Wednesday, May 16, 2012

The Word (a midweek lesson)

I know I said David was next, and I did start the post on David. But tonight I gave a lesson on "The Word" to my midweek group, and it went pretty well, so I decided to post the highlights of the lesson here. It deviates from the normal style, but... c'est le vie.


Background


When I was asked to do a lesson on "The Word", I thought, uh oh... I'm good at trivia, and tangents, but... I'm no (LB/KN - very wise person I know) and what a broad topic!!! Really?!?!


But, I wasn't worried. I love God's word. It's my favorite book. I read at least a chapter every day. Sometimes, I do in-depth studies. Sometimes I make lists. I love using Excel to analyze what God is showing me, it has helped me to see new things.


I love that God expects us to use Reason. In Isaiah 1:18 he says "Come now, let us reason together." Thanks God! I needed that. I know I'm not like most people, and I felt that was directed at me.


Diversity


That reminds me how much God loves diversity among his people. The church has people from every nation, socio-economic status, political perspective, love languages, varying levels of baggage... Saul enjoyed hanging out with the baggage...


According to the Holmam bible, in Exodus 12:38, "An ethnically diverse crowd also went up with them". I think this is showing that God always had a plan for the gentiles. Every nation must be saved. 


I mean, we just have to look around to see that God loves color. God gave us rainbows and duck-billed platy-pusses, giraffes and toucans, and penguins. So of course, in the bible, He gives us historical parts, poetry, songs, wise sayings, prophesy, allegories and more. Different parts speak to different people at various times in their lives.Sometimes, when I read something in the bible, it's like I get to ease-drop on God's conversation with someone else. I know it will be relevant for me one day, if not today.

Statistics



But then I realized it was time to get busy and make a lesson about "The Word". So I followed the trend and went to the internet, where I found that there are: 783,137 words in the NIV bible, found across 68 books, and 1,189 chapters.


According to Bible gateway's niv 1984 version, there are 964 occurrences of the word "word" in the bible.


There are 502 occurrences of the phrase "the word" although, some of those are "the words". Japanese don't mind plural, so we'll ignore that for now. Most of these references are directly to the word of God, but not all.


Hmm... that's not much help in narrowing down my lesson.


Our Foundation

So I went back to the basics.


Heb 4:12 teaches us that the bible is living and active and goes deep. DEEP. Did you know the word even impacts stones? In Judges 24:27 it says '“See!” he said to all the people. “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the LORD has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.”'


Jesus also talked about stones being able to cry out in Luke 19:40, but I'll have to meditate on that later.


It's POWERFUL! In Isaiah 55 10-11 we read: "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." God compares his word to water that makes food to grow.


Brief personal history

You see, I started studying the word to beat back the Bible thumpers at my school. That is a story for another day, but these people appeared to believe scripture without reason, they said they took it on faith, but I noticed they wouldn't swim outside the point they wanted to make. They 'studied' but didn't appear to understand, so I read to learn how I could turn it back on them. I'm sure they knew more than I picked up on, but if you are going to open a door like that, someone will step through.


Where was the external proof that this God's word was really God's word? I could tell that more than one person had wrote it. But the lame "Inspired by God" would lead me to snort. 


Joke's on me though, God turned this back on me.

Attaining Wisdom

In a conversation with a good friend recently, I was reminded that we get the wisdom of God with the Holy spirit, but how do we get wise? 


We need to read the word so He has material to work with. He's a gentleman, he doesn't like to force things on people. I think he's very respectful of what we want and are interested in, and I can give you a lecture on Saul if you want to see why I think that way. But that would be another lesson. (See the last blog post).


In Jeremiah 8:9, it says "The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what kind of wisdom do they have?" We can't be wise without embracing God's word.


Not long after I was baptized, I started studying, not just reading and I thought "Holy cats, how am I ever going to know as much as ML (a very wise person I know)?" But the Holy Spirit inspired me that if I just read everyday, I will eventually get there. The key for me is writing down (need to do that more!) and meditation.

The Value of Meditation

K will discuss meditation, but my best insights come from chewing on a scripture and asking the Holy Spirit questions. I like to read a story, about Saul for example, and work over the events with the Holy Spirit. There's not a lot of detail, but by engaging in a thoughtful dialog (or a think and wait for inspiring response) I learn a lot from a few short passages.


So... the key is to read as much and as often as you can so there is more material for the Holy Spirit to easily leverage. He can inspire without it, yes, but let's make his job easier. I don't want him to grieve.


I believe this is how we act on Colossians 3:16 "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."


Source of "The Word"

But I digress. The obvious thing to discuss when given the topic of "The Word" is "The Word".


In Genesis 1, the first thing God does is Speak. You could argue that he Observes while he's hovering, but the first significant action that causes a reaction is Speaking. 


In fact, the word, Universe is Uni = one and verse = sentence. Kind of neat how God slips little tidbits like that into our modern language.


In Deuteronomy 30:14, it says "No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. " 


What? this is Deuteronomy, before Judges, before Samuel, before Kings... God wrote it on their hearts that long ago? I think that I'll set that aside to meditate on later.


In 2 Kings 3:12 we see that the word of the Lord can go with people. YES! wait... is that Jesus? It could be... there is speculation that the Spirit of the Lord in the old Testament is actually Jesus. In fact, in John 1:14 the word becomes flesh.


