Moses

26
Aug
2024

Reexamining our trust in the Lord

A meditation concerning Psalm 34

by David Sellnow

Martin Luther said we treasure the Psalms because they lay bare the hearts and souls of the psalm writers—and our hearts along with them: “The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from every corner of the earth. … These tempests of the heart” caused the psalm writers to wrestle with their faith. Their words induce us to examine the inner recesses of our own souls too. 

Psalm 34 is a powerful example of reexamination of one’s own life and soul, of the need to trust in God rather than ourselves. David wrote Psalm 34 when looking back at a difficult time in his life—a time when he relied on his own ideas and cleverness rather than truly trusting the Lord. 

The heading in the Hebrew Scriptures atop Psalm 34 says: A psalm “of David, when he feigned madness before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.” Let’s explore that context to better understand the lessons David learned and, later, expressed in this psalm. 

You remember that David, while still a pre-teen, had been chosen by the Lord and anointed by the Prophet Samuel to be Israel’s future king (1 Samuel 16). While still a teenager, David began to serve when needed as a court musician for the reigning king, Saul, who was troubled by an evil spirit. Whenever the evil spirit came upon Saul, David would come and play his lyre, “and Saul would be relieved and feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him” (1 Samuel 16:23). Meanwhile, David continued to serve his own family, shepherding their sheep. During that time, David was sent by his father to see how his older brothers were doing at the battlefront of a standoff between the armies of Israel and the Philistines. David stepped into the foreground on that occasion, trusting implicitly in the Lord’s integrity and strength. He went out with just a slingshot and defeated the Philistines’ gigantic hero, Goliath, in a duel to the death. Following that, jealousy grew in King Saul’s heart against David. One day while David was playing music, Saul hurled a spear at him, trying to kill him, but David twice eluded the hurled weapons (1 Samuel 18:10,11). Saul then banished David from his presence, but sent him off as a main commander in Israel’s army (1 Samuel 18:13). Saul hoped David would die in battle. “Let the Philistines deal with him,” as he later said (1 Samuel 18:17). But David continued to have success. So. Saul brought David back to the palace and offered him the hand of one of his daughters in marriage.  He offered his daughter Michal, who loved David, thinking to himself, “Let me give her to him so that she may be a snare for him”, distracting David’s focus so that the hand of the Philistines might prevail against him (1 Samuel 18:21). But the more Saul realized that the Lord was with David and that his daughter Michal loved David, the more Saul’s jealousy and fury grew. “So Saul was David’s enemy from that time forward” (1 Samuel 18:29). Again “Saul sought to pin David to the wall with a spear, but David eluded Saul and the spear landed in the wall (1 Samuel 19:10). David fled for his life, and Saul began actively making more concerted efforts to have David killed (cf. 1 Samuel 19:11 – 20:33). 

That was when David, fearful of Saul, fled to Gath, the hometown of Goliath, the Philistine champion whom David had slain some years earlier. The city of Gath was also the seat of power for the Philistine king known as Achish or Abimelech, the very king who was at war with Saul and the kingdom of Israel. David had led armies in battle against the Philistines. He even was carrying the sword of Goliath with him when he went to Gath (1 Samuel 20:8-9). Did David think he could hide out in enemy territory and Saul wouldn’t come looking there? If he was hiding, that didn’t work. David was recognized, seized, and held under arrest (cf. Psalm 56, heading). Or maybe David was thinking, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” hoping the Philistines would protect him against Saul if he came over to their side. But David’s attempts to rescue himself went awry quickly. The officers of King Achish asked, “Isn’t David a king back in his own country? Don’t the Israelites dance and sing, ‘Saul has killed a thousand enemies; David has killed ten thousand’?” (1 Kings 21:11 CEV)  David then became very much afraid of King Achish and his men. “So he changed his behavior before them; he pretended to be mad when in their presence. He scratched marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard. Achish said to his servants, ‘You see the man is mad; why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to act like a madman in my presence” (1 Samuel 21:13-15)? The Philistines drove David out of their lands, back into Israelite territory. And Saul kept pursuing David, seeking to kill him. 

So, that’s a bit of a story, isn’t it? That’s the context when the heading atop Psalm 34 in your Bible says: A psalm of David, when he feigned madness before Abimelech (also known as Achish), so that Achish drove David out, and he went away. At some point later in his life, David wrote two psalms (Psalm 56 and Psalm 34), with headings showing he was thinking about those days when he was on the run and ran to Gath. Looking back on his life, David recognized he had tried to save himself by his own ingenuity, resorting to desperate means, often failing to maintain his integrity as a man of God. In Psalm 56, written after the fact, David prayed to God: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. … This I know, that God is for me … the Lord, whose word I praise. … In God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me?” (Psalm 56:3,4,9,11). That’s the lesson David learned, the faith he confessed in retrospect. At the time, however, David was caught up in all sorts of fear and uncertainty and did not trust God would get him through it. Mere mortals like Saul and the Philistines scared him plenty. He tried to scheme his way out of trouble—to the point of slobbering on himself and acting as if he had lost all mental faculties. The great future king of Israel, the anointed of the Lord, acting as though his only hope was to pretend he was hopeless and witless, a nobody that was of no use to the Philistines or Israel.

We’ve seen it before in the lives of other great persons of faith—losing track of God’s promises, losing trust in God’s promises, and resorting to their own solutions to their dilemmas in life. Consider Abram and Sarai. They had been promised they would have a child in their old age. But what the Lord promised seemed too slow in happening, seemed not to be happening. So, they decided Abram should sleep with Sarai’s handmaiden, Hagar, and have a son with her. That was not what God intended. Or consider Moses. Born to an Israelite slave, Moses was raised in the Egyptian palace as a grandson of a pharaoh. When he grew up, Moses initially took it upon himself to do something about Egyptian abuse of Israelite slaves. One day, Moses “went out to his people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand” (Exodus 20:11-12). But what he did became known. Moses had to flee Egypt and was gone for forty years.

