The tent-loving Jacob offered no competition to outdoorsman Esau in impressing Isaac. The Patriarch openly favored his older son, particularly the savory dishes he prepared when returning from game hunting. In a divided-allegiance household, Mother Rebekah favored Jacob.
The entire family seemed wedded to deceit when crisis occurred or danger threatened. Abram began it, Isaac continued it, Rebekah employed it, Jacob embodied it, Laban perfected it, Rachel adopted it and Jacob's son exercised it. For his first 97 years Jacob earned the sobriquet of deceiver. However, knowing that God himself chose Jacob to carry on the messianic line, Genesis 25:19-23, Isaac refused to accept it. Do not overlook his sin in favoring Esau simply because he loved his culinary skills. In essence, they shared equally in guilt: where Esau merely expressed his godless nature, God-fearing Isaac expressed disrespect of God's explicit will. A heinous forfeiture of his role as Patriarch sworn to observe God's will and impose God's rule in his family. Isaac would have squandered God's will for a bowl of soup as Esau DID! End Part I
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Obedience is as different from accommodation in discipleship as mature and juvenile reactions differ when God disciplines inadequate or punishes sinful behavior. (This will be periodically discussed in future blogs.)
First, understand that both discipline and punishment can occur in discipleship, as Jesus said in John 15:1-4: the fruitful branch for more production, the dead branch to severance. Second, since both HURT, we may not instantly determine which we experience. Third, our reaction to the pruning may determine which branch we are. When God accuses us of inadequate faith, be honest enough to know he's RIGHT: we have been slack in service. When he accuses us of sinful behavior, we dare not rummage in our grab bag of excuses to find a justification for it. Nothing more quickly turns mere discipline (pruning) into punishment (severance) than trying to make ourselves acceptable to God by explaining why we sinned. King David and wanted-to-be-king Cain serve as examples. David readily admitted his sin when prophet Nathan recounted in blistering oratory the story of the rich versus the poor man II Samuel 12:7-9. "I have sinned against the LORD" II Samuel 12:13, David admitted: the confession that brought forgiveness without removing the punishment that for David became mere pruning of his character. God gave Cain time enough to THINK about his murder of Abel. It wasn't manslaughter—something happening in the heat of an argument, or by accidently striking an opponent. Cain in malice aforethought invited his brother to a lonely place, to be killed—so none would know. He didn't have enough faith to know GOD SAW IT! Then, given the chance to admit his guilt when asked, "Where is your brother Abel?" Cain first lied: I don't know. Then expressed the killer's rationale: I can't be held responsible for what happened to him. The very response of people stopped by police for an infraction of the law. They may drive at high rates of speed through city streets, or the wrong way on highways, because they don't care about others. They alone matter. Anything that their EGO demands must be satisfied. In summary, David had been thinking about what James would later describe as the path to spiritual pain 1:13-15: desire leading to enticement, leading to sin, leading to death. And his confession brought repentance called pruning. Cain, given the same opportunity, couldn't get himself out of the way. He kept seeing whatever he did—even murder—as his right. We all, more than once, come to those points of no return, those crossroads of choice when confronted by Christ's accusation of inadequacy or sin. We can either refuse correction because it's too hard to accept; or submit to it because it's too obvious not to accept accountability. Our decision will turn every divine clip with the shears into a pruning that helps us grow or a severing that casts us out. In the first, like David, we remain in Christ though a sinner. In the second, like Cain, we prove a dead branch for the burning. Which will we be? Why God Chooses Particular People as His Servants.
Near the close of his life, and at the end of 25 years of successful warfare against the nations of Canaan, Joshua summoned the leaders and people of Israel to Shechem for a final convocation. Read Joshua 23-24. After reviewing God's attention in keeping Israel safe, though facing many dangers, he called the nation to a complete commitment to God. Which meant eliminating the gods they still held and worshipped AT THE TIME. An amazing inconsistency!
