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I have favorite Bible characters. Perhaps you do too. One of mine is Ananias. There are several folks with this name and they are not all favorites. Let us call mine, Ananias of Damascus. He was a Believer in and Follower of Jesus. We only see a short picture of him. It appears in the Book of Acts, chapter nine. So far as I know, this is his only appearance in all of Scripture. It is a good one. The one known as Saul of Tarsus was headed for Damascus. He had a vendetta against Believers and Followers of Jesus and had authority from the Chief...
Perhaps you have been or are going through a period of affliction. (I remind you a meaning for affliction is: physical or mental pain or suffering testing a person’s ability to function) Affliction can have benefits: One of these is found in Romans 5:3; “…Tribulation (affliction) works toward giving patience.” It can be dangerous to pray for patience because God might just use affliction or tribulation to bring patience into your life. Other benefits are found in Psalm 119:67 where the Psalmis...
A weary, soul-stressed, woman comes to Jesus with a desperate need and pleads with Him for help. What will our kind, loving, gentle Jesus do? He will ignore her. At the encouragement of His disciples, He may tell her He has nothing for her and send her away. “Say it isn’t so!” But it is. The story is found in St. Mark 7:24-30. There is more to the story. We eventually see her needs are met. But what can we learn from this story? I would like to paint a different scenario: A young couple returns home with their young son. The wife walks by the l...
I wish I could tell you that everything after what we have seen turns out wonderfully well. But I cannot. Yes, everything so far looks good. God did perform multiple miracles. Hezekiah recovered from his life-threatening disease. He did live fifteen more years. God sent His ‘death-angel’ through the Assyrian army camp and that night. 185,000 of the army that mocked God and God’s people died. Sennacherib (S) did return to Assyria in shame at this terrible defeat at the hand of the God he had mock...
The Assyrian King is Sennacherib (S). He marches with an immense army to confront Hezekiah, who has not paid the tribute as his father had. It is here the weak faith of Hezekiah falters. He pays the tribute (S) demands. He takes some of his own wealth and unfortunately raids the precious metal in the Temple of the Lord to make up the balance. Hezekiah does not know if this will appease (S) so he does what he can humanly do to stave off disaster. He stops a major water supply to hinder (S) and...
This “Thought” will hopefully cause us to think about The Church/Christians. For Christians are The Church, one at a time. Followers of Christ were first called Christians at Antioch. It was intended to be derogatory. It means, “Little Christs” or “Imitators of Christ.” That is what Christians should want to be: imitators of Christ. We were given a formula for this to happen by Jesus Christ. He said, “This is how men will know you are my disciples (followers), if you love one another.” (St...
James writes: “… What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while than vanishes…” I am scared to argue with Scripture but sometimes I feel like a counter point is valid. Memory takes me back decades. I was a high school freshman. Some of us went to a wrestling match. My friend and classmate was wrestling at 112#. He was good and won his match easily. His brother, an upper classman, wrestling at 165#, was a mass of muscle and intimidated me for sure. He got his opponent into a...
Winter has just barely begun. Spring is far away. Many of us do not like winter’s cold challenges. What can we do? There is one thing we must surely do: “Wait!” Of course we may not like waiting very much either. There are three ladies from Scripture we can look at. First there is Sarai, Abram’s wife. She wanted a child and for a long time was not able to have a child. She knew God had promised one but was impatient. So she went ahead with her own plan. She gave her maid servant to her husband...
Mary must have had an emotional roller coaster. It is said “Patience is a virtue.” Surely this is true. It is not so much Mary I am talking about here. God spoke through the Prophet Isaiah. It had been almost 700 years since the prophecy told “A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son…” It would certainly be a miracle for this to happen and small wonder most people would not believe it could happen. Yet the prophecy was a subject of Scripture and therefore would be preached, and talked about, no...
As we approach the Christmas Season, I’d like us to think about some of the Biblical personalities in the Story. It would be easy to remember them and not think they were real. But, they were. They had bodies, minds, spirit-souls, just like we do. I’d like to lead our thoughts to consider their emotions. I start with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were getting old. They were a godly couple and served God faithfully but God had not granted one of their chief prayer requests. They had...