Too often in life, all of us as God’s people forget to trust God. We neglect to keep his steadfastness and truth in mind. We resort to our own solutions. We scratch and claw and act without integrity. We fail to believe if we follow the ways of God, if we wait on God, that we will be safe, we will be secure, we will stay alive.

David learned from what he went through. He had been flailing away trying to protect himself. But running in the wrong direction and engaging in lies and deceptions only made his situation worse, not better. Coming out of those experiences, David recognized that the Lord his God had protected him and rescued him, despite himself. The Lord had been with him through every day of trouble, and remained with him by grace even when David had made a bigger mess of things. That’s when David penned the words of Psalm 34, saying:

Magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together. …
Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. …
Which of you desires life, and covets many days to enjoy good?
Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. …
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and will save those whose spirits are crushed.
Many are the troubles of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all. …
The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. 
(Psalm 34:2,3,10,12-14,17-20,22)

God help us to learn the same lesson David did. As the apostle Paul urged us: Let us be careful how we live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time we have. Yes, often the days in this life are evil and troubles surround us, but we seek to understand what the will of the Lord is. We want to sing and make music to the Lord in our hearts always—no matter the circumstances of life in which we find ourselves. We give thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Cf. Ephesians 5:15-20.)  No matter what happens in this life, we maintain our trust in Jesus Christ, the living bread that came down from heaven. Partaking in the life that is in Christ, we know we will live forever. (Cf. John 6:51.) As another worship hymn from the Psalms says:

With the Lord on my side I do not fear.
What can mortals do to me?
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to put confidence in mortals.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord
than to put confidence in princes.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever.
(Psalm 118:7-9, 29).

So, let us “revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness” (Joshua 24:14). Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods or come up with our own schemes and strategies for getting through life or escaping harm. For when we look back on our lives, it has been the Lord who has stayed with us through thick and thin (cf. Joshua 24:16-18).  Even in those moments when we did stupid things, acted like we maybe had lost our minds, or fell into dreadful sins, God still did not abandon us. Think of David later in his life as king, when he forgot what he expressed in this psalm. He let power go to his head and let lust overtake his will. He engaged in adultery and murder and a cover-up. Yet again, God did not abandon him, but sent the prophet Nathan to confront David in his sin and call him back to the Lord’s mercy and back to faith. (Cf. 2 Samuel 11 & 12.) 

This life is full of challenges to our faith and decency and all that is good. As the apostle Paul said, “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh” (Ephesians 6:1200.  We are up against “the evil rulers of the unseen world … and huge numbers of wicked spirits in the spirit world” (Ephesians 6:12 TLB). So, we need to arm ourselves not with the tools or devices of this world, not even with the mighty sword of a Goliath (which ultimately did David no good). We take up the whole armor of God—the sword of the Spirit, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation—so that we may be able to withstand evil. We stand firm when we stand in the righteousness God has given us in Christ and cling always to the words that Jesus has spoken to us—words that are spirit and life (John 6:63). There’s really nowhere else we can run for safety, nowhere else we can go to have hope and peace and goodness in our lives, no one else who can hold onto us for eternity. 

May we daily say, as Jesus’ disciples said, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow, 1 comment
03
Dec
2023

The Sun of Righteousness is Rising

An Advent Promise—and Warning


The Sun of Righteousness is Rising

by David Sellnow

In 1969, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) wrote a song called Bad Moon Rising. “I see the bad moon arising, I see trouble on the way”—that was the opening lyric. The song had a very end-times theme. One stanza said:

I hear hurricanes a-blowin’
I know the end is comin’ soon
I fear rivers overflowin’
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Fogerty himself said the song is about “the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us”—but at the same time wrote it with “a happy-sounding tune.” I thought of that song as I was reading the prophecy from Malachi. The prophet spoke of a time that is like a bad moon rising for many people, but like a glorious sunrise for others. “The sun of righteousness shall rise,” Malachi wrote (4:1), bringing healing, light, and warmth for those who revere God’s name. At the same time, it will burn the arrogant and evildoers. 

If you had a Bible in your hand and opened it to find the book of Malachi, you’d get a good idea of what new horizon he had in mind. It is the New Testament—the coming of the day of Jesus Christ. The words of Malachi chapter 4 are the last words in the Old Testament. You flip the page and you’re in the New Testament. The first New Testament book, Matthew, begins with “an account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah” (Matthew 1:1) and then explains how “the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place” (Matthew 1:18).  That’s a 400-year flip as you flip that one page. Malachi’s writing was the last prophetic word from God for at least 400 years before Jesus Christ arrived on the scene. The next prophet from God would not come until immediately before Jesus. Then, an angel announced the birth of a child to be named John. Echoing the words of Malachi, the angel said, “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah” he would “turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1:13-17). That child would become the preacher known to us as John the Baptist.

In the new day as prophesied by Malachi, and introduced by John the Baptist, “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings” for all who revere the name of the Lord (Malachi 4:2).  “Revere” is an attempt to translate the ancient Hebrew word יָרֵא (yah-ra), for which we have no one-word equivalent in English. It is to fear the name of the Lord, to stand in awe of him, to be amazed at him, respect him, trust him, rely on him, worship him. Those who revere God, who know his saving name and his saving deeds, anticipate his arrival with hope. When the Lord enters our world, his coming is an answer to prayers, a day of salvation. He brings righteousness as a gift, forgiving our sins and supplying us with goodness. The day of the Lord is like bright and warm sunshine, bringing a fresh new morning. Think of the warmth and joy we feel when we celebrate Christmas: Jesus came to be our righteousness, to bring us peace with God. This dawning of the new, bright sunshiny day in Christ is the kind of thing that makes you go out and leap like young calves released from the stall, as Malachi described it (4:2). You jump for joy. You bask in the sunlight. Your spirit rejoices in God your Savior (cf. Luke 1:47). Sin and death and all that opposes the way of grace and faith in Christ “will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts” (Malachi 4:3). God promises that all the evil which troubles us is overcome by the coming of the Christ. Both when Jesus came to this world the first time, and when he comes again, the triumph of life that is in him is made evident.

