Deep Thoughts With Toucan

Tonight I read Isaiah 18-20 and Exodus 33-34:9.

Isaiah 18-20 continue God’s foretelling of judgment on different nations, Cush and Egypt for these chapters. However, in the midst of this he also says that he will have mercy on those who cry out to him. Isaiah 19:20 (ESV) says…

…When they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them.

A couple verses later, in Isaiah 19:22 (ESV), he then says…

And the Lord will strike Egypt, striking AND healing, and they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.

The fact that striking and healing are spoken of as if they are both results of a single action stuck out to me. It basically reiterated the “spiritual epiphany” I talked about a few days ago, so I won’t rehash all that. Sometimes God has to tear down our pride (striking) in order to turn our focus back to him (healing). The most reassuring part is that even though the troubles we find ourselves in are usually God giving us up to our selfish pride, he still listens to our cries of despair and comes to our aid. How many times in our lives do we ignore another person’s plea for help because they “already had their chance” to receive it? Instead of helping them, we just tell them “I told you so”. How awesome it is that God isn’t anything like us.

I don’t mean to disrespect God’s word in Isaiah 20:3 because I know it has spiritual significance, but it is fairly humorous that Isaiah strolled around butt naked for three years because God told him to. Just imagine trying to explain that one to someone. Look man I know this is awkward, but God told me to.

Exodus 33-34:10 continue to tell the story of the aftermath of the golden calf. God is understandably frustrated with the Israelites. These are the same people that God saved from the Egyptians by parting the Red Sea, which has an average depth of 1,608 feet – that’s a whole bunch of water! Despite this they still turned to worshiping a piece of gold shaped like a future hamburger. Even so, he still remains steadfast to his promise to deliver them into the Land of Canaan. Exodus 33:2-3 (ESV) says…

I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.

For their sake, God has to send an angel in his place, lest he might let a few lightning bolts loose on some Israelites. You can almost picture God pacing back and forth in his throne room, smite…or not to smite? We can read these words thousands of years later and wonder how the Israelites could be so stupid after the amazing miracles that God had performed in their sight, but the reality is that God performs miracles in our lives every day. We take a breath. We stick to the earth by a mysterious force we call gravity. We orbit the Sun at just the right distance. We look at the stars. We read stories of incidents that defy all scientific explanation. And with the vastly superior understanding of the intricacies of nature and the cosmos that we have versus the Israelites, these miracles should be at least as awe inspiring to us as making dry land in the middle of a body of water. It is conceivable that I could do the same thing with a giant leaf blower. Replicating the human body is a little different story. We too turn our backs on God and worship the stuff of this world instead. We too frustrate God. Our sins separate us from God just as the sins of the Israelites separated them from God. Thousands of years later we still haven’t learned our lesson. God gives us the solution to the problem. Exodus 33:4-5 (ESV) says…

When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’”

God says to stop seeking the stuff of this world (ornaments) and turn to him. Until we stop glorifying ourselves instead of him, he isn’t going to do anything good with us. Exodus 33:13 (ESV) says…

“…show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.”

This is Moses asking God to show his will to the Israelites. It is only when we are in God’s will, instead of our own, that he is able to use us for good. It is only when we actively seek his will, just as Moses did, that he will show it to us. This is a good time for Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV)…

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

Until we learn to actively seek his will in all things, then we are no different from the rest of the world. Moses confirms this by the question he asks God in Exodus 33:18 (ESV)…

“Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”

Recently I read through 2 Corinthians 1-4. While all of it is good stuff from Paul about experiencing our pains and sorrows together as believers, the glory of Christ above all other things, and our weakness apart from Christ, the verses that made me think the most were 2 Corinthians 4:1-2 (ESV)…

Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or TAMPER WITH GOD’S WORD, but by the open statement of truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

