Hear God

“These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes, and your elders. And you said, ‘Behold, the LORD our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live. Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? Go near and hear all that the LORD our God will say, and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’
“And the LORD heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the LORD said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! Go and say to them, “Return to your tents.” But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess.’ You shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess. (Deuteronomy 5:22-33 ESV)

Have you ever wished that God would just give you a clear answer to a question or request in an easy to understand voice? Kind of like a phone call, where God calls and says “Hey it’s me God, you need to go to the store and get some milk and take to 104 East Street.” If only God’s thoughts were this clear to us… Or maybe like the picture here shows, God asks you what He should do. Would you know how to answer if God did this?

Well we did have that access to God. In the reading from today, the Israelites heard God delivered to them orally the 10 commandments. He spoke to them. And they realized what was happening, and the fear of the power of God over took them. Kind of like when God passed by Moses and Moses saw God’s backside because if he would have seen God’s face he would have died. Like the angels in Isaiah 6 that cover their faces with 2 of their wings, because to see God is death…

So the Israelites heard God speak to them, and said, “No More!” Let Him not speak to us or we will surely die. He can speak to you and you to us for Him.” So they set up the prophets, who they said did not really hear God and did not know what they are talking about. And we do this…

We say we want God to speak to us, but f He actually did we would be so scared that we would not know what to do. Am I saying God does not speak to us? No, He does. Directly even I believe. And He also speaks to us in many and various ways. Through His word, in Jesus, and the Bible and extra biblical books. He speaks to us through friends and family, through strangers. He speaks to us through nature and circumstances that impact our lives… God works in and through everything to speak to us every day.

So do you hear God? Or are you too busy to be quiet long enough to actually listen…

What do you want…

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands! (Psalm 90:12-17 ESV)

Have you ever felt like this? The person in the picture out in the middle of no where with no one around…

All alone, and wondering when God is going to come to your rescue?

That is what these verses in the psalm for today make me think about. How long O Lord will you leave me here, come and give me what I want. Have pity on me and fill me with your steadfast love, and make me feel good so that I can be happy and rejoice because my life is good and I have no problems…

Is this what we really think about God? That He will establish the work of our hands? That what we want will be given to us, when we want it?

God is not a cosmic vending machine there for us to call to to make all of our troubles go away. We can not call on Him when everything is bad and expect what we want to be given to us. That is not how it works. God is not a beck and call king of creator. Yes He loves you, but He wants more than your requests. He wants all of your life, and if you hand Him your life, and follow after Him, those moments in the desert, when it feels like your life is falling apart, will not be alone. You will be walking hand in hand with Jesus, not because you have your life together and you are doing the right things all the time, but you are living a life in relationship with Him! You are living in relationship with God, and that is why you are not alone. Not because you follow all of the rules and do everything right. God knows you can’t do that but He loves you any how.

It is like any other relationship. You can not not talk to a friend for years and then pick up the phone and ask them for a kidney. It doesn’t work like that. But someone you have lived with through thick and thin and been there for the ups and downs, when you get that call for the kidney, it is a longer pause, and a possibility. God will never let you down. Don’t treat Him like a vending machine just giving Him your requests, but spend time, and then you will never be alone.

If you wanted me…

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
“Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.
(Matthew 5:27-36 ESV)

I think of the song If You wanted Me by Todd Agnew when I read this text. One of the verses/chorus of the song is:

And I’ll admit I’m glad I’m not King David
Ruling over everything I see
‘Cause I think I’ve fallen for more than Bathsheba
Your creation’s a temptation for me
If you wanted me to love you only
Why’d you make the moonlight sparkle in her eyes?

I mean really if we were suppose to love only God, why did He make everything so beautiful and great to look upon? Really Jesus, it is not enough to not actually commit adultery  but now I can’t even look on a woman and think anything lustfully… Well I think every person is in trouble on that one… I know of no person who has not had a lustful thought for someone. If you have to think about whether this includes you or not, remember that God knows all of your thoughts and everything you have ever done… We are all guilty of committing adultery with this new expansion on the commandment…

And do not swear an oath… Pinky swears count in this? Or cross my heart and hope to die stick a needle in my eye… How many of us did something like this as a child and while it was simple playground banter, it is something that Jesus said we shouldn’t do… So here again we are all in trouble.

And included in this sandwich of making all f us adulterers and putting us on the spot for swearing oaths… is Matthews version of the divorce text.  So what does all of this mean?