Having said that, it also must be said that the day of the Lord does not make everyone happy. Many do not revere God‘s name and do not welcome him. Their hopes are in themselves, not in the Lord. Some think they are perfectly healthy without God and feel no need for spiritual healing. Some have usurped religious authority for themselves and imposed rules that “lock people out of the kingdom of heaven” because they get wrapped up in legalisms and neglect “justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:13,23). Those attitudes the Lord calls arrogance. There also are persons who do immoral deeds in darkness. They don’t want any sunlight exposing their shame. The things they do are things God calls evil. According to Malachi, for the arrogant and the evildoers, the shining of God‘s light is like scorching desert heat that burns. God’s announcement of a rising sun of righteousness is like a bad moon rising for them. The same righteousness of God that provides a refuge for those who trust in him is a burning scourge on those who trust their own righteousness or try to hide their own guilt. God’s blazing glory turns to dust everything that is not cleansed by forgiveness through faith. “All the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble,” Malachi warned (4:1).

So we see that the day of the Lord is a great joy for those who put their trust in the Lord by faith. It is a dreadful day for those who do not, whose hearts fight against God. We might well bear in mind that either of those descriptions may describe each of us at times. We are not always faithful. We have the same human tendencies as all human beings, wanting the opposite of what the Lord wants for us, thinking we know better than him. Malachi spoke to our consciences. “Remember the teaching of my servant Moses,” he said (Malachi 4:4). No one who keeps in mind God‘s laws to Moses can pretend they are righteous on their own or hide the fact that they sin. What does the law of Moses say? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5)  “Walk in all his ways” (Deuteronomy 10:12). “Have no other gods” (Exodus 20:3)—nothing that comes ahead of the Lord in your life.  Be holy. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Do not pervert justice. Judge your neighbor fairly. Do not go about spreading slander. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge. Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus, chapter 19). Just listening to those laws is painful, because we know we fall far short of godly ideals. We are not righteous. We are sinful. Malachi’s warning keeps us from getting too puffed up about ourselves.

So did the warnings of the prophet who came after Malachi, a voice like that of Elijah of old. John the Baptist was like a second Elijah, speaking for God. He declared: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 3:2). John the Baptist scolded those who were proud of themselves and their heritage, but were arrogant and lacked the humility of faith. “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’” John told them. “For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Luke 3:8). Being descendants of a religious forefather was not a ticket into heaven for them. Without faith in the Messiah themselves, they were destined to be cut down and thrown into the fire (Luke 3:9). That was John’s message to the arrogant and evildoers.

Strong prophetic warnings always aimed at shaking people out of their self-righteousness and sinfulness and turning their hearts back to the Lord. While the ministry of God’s prophets shouted out warnings, they also soothed with promises. Malachi told of healing sunshine, rays of hope for people who trusted in God. And John “proclaimed the good news to the people” (Luke 3:18). He pointed to Jesus and said, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). John’s ministry turned the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, keeping individuals and families focused on faith and hope and love (cf. Malachi 4:6). The curse of the law would be removed by the Messiah, Jesus (cf. Galatians 3:13-14). The sunshine of God’s love, the gift of his goodness, have come to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

We are living in the Day of the Lord, my friends. His presence never departs from us. It is AD 2023. We refer to our years as AD: Anno Domini—in the year of the Lord. The ancients who set up our calendar declared every year from the time of Christ’s arrival to be “The year of our Lord.”  The Lord has come. The Lord will come again. Blessed be the name of the Lord, and blessed are all those who continue to put their trust in him. Let us continue to put our trust in him, and so be ready for the day he comes again.

Christmas gift idea:  Sermons on Selected Psalms, available at Amazon.com:

Sermons on Selected Psalms: Sellnow, David: 9798402872462: Amazon.com: Books

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
29
Oct
2022

We Will Serve the Lord

Thoughts in focus on Joshua 24:13-15, in context of Joshua 24:1-26

As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Years ago, I was canvassing for a church outreach project. After a less-than-friendly reception at many homes, I came to a house with a lovely engraved door knocker that said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I thought, “At least here I’ll find a warm welcome.” Yet when the homeowner answered my knocking, he was irritated that I was on his porch. He brushed me off abruptly and told me to go away. At the time I thought, “Well, so much for him and his household serving the Lord!” As I think back on it now, I’m less inclined to judge his motives. In retrospect, our door-to-door surveying wasn’t particularly helpful to our neighbors. We didn’t exactly go out to the community asking them how we could be of help to them. We weren’t engaging much in service to or projects with the community. We just wanted to add members to our congregation. Perhaps we zealous surveyors needed some rethinking on what it means to say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” 

I will admit, I have no great credentials to be lecturing you on what it means to serve the Lord. I spent much of my elementary school life writing “I will not  ____” 100 times on the chalkboard because of my behavior. I was called into the dean’s office multiple times in high school. I was called into the dean’s office multiple times in college. I’ll spare you the details of my transgressions–the ones back then and the ones since. If you want someone who has always obeyed all the rules to help you understand what it means to serve the Lord, I’m not your guy.  But what I propose is that for you, for me, for our households, serving the Lord isn’t merely making sure you have all obeyed all the rules. Serving the Lord isn’t about mouthing the right words or following a “commandment learned by rote” (Isaiah 29:13), but a matter of hearts that are drawn close into relationship with God. Our God can (and will) hold onto hearts of those who trust in him, even when their lives get complicated and confused and messy. The person whose heart is linked to the Lord, ready to serve, is more likely to be the tax collector who knows he doesn’t deserve heaven but prays, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” rather than the proud Pharisee who announces, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people … I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income” (cf. Luke 18:9-14).