I’m just going to go ahead and warn you that I’m going into soapbox mode because these verses speak about something I’ve thought about a lot lately and really gets my goat. It’s the idea of tampering with God’s word (KJV says handling the word of God deceitfully; also saw a translation that called it perversion of God’s word). I think it’s accurate to say that the ideals of today’s society largely clash with the biblical commandments that we as believers have been called to live by. Society tells us that there is no absolute truth, that whatever makes you feel good is okay. The Bible very clearly tells us that this is completely wrong, that there is only one God and that the only way to bridge the gap to him created by our sinful nature is through belief in Jesus Christ as the Savior of this world. While sad and often frustrating, I don’t think the friction between the beliefs of society and the commandments of God should be of any surprise to us. We are a fallen people – defiance of God is our default setting. Even though something like 85% of Americans claim to be Christian, I’m pretty sure that a significantly smaller portion of that percentage have truly given up their lives to follow Christ. While only God will be the judge in the end, I think the unfortunate truth is that a large portion, maybe even the majority, of those claiming to be Christian fall into the lukewarm category, which Christ states very clearly will be spat out when the final judgment comes (Revelation 3:16). And finally getting to the part that really irks me about the whole thing is that the Church (at least the American one…I have very little experience with Christianity in other nations) is chiefly responsible for this prevalence of the lukewarm. Many churches and individuals are so afraid of making waves, of losing members, of the fear that revealing the true nature of God to someone will offend them, that they twist the words of the Bible until they have removed their truth and made them say what is more in line with the ideals of society. There are even “Christian” denominations that denounce the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and the idea that Christ is the only source of salvation. Instead of conforming our lives to Christ, we attempt to conform Christ to us. By doing so, we have given many individuals a false sense of security in a salvation that they may not truly have. I’m going to single out homosexuality as an example here because of something significant that has recently occurred, but this is not to pronounce homosexuality any different from any of the other ways by which we have twisted God’s word. Within the past month or so, the governing body of one of the divisions of the denomination that I grew up a member of passed a measure that will allow practicing homosexuals to be ordained as ministers and officers of the church. First off, I am not at all against homosexuals being in the church. I believe that homosexuality is a legitimate struggle for an individual, just as anger or an addiction to pornography is a legitimate struggle. However, it is a struggle/temptation, which God has assured us can be overcome if we give it up to him and repent. The issue with homosexuality is that I would suspect most of the individuals who practice it do not see it as a struggle. It is viewed as simply the way they have been wired and because of that it must be okay with God. I do not refute that a tendency towards homosexuality probably has a biological component. I come from a family whose males are known for having some fiery tempers. Until very recently, I regularly lost my cool and lashed out in anger at those around me. It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of reading in the Bible to see that anger is a sin and dishonors our profession of Christ as our Savior. I finally handed it over to God and literally pleaded with him to take it away from me. While I believe he is being faithful to my plea, my tendency towards anger is a piece of who I am and a struggle that I will always deal with. When a believer has the mindset that homosexuality is their lifestyle and is okay with God, rather than something that they struggle with, it becomes an unrepentant sin. I would say that the reason for the prevalence of this mindset within the Church, in both those who are homosexual and those who are heterosexual, gets back to the idea of distoring God’s word. If you look up homosexuality in the New Testament on Google, you’ll find many Christian individuals that state that homosexuality is not denounced in the New Testament, when in fact it is in at least three passages that I know of (Romans 1, 2 Corinthians 8, 1 Timothy 1). I once read an article written by a minister that said that homosexuality was not truly dishonorable to God because it is only condemned once in the New Testament (again…not true). I don’t know about you, but when God asks me to give an account for my sin, I’m not going to ask him to excuse one because he only said not to do it once. Personally, once is more than enough for the Creator of the Universe to tell me something is sinful for me to accept it. My own parents don’t even buy that excuse. I’m off track a little though. So this division of the denomination is now allowing individuals who practice something that God has clearly condemned without feeling any need for repentance and changing of their ways in order to become a clearer reflection of Christ to be the leaders of the church and the examples to which its members look to. In light of eternity, this is about as dangerous of a message to be sending a congregation as any. And here’s the thing – it is my belief that this particular division of the denomination as a whole will increase its membership due to this measure. Sure they will lose some of the “conservatives” who place the commandments of God above all else, but they have just made the church more in line with the values of society. Church growth is a good thing – but at the cost of ignoring God’s truth? The Bible says that there is one way and one truth. The message of the Bible is always going to be offensive to those still rooted in the ways of this world. The Bible does not say that we can ignore parts of it, sugarcoat, or flat out change its meaning in order to be less offensive to the world. If we do so we are not presenting the true character of God. We essentially present a false god to someone. They come to believe in a false salvation. And while we can never be the ones to ultimately condemn someone (only God will judge us and decide our ultimate fate), we are doing our part to push the scale in that direction. To me there is no greater sin. This is something I struggle with everyday. I’m scared to face the rejection or ridicule that I may receive from my co-workers/friends if I were to share the Gospel with them. I know there are times when I have found myself bending the truths of God so that I do not get harassed by others for my seeming foolishness for believing them. So the application I get out of this verse is to not be ashamed of the Gospel, just as Paul tells us in Romans 1. We are called to present God’s truth, and that’s it. If someone rejects that truth after you have presented it to them in a loving and accurate manner, then your hands are clean of the fate of eternal separation from God that may be in their future. If you twist God’s character in order to satisfy the idea of God that they are looking for, then I’m not so sure your hands are clean. God wants true believers that accept him as the dictator of what is right and wrong, not massive numbers of lukewarm Christians believing in whatever idea of God that pleases them. One of my favorite songs is called “What This World Needs” by Casting Crowns. If you’ve never heard it, definitely listen to it. The whole album is good actually. Here are the lyrics…