It is all about us thinking about the other, and not ourselves. If we are thinking lustful thoughts of another we are putting our selves in a higher position than them, making them subservient to us. In the eyes of God we are all equal. No one is higher than anyone else. We can not think that way, for how we think becomes how we act, and we need to hold others in a high place in our minds, so we treat them that way.

And to swear on something we can not control, puts others in a bad position. We merely need to make our yes be yes and our no be no. And this means we are honest with ourselves and everyone else. Do not say you can do something you know you can not do. And be helpful by doing that which you can, even when it is inconvenient.

And divorce causes issues in relationships through out the community. It is not about us being happy or always getting our way. It is about living in the relationships that we are in and building up the community. It is how we think about the other.

And here is the video of the Todd Agnew song. Hopefully it will make you think…

Community is built on relationships…

To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? (1 Corinthians 7:10-16 ESV)

If you have a wife keep them…  We are on a role of texts from the Bible that talk about marriage relationships, are are really about much more than that. We have discovered over the past few days that these texts talk about relationships, not just marriage, but all relationships.

See today Paul tells us that as believers if we are married with an unbeliever, then we make that person holy, by association. We live in a relationship with them, accepting them as they are even though we have changed, we stay with them, and by doing this we are allowing them to take some of our faith/grace/holiness and have it as their own. It is like in the Lutheran church when a child is baptized as an infant, and the faith of the parents and the sponsors (God parents) is usurped by the child and used as their own faith until they are confirmed and answer the same questions again, but this time for themselves. (OK this is not how it really happens but it is a good analogy and way to think about it.)

You see we all live in relationships with each other and we lend our faith and grace sometimes, and sometimes we borrow. It is community, living in a communal lifestyle. That is really what faith is about, and when one relationship is broken, then all the relationships in the community will suffer because of that.

You see it is about us not being selfish and thinking about ourselves. We can not end a relationship simply because we are no longer happy in it, or it is not what we signed up for. It is not about us, it is about the other.

So look out for the other and think of others before yourself. That is what God did for you, and asks for you to do for each other!

Have a steady heart!

Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments! His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries. He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor. The wicked man sees it and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish! (Psalm 112 ESV)

So what do you do when you get bad news? Most of us do not deal with bad news well. We let it get to us. We let it take over our space and make our day seem dark and gloomy. We do not usually take well to bad news.

Yesterday my eldest daughter was in a gymnastics meet which she needed to do well enough at to advance to the next level. She did her best and even did some of her best routines her mother and I had seen her do. She was hitting things she had not hit and was making connections that seemed to elude her before. The scores did not reflect this, but that is the nature of the meet, and the sport. She did a wonderful job and her mother and I ware very proud of her. She needed to be in the top 26 to advance on to the next level. She was 29th.  She missed going on by 3 places, but she did her best, but the news was devastating to all of us. We were so looking forward to moving on to the next level. But is this new the end of the world?No there will be other meets and she will have a chance to advance to the level she now missed again later in life. This does not mean she is a failure as a person. She is a wonderful woman who has done wonderful things for many people and will continue to do things for people. She will be a light in the darkness because of the love of Christ that lives in her.

You see one failure does not constitute the end of the battle, or the end of your life. If you learn from any defeat or bad news, and move on, trusting in God to see you through, as the psalmist tells us. The darkness can not hold back the light and there is no need to be upset with bad news, it is merely a bump in the road and God will be there to help you over it.

Today my daughter is going to gymnastics practice to learn how to do it a little bit better, so next time she will do even better. She is learning from her past meets and listening to those around her that might have a better understanding of the sport. If we can learn from the sins we have made, or the shortcomings in helping the last, lost, least, and little and be in community with the other children of God, we can move forward in the light, spreading that light to all of the world. So trust in God and know that He will be your light in the darkness and the hope in the day that looks gloomy and dark.

Who is better?

And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”  They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.  But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’  ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,
  and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”  And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,  and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”  And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.  Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”  And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them. ( Mark 10:2-16 ESV)

Here we go again with divorce. But today rather than Pharisees looking for money and having people do things that will not help them be in relationship. We have Jesus bringing in a child.

You see today in Mark Jesus throws the understanding of society completely on its head.