The oft-quoted line, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” comes from a speech by Joshua at the beginning of Israel’s national history. When Joshua and his people had taken possession of lands that would come to be known as Israel, they held a solemn ceremony. Joshua rehearsed their history and called the people to faithful service. Promises were made to Abraham, to turn Abraham’s family into a great nation of descendants with a homeland in mind for them. Israel had grown into a nation within a nation when they were in Egypt. God sent Moses and Aaron to lead them out, to go to their promised land. They escaped Egypt, and Egypt’s army was destroyed. They spent many years living in the wilderness, without an established home. Then they were led to lands inhabited by the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and God handed them over to Israel (Joshua 24:2-13). 

Joshua’s speech summed it up all rather matter-of-factly. And we tend to think of the conquest of Canaan rather matter-of-factly–even in bold, heroic terms. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down! But if you ponder it, there are challenging questions to consider. How do you deal with the fact that God’s chosen people were sent on a mission to eradicate other peoples and take possession of their territories? They had been given commands from God through Moses that described their mission in stark terms.  If the people they were dispossessing didn’t surrender peacefully, the Israelites were told to “make war” and “besiege” them and “put all males to the sword. … As for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance,” they they were taught by Moses, “you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them” (Deuteronomy 20:10-17).  

That’s fearsome language.  We’re told that God was using Israel to bring judgment upon those other nations, because of “the abhorrent practices of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9). Archaology supports the Bible’s record that those nations’ practices included even the ritual sacrifice of children. In a previous time, when the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had exhausted God’s patience, fire rained down from heaven in judgment. In the days of Joshua, judgment by God was brought upon Canaan by the army of Israel. God made clear to the people of Israel that it was not because they were better or more worthy that they were being given these victories. It was because of God’s faithfulness to his own promises. He was fulfilling the oath he made to Israel’s ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, that this would be their land (Deuteronomy 9:4-5).  Joshua’s job was to establish a physical homeland for the people of Israel and to safeguard the boundary lines of their nation. This was no easy task in the midst of rival peoples who followed the worst of the tendencies of religion and ritual and power in this world. Within that territory, Israel needed to remain intact in order to keep the bloodline of the family of Abraham intact until the arrival of the Messiah, promised to come from Abraham’s descendants. 

So what it meant for Joshua and the Israelites to serve the Lord faithfully in their day had some very special circumstances. Thus Joshua addressed the people with some very stern language. He laid down the law heavily with them, warning they could come under God’s judgment too if they turned away from faithfulness. Their faithfulness involved following moral, civil, and ceremonial laws given through Moses, to maintain their identity as a people. God did not want them to fall into the ways of the people around them and “do all the abhorrent things that they [did] for their gods, and thus sin” against the LORD God (Deuteronomy 20:18). The LORD God wanted to keep his people from the coercion of idolatrous religion. The idols of the nations really are nothings; they cannot bring rain, they cannot provide hope (cf. Jeremiah 14:22).  Only the true Lord of heaven can send showers and offer salvation. He’s not the kind of God that you can please by burning your child alive in a fiery sacrifice. You may remember how the LORD God once presented Abraham with a challenge of fatih, asking him to sacrifice his own son Isaac–but then stopped him to show this is not how the LORD God is served. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a God who relates to his people, who knows and calls each of his people by name. The God of Abrahm, Isaac, and Jacob is someone who calls us into relationship with him, whose Spirit renews our hearts and minds so that we walk in willing agreement with his principles. Our God is not seeking to impose a way of oppression or slavish obedience to rules and power. The faith and way of life for the people of Israel was to be uniquely different from the ways of the world around them. For them as people of the LORD their God, most of all, their life of worship and faithfulness would be looking forward to and foreshadowing the promised Savior of all nations, who would come through their nation.

Let’s bear that in mind. In the midst of the sternness of the situation for the people of Israel–needing to establish and maintain their integrity in the midst of pagan neighbors–their main focus always was to look toward and trust in God’s promise of salvation.  For them to serve the Lord in ancient days (and for us to serve the Lord in our day) is, above all, a matter of clinging to the promises of God in Christ with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. When we say, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord,” think first of service to the gospel.  When Jesus was asked, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Jesus answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. … This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life” (John 6:28,29,40). Doing God’s will always has been, more than anything, about trusting his gospel promises.

Time and again, the Lord’s prophetic spokesmen reminded that the Lord says, “I desire steadfast love, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6; see also Micah 6:6-8, Psalm 51:1-2,16-17, Proverbs 21:3, 1 Samuel 15:22, Isaiah 55:1-7, Joel 2:12-13, Matthew 9:13, Matthew 12:7). It’s never sacrifices for sacrifices’ sake, or ritual for ritual’s sake, or commandments for commandments’ sake.  It’s always about mercy, about rescue, about following a God who chooses the weak, the insignificant, the forgotten, who gives grace to everyone–not rewards to those who think they’ve earned it by how pure or correct or straightlaced they have been.

It’s worth noting that as the people of Israel went forward, often it was not the formal leadership that got what “serving the Lord” truly meant. It wasn’t scribes and Pharisees counting every way to be law-obeyers and ritual-keepers. By the time of Jesus’ arrival, the ones whose hearts were in the right place were simple-hearted souls like a carpenter and his young bride (Joseph and Mary) like a very ordinary, rank and file, elderly priest and his wife (Zechariah and Elizabeth), like simple, devoted worshipers who frequented the temple, yearning for the coming of the Savior (Simeon and Anna). The ones who received the message of Jesus with joy when he arrived in this world were shepherds, fishermen, the sick and disabled, the poor and the needy, societal outcasts, sinners. Jesus said to the high and haughty religious leaders of the day, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matthew 21:31).

So, in practice, what does it mean for us to serve the Lord?  Serving the Lord isn’t how many church functions you do or how many weekly or daily rituals you observe. Yes, we want to gather together in church. Yes, we want all members of the congregation to feel they have opportunities for service in ways that use their gifts and abilities. But the measure of your service to the Lord is not how many times you attend church or how many committees you join.

