Reverence For God's Word

In today's church we get sermons that are 23-60 minutes long and people complain and murmur about the length. I was in one congregation that actually yelled out jokes at the preacher because he would go longer than the senior pastor did. And people laughed. The pastor laughed. Read this passage from Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 8:1-3
And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the LORD had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.

Nehemiah didn't even preach. He read God's Word for about 5 hours straight. No one complained. No one left. No one sat down. No one got bored or fell asleep. This how much they revered God's Word. Look at what this did to their hearts.

Nehemiah 8:5-6
And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.

When is the last time you saw this happen in church?

Look at how the day ends.

Nehemiah 8:9-12
And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law. Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved.” And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

This is what church ought to look like. we ought to come in and be overwhelmed by the power of God's Word and it ought to penetrate our hearts causing us to weep and worship. Then we should rise up and go celebrate the day in view of the greatness of our God and the power of His Word and then share what we have in honor of what we have been given.

Looking For Unity In the Midst of a Self Culture

We’ve all heard the expression, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Honestly, all of us have felt that way before. It seems our fallen, human nature, works hard on us to never be satisfied with what we have, who we are, and how others perceive us. It is precisely this attitude that leads us all down the path of discontentment. It is what robs us of joy and makes true happiness seem nothing more than a pipe dream.

It is this attitude of discontent that fights against the truth of the scriptures. We don’t want what we have, we want what we don’t have, we want what God has said no to. The Bible develops this theme in the very beginning. It is the essence of the sin and the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve lived a place where there was no death, no sickness. They had everything they could ever desire. Even work was without trouble. The very name Eden is defined in the dictionary as “a state of perfect happiness or bliss” and as “paradise”. Who wouldn’t want to live in Eden? Who wouldn’t be content with that.

But then comes the “but” in the story. Genesis 2:16-17 tells us that “the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.”

And there it is. Everything here is yours, you’re free to eat of it all, oh wait, except this one tree. Leave it alone, God tells them. He even warned them that eating of that one tree would cause death. Yet, there it is; discontentment. In spite of all the good things they had, they wanted the one thing they weren’t supposed to have. And rebellion was born in the heart of man. They had perfect bliss. But it wasn’t enough, they wanted more. They wanted what God said no to.

Nothing has changed since that time. God has blessed us with so much and yet it isn’t enough. It isn’t enough because God has also given us free will to choose and we still use that free will to choose what He has said not to choose. We want we God has told us will bring pain, sorrow, and even death.

God blessed us with life and made us, both male and female. Now we want to decide that we want to choose our sexual identity. God blessed us with sex, not only as a means to fill the earth with children, but He made it pleasurable and the source of beautiful intimacy. But He told us it is to be enjoyed in the context of marriage and to be performed only in the commitment of one man and one woman. But we want to have sex with other people. We want other men’s wives and we want it with anyone we choose, without the lifetime commitment of marriage. We want to be able to get married but if we tire of our spouse, make them disposable, just like everything else we consume. We want to have sex free of the responsibility that it may result in children, so we legalize abortion and murder our own off-spring. We want to have sex with our own sex. We want everything God has told us can’t have, we are not content with the beauty of what He has given us.

Recently, a prominent pastor/teacher, John MacArthur, has come under fire for condemning the idea of women being pastors. In the past week I have read the words of many who are commenting on this topic, and the church is certainly divided on this doctrine. Certainly Dr. MacArthur came across harsh in how he stated the error of allowing women to be pastors, but that is irrelevant to the truth that the church needs to stand firm on the scriptures in this, as it should do in all issues on which scripture speaks.

Maybe some of you interpret scripture differently and believe in your heart that women should be allowed to pastor churches. I would disagree and honestly, I have tried to consider the arguments I have seen in support of this issue for women pastors and I just cannot find that to be justified as I look at the entirety of scripture.

As I started out in this writing, I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t another case of the sinful nature we possess to have what God has said no to. It is hard to argue that God did not make men and women vastly different. And scripture seems to stress that men and women, even individuals within the binary gender creation that God has created us in, have different roles. But those roles are, in no way, to be seen as one being better than the other. Open up 1 Corinthians 12 and we see that the church is a body and that body is made of many parts. Not one single part is more important than the other. The body cannot function properly unless each part works in conjunction with each other. Yet, this also means that each part has a specific function and that part needs to operate within its own Biblical sphere.

So, I suggest that maybe women and men ought to find unity in the fact that there are certain roles God calls us to and if we rebel against that, we are hurting, not helping the body of Christ. We cannot interpret nor properly apply scripture from the tainted and sinful viewpoint of the human flesh, for it has, since the very creation of man, wanted what God has said no to. We have to seek desperately the teaching of the Holy Spirit as we develop our doctrine.

