The god of Nothing!

In Judges chapters 17 & 18 we are told of a man named Micah.  This man had made for himself god’s and even hired a Levite priest to lead his family.  This man was very religious, and very concerned with his spirituality.  The story continues with the tribe of Dan coming to his house and stealing his god’s and his priest.  This upsets Micah and he sets out after the men of Dan to get his stuff back.  His attempt is squelched when the men of Dan threaten to kill him if he doesn’t go away and leave them alone.  It as at this point that we learn a very sad fact about Micah.  He responds to the threats of the men of Dan by saying “You took the gods I made, and my priest, and went away.  What else do I have?”

This mans world revolved around his religious experience rather that his religious relationship.  He was consumed with false idols in the form of sculptures, all the while missing THE GOD of the universe who is eternal and not found in some carved image.  Another sad fact is that this Levite who was supposed to know better, administered this mans worship of false idols.  They had exchanged the real relationship with false worship, and it was because of this that the man felt as if he had nothing, when all his god’s got taken away.

This story has very real applications for us today.  While we might not have graven images set up in our own personal shrine, with  a hired priest leading us into idol worship, we do have god’s of our own that consume our time, finances, thoughts, and energy.  We worship them with our lives, by allowing them to consume us from morning till evening everyday of the week.  Yet when these things are taken away, we find an empty void within us that is longing to be filled.  These gods are really the god of nothing because they have no power to complete us, or restore us to the people we were meant to be.  The God of everything cannot be taken away, he is eternal, and unchanging.  He loves us yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  To be filled by him brings eternal satisfaction.  We find this filling through surrender to Him, and time spent with Him.  Don’t make the mistake Micah made, fill your life with the relationship that comes from knowing the ONE TRUE GOD and you will never be left feeling as if you have nothing.

The Faith of Samson

Samson is a central character in the book of Judges.  Almost every kid has heard of Samson from their days in Sunday school.  The interesting thing about Samson however is his story is not what you, or at least not what I would have expected.  Samson is a man who has a temper, is consumed with lust, and at times doesn’t seem to be all there in the ole’ noggin.  So why is so much attention given to this man, why is he even mentioned in the “Hall of Faith” (Hebrews 11:32) ?  To be honest I am not really sure.  There are a couple of things I think I can say with some certainty.

The first is the faith of Samson’s parents.  We can get out of the text that Samson’s parents wanted the best for him, and wanted to be sure to obey all the commands of God.  Godly parents play a huge role in the spiritual development of their children.  A child who does not have a strong set of Godly parents is at a huge disadvantage to the child whose parents lead them in the ways of Christ.  Samson never seemed to fully grasp the faith his parents had, but we do see it had an influence on how he lived.

The second thing is that God was with Samson.  This is the most important reason for the success of Samson.  It was God who endowed Samson with his great strength, it was God who called him to help over throw the Philistine oppression, and it was God who directed the moments of his life.  The sad thing is Samson never fully devoted himself to God.  What stories would we have had if Samson would have lived according to his Nazirite Vow, How great of a leader could he have been if he hadn’t allowed himself to get mixed up with people he shouldn’t have been associated with.  Sometimes Godly people lose their maximum effectiveness because of the sin they allow to creep in here and there.

The wonderful thing about the story of Samson however is that God is loving, kind, slow to anger, and compassionate.  He works through people who mess up, and God desires to do great things through people who will just be willing to put their faith in Him.  The Bible is full of people who do dumb things for dumb reasons even though God has so loved them.  We are the same way, yet through God’s greatness, he redeems us from our sinfulness, and calls us His children.  The faith of Samson seems so little, yet he is called to move mountains, or in his case temple pillars.  We too are called to use our faith for what God has in store for us, no matter how big or how small.

Slow to Anger

So far in the book of Judges the Ephraimites have come to the conquering judges twice to demand explanation as to why they weren’t invited to the battle.  You would think that not going to war is a good thing, but the men of Ephraim wanted to fight, and they were willing to take a fight, even if it meant fighting their own people.  In Chapter 12 of Judges the men of Ephraim pick a fight with Jephthah about not calling them to help fight.  The men of Ephraim are defeated and Jephthah was victorious by the hand of God.

I have known people who are quick to anger, just looking for a fight at whatever the cost.  I usually laugh at such people because often times they are so quick to react they fail to notice their own stupidity.  The say things that sound as if they havent given any thought to it, which likely is a result of the fact that they havent given any thought to it.  I think we all know people like this and we may even be this person, but there is a lesson for us to learn from the Ephraimites.

James 1:19 (New International Version)

¹⁹My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.