I think I mentioned that our Sunday School Class is studying the Book of Daniel this quarter. (By the way, if you are not involved/attending Sunday School, I would encourage you to do so. Gathering for worship is wonderful but it is not the same as being involved with a small group, studying/asking and answering Biblical questions, and enjoying the open camaraderie of a small group.) I expect most folks know a bit about the story of ‘Daniel in the lion’s den’. Israel had been conquered by Babylo...
It is pretty rare for a person to never get angry. So, is anger a good thing? There is no easy answer for that but there are answers. Anger can be a reflex and when it is there is danger of saying or doing something we will regret because we acted too quickly. Anger can be a response and can be an asset or a liability. No matter, it is a good idea to slow down the reflex or response. We might encourage ourselves and others to ‘count to ten’. Perhaps if you are a fast counter, it would be bet...
The subject of fasting came up in study recently. I thought I might utilize the subject in a "Thought." It is not discussed very much and so it may be an unfamiliar subject for many of us. First of all, fasting is not a means for dietary control. i.e. It is not "I need to lose a few pounds, so I will fast." Certainly this can work, and there is nothing wrong with doing it. But this is not the reason or purpose for fasting. Fasting is closely connected to prayer. So, we can determine there is a s...
That night, the king could not sleep. I wonder why. Could it be indigestion from lunch or could it be God Who is working out His plan? At any rate, the king is wide awake. What should he do? He could have called for a concubine, or a minstrel show, or an orchestra or a choir concert. Instead, he chose to have the chronicles of the kingdom read. I expect a lot of those records were extremely boring. Perhaps that was the king’s thought. “I will be so bored, I’ll fall asleep.” But perhaps God now...
Queen Esther has an amazing response to Mordecai’s proposal. In order to truly understand this Book, I need to deal with some history both secular and Biblical. I need some detail but I don’t want to get so detailed that I lose you. Please bear with me. By the year 550 B.C. Cyrus became king of Persia. He overcame any Median opposition to do this. Xerxes became king of Persia in 485 B.C. That is about 65 years later. I am bothered by the fact that prayer is not mentioned in the Book of Est...
After a period of time when the king seemed content, he made an appointment of a man to be his sort of "second in command." His name is Haman. He is an Agagite. Agagite may mean nothing to us but we refer to history and Scripture. It seems Agagite is a title for the royal family of the Amalekites. When Israel was coming out of captivity in Egypt, the Amalekites attacked and killed many of the weak and weary in the rear of the company. For this treachery and wickedness, and the fact that they...
Jesus talked a lot about giving. Often He was talking about giving to God. But sometimes, He spoke about charitable giving. Once, He and his disciples sat in the Temple and Jesus observed what people were putting into the box that was for charity to the poor. A poor widow came to the box and put into it two mites. A mite was the smallest minted coin at the time. Jesus pointed out this gift to His disciples with the word of commendation that “She has put in more than they all because … she has pu...
In Israel of old, it was scornful not to have children. If a woman was barren she was looked down upon. Yet, quite a number of the heroes had problems with bearing children. Examples: Abram-Sarai, Isaac-Rebekah, Jacob-Rachel and Zachariah-Elizabeth. Eventually, these couples did have children but it took some intervention from God. Today, I would like to look at another Old Testament example. Her name is Hannah. Her story is found in I Samuel. Hannah had a husband, Elkanah. Elkanah had a second...
This will be the last in the Judges’ series. We have looked at Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Barak and Gideon. I have skipped Abimelech, (although I am not sure he really qualified as a judge), Tolah and Jair. I won’t get to Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Samson, or Samuel. This has been a difficult series for me, frustrating when I look at Israel and even frustrating to look at the judges themselves. I guess I see so much of me (us) in them. The one great factor is to see God. He has shown mar...
Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain be removed and cast into the sea. It will obey you. In looking at our next judge, we will see that mustard seed sized faith in action. Israel had sinned again. This time God sent Midianites and other eastern nomadic nations to oppress Israel. They did. Scripture proposes they were like locusts stripping the land of everything. The raiding bands of Midianites lived on the move, in tents, taking everything w...