And so, here are many scriptures about the word to meditate on later:
  • Numbers 3:16, 51 - it commands
  • Deut 30:14 - it is in us, it must be obeyed
  • 1 Sam 15:23, 26 - it can be rejected
  • 2 Sam 12:9 - it can be despised when we do evil (by David!)
  • 2 Sam 22:31 - it is flawless, a shield
  • 1 Kings 13 - it predicts the future
  • 1 Kings 19:9 - it appears
  • Psalm 17:4 - it keeps us from violence
  • Psalm 18:30 - it is flawless (flaws abound, but it's in us, not God's word)
  • Psalm 33:4 - it is right and true
  • Isaiah 28:14 - a scary one.... talks about our flawed view of the word
  • Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:25 - it stands forever
  • Isaiah 50:4 - it sustains the weary
  • Jeremiah 6:10 - it is offensive to some
  • Amos 8:12 - Men will search and not find (YIKES)
  • Zechariah 4:6 - Victory from the spirit
  • The parable of the soils is all about the impact of the word on us
  • Mathew 5:16, mark 7:13 - we can nullify the word of God (can we really)?
  • Luke 11:28 - blessed if we hear and obey
  • John 1:1 - WORD!
  • Acts 12:24 - it increases and spreads
  • Acts 19:20 - it grows in power
  • Acts 20:32 - it gives us inheritance
  • Romans 10:17 - it brings faith
  • Eph 1:13 - it marks us with the Holy Spirit
  • Eph 6:7 - it is a sword
  • 2 Tim 2:15 - it can be handled incorrectly
  • James 1:18 - it gives birth to us
  • 2 Peter 2:19 - it is like light in our hearts
  • Rev 12:11 - it gives us proper perspective over life


Conclusion

In conclusion, the Word is many things. It is powerful. It is flawless. It creates. It is Jesus. It lives. 


I encourage you to seek to find how God's word best speaks to you. And let the Holy Spirit build your wisdom as you meditate on His word.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Humility: It's underrated part 1 (Saul)

I've said on more than one occasion "Instant gratification isn't quick enough". Sometimes regarding how I feel, sometimes as a response to a friend's comment. In fact, I used to pray "God, why can't you snap your fingers and 'poof' I'm the person you want me to be?"

But a while ago God showed me something interesting in the bible about this.

In the books of Samuel, we read about two kings. Saul, and David. Saul started with the full package. In fact we see he was quite remarkable in 1 Samuel 9:2 "Saul, an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites—a head taller than any of the others."

He was tall. Tall is good. In fact, I bet Darth Vader would have said "Impressive, most impressive". And Saul was humble, despite being so tall, or perhaps because of? I'm not sure. Regardless, we see his humility demonstrated in 1Samuel 9:21.


<tangent>Interesting psychology there... Someday, I think I will explore the psychology behind that.</tangent>

God leads Saul to Samuel, and Samuel effectively says to Saul in 1 Samuel 10:1-8 "The donkeys are fine (but not talking), people are worried about you, when you are hungry today, notice how God provides for both you and your servant, and then when you see people acting crazy you will join them, and at that moment God will instantly transform you. Then, you'll marinate in it for about a week and finally get some guidance." Samuel enjoys run on sentences in my interpretation.

Something really key here, in 1 Samuel 10:9 "As Saul turned to leave Samuel, God changed Saul’s heart". WOW. I need that. Every day. Every hour... Without the oil poured on my head though. Uh oh, tangent alert, I'll move on.

And Saul wasn't some young teenager. When I was a teenager, I decided to like water better than soda-pop and I've never looked back. Maybe that's not on the scale of Saul's transformation, but when I was young radical change was easier. Saul, he was 30 years old when this happened.

Being crazy with the prophets was something Saul didn't do. 1 Samuel 10:11 But God changed him there, and he was different.

We see that Saul's humility stuck with him through the transformation. When they looked for him, he was hiding with the baggage. I guess he couldn't find a rock to crawl under. Little good it did him, God told the people where to find him.

So Saul becomes king, he's what the people need, he's the one who God transformed into the person he needed to be. He saves towns like, Jabesh Gilead. This is good. This is GREAT! That's what I want! Well... maybe not. You see, the key here is it didn't stick.

<tangent>What's with all the comments about gifts in this passage? 1 Samuel 9:7 & 1 Samuel 10:27 I guess Saul's love language was gifts?</tangent>

Later in his life (not sure how much later, but he has a son who is in the army with him - Jonathan) he appears to lose his humility, the quality he had before God transformed him. The first thing Saul had learned about Samuel was that people wait for Samuel for their sacrifices. In 1 Samuel 9:12-13 the people were waiting and would not eat until Samuel blessed it. However, Saul took matters into his own hands and displeased God. He then added to this poor judgement by forbidding his soldiers to eat.

I think this is where Saul shows that he is overly swayed by what others thought of him. He bound the soldiers with this curse, but then doesn't follow through with the consequences. The soldiers didn't allow him to kill Jonathan, even though he had sworn to. He allowed the opinions of others to matter more than the opinion of God, as we see in 1 Samuel 15. Of course, Jonathan was right, it was a lame thing Saul had done. But it only gets worse from here, and he stops taking responsibility for the actions of his crew even though he was in charge. He allows his fear to control him because his pride now relies more on the opinions of people than the opinion of God and obeying him. Little things began to irritate him because they struck at his new god, others people's opinion.

Saul was someone who God snapped his fingers and made instantly into the person he needed to be in order to be a successful king as we see in 1 Samuel 10:6-7 Saul had humility, and God gave him wisdom, strength and courage, and inspired the nation to follow him. He had everything he needed to rule the Israelites. He got help from God to be a better person, and then soon after that, the good qualities he originally had began to slip away.

Of course, as I type this out, I wonder how much of a god I have made other people's opinion of me. I learn so well from these examples!

Next post, we will examine David.