Ladies, you are important to God, to the church, to your family, and to the world. Vitally important. We men need you. Other women need you. God made you women for a reason and be careful that you don’t put your wants, above His.

This culture, by the feminist movement, has told you that being a wife, a mom, and all the other things women do that men really aren’t very good at, have little or no value. They have attacked your self-worth. And it has even permeated the church. We men, well we have failed you. We have failed to make you feel like the queens you are. But the value of women is beyond my ability to express. The Bible is filled with examples of how important women are to the church.

The church, like the culture, is at a crossroads. We need to repent, all of us, and get back to the place God calls us to be. We need to get back to putting God first, not our feelings or our desires, for they will take us into rebellion against God.

Again, I am not posting this to start a debate. I am posting it to beg all of us to look deeply into the heart of God and turn back to His way. Even if His way, is not what we want.

Let us at least join together in prayer for God to help us to be united, with one mind, His mind.

1 Corinthians 2:16

“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

God bless all of you.

Studies in the Psalms - Psalm 108

Psalm 108 is the combination of Psalms 57 and 60. The Holy Spirit inspired the psalmist to put them together, so God has a purpose in this psalm. If nothing else, it is a reminder to worship God. It is a reminder to praise Him and be thankful. Today is Sunday. Go to church and let your heart be glad in Him.

Psalm 108:1-6

 My heart is steadfast, O God! I will sing and make melody with all my being!  Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!  I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.  For your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.  Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!  That your beloved ones may be delivered, give salvation by your right hand and answer me!

Psalm 108:7-9
God has promised in his holiness: “With exultation I will divide up Shechem and portion out the Valley of Succoth.  Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim is my helmet, Judah my scepter.  Moab is my washbasin; upon Edom I cast my shoe; over Philistia I shout in triumph.”

God’s judgments and His actions are always good because God is holy. Go to church today and stand in awe of our Holy God.

Psalm 108:10-13
Who will bring me to the fortified city? Who will lead me to Edom?  Have you not rejected us, O God? You do not go out, O God, with our armies.  Oh grant us help against the foe, for vain is the salvation of man!  With God we shall do valiantly; it is he who will tread down our foes.

Our greatest foe is self. It is the pride within us that leads us to sin against our Holy God. When we sin, we are rebelling against God and His holiness and against His pure and perfect Word.

Go to church this morning. Go to your knees in humility and pray the words of this psalm which say, “My heart is steadfast, O God! I will sing and make melody with all my being!  Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!  I will give thanks to you, O LORD, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations.  For your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.  Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!  That your beloved ones may be delivered, give salvation by your right hand and answer me!”

He will answer.

4 Things We See in the Faith of the Early Church Believers

As my studies moved from the Gospels into the Book of Acts I learned this morning that we find four important things the early Church believed in. First of all they believed in the risen Christ. As we move this week closer to our celebration of the resurrection on what most call Easter Sunday it is important to consider what this means to our faith. Paul speaks to the importance of this in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 saying, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

The resurrection is a crucial doctrine along with the deity of Christ.  It is the sign of Jonah that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 12:38-41 and we join the early disciples who witnessed the risen Christ in putting our hope in it.

The second attribute of the early Church people was that they believed in each other and the importance of unity in the church. A key phrase of the Book of Acts is the phrase “with one accord” and is found six times throughout its pages. If there is one sad fault of the modern church it is the lack of unity and cooperation. Jesus said this Himself in Mark 3:24-25, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.  If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Oh how much more effective our ministries would be if we were all of one accord. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” - Psalm 133:1

The third important attribute of the early church was their belief in prayer. They prayed for courage to witness, guidance in all decisions, and prayed in every circumstance as seen throughout the Book of Acts. It has been said that prayer is the thermometer and the thermostat of the church, for the spiritual temperature of goes up or down depending on how the people pray.

The fourth thing the early church did was to believe in God’s leading. Jesus had left them to ascend back into Heaven and thus they had lost their earthly leader. However they did not fall apart, they turned to God’s Word and prayer as we read in Acts 6:4 where the leaders said they would “…give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the Word."

The early church was lead by men who had personally been taught by Jesus and they needed these four things to carry on the work Jesus gave them to do. If they needed these things, how much more do we need them today?

As we approach our celebration of the resurrection of Christ let us return to the methods of the early church. Believe in the risen Christ, believe in each other as believers, believe in prayer, and believe in God’s leading. The power of the Holy Spirit came upon the early church at Pentecost and He is still here today living in the hearts of believers. Let us be like Paul who desired to live in His power as he declares in Philippians 3:10 wanting to “know him and the power of his resurrection.”