Back in the day, when I was doing door-knocking with a community religious survey in hand, one of the survey questions asked about religious involvement with a multiple choice question: “How often do you attend church?” The answer choices were:

___ Weekly
___ Once or twice a month
___ A couple times each year
___ Not at all

There were many community members (in the Bible Belt town where we were surveying) who got very offended at the question.  They would look at that question and respond, “You need another answer on here! I go three times a week–Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night prayer meeting!” They insisted that our survey records give them full credit for how much they were doing for the Lord. I don’t doubt the sincerity of their faith, but many of them seemed to have the emphasis in the wrong place–on their obedience, their diligence, their actions. When Jesus pictured the day of judgment and the Son of Man saying to those who are found righteous, “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:35-36), the response of the righteous is not, “Hey, God, you forgot to list how many times I went to church! And you forgot to list the times I helped an elderly lady across the street and how I did my neighbors’ yard work while they were away.”  Those whose hearts are genuine in serving the Lord aren’t keeping a scorecard.  They are simply living and breathing the gospel. God’s Spirit is alive in them. 

Jesus summed up what it means to serve the Lord in a few words:  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).  This wasn’t new in the sense of never having been stated before. The primary path for serving the Lord also in Old Testament times was living in love toward others. Joshua and the Israelites had a unique assignment when they were asked to take hold of a physical homeland for their nation.  But the primary calling for God’s people in serving the Lord in their day-to-day lives was: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).  The ancient command to love our neighbor has remained always true and was given revitalized emphasis by Jesus and his apostles.  Paul said, if we speak “in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love,” we are just noisy gongs, clanging cymbals.  If we “have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and … have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love,” we are nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-2).  John wrote, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent us his Son … Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. … If we love one another, God lives in us” (1 John 4:10-12).

Sometimes church folk have fallen into a misguided way of thinking about our mission in the world: thinking of our service to the Lord primarily as a battle against evil and evildoers. If we overdo that idea, we too easily cast ourselves in the role of godly warriors who stand against our enemies and must beat them down to defeat them. Then we start thinking of every neighbor who is different from us as someone we must oppose and push away. It’s as if we made the specialized mission Joshua and Israel had for a limited time in history into an ongoing crusade for all Christians for all time.  In doing so, we lose sight of our primary mission. Our primary mission, as Peter said, is: “Above all, maintain constant love for one another …. Be hospitable to one another …. Serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (1 Peter 4:8-10).  As Paul put it, “The love of Christ urges us on … so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.” We serve the Lord by engaging with our world with a ministry of reconciliation, of hope, of friendship. “We are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:14-20).

Maybe, a song called “Onward Christ’s ambassadors, reaching out in peace” wouldn’t have the same ring to it as “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.” But we’d do well to change our tune in that direction.  We are ambassadors more than we are warriors. God makes his appeal through us to bring others into relationship with us and with God through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20).  The Lord whom we serve, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is one who desires a heartfelt, deep relationship with each of us, by name. We serve him by living in love and relationship with others.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Posted by David Sellnow
11
Sep
2022

Ask God to Remember Who He Is

We pray to the One who is faithful, even when we are faithless

A sermon for September 11, 2022  (Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

Scripture for consideration:  Exodus 32:7-14


There is a tension inside of parents. Parents want their children to be good, to behave well, to do well. You have a godly desire for them to live productive, well-directed lives. You are upset when your children do things wrong, when they run away from you, when they do the opposite of what you know is good for them. At the same time, the core of a parent’s character is unconditional love. A parent will be there always for them, will never abandon them. A parent will search and strive and keep reaching out if ever children wander off or lose their way, intent on holding them close again in love, embracing them with forgiveness.

God describes himself to us as a parent to us; he is our Father. There is something of that same tension within God’s heart and in his Word to us. God has a righteous desire for rightness, obedience, and well-ordered lives for us. The Ten Commandments serve as a summary of the Law of God, his plans and principles for us. But law alone is not the essence of who God is. Above all, God’s love for us and promises to us always will be paramount. God’s essential character will not let him turn away from unconditional love, commitment, and caring for persons he has called to be his own. Even when we are not “good children,” when we are like prodigal sons who run off and squander our inheritance from our Father in “dissolute living” (Luke 15:13), our Father is waiting and watching for us every day, filled with compassion. Hi is ready to run and put his arms around us and welcome us home the moment we come back to him (cf. Luke 15:20). 

Mount Sinai (via Wikimedia Commons)

Today (in consideration of this Sunday’s Old Testament reading), we ponder what happened when Moses prayed on behalf of God’s people, and we hear that God “changed his mind” in response. This happened when the people of Israel were gathered in the southern Sinai Peninsula, at the base of Mount Sinai. Just three months prior, the people had exited Egypt amid astonishing signs and wonders and miracles that God enacted to deliver them from slavery. But when Moses was up on the mountain receiving teaching from God for forty days, the people lost faith. They reverted to the sort of worship they had seen in idolatrous Egypt.  They crafted a symbol, something like the Egyptian bull god Apis, a sacred cow, an image of fertility and strength. The LORD God, who had delivered Israel from Egypt, was angry at their apostasy. He announced to Moses that he was ready to destroy them and start over, making a new nation out of Moses and his descendants.  Moses, whom “the Lord used to speak to … face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11), spoke back to God and said, “No, you don’t want to do that.”  Moses asked why God would turn his power against the Israelites when he had promised to carry them forward as his people. “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants,” Moses said. “You swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants.’” (Exodus 32:13). Moses reminded God of his own character, his own promises, his own ultimate goal of gospel and mercy. At that, we are told, “The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (Exodus 32:14).  

This is amazing, isn’t it? Do you sense the conundrum in a statement like, “The Lord changed his mind”?  Haven’t we been taught that the heavenly Father “does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17 NIV)? And regarding the path of our lives, we confess that “all the days that were formed” for us were already written in God’s book “when none of them as yet existed” (Psalm 139:16). So, if God knows all things in advance, how can he have had one plan in mind and then changed plans?  How is it possible that God was intending to end his relationship with the people of Israel, and then, in response to Moses’ prayer, turned around and “did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened” (Exodus 32:14 NIV)?