We have been looking at a sort of “prologue” for the Book of Judges and have reviewed a bit of the Book of Joshua as well. I think it was good we did this because you can probably see a lot of the same things reflected in our own nation. The spies brought back a mixed report after they had traveled through the Promised Land. Everybody agreed it was a beautiful and prosperous land. We could say we have one, too. But, they did not agree on whether God could be trusted to give them possession or...
God gave Israel responsibility to eliminate the nations that were occupying the “Promised Land.” Why? Well, to begin with, these nations were evil. We note they were evil way back when Abraham lived more than 700 years before the times of Joshua and Judges. There is a little phrase God shared with Abraham. It was that ‘their cup of evil was not full’. What can we gather from that? Did God want more evil to come? Certainly not. God is long-suffering. He does not want to destroy anyone. He is giving these nations every chance to change. We shou...
Leaders must follow a code. In the case of religious leaders, there is generally a written code. Since I am following what has been my pattern, the Israelite leader would follow what we call the Old Testament. The Pope would follow a Roman Catholic Bible. For Protestants, it would be a Bible but without the extra books contained in the Roman Catholic Bible. For the three-dimensional-Israel, their High Priest (religious leader), their family head and their king, (political leader) would all be ex...
We love and please God by obeying Him. Of course that is not only what God wants, it is good for us as well. I acknowledge it is hard because of our “fallen nature.” But think how wonderful our world would be if we all obeyed God’s commandments. In a recent message, our bishop said, “If we all obeyed God’s commands to live a chaste life, we would see the end of all Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs).” Think about it. God says, “Do not commit adultery” and “Avoid fornication.” The...
I would like to describe perfect love but I am not sure I can. First, I would say that no person who is only human could understand perfect love and could certainly not practice it. Therefore, I have rejected using a human dictionary to describe it. One dictionary I have, gives fourteen definitions for “love,” then gives 31 hyphenated uses. Only God can define and practice love perfectly. Part of the reason is because God is omniscient and eternal. That means He knows everything about eve...
I believe I can support the first part of this “Thought” with Scripture. The second part includes more speculation and less Scripture. The conclusion is a mix. Most certainly, Jesus is on His Journey to bring His Bride back to His eternal home. The Rapture of the Church is much anticipated and longed for. When the arch angel calls, the trumpet sounds, and the dead in Christ rise to meet Christ and the living Church in the air, it will be a thrilling reunion/union. Christ will have purified His...
Some weeks ago, I had a Thought that I knew would take a lot of space. I asked Editor Baughman if I could have more than my normal space and she graciously granted it. I don’t think I should ask again so, would do me a favor: cut out and save these next few Thoughts, it would be helpful to have them to read together. I want to lead you to think about a Christmas Journey. This is not what you might normally think about. It is not the journey of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, nor t...
Scripture and hymn-writers unite to tell us to give thanks to the Lord. They utilize various words for the thanks part, including praise, worship, exalt and many others. The point being we are to attain and hold a position of giving God the honor that is due to His name. It is not simply saying the words of course, it is also living in a way that brings honor and glory to God. When we are His, we need to reflect a worshipful attitude. So, let us look at some of those words used to encourage us...
Two weeks ago, I alluded to the duties of a prophet being challenging because he was asked to do whatever God wanted him to do. Sometimes those things were bizarre. But there were regular things as well. A prophet had to deal with people. Often they were hard-headed and even more frequently hard-hearted. So, when the prophet was commissioned to call people to repent they resisted. Scripture tells us there are pleasures in sin for a season. Even when that season is over, people frankly want to...
Scriptures to Read Jeremiah 1:1-10 Jeremiah 1:11-19 Jeremiah 2:1-9 Jeremiah 5:1-13 Jeremiah 7:1-11 Jeremiah 8:18-22 Jeremiah 11:1-10 I am so glad for an oven with a glass in the door and a light inside. It gives me opportunity to view the cake as it is baking. I can see it begin to pull away from the sides of the pan without having to open the door and risk upsetting the baking process. I want to spend time looking at the Prophet Jeremiah. In His Own special and unique way, God looked upon...