The appeal he made then still resonates a blistering challenge to America. He demanded Israel's faithfulness to Moses. God still demands America's faithfulness to the Christian beliefs the nation's founding fathers—Puritans and Pilgrims—held in 1607 and 1620. Where would America be now if established by people of the politics and immoralities wedded to each other in the present administration and in our culture? The Founding fathers had strong Christian convictions. Present leaders of both parties forsake those convictions to keep peace in a diverse world. America faces the very challenge facing the newly-sovereign nation in Canaan. Israel proved it had established political dominance in Canaan WITHOUT eliminating the terrifying religious beliefs and practices of those uprooted by military power. The refusal to eradicate the religious beliefs of the conquered proved "thorns", "snares" and "barbs in the eyes" of Israel. The survivors of conquest had their revenge by paganizing the Hebrews. Some of the nations determined to remain, which made no difference, since God had ordained them to destruction—which meant obliteration. Only to find an Israel more committed to accommodation with pagan religions than committed to Moses. The same issue faces America today. In our rush to ecumenicity, we want to reduce the uncompromising singularity of Jesus Christ to an accommodating plurality of religions. Call an enemy of God anyone who proclaims, supports or tolerates that satanic lie. Just because Satan refuses to believe God is no argument to consider him right and God wrong. The Devil will continue to manufacture any deity fallen humanity wants—like the 33 heathen goddesses the lady painted. The deities will change as culture changes, and everyone will be a satanic lie because but One LORD exists, and no other. And he reveals himself in the Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and NO OTHER. That truth remains fixed in Heaven and no earthly power can alter or deny it. The challenge is this: if we will not remain true to the scriptural Godhead, to which of the MANY gods and goddesses will we be true? Will we seek? Will we believe? Will we serve? Christians, we have no choice: we must declare with Joshua we will serve ONLY GOD in CHRIST, the ONLY God! God isn't obligated to accept anything we believe just because we believe it. We are obligated to accept anything God says just because he says it! Fini A man approached Jesus and "fell on his knees before him. 'Good teacher,' he asked, 'what must I do to inherit eternal life?'" Jesus answered, "Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone" Mark 10:17-18.
"Why call me good?" Jesus answered. The essential question the man needed to ponder. Did he understand Jesus as good as GOD is GOOD? For that's specifically Jesus as God in the Flesh. (The best and likely way to explain the Master's reply.) It's the single question American culture needs to ponder, given its diversity-crazed appetite for more and more, and infinitely MORE and MORE of multiplied religions. Consider the display of 33 paintings in the San Diego Balboa Park's Spanish Village Art Center March, 2021. The artist, because she wanted "more female energy in the world," used her art to express it: from the Celtic goddess Andraste to Buddhist Apsara. Interesting: she sought "more female energy" in non-existent pagan deities. The art reflected merely her need to feel female power, not Scripture's declaration of God Almighty being so far beyond masculine and into such MALENESS that everything else is female by comparison. Jehovah the only God, revealed in the eternal Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in ONE: Scripture's grand, unchanging declaration! GOD, the sole source of ALL TRUTH. Not two or more gods or goddesses speculating truth as they see it, for that creates the certainty of division in society. The artist's conception is nothing new. It's as old as Satan's successful endeavor to deceive Eve in the Garden, his equally successful effort to turn ancient Gentiles from the TRUE GOD of Romans 1:18-20, into mindless, baseless idolatry, 1:21-23, with all the sexual perversions that accompany heathen religions, including homosexuality and its associated immoralities Romans 1:24-32. Satan's success ended when he endeavored to turn Christ's test from God into a temptation—and failed Matthew 4:1-11. This writer describes that seminal conflict in Volume 1, pages 258-271 of Their Own Best Defense. No one...that means NO ONE...has any excuse to believe in atheism, skepticism, pantheism or polytheism. Only monotheism—belief in ONE GOD—makes sense because Jesus withstood—resisted, refused—all Satan's lies in the 40-day ordeal chronicled in Matthew 1:1-11. Note: he allowed himself to be tested but never for an instant saw any of the tests during the 40 days as a temptation, including their summary in Matthew and Luke. He gave Satan all the advantage in the contest to prove him a spiritual Mini Flyweight slinging cotton balls against Christ's spiritual armor-plated personality. A lesson America has forgotten. End Part III GOD ALMIGHTY authors earthly life because he is eternal, never-beginning, never-ending,