Well, that is the wonderful mystery of prayer, isn’t it? It also reveals something of the wonderful mystery of God’s being and how he deals with us.  God already knows what is best for us before we ever utter a single prayer, and assures us that he has foreseen the whole plan of our lives (cf. Psalm 139). Yet he also urges us to pray and promises that he responds to our prayers. Pondering a deep mystery of God such as this makes us say, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6). It is true that God knows all things, and therefore knows in advance all that will transpire in our lives. On the other hand, it is also true that God hears and responds to our prayers, even changing the course of history in reply to the prayers of his people. We do not try to reconcile this logical paradox; rather, we acknowledge that God’s knowledge is far past our understanding.

It’s good that there are two differing perspectives in how God deals with us, because It’s not just Israel’s idolatry with the golden calf that deserved God’s punishment. Scripture says, “There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil” (Romans 2:9), and, ultimately, everyone is guilty of evildoing. “There is no one who is righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10).  Yet the same God who handed down the law that holds the whole world morally accountable also is full of mercy for us sinners. This is indeed a happy contradiction! God’s gospel (good news) stands opposed to his law of judgment. If it were not so, we would all be condemned forever. But God makes this promise to us:

Let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. …
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts  (Isaiah 55:7-9).

The higher wisdom of God goes above and beyond rules that say, “The person who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:2). God provides an answer to his own demands from the depths of his own mercy.

At a later time in the history of Israel, when the people were about to be carried away to Babylon for 70 years of exile, God instructed the people to pray for a return home. God’s knowledge of their future included the prayers they would offer to him.  “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile”  (Jeremiah 29:10-14).

Notice that God’s plans for us that look into the future include also plans that we will pray and he will respond to our prayers. That doesn’t mean that our prayers are all pre-scripted, as if God has programmed us like computers. Think bigger than that. No matter how many options or scenarios there may be, there is nothing of our lives that is outside of God’s awareness, including our prayers and all the different possibilities of our actions day by day. 

The Christian church father Augustine commented on our freedom to act (and to pray) fitting within God’s overall knowledge of all things: “Our wills themselves,” Augustine wrote, “are included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by his foreknowledge. For human wills are also causes of human actions, and he who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our wills” (quoted from City of God, Book V, chapter 9). That’s complicated, I know, but did you catch what Augustine was saying? God’s knowledge and will is so vast and all-encompassing that every possible change of direction by us, or every petition of prayer we might offer, is included. Our God is not small!

September 11 (via Wikimedia Commons)

As Christians, we are not fatalists. We do not believe that God has pre-chosen every detail of our existence in such a way that all we are doing is going through mindless motions. We are not God’s puppets; we are his people. In a prominent confession, Lutheran theologians rejected all notions of fatalism. “We reject and condemn as contrary to the standard of God’s Word the delirium of philosophers who . . . taught that everything that happens must so happen, and cannot happen otherwise, and that everything that man does, even in outward things, he does by compulsion, and that he is coerced to evil works and deeds [such as] robbery, murder, theft, and the like” (Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article II). If you take a fatalistic view, then you would have to blame God for the behavior of the Israelites in worshiping the golden calf, as if he made them do that. Or you would have to blame God for the actions of the terrorists that caused so much destruction on September 11th twenty-one years ago, as if God willed for them to do that. In a history classroom at a religious college, on more than one occasion, I had to correct students who wanted to say the Holocaust–the massacre of Jews and others hated by Hitler and the Nazi regime–must have been God’s will because God is in charge of everything. That sort of thinking is an atrocity in itself and an affront to God’s character. “God is love” (1 John 4:8). “God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13).  When human beings do evil things, we do that of our own accord. Persons are tempted by their “own desire, being lured and enticed by it; then, when that desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin” (James 1:14-15).

Do not assign death and destruction and harm and calamity to the will and desire of God. Moses knew God cannot do evil. So, when God denounced how stiff-necked and unfaithful his people were, and said, “Let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them” (Exodus 32:10), Moses said, “No, Lord, that’s not who you are.”  The goal of God is never our destruction but our salvation. He is patient with us, “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Think of someone like Paul, who had been such a self-righteous Pharisee, “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence” (1 Timothy 1:13).  But God showed him mercy, redeeming him from his ignorance, outpouring on him an overflow of faith and love in Christ (1 Timothy 1:14). Think of how Jesus described God’s intent and purpose–like a shepherd who will keep seeking and not give up on even one lost sheep, like a woman cleaning every corner of the house in search of just one lost coin (cf. Luke 15:1-10).  Emmy Kegler, in her book, One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins (2019), describes God’s loving purpose toward us well. She writes: “We too are lost and dusty coins. We have gone unnoticed, rusted from others’ indifference, misspent and misused, and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But God, in big and little ways, has picked up a woman’s broom and swept every corner of creation. God, in big and little ways, has tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust bunnies and checked every dress pocket. God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you were dropped in, you are mine.” 

We may wander. We may roll away. People near and dear to us may go astray, may lose faith and begin worshiping other things rather than staying true to God.  But God remains faithful to us and to them. Even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). God invites us to pray to him (Psalm 50:15, Ephesians 6:18). He invites our prayers in response to whatever is going on in our lives and in the world around us. And he promises he will respond to our prayers. We pray with confidence that prayer indeed can change things, for God has promised: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20).

We have a God whose character is anchored in a desire to rescue, to help, to save, to forgive. Our God invites us to be in conversation with him, to ask him to change his mind when we or others have sinned much “and indeed deserve only punishment.” Though “we are worthy of nothing for which we ask, no have we earned it … we ask that God would give us all things by grace”–and he does. Let us keep calling on God in prayer, asking him to remember his gospel promises. Like Moses prayed boldly even when his people were at their worst, we will keep on praying to our God “boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father.”

(Quotations in final paragraph from the Small Catechism, cf. Lutheran Book of Worship, p. 1163, 1164).  

