple during the broadcast
And at Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish, a previously scheduled gathering to discuss religious support of gay marriage will now include a critique of the Family Research Council, arguing that conservative religious interests are threatening religious liberty by trying to prevent the government from recognizing marriages that are sanctioned by liberal religious denominations.
"`This is part of this year's crusade to get out the vote for the most conservative Republican candidates possible, and to use the imagery of religion to do so," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn , a United Church of Christ minister who is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ``The rhetoric at their past events has been so inflammatory, it should be an embarrassment to anyone even if they're anti-gay marriage. The event is a common scare tactic to advance their anti gay agenda."
Several other groups, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, are calling on Romney to distance himself from what they describe as bigoted statements by speakers at a previous Family Research Council event.
The council, formerly a part of Focus on the Family, lobbies Congress through an affiliate, called FRC Action. Among its policy positions are supporting measures that define marriage as a heterosexual institution, opposing abortion, and promoting the confirmation of conservative nominees to the federal judiciary. According to its website, the organization also supports ``a renewal of ethical monotheism and traditional Judeo-Christian standards of morality."
``The Family Research Council is an important focus for conservative Christians, and these events are really effective at rallying their base," said Brett Clifton , assistant director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. ``They are trying to rally people around the idea that religious people have rights too, and that government and society have grown increasingly secular and anti religious."
At today's event in Boston, the speakers are planning to make the case that a homosexual agenda poses a threat to religious liberty. They will cite as examples the inability of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston to retain a state license to provide adoption services unless it was willing to place children with gay and lesbian couples, and the experience of parents in Lexington who have been battling the local school district over its decision to read to second-graders a fairy tale in which two princes fall in love.
``The bottom line is that the religious liberties of this country, which were birthed in Boston, are now at stake of dying as a result of the advancement of same-sex marriage," said Tony Perkins , president of the Family Research Council.
``We're going to highlight particular cases about the rights of parents to determine what their children are taught, about people who hold positions in public but have had to resign or have been fired because of opposition to same-sex marriage, and about how Catholic Charities was put out of the adoption business because they refused to go along with same-sex marriage."
The three Boston pastors featured in the simulcast are the Rev. Roberto Miranda , senior pastor of Congregation Lion of Judah, a large, predominantly Hispanic church in the South End; Bishop Gilbert A. Thompson , senior pastor of Jubilee Christian Church, a large, predominantly African-American congregation in Mattapan; and the Rev. Ray Pendleton , pastor of Tremont Temple, which is a small American Baptist congregation.
``Our goal is to strengthen people in their stand about a traditional, Biblical view of marriage," Pendleton said. ``The Christian voice is somehow feared for some reason, which I don't understand. It's been marginalized and seen as right-wing ranting, but that's just what the liberal press has done as a way of loading the issue. If the people are allowed to vote, the traditionalist view will win the day -- I don't think there's a question on that."
Scholars said that the Family Research Council simulcasts are not likely to persuade people to change their minds on issues such as same-sex marriage, but are effective at motivating religious conservatives to political action.
``They're largely preaching to the choir, sending their message into congregations of people who already think gay marriage is something that ought to be stopped and is, in the word they often use, an abomination," said Nancy T. Ammerman , a professor of the sociology of religion at Boston University's School of Theology. ``It seems pretty clear that the politicized evangelical operatives recognize that if people are worried about gay marriage, they're likely to go to the polls."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
Group to rally opposition to gay marriage
Romney to speak at event targeting evangelical voters
The Rev. Ray Pendleton of Tremont Temple Baptist Church said ‘‘Liberty Sunday’’ hopes to strengthen a Biblical view of marriage. (Bill Brett for the Boston Globe)
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff October 15, 2006
In an attempt to motivate religious conservatives to go to the polls next month, a national organization of family values activists will join Governor Mitt Romney and more than 1,000 local churchgoers today to argue to evangelicals that the legalization of same-sex marriage here is threatening religious liberty throughout the country.
The event, dubbed ``Liberty Sunday" by its organizer, the Family Research Council, will be simulcast from the Tremont Temple Baptist Church , near Boston Common, to hundreds of churches. It will also be broadcast on several Christian television and radio networks as well as over the Internet. The council, which over the last two years has staged six similar events at other sites around the country, estimates a potential audience of 79 million, but says it is impossible to measure exactly how many people really tune in.
The council-sponsored broadcasts have become influential enough that Romney, a Republican who is exploring a run for the presidency in 2008, on Friday added the event to his schedule.