An elderly lady lived in a ramshackle house. She did not seem to care about things. The house was not only untidy but dirty as well. For that matter, she was herself was both untidy and dirty. One day, a little girl brought a beautiful lily that had been part of the Easter decoration at church as a gift for her. The lady was grateful and placed the lily on the middle of her dining room table. She realized the beautiful lily, bright and shining looked out of place on that table. She got out some...
As I said last week, "Isaiah is a good prophet and he uses a combination of warnings to alert the people and promises of blessings to entice them to get into a right relationship with God and to obey God's commands. But Isaiah speaks to more than just Israel. He shares God's word with at least eight other nations as well. To be fair, a prophet may not fully understand the words he speaks on behalf of God. I recall passing on driving instructions to a place I had never visited. My dad gave the...
Much preaching/teaching today is focused on the New Testament. I am certainly not opposed to that. I am glad for those who preach and teach truth and utilize the New Testament to do it. But I'd like to take some time to look at the nuggets of truth found in the Old Testament. I want to use these next "Thoughts" to examine tiny segments of the Old Testament. I plan to start with Isaiah and perhaps spend five weeks or so there before moving on. Most certainly no one can exhaust such a magnificent...
We humans are pretty good at the blame game. We do not do so well at accepting responsibility. This started way back in the Garden of Eden, after our first human ancestors disobeyed God and ate from the tree He told them not to eat. It did not take very long for God to confront them. God went first to Adam. Adam blamed Eve. God went to Eve and she blamed the serpent. Down through the centuries of time, all manner of people play the blame game. The Prophet Ezekiel shows us another aspect of...
The Day of Pentecost was fully come. The Jews had been celebrating Pentecost for centuries. It was a time of great celebration. It marked the time the grain harvests were completed. God had promised their ancestor Abraham He would bring his descendants into a Land that was rich and prosperous. It was a Land that flowed with milk and honey. Of course failure of the Jews to fully obey God resulted in lots of failures. The land was rich and when Israel was obedient, the harvest was plentiful....
The title today may be misleading. I really do not think there is such a thing as unanswered prayer. If we are honest about it, my guess is there are far more unspoken or unasked prayers than unanswered ones. God has multiple ways to answer prayer. He answers some with a “Yes.” He answers some with a “No.” But there are other answers also. Sometimes He says, “Not yet.” This means the answer will take a while to prepare for. It may be that circumstances need to change or that the one who is pray...
I do not plan to examine all the judges of Israel listed in the Book. But I do want to look at some. The Scriptural readings that go along with this one are fairly long but do not ignore reading them. I am certainly not apologetic about asking you to read Scripture. As a nation, as a church, and as a generation, we are Biblically illiterate. We know Timothy, a protege of Paul’s, had good Scriptural knowledge, yet Paul tells him to continue to, “Study to show yourself a-proved unto God…” At any...
Saturday is Sabbath. Everyone rests. Jesus rests in the tomb. Sunday, Sabbath is over. Before dawn, women came to do a better job of preparing Jesus’ body for burial than they think the men did. Their chief concern was, “Who or how could the huge stone be removed from the entrance of the tomb?” As they get close enough to see clearly, the stone is rolled away. Jesus had told His disciples that He would rise again. They did not comprehend or remember. There had been an earthquake. There was a...
It was very early on Friday morning. Jesus had finished a three-hour prayer. He had urged His disciples to watch and pray with Him. Some may have prayed but none were able to stay awake long. A multitude (this is a difficult word to define but it was at the very least a large group) most likely comprised of Temple Police, Roman soldiers and ruffians hired to seize Jesus. Judas Iscariot was to point out Jesus so there would be no mistake. He chose to do this by telling them he would kiss Jesus....
The relationship between shepherd and sheep is not the same everywhere. In some countries, i.e. Australia, New Zealand, the United States, sheep are simply possessions. The care they receive is for them to be fenced in or guarded by dogs to keep them safe. In the Middle East, or Holy Lands, sheep are more like family members. Flocks are small. Sheep are known by name or at least identified as individuals. Care for sheep is individualized. The Prophet Nathan gave a parable in order to help King...