God desires that before we speak, we listen.  This can be tough for some of us because we want to be heard.  However when we dont listen, this is when we dont hear and things are misunderstood and we are quick to run our mouths.  This is why we should also be slow to speak.  I myself have been trying this for some time where I try to not speak unless I really fell like I need to give my advice.  I have a long way to go in this area but when we are slow to speak, we can better say what we wanted to say, and what we say has more meaning to the conversation because we have first listened.  Once you have listened, been slow to interject, you wont have any choice when you live like this, you will be slow to anger.  You will likely be puting the needs of others before your own, because your focus will be on them from your listening, and your letting them talk.  Much of our trouble could be avoided if we would simply slow down, and put things in their proper perspective.

Repentance without Works is Dead!

In James 2: 14-26 there is the famous saying that “faith without works is dead”.  I say also that “repentance without works is dead”. As I was reading this morning I came across a section in Judges 10 where the people had given themselves over to the worship of false god’s.  Because of this, as is the case in the book of Judges, God allows the people to be overtaken and oppressed by enemies.  After a time of persecution, the people finally cry out to the one true God to save them.  This time God’s response to the people is interesting.  He tells them that they can go cry out to the god’s they have been worshiping because they have chosen them over Him.

When the people cry out to God for help, you can imagine it went something like; “Oh Lord please forgive us for we have sinned, we have worshiped other Gods before you, and are now in a world of trouble and we need your help.  Please save us from our enemies, amen!”  This pray however doesn’t seem to impress God because he responds to their cries for help by telling them to get help from the other false god’s they have chosen.  This prayer even reminds me of prayers I have prayed asking for forgiveness, yet not really seeking to change.  It is here that the people of Israel finally do what they should have been doing all along.  This is when the people put feet to their prayers, by riding themselves of the idols they had been serving, and they began to serve God instead.  When the people of Israel truly repented, we see that action followed.  They got rid of the sin that had been entangling them and they served God.

I think that just as faith without works is dead, so is repentance without works.  If we seek forgiveness yet do nothing to ensure that we are correcting the sin, are we really asking for forgiveness, or are we simply trying to clear our conscience.  It has been said that to ask forgiveness means that you are turning from the direction you were heading in, and begin going the opposite way.  This is a good picture of what it means to seek cleansing, and then work to ensure that you stay clean.  I pray that we will no longer simply ask forgiveness and then continue living in the same manner, expecting that God is some how forced to put up with us.  God loves us and desires us to love Him, not just when we are in trouble.  True repentance is always accompanied by action, action on the part of God in forgiving us, and on our part of changing the behaviors that got us into trouble in the first place.

When Were Weak

I think most everyone knows the story of Gideon in Judges chapter 7.  Gideon sets out to defeat the Midianites with 32,000 people.  God tells Gideon that he has too many men, and so he tells all the men who are afraid to leave.  22,000 leave, giving Gideon only 10,000 men.  God again tells Gideon he has too many men, so they test them by having them take a drink of water to see how they drink it.  The men who cupped the water in their hands were kept and the rest were sent home, dwindling Gideon’s army down to 300.  This satisfied God and so the Israelite’s were off to war.  As the story goes Gideon and his 300 men are victorious.

I say all of this to say that God is able to do anything he wants, yet he chooses to allow us to make our own choices.  This means that there are times when we choose wrong and miss out on the things God wants us to experience.  Whenever we choose wrong we call this sin.  Sin is selfishness at its very core.  When we sin, it is because we think our way is better.  God had Gideon get rid of most of his army so that Gideon would be weak and reliant on God’s plan.  God desires the same humility in us, so that we will submit to His plan, rather than our own.  When were weak, God is at His strongest in us.

I pray that God would teach me to be weak, able to submit myself under His authority and the authority that He has placed over me.  My desire is to be more like Christ, which means I must do all things according to the will of Him who has sent me.

Reason to Sing

In Judges Chapter five we have the song of Deborah and Barak.  They sang it after the Canaanites had been defeated and Sisera had been killed by Jael with a tent-peg, awesome I know!  The other awesome thing is how they began their song of rejoicing. I have included it below for reference.

Judges 5:1-5 (NASB)

¹Then Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying,
²“That the leaders led in Israel, That the people volunteered, Bless the LORD!
³“Hear, O kings; give ear, O rulers! I–to the LORD, I will sing,
I will sing praise to the LORD, the God of Israel.
⁴“LORD, when You went out from Seir, When You marched from the field of Edom,
The earth quaked, the heavens also dripped,Even the clouds dripped water.
⁵“The mountains quaked at the presence of the LORD,
This Sinai, at the presence of the LORD, the God of Israel.

It would seem that the three things that excited Deborah and Barak the most was; the Leaders led, the people volunteered, and God Moved.