``The governor recognizes that this event is an important milestone in the effort to preserve traditional marriage in Massachusetts," said Romney's spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom . ``The governor will talk about the importance of marriage, and the fact that the debate over gay marriage is not so much a debate about adult rights as it is about the rights of children to be raised in a home with a mother and a father."
The event is timed with a little more than three weeks to go before the Nov. 7 mid term congressional elections, in which control of both the House and Senate is up for grabs and a new governor of Massachusetts will be elected. Republican strategists have become increasingly worried that conservative evangelicals, frustrated by a number of recent congressional scandals and a lack of progress on issues they care about, may not turn out to vote this fall in the same numbers as they have in recent elections.
Eight states -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin -- will be voting on constitutional amendments that would bar same-sex marriage. And two days later, on Beacon Hill, the Legislature is to vote on whether to advance toward the ballot a measure that would overturn same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, the only state where it is legal.
``The governor is committed to doing what he can to get this issue on the ballot, so that people can be heard," Fehrnstrom said.
The Liberty Sunday event is provoking opposition from more liberal religious groups. The vicar of Old North Church, an Episcopal parish, is objecting to the use of an image of his church's steeple in the Family Research Council's promotional materials. A gay and lesbian group at Arlington Street Church , a Unitarian Universalist parish, will be sponsoring a candlelight vigil outside the Tremont Temple during the broadcast
And at Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish, a previously scheduled gathering to discuss religious support of gay marriage will now include a critique of the Family Research Council, arguing that conservative religious interests are threatening religious liberty by trying to prevent the government from recognizing marriages that are sanctioned by liberal religious denominations.
"`This is part of this year's crusade to get out the vote for the most conservative Republican candidates possible, and to use the imagery of religion to do so," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn , a United Church of Christ minister who is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. ``The rhetoric at their past events has been so inflammatory, it should be an embarrassment to anyone even if they're anti-gay marriage. The event is a common scare tactic to advance their anti gay agenda."
Several other groups, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action, are calling on Romney to distance himself from what they describe as bigoted statements by speakers at a previous Family Research Council event.
The council, formerly a part of Focus on the Family, lobbies Congress through an affiliate, called FRC Action. Among its policy positions are supporting measures that define marriage as a heterosexual institution, opposing abortion, and promoting the confirmation of conservative nominees to the federal judiciary. According to its website, the organization also supports ``a renewal of ethical monotheism and traditional Judeo-Christian standards of morality."
``The Family Research Council is an important focus for conservative Christians, and these events are really effective at rallying their base," said Brett Clifton , assistant director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. ``They are trying to rally people around the idea that religious people have rights too, and that government and society have grown increasingly secular and anti religious."
At today's event in Boston, the speakers are planning to make the case that a homosexual agenda poses a threat to religious liberty. They will cite as examples the inability of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston to retain a state license to provide adoption services unless it was willing to place children with gay and lesbian couples, and the experience of parents in Lexington who have been battling the local school district over its decision to read to second-graders a fairy tale in which two princes fall in love.
``The bottom line is that the religious liberties of this country, which were birthed in Boston, are now at stake of dying as a result of the advancement of same-sex marriage," said Tony Perkins , president of the Family Research Council.
``We're going to highlight particular cases about the rights of parents to determine what their children are taught, about people who hold positions in public but have had to resign or have been fired because of opposition to same-sex marriage, and about how Catholic Charities was put out of the adoption business because they refused to go along with same-sex marriage."
The three Boston pastors featured in the simulcast are the Rev. Roberto Miranda , senior pastor of Congregation Lion of Judah, a large, predominantly Hispanic church in the South End; Bishop Gilbert A. Thompson , senior pastor of Jubilee Christian Church, a large, predominantly African-American congregation in Mattapan; and the Rev. Ray Pendleton , pastor of Tremont Temple, which is a small American Baptist congregation.
``Our goal is to strengthen people in their stand about a traditional, Biblical view of marriage," Pendleton said. ``The Christian voice is somehow feared for some reason, which I don't understand. It's been marginalized and seen as right-wing ranting, but that's just what the liberal press has done as a way of loading the issue. If the people are allowed to vote, the traditionalist view will win the day -- I don't think there's a question on that."
Scholars said that the Family Research Council simulcasts are not likely to persuade people to change their minds on issues such as same-sex marriage, but are effective at motivating religious conservatives to political action.
``They're largely preaching to the choir, sending their message into congregations of people who already think gay marriage is something that ought to be stopped and is, in the word they often use, an abomination," said Nancy T. Ammerman , a professor of the sociology of religion at Boston University's School of Theology. ``It seems pretty clear that the politicized evangelical operatives recognize that if people are worried about gay marriage, they're likely to go to the polls."
Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
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