What this world needs is not another one hit wonder with an axe to grind
Another two bit politician peddling lies
Another three ring circus society
What this world needs is not another sign waving super saint that’s better than you
Another ear pleasing candy man afraid of the truth
Another prophet in an Armani suit

What this world needs is a Savior who will rescue
A Spirit who will lead
A Father who will love them in their time of need
A Savior who will rescue
A Spirit who will lead
A Father who will love
That’s what this world needs

What this world needs is for us to care more about the inside than the outside
Have we become so blind that we can’t see
God’s gotta change her heart before he changes her shirt
What this world needs is for us to stop hiding behind our relevance
Blending in so well that people can’t see the difference
And it’s the difference that sets the world free

Jesus is our Savior, that’s what this world needs
Father’s arms around you, that’s what this world needs
That’s what this world needs

Don’t be the “ear pleasing candy man afraid of the truth”. Don’t hide behind the relevance that society pushes so much. To do so is only to hinder the advance of the Gospel. It is only by complete submission to Christ that we are saved, and that’s what the world needs to hear. Like I said, I’m not excusing myself. I’ve contributed to it in the past for sure, and probably still do…if only by my usual silence about my beliefs when I’m surrounded by unbelievers. As believers we should be questioning and challenging each other’s boldness to share the greatest story ever told, no matter the ridicule we may face.

And on a bit of a footnote, 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 (ESV) says…

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of a Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?

Every time I read that I am the “aroma of Christ” to the world around me, I wonder what I smell like. Am I truly a pleasant fragrance as an imitator of Christ or do I smell more like the sewage plant I always drove by growing up because of my sin. Just a thought.

I just read Isaiah 11-12 and Exodus 25-27.

I believe Isaiah chapter 11 is a reference to the 2nd coming of Christ. The world will be at peace and the power of evil will be defeated once and for all. Christ will come with a spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of God (11:2), all of which are attributes that we ourselves should strive for. Verse 11:4 (ESV) also says…

…but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equality for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Whenever I’m reading the Bible, I’m always looking for verses that refute many of the common reasons that I know for people rejecting Christianity. It’s hard to play any part in changing someone’s mind about faith if you don’t have any material to contradict their false notions. This is one of the many reasons why it’s so important to study God’s word and commit it to memory. Anyway, one of the major reasons that people reject Christianity (and religious belief in general) is because of the violence that has been carried out in the name of religion throughout history. For Christianity the Crusades is the most commonly cited event. I think the best (and only) answer we can give to anyone who is hung up on this is that any events like this were not carried out according to anything that Christ taught. The people responsible were wrong and sinning by their actions, plain and simple. This verse says that Christ will come (and already came once) using his words as his weapons. It is evident throughout the gospels and the New Testament that Christ never condoned violence as a means by which to spread his teachings. The fact that so many people reject Christianity for the events of the Crusades is evidence of why it is so important that we consider our actions according to what Christ taught us. While as believers we all know that we are forgiven for our screw-ups, an individual not familiar with his teachings does not know this and will not be even remotely as forgiving as God is of us. People will almost always judge a religion first by the actions of those who profess it, rather than by taking the time to study the principles on which it truly rests upon. One of my favorite quotes is by Mahatma Gandhi because of the challenge it provides to me personally from someone who as far as I know did not ever come to believe in Christ…

I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

I don’t have a terrible amount to say about Exodus 25-27. Most all of the material in these chapters pertains to God’s instructions to Moses for the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle…which sounds like the hardest tent to put up in the history of man. It is actually really cool to read this stuff to see the origins of the teachings and stories of the rest of the Bible. For instance, the veil mentioned in 26:33 is the first iteration of the Temple veil that was torn when Christ died on the cross. I may just be a nerd for liking history so much.

Verses 25:1-2 (ESV) did jump out at me…

The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for me a contribution. From every man whose HEART moves him you shall receive the contribution for me.”

I think sometimes there is a notion that God will condemn us for not giving to the Church. Even way back in the day God asked his people to give as they felt led. He does not smite us for not giving. This verse shows that we aren’t alone when we find ourselves struggling to be generous with our blessings. Don’t get me wrong, tithing is a good thing and I’m not trying to provide reasons not to tithe. I think our willingness to be generous with what God has given us is another outward sign of Christ’s spirit within us. I also believe that a church led by individuals who are sold out for Christ is the greatest power for reaching out to those in need that exists in this world.

I just finished reading Isaiah 9-10 and Exodus 22-24.