I AM-LIFE! It’s either God creating or nothing is created. For when has Nothing produced Something—at all, ever? As the Hammerstein song says, “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.” GOD: the author of every kind of life that exists, from the single-cell amoeba to the million thousand cell whale. Each constitutes the mystery wrapped inside the “flower-in-the-crannied wall” mystifying Tennyson. All the certainty of GOD and GOD alone, of GOD, and no one else, defies the denials of scholastics spouting spontaneous regeneration from nothing producing something. Nonsense that pleases only the quasi-intellectuals who consider their intelligence the LIMIT of all that’s possible and knowable, as if whatever isn’t is neither. This particularity relates to us. Aware of our humanity, God still loves us beyond understanding. While the sole authority of TRUTH over ERROR, he invites us to study him to our very depth. While so different from us that no comparison is possible, we’re alone more like him than anything else he made by having his Imprimatur-Image on our minds. Isaiah’s dynamic passages, 40:12-31, 55:6-13, and Paul’s explosive benediction in Romans 11:33-36, declare God’s independence from us and our complete dependence on him. His refusal to ever be answerable to us, or judged by us, while willing to declare us righteous by our pledge of faith in Jesus Christ. All of which poses a choice to an America that considers itself beyond the need of choice. End Part II When the Lewis and Clark Voyage of Discovery returned from the Pacific Coast in September, 1806, St. Louis merchants wanted to know how to capitalize on the Missouri River fur trade. The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia sought information on Botanical, Zoological and Ethnological specimens, including Live Indian chiefs. And in Washington, D.C., the tirelessly intellectual Jefferson asked endless questions relating to every aspect of the Voyage. None more important than the discovery of the fabled Northwest Passage across the American continent by water. Lewis’s discoveries scotched the whole idea.
That will-of-the-wisp dream had been the continuing pursuit of white civilization since 1492. To be satisfied only in the middle 19th century by an explorer looking for the doomed Sir John Franklin expedition, itself victim of the illusion. Webster’s Geographic Dictionary, 803-804 Author Stephen Ambrose emphasized the spirit of the early 19th century, embodied in British explorer George Vancouver: it demanded to know the “true geography of the earth”. Undaunted Courage, 420. If the early 19th century had the passion, the 20th and 21st centuries have an obsession with studying the works of God in creation…SANS any interest in the GOD of creation. How could we be so spiritually blind to consider “correct understanding” of earth’s geography essential to us but no understanding of God even relevant, let alone essential? That will be the subject of this short series of blogs, and how it relates to Christians. End Part I Paul followed the statement of great doctrines in Romans I-11 with practical applications for everyday discipleship in 12-16. He followed the same procedure when writing Ephesians. The testing Jesus endured after hearing God’s admiration of him when baptized by John follows the same principle. What can we learn from it for our discipleship?
First: We should consider any trying circumstance as God’s confidence that we’ll rise to the challenge of being worthy of him! If we lack that perspective, any test that could prove our persevering faith in God instead becomes a temptation to fail. A failure that turns what could be a robust Reality in us into a colossal Illusion. Second: Since God in Christ is our only HOPE, he is Just when he lets us bruise, break or otherwise damage ourselves in SELF-WILL. Since Jesus embodied SELF-SURRENDER to God, we find his correction, healing, wholeness and reconciliation with God only through SELF-DENIAL. That’s what God has decided, so it cannot be changed; what he has proposed, so it cannot be disposed; what he has ratified in Heaven, so no decision on earth can annul it. Read Matthew 21:42-46. Third: Since self-denial is a specifically Christian demand, and Jesus never said anyone outside his grace had to accept it as the basis of their religion, those who lack it have the infinitely heavier burden of unforgiven sin, which receives only God’s Justice, not his Mercy. Fourth: Jesus endured his cross, despising its shame, so he could inherit the Joy beyond Hebrews 12:2. Since the only cross Christians bear is Self-Denial—all other “so-called crosses” are merely burdens common to humanity—we can’t avoid self-denial and still expect to receive the glory issuing from it. See Colossians 3:1-4. Note that our pleasure/glory/delight comes after a life “hidden with Christ in God.” Fifth: A summary thought. Jesus learned obedience by suffering Hebrews 2:10. Christians can’t expect to learn it by praise, success, applause or any of the other ways disciples WANT to LEARN it. God values his Son so much he subjected his life to trials Luke 22:28. Let us be bold enough to think he so values righteous disciples—those right with him by Grace alone, Ephesians 2:8, II Corinthians 1:21-22, 33—that he dares use them as witnesses to those lost without him. Why wouldn’t we consider enduring any hardship an honor to be in that host? Fini |
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