Today the people of this world need strong leaders who can not only lead, but do so with firm direction and integrity.  Leading is not an easy task, you are often out in front where it is the most lonely, any decision you make will surely have its complainers, and it is the responsibility of the leader to navigate in the direction that is best.  For the Christian leader this should always mean the way that God is leading us.  God has already lead us into the truth by giving us the Bible.  This word should be the firm direction on which we base our decisions.  It is not always popular to stand on the word of God for truth and many leaders are standing on pop-psychology or sociological trends to find direction for their churches, but this attempt is wrong-headed.  Gods word was, is, and always will be the only true guide for the way to lead.

The next thing was that the people volunteered.  I read an article a while ago that said in todays American Church 20% of the people in any given congregation do 100% of the work.  In my experiences this has been rather accurate.  You always see the same people each time the doors are open doing way more tasks than they should be doing because there are not enough people volunteering to cover all that needs to be done.  If each person would volunteer there is so much more that could be done, or rather the things we do could be done way better.  There is another aspect to this whole people volunteering here.  I think it also means that they voluntarily submitted themselves to the leaders who were leading.  It is tough to lead if the people dont follow, and it is tough to follow if you dont submit to the leadership that you are supposed to be following.  I am not saying that we should blindly follow anyones leadership, but we at all levels must submit to someones authority, if any thing is to be done.  As God’s people we need to volunteer our time, money, resources, energy, abilities, and submission.

When we have a combination of leaders leading, and people volunteering, amazing things happen, like for instance, we get to see God move.  God goes ahead of us and prepares the way for us as the church to do great things.  I think much of what God wants to do for us is not done because of the lack of leadership, and the lack of service by the people.  God has told us that he will strongly support the people whose hearts are fully his.  As the church today, we can have reason to sing if only we will stand firm on the direction that God has given, and be willing to submit our whole selves to follow that leadership.

Indifference

In the book of Judges the people are disobedient, then are defeated by an enemy, cry out to God, and God delivers them.  The thing that has caught my attention about this cycle is the amount of time the people of Israel stay in captivity before they cry out to the Lord.  Defeated by pagan people, Enslaved by foreign rulers, and  made to worship false god’s, the people seem to be indifferent to their seperation from God. It is not until the people finally get tired of their captivity that they realize the error of thier ways and cry out to the Lord.

Interestingly enough this sounds rather familiar.  In my own life there have been times where I was indifferent to sin, willing to be enslaved by its control, and willing to be separate from the worship of the God who loves me and gave Himself for me.  It should not take a wake up call for us to stop our indifference toward sin.  Following God is not left for the ministers, people who are older, people with more money, or more time, rather all who confess Jesus as Lord are to be followers of God and enemy’s of sin and self.  God desires to rescue you if you are enslaved by sin, all we need to do is cry out to him and he will save us.  God is so full of grace and mercy!

I pray that God will end indifference, heal people from sin and rise up His people to serve Him in all their ways.

Good Habits

Good habits;  where do they come from,   how are they formed, and what makes it good?  I am setting out to form a new good habit.  It is going to be my challenge to wake up at 6:30 AM each morning, have my morning bible study, write about my thoughts from said bible study, and then go for a run.  I am well into morning one and I can assure you this will be difficult for me as I am not a natural-born morning person nor am I a runner at heart.  I do think this is a good habit that will have great impact on my life both spiritually and physically.

The subject of “Good Habits” however is not simply to introduce what my good intentions are.  This is also what I gleaned from my morning bible study.  I am starting to read through the book of Judges, and right from the start we have this description of the people of Israel being disobedient.  God had told them to go into the promised land and completely take it over in every aspect.  The Israelite’s however had a bad habit of letting the people of the land stay as inhabitants which they were told not to do.  Why is this such a problem?  What difference does it make if the Israelite’s let original people stay?  We find out rather quickly that this matters for two reasons.  The first is the most obvious and that is that God had told them not to.  When God speaks, we listen  that’s it!  There is no arguing or negotiating.  The second reason this matters as if the first reason wasn’t enough, is that the people who lived in the land were pagan people who worshiped pagan gods.  This got the people of Israel in trouble real fast, as they began to forsake the one true GOD, and started worshiping the god’s of the original inhabitants.

Bad habits are hard to break.  The people of God have always had trouble breaking the habitual nature of our sin flesh.  This morning I was reminded that God desires good habits from me, He desires faithfulness, obedience, willingness, discipline, and humility.  I pray that I will not be like the people described in the beginning of Judges, a people who make it a habit of being disobedient.  I pray that God show me what bad habits I have developed, and that he would break me of those things.