The reading ends with Jesus saying that you have to come to the kingdom like a little child. And children were property and were not to be seen or heard. They were suppose to learn how to act in society from the women who were OK to be seen but should not be heard. Children were not cute and a wonderful thing to have around. They were property and not always wanted. Jesus said though these people who are shunned by society and looked upon as disposable are really the ones who know what the kingdom of God is. And if you want to be a part of that kingdom you need to accept them and be like them.

The other thing that Jesus does here in Mark is to make women equal to men. You see at this time only men could divorce because women are property. But Jesus said if a woman divorces her husband and marries another… that was unheard of. Women could not do that, but Jesus said they are able to this and in so doing this He declared them equal to men.

You see it is again about relationships. It is about thinking of the other before ourselves. Not thinking too highly of ourselves like we are better than everyone else, because on our own we are all going straight to hell. We are all equal sinners that deserve to be punished. But because of the grace of God we are able to be in a relationship with Him.

So don’t think you are better than anyone else. Because God loves all of us just the same.

Divorce ~ Marriage ~ or More…

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him. And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.
“The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. (Luke 16:14-18 ESV)

Why is the verse about a person divorcing their wife and becoming an adulterer in the mix with Jesus informing the Pharisees that they justify themselves before men, but God knows the real content of their hearts? Maybe it is because it is really not about divorce but more than that…

You see these verses all fit together because it is about relationships. To divorce a woman in Jesus time was to through her to the streets with no support and would warrant her being stoned to death. She would not be accepted by her family and would have no means to survive. She was as good as dead. But the relationship that fabric that binds together the community would be ripped and cause issues and have rippling effects across many families and places…

So it is a bout living in and with others. Relationships are the key to all of this and the key element all of us need to remember is not to look out for #1 but to think of the other before we think of ourselves. It is about how we treat and care for the other, the last, the lost, the little, the least of these. We can not be as the pharisees and look out for ourselves at the cost of someone else. We have to take care of them first and we will be provided for. It is about living for the betterment of the community, rather than building ourselves up.

So what does divorce have to do with the pharisees amassing lots of money at the expense of others? It is about living in relationship and not getting what we want all the time, but looking our for the need of the other, the last, lost, least, little, those who society says have no voice and do not count. Those are the ones we need to help. We need to stop worrying about what society says about us and get to the work God has set before us!

Who is in Christ?

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:1-11 ESV)

I love Romans because it really makes you think. You have to wrestle with Paul and your intellect and really chew on what is written to try to get it in you so you can integrate it into your life. But it raises just as many questions as it answers…

You see this passage for instance says that he who lives in the Spirit and not the flesh has been found to be in Christ and there for there is no condemnation for them. But who is living in the Spirit? And who is living in the flesh? Who is in Christ?

Those who set their minds on things of the flesh follow the flesh. But what does that mean? Because this person and their mind is hostile towards God. But what does it mean to follow the flesh or dwell in the flesh? We are not thinking about God or what is best for the other. And that does not mean that we are forcing the other to conform to some code that we ourselves do not follow. The law of the Israelites is not what gets us to heaven and is not what we need to force others to follow when we do not follow and when Jesus and his disciples did not follow it. They broke the oral law that was transmitted and was thought to be just as important as the rest of the written law. This code is not what saves us and makes us right with God. Only Jesus does this. So if you think you are right with God, please remove the log from your own eye, before helping me remove the plank from mine. Yes I know that I have sinned and continue to do so even though I do not want to. We do the things we do not want and can not follow after Jesus… Jesus asks us to follow Him and to be like Him. Not judge but accept the other where they are and love them as they are. Knowing that the relationship will make them to be who they need to be. Change is not necessary before coming to Jesus  Jesus will do it all. We can not expect people to be perfect or not sinful before they come to Jesus, other wise we all would have to leave.

So to live in the Spirit is to think of the other, before yourself.

What are you?

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8 ESV)

How majestic is the creator of everything? That the hosts of heaven worship and adore Him every second of every minute of every hour of every day…

Yet He is still concerned with you! He cares for you and wonders about you. He plans your days, and has counted every hair on your head. (which for me would really not take that long!) He knows the intimate details of your life and He still wants to be in a relationship with you. He knows your deepest darkest secrets and He still picks you to be on His team. He has made us a little lower than Himself, or the angels or heaven. We are His creation and therefore He loves us and wants what is best for us. Even with everything else in creation He cares for you and wants to spend time with you.

So next time you think no one cares, think again, because the creator of the universe cars for you and wants to be with you. You are His creation and therefore you are loved by Him!

So what are you? You are loved. By God!