God created humankind to have fellowship with Him. In the beginning that worked. God had fellowship with man. But God was God and Sovereign. Man could and did have fellowship with God. But God required man to be obedient to Him. Man rebelled. The rebellion was called sin. Sin separated man from God. In order for man to get back into fellowship with God, a sacrifice was required. It needed to be a blood sacrifice. The sin nature of man is passed on to his children. As man passes on physical...
Scripture frequently speaks of God as being a Shepherd. It also speaks of people being His sheep and His flock. I want to take these next “Thoughts” to examine this subject. We are approaching Easter. Many will think of brightly colored eggs and a bunny. I’d like us to think of a Lamb representing Easter. I do not want to commercialize the Lamb. I want you to consider Him as sacred. He will represent Jesus, The Christ, the Lamb of God, the One Who came to absorb and remove the sin and sins...
Here and now we are getting little foretastes of what is to come. As I write this, the temperature is pretty bitter cold but we have already had some warm days and little glimpses of springtime. I am really wanting to focus on spiritual things. As Christians we experience some really blessed times. They come in worship services, hymn sings, weddings, baby dedications and the like. But there is more and better to come. Imagine with me, we are an observation deck and overlooking the assembling of...
The Old Testament shows some aspects of God dealing with people that we have trouble understanding. God had delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. He used signs and wonders to accomplish this. The fear of God had fallen upon many pagan peoples. Unfortunately, God’s own people, Israel, did not have a holy fear and reverence for God. They did not trust Him as they should have. There is a story of a pagan king to give us some understanding. Israel had come into the nation of the Amorites, s...
Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent part of his life in a Soviet Siberian prison. At one point, he was so weak physically and discouraged mentally that he hoped for death. He even thought that if he stopped at his required hard labor and just leaned on his shovel, the prison guards would kill him. But a Christian working next to him sensing the desperation, leaned over his own shovel and drew a cross at the feet of Solzhenitsyn, erasing it before the guard could see. He would later record that was the...
The Bible says, “Pray without ceasing.” This means I need to bring God into everything all the time. I must stay in contact with God about all sorts of things. It’s critical because I want God involved in everything, large and small. Small things become large. My range of knowledge is very small. For instance, the “Presidential Prayer Team” encourages me to pray for one elected official each day. To help me do this, they list one official and eight things about that person daily. Eventuall...
I wrote last time about how precious the life of David was to God. David had every reason to trust, obey, and love God. But it would not be fair to propose David was more loved than others. God is capable of doing things we cannot do. He can love without favor. Much as I hate to admit it, my love for people is influenced by the people themselves. If people treat me well, I have no problem loving them. But, if people say and do bad things against me and even if they simply say and do bad things...
In a recent Bible Study, someone proposed we should “hate the sin but love the sinner.” I don’t know that this is actually a simple statement from Scripture but I do think it is a concept drawn from compilations of Scriptural teaching. Practicing to live this way is a real challenge. It is reasonable to hate sin. Sin is the root cause of everything bad. The end result of sin is death. Sin opposes God. God is all things good. Satan is the author of sin. Man is not sin’s author but mankind...
We were traveling recently and I lamented to my wife, “Prayer is the most powerful tool a Christian’s has. But I really wonder how many Christians actually pray.” There is so much Scripture to affirm prayer. Why don’t we avail ourselves more? In one place Jesus tells people to enter their prayer closets, shut the door, and pray to God. Perhaps we do not pray because we think we do not have the right words for prayer. When you are alone with God, you can pray in whatever words you want to. I’d...
There is a section of Scripture in the beginning of the Book of Ezra that I would like to look at with you. This will not be an expository ‘Thought” just some comments on what Israel went through and perhaps what we’re going through as well. A new king had come to the Persian throne. It seems God moved mightily upon him. One of his first acts in office was to decree Israel should be allowed to send back some of its people and to rebuild. He was very generous. He supplied financial support. He re...