As I read through Isaiah today, I had a little spiritual epiphany. So far what I have read in Isaiah foretells God’s punishment of the Israelites for their turning away from him by sending the Assyrians to conquer them. In reading through the Old Testament, our first impressions are often that God is one mean Universe-creating dude. However, I think if you look at the purpose behind his actions you see that he truly is a God of love that desires the best for his people. By tearing down all of the wealth that the Israelites worshiped instead of him, God showed the Israelites that they were nothing without him. Even this at first may seem selfish of God. It sounds almost like God is a kid who doesn’t feel like they are getting enough attention from their parents, so they destroy something to get that attention (sounds like…not saying this is the truth). The truth is that God’s ultimate purpose ever since our fall has been to save us such that we are able to have eternal and abundant life with him after a brief stay here on earth. As human beings, we tend to be predominantly focused on the here and now, the seen versus the unseen. We want a better job so that we can make more money so that we can buy more stuff because stuff is what makes us happy. God is infinitely wiser than we are and does whatever it takes to remind us that this life is only temporary. By taking away all of our temporary treasures on earth, God forces our focus back towards our eternal treasures in heaven. It may be hard to see in the midst of the storm, but God always has our best interests in mind. We can see this in the story of the Israelites in Isaiah 10:20 (ESV)…

In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.

Not to leave Exodus without a little love, a thought jumped into my head when I read through Exodus 23:29-30 (ESV)…

I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land.

This verse is speaking of God’s promise to the Israelites that he will give them the promised land of Canaan. The verses struck me because God states that he will deliberately make their conquest over the people of the land a slow process. His purpose behind this is so that the Israelites do not enter the land before they are of sufficient numbers to maintain it. Managing land is a lot of work. It takes manpower to plant crops and manage herds and then more manpower to fend off wascally wabbits and big bad wolves that want to eat your crops and herds. Growing babies doesn’t happen overnight, so the Israelites needed time to increase their numbers. I often get frustrated with God because I don’t like the timeline of his plans. I want things to happen NOW. I want my D.V.M. degree NOW, I want my future wife to knock on my door NOW (in reality God may want me to be a lifetime bachelor…who knows), and I want him to reveal all of the plans he has for me RIGHT NOW. I’ve undertaken many endeavors in my life that I had convinced myself I was ready for, only to end up having them kick my bootah. God’s timing is perfect. He knows exactly when we are ready for the plans he has for us and will reveal them to us at just the right time.

It’d be awesome if I could tell you the knock I just received at my door was the “girl of my dreams”, but nonetheless it was the Comcast guy.

I read through Isaiah 4 and 5 today.

The words that really jumped out at me in these chapters were the first half of Isaiah 5:13 (ESV)…

“Therefore my people go into exile for lack of knowledge”

Because he is a God that takes pleasure in blessing his people, God bestowed much wealth upon the Israelites. The Israelites, being human beings, became consumed with desire for more worldly riches and pleasures. They no longer sought to have a personal relationship with the Lord. As a result, God took away their possessions and laid their homes to ruins.

The earthly wealth that we receive from God is by no means a bad thing. It is when this wealth interferes with our desire to seek him that it becomes an object of sin. Our one and only purpose in life is to have a personal relationship with God such that we might further learn of his character and glorify him through our lives. We do this through prayer, reading the Bible, and seeking to imitate Christ. God gives us wealth in order for us to use it to advance HIS kingdom on earth, not to advance OUR own kingdom. We are to seek more of God rather than to seek more stuff.

I also read Exodus 16-18.

I think Exodus 17:12 (ESV) is one of the best verses for accountability in the Bible…

“But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the son.”

The context of this verse is that the Israelites are fighting against the armies of Amalek. During the battle Moses stood on top of a hill, I presume overlooking the battle. Whenever he held up his hand with the staff of God Israel would push back the armies of Amalek. Whenever his hands dropped they would lose ground. So it is with our fight against sin. Sin is a tough mutha, no matter how pious we are. By fighting against sin, we are fighting our very nature…our default setting. I know I often feel like I am led to sin by extremely stupid stuff that surely no one else would allow to trip them up. However, when I hear the struggles of fellow believers, I realize that they struggle with the exact same things that I do. God never says we have to fight sin alone. For one, we have the Holy Spirit living within us. Second, he has placed people in our lives to help us overcome our desire to sin and to encourage us when we fall short. In the same way, he has put us in their lives to reciprocate.

This may be a little cheesy, but in reading through Exodus you see many references to the “staff of God” that Moses carried. It is first mentioned in Exodus 4:20 when Moses returns to Egypt to confront Pharoah. It is often used as a physical device by which God displays his power and reassures Moses of his presence with him. In my reading through Exodus, I’ve thought about what I could use as my own personal “staff of God” — a trinket to carry around to remind myself of the mighty power of God when I forget. I haven’t really figured out what to use yet since I admittedly keep forgetting about it, but maybe it’s something that could help us stand strong in our walk.

And thus concludes my nightly commentary. I’m gonna have to start doing these at a better time before vet school starts up…