Grains of Sand

teensaloud.com (Google Images) “ …my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge ” writes the prophet in Hosea 4:6 (NIV). The entire chapter is terrifying in its condemnation, but this one phrase came to mind as I read 2 Chronicles 17 this morning. The chapter describes the early years of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah.  Those were good years because Jehoshaphat followed the Lord (17:3-6). One of the items on the king’s “to-do” list is described in verses 7 to 9 where we are told that he sent his officials, along with Levites and priests, to the outlying areas of the country. Their task is described this way: “ They taught throughout Judah, taking with them the Book of the Law of the Lord; they went around to all the towns and taught the people .” Jehoshaphat’s father, Asa, had been delivered a message through one of God’s prophets. As king, he had begun the process of ridding the land of its pagan idols and its idol worship. Substituting the true God for other gods was inevitably ...

Google Images Do we detect a little bit of “something” in the Lord’s voice as He looks at a multitude who refused to be satisfied? The Lord likens them to children: “T o what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn ’” (Matthew 11:16, 17). Do it our way, they say. The problem was (one that Jesus recognized easily) that these “children” would not be satisfied, would not respond to the message of reconciliation, no matter what the “packaging” looked like. Cosmetics wouldn’t cut it. Band-aids wouldn’t cover the wound. Jesus’ statement came on the heels of answering a question sent to Him by John the Baptist, who was then in prison. John was a rare character. He had appeared out of the desert. He wore strange clothes, ate weird food, and was in attack mode from the get-go. He was not “politically correct.” But he was doing what G...

Reading: Mark 4, 5 It caught my attention this morning how often Jesus told people not to talk about the miracles He had performed for them. The book of Mark is the shortest of the Gospels and the writer squeezes a lot of the highlights of Jesus’ earthly ministry into relatively few chapters, making the journey a particularly intense one.   The shortness of the book makes the Lord’s instructions not to talk about His miracles that much more pronounced. Of course, He didn’t want the demons He cast out of people (Mark 3:12) to talk about Him—who needs that kind of publicity? When the miracles were public there wasn’t much He could do about the crowds reaction. His fame became so great that He had difficulty getting into the towns without attracting a huge following (Mark 1:45; 3:7-8). Where He could, He asked those who benefitted from His miracles to limit who they spoke to about them (Mark 1:43-44; 5:19, 20, 43). I asked myself why Jesus didn’t want His miracles to be broad...

Reading: Matthew 5-7 The Sermon on the Mount would probably not score high marks in a Homiletics class. It has more than three points, no particular central theme, no clever “hook” to draw its audience in, and seems to end quite abruptly. Granted, we don’t have the whole sermon recorded for us and I’d bet the farm, if I had one, that it took Jesus a lot longer than 30 minutes to preach it! One thing the longest recorded teaching of Jesus can’t be accused of is being comfortable. The Beatitudes (5:3-12) remind us that believers need to be totally counter-culture if they expect blessings from heaven. The Ten Commandments, which we thought were difficult enough, are made even more difficult (5:17-48), and prayer is more about God than it is about being admired for our eloquence or George’s lack of employment (6:1-18). Heaven is to be our focus rather than earth (6:19-23). Worry is a no-no even when the wolf is at the door and the knees are out of your pants (6:24-34), which means...

“ The days are coming,” declared the Sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the land– not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it. In that day the lovely young women and strong young men will faint because of thirst. They who swear by the shame of Samaria, or say ‘As surely as your god lives, O Dan,’ or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’– they will fall, never to rise again .” –Amos 8:11-14, NIV. Some people recognize the signs. The famine has come upon us. The land lies dry, whirligigs of dust swirling around. We waited too long to make our course correction, to pull out the weeds of human philosophy and worldly wisdom and to put our roots down into His riverbed where we could draw from the water of life. The weeds have choked the grain. And the God who let us choose between His Word and...

“ As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth; it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it ” —Isaiah 55:10, 11, NIV. Easter weekend Spring brings with it an uncertainty with the dawn of each new day. Has it snowed overnight? Will it rain? Here in more northern climes, we are never quite sure until June that we won’t wake up to a blanket of white on the ground. Even then there isn’t any guarantee; some people remember snow in July! We grumbled a bit when it snowed heavily this past Easter weekend. At the same time we remember last summer when a Winter almost devoid of snow and a painfully dry Spring meant a summer of dry forests and the constant danger of forest fires even before summer began. In a part of the world where ci...

Today's verse always pricks me. " …faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of God " —Romans 10:17. In our desperate attempt to reach people, to be "relevant," we oftentimes run the risk of wrapping the Word of God up in such brilliant and innovative packaging that the message gets missed. In our desire to not offend and chase people away from truth, we sometimes dilute that truth so much that even when people are attracted to it, they find it lacking in the essential ingredients that made it truth in the first place. I read a recent blog on a Christianity Today website that featured a video of Dr. John Piper talking about preaching. During his interview, Dr. Piper emphasized the importance of preaching as opposed to the more "entertainment" type methods used to present the Gospel. The comments posted were quite hard on Dr. Piper. Several accused him of being against drama, for example, even though he said during...