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
18
Jan
2021

Thoughts for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Reject racism; God shows no partiality

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC (8/28/1963), the Rev. Dr. Martin  Luther King, Jr., famously said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” He dreamed that one day the United States would be a nation where individuals would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at University of Minnesota, Saint Paul campus, 1967 – Wikimedia Commons

Recent events reveal a distance still to go before King’s dream can be realized. Instances of propaganda and recruitment to white nationalist organizations have shown a more than fivefold rate of increase over the past two years.  The rate of death from COVID-19 for Native Americans has been 73% higher than for white Americans, and 40% higher for black Americans than white Americans.  What Dr. King said at a meeting of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (3/25/1966), sadly, still rings true today:  “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death” (Associated Press, 3/26/1966).

A dozen days ago, a self-proclaimed “shaman” stood at the rostrum of the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the US Capitol (after invading that space). He invoked the name of Jesus Christ and led a prayer of sorts, thanking God for “allowing the United States of America to be reborn” and “for allowing us to get rid of the traitors within our government.”  In response to such a misuse of Christ’s name, it seems fitting to gather together things spoken in Scripture and by recognized religious leaders about our call to work for peace and kinship among all human beings–children of God “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).   In King’s words, may we “speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

Bible statements

  • “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”  – The Apostle Peter  (Acts 10:34,35)
  • “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  – The Apostle Paul  (Galatians 3:28)
  • “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself.” – God’s word revealed to Moses (Leviticus 19:33,34)
  • “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” – James, leader in 1st century Jerusalem church  (James 2:8-9) 

Statements by religious leaders

  • “Discrimination based on the accidental fact of race or color, and as such injurious to human rights regardless of personal qualities or achievements, cannot be reconciled with the truth that God has created all men with equal rights and equal dignity.” – United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Discrimination and Christian Conscience (11/14/1958)
  • “Racism—a mix of power, privilege, and prejudice—is sin, a violation of God’s intention for humanity. The resulting racial, ethnic, or cultural barriers deny the truth that all people are God’s creatures and, therefore, persons of dignity. Racism fractures and fragments both church and society.” – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Freed in Christ: Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (8/31/1993)
  • “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. … I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech (12/10/1964)
  • “Racism can ultimately never be benign, nice and respectable.  It is always evil, immoral and ultimately vicious and not to be tolerated by Christians and people of goodwill as well as those of other faiths. … Racism claims that what invests us, each person, with worth is some extraneous arbitrary biological or other attribute, skin colour or ethnicity. … The Bible and Christianity teach a categorically different position.  What endows the human person with worth is not this or that attribute.  No, it is the fact that each person is created in the image and likeness of God.  This is something that is so for every single human being. … It does not depend on status, on gender, on race, on culture.  It does not matter whether you are beautiful or not so beautiful, whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated.  … Reconciliation [of all people] is really the heart of the Gospel message.  Therefore to say that people are fundamentally irreconcilable is to deny … the central tenet of Christianity.  Jesus said of himself, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all to me’” (John 12:32). – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speech to the Parliament of Australia (12/6/1994)


To see additional thoughts here on The Electric Gospel that speak against favoritism and prejudice, go to the following link and scroll through previous posts on the topic:

https://theelectricgospel.com/tag/favoritism/

 

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
21
Dec
2020

Spirits of Christmas past

The Electric Gospel got its start back in the 1990s as email devotions sent to parishioners and others on a church’s email list. Then for a while, it morphed into mailings for college students around the country (when I was serving on a national campus ministry board). Several years ago, The Electric Gospel was revived in blog form, providing a place to publish writings by students in religion courses I was teaching. Now (as noted on the “About Us” page of this site), the current Electric Gospel aims to carry these devotional efforts forward to as wide an audience as possible.

For this Christmas week, I thought I’d share a couple devotional pieces that were posted on the archival Electric Gospel blog five Christmases ago (in 2015). They were written by two wonderful young women I had the privilege of working with during my years teaching college undergraduates (like Eunseo) and working with Christian teachers (like Amanda).

Have a blessed Christmas.

– David Sellnow


Four Names for the Messiah 

by Eunseo Yang

For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).
———-

Names have meaning. In Korean, ‘eun’ means grace and ‘seo’ means words, so my name (Eunseo) could mean “words of grace.”  In my language, 군사부일체 means king, teacher and father are one (like trinity).  It emphasizes the authority of such persons in society and that father, teacher and king offer the same merciful grace.

In Isaiah’s prophecy, although the Messiah is given four names, he is only one.

He is our Wonderful Counselor.  He himself is a wonder, and he solves for us things we cannot solve or explain.  He counsels us through troubles, overcoming them by his strength.  He guides us with his wisdom.

Since we are weak, we cannot stand against troubles on our own.  But Mighty God supports us. There is nothing he cannot do. He does miracles that are impossible to be explained by human science or power.

The Messiah is also called Everlasting Father.  What does that mean in reference to Jesus, God the Son?  The term “father” is being used like the Korean term I mentioned.  He is father in the sense of king and leader over us.  And his leadership never ends.  Jesus lives forever and leads us to life in heaven.  Jesus is with us always, in life and in death.

And this same Jesus is the Prince of Peace.  “He will reign … with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever” (Isaiah 9:7).  Imagine no wars, no strife, no disasters. With Jesus’ kingdom, it’s not imaginary. His government is real. When Jesus rules our hearts, peace comes to us.

Jesus has many names – and every name is true. He is love itself, King of kings, our Savior. Through him we have victory against evil.

———-

Jesus, you are everything to us.  Keep our faith focused on you always, trusting your wisdom, your power, and your leadership.  Bring peace to our hearts.  Amen.


A Prophet Like Moses Will Come

by Amanda Becker

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15).
———-

It happened again, as it had happened many times before.   I had given my students directions for an important assignment.  Immediately a hand went up and a student asked the dreaded question: “So what do we have to do?”

My immediate thought was, “Didn’t I just explain this thirty seconds ago?”

Have you experienced this with your own children, family, friends, or coworkers? Have you ever found yourself asking the words: “Are you even listening to me?”

Can you imagine how Moses felt every time the Israelites didn’t listen to him and God’s commands? How many times did he have to tell them to stop worshiping false idols, stop complaining, stop mistrusting the Lord? Can’t they just follow directions?

How many times have we been like the Israelites, not listening to the Lord? How many times aren’t we like children, asking, “So, what do we have to do?” when God has already told us? But instead of turning away from us in frustration, God sent us a teacher whose word we needed most of all. He sent a prophet like Moses but better than Moses – his very own Son, Jesus. We listen to Jesus because our very souls and eternal life are at stake. The ultimate Prophet, Jesus, tells us, “Anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).

Are you listening to Jesus?

———-

Dear Lord, forgive me when I fail to listen to your commands. I never have to demand to be heard by you, for you always listen to my heart.  You are a God of love and forgiveness. Please help me to be a more loving listener to you and to the people in my life, and forgive me when I stumble. Amen.

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
24
Aug
2020

Healthy self-assessment

For the sake of our service in Christ

by David Sellnow

The Epistle appointed for this Sunday got me thinking. Of course, all of Scripture is inspired and prompts our pondering on many levels (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16-17). But a particular line in today’s pericope sparked the thoughts I’ll share here today.

Here’s the verse from Paul’s letter to the Romans:  “For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3).

Thinking of ourselves with sober judgment is difficult. We tend to go overboard in one direction or the other. Some church members may hold their own opinions and desires paramount over others and will try to control a congregation’s agenda to suit themselves. At the same time, other church members can be overly humble and self-effacing. Yes, we are called upon to live in humility (Ephesians 4:2). But that doesn’t mean adopting so low a view of ourselves that we hold back from serving others. Church leaders often struggle to find persons for needed ministry roles when members shrink away from teaching or witnessing or leadership, thinking themselves not up to the task. 

Trust me, I’m not lecturing anyone with this bit of blogging, as if I’ve attained the ability to do appropriate self-assessment. I’ve erred on both ends of the spectrum. At times in my life, I’ve been way too full of myself, thinking I was somebody important. At other times, I’ve been overly hard on myself, thinking I had no value to anyone and nothing to offer.  Perhaps your own self-image has followed a similar pattern, sometimes puffed up, other times entirely deflated.

We’re not alone in this dilemma. Even Moses had to learn about estimating his abilities humbly and honestly. Having grown up in a position of privilege in the royal palace, he envisioned himself as hero to intervene on behalf of his people, the enslaved Israelites. “One day, he went out to where his own people were. He watched them while they were hard at work. He saw an Egyptian hitting a Hebrew man. The man was one of Moses’ own people. Moses looked around and didn’t see anyone. So he killed the Egyptian. Then he hid his body in the sand” (Exodus 2:11-12). Moses had thought too highly of himself, presumed too much authority too soon, and ended up fleeing for his life. He spent decades as a shepherd in a foreign land and started a family there. After many years, God decided it was time for Moses to take on the mantle of leadership. But when the Lord then came to call Moses be his prophet, Moses balked. “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:11)?  He objected, “Suppose they do not believe me or listen to me” (Exodus 4:1)? Even after the Lord demonstrated miracles that would validate Moses’ divine calling, Moses still offered an excuse: “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 4:10). And when the Lord kept pressing, saying, “I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak,” Moses pleaded, “O my Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:12,13).  

God considered Moses the right man for the job, but Moses had stopped seeing himself as someone who could do anything of significance. Of course, we know whose view of the situation was accurate and whose wasn’t. With God’s strength supporting him, Moses became the leader God intended him to be. After his death it was written, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt … and in the sight of all Israel” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).

When it comes to our own service in Christ’s kingdom, may God preserve us from presumption and arrogance as well as from minimizing or degrading ourselves.  May we not think of ourselves more highly than we ought … but also not more lowly than we ought.  Rather, may we consider our abilities as God’s servants “with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3).  We want to see ourselves through a lens of humility, but not a warped lens that fails to see ways we can bring benefit to others in our world. As the apostle Paul urged elsewhere, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3-4). A key part of looking to the interests of others involves healthy self-assessment of gifts and talents and skills we possess, which we can use in caring for others. Rather than saying, “O my Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:13), when we have the abilities and opportunities, God help us to say, “Here I am; send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).

—-

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Posted by David Sellnow
27
Dec
2019

Are you listening?

Originally published on The Electric Gospel on December 10, 2015.

Deuteronomy 18:15 –  The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him.

A Prophet Like Moses Will Come

by Amanda Becker

It happened again, as it had happened many times before.   I had given my students directions for an important assignment.  Immediately a hand went up and a student asked the dreaded question: “So what do we have to do?”

My immediate thought was, “Didn’t I just explain this thirty seconds ago?”

Have you experienced this with your own children, family, friends, or coworkers? Have you ever found yourself asking the words: “Are you even listening to me?”

Can you imagine how Moses felt every time the Israelites didn’t listen to him and God’s commands? How many times did he have to tell them to stop worshiping false idols, stop complaining, stop mistrusting the Lord? Can’t they just follow directions?

How many times have we been like the Israelites, not listening to the Lord? How many times aren’t we like children, asking, “So, what do we have to do?” when God has already told us. But instead of turning away from us in frustration, God sent us a teacher whose word we needed most of all. He sent a prophet like Moses but better than Moses – his very own Son, Jesus. We listen to Jesus because our very souls and eternal life are at stake. The ultimate Prophet, Jesus, tells us, “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24).

Are you listening to Jesus?

Prayer: Dear Lord, forgive me when I fail to listen to your commands. I never have to demand to be heard by you, for you always listen to my heart.  You are a God of love and forgiveness. Please help me to be a more loving listener to you and to the people in my life, and forgive me when I stumble. Amen.

Posted by kyriesellnow