firstborn

The arrival of the angel of death was the fulfillment of God's fatal promise to Pharaoh. "Let my people go" the Lord warned through Moses and Aaron. "Or else."

The other plagues were confounding. Could they happen without divine intervention? I've read that they could flow from one to the next based on natural occurrences. However, the final one, the selective death of the firstborn, was clearly supernatural.

Think about the firstborn. Books have been written about the firstborn. First borns are known for leadership, vision, courage, being headstrong, successful, and independent. These were the people stripped from the fabric of Egyptian society. Yes, there were other birth orders that infiltrated the ranks of managers, captains and officials.  But most probably they were not the front runners in the crisis management ops manual.

In fact, it is interesting to question "Why didn't Pharaoh die? Was he not considered the firstborn?"

What was left was Pharaoh as single leader and sole voice of the hordes of Egyptians. Most of those he could have listened to were dead. The ones left probably were workers and appeasers stung by the loss of their older siblings. "Do something!" Pharaoh responded with what he knew best: his army.

In the end, not only did Pharaoh lose the firstborns of his country, he lost his weapon too. The army's defeat was total, including their armament. It would take decades to recover from this disaster. In the meantime Israel was able to enter the Promised Land and flourish as the People of God.

If you are a firstborn take heed at the important place you have in the Kingdom. In ancient society you received a double portion of the inheritance. You were the first to receive the blessing from the dying father. You were the one entrusted with the workings of the family business. You were called on to be the protector of the family, the nurturer of the elderly, the haven of rest, the one to provide order and guide the success of  the family. It was a heavy burden that was carried quietly. It was assumed.

How can someone achieve all of this burden? Only with the presence and power of the Lord who saves. The Lord who orders the death angel to pass over... the sprinkled doorposts. The Lord who speaks, empowers and leads.

Are your doorposts sprinkled, figuratively, with the blood of the passover Lamb? That Lamb has a name, and it is Jesus who is the Christ. Apply the blood, learn from his wisdom, apply his leadership and your home will be a haven of life for all who abide within.

donkey

donkey

Genesis 16: 11, 12

The angel of the Lord also said to her:

“you are now with child

and you will have a son.

You shall name him Ishmael,

for the Lord has heard of your misery.

He will be a wild donkey of a man;

his hand will be against everyone

and everyone’s hand against him,

and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

Oh, Hagar! First you are ripped from your Egyptian family and bound to a rich vagrant. Then after serving faithfully and well you discovered that your exaltation to become the Master’s concubine for the purpose of mothering an heir has become a nightmare. Your haughty attitude came from the quick insemination from the elderly Abram, while his long suffering wife remained barren. Sarai’s understandable angst turned against you and here you are: fleeing, angry and scared. 

Did the angel of the Lord give you a vision of the hordes of people who would point to you and Abram as the fountainhead of their people? Did you connect the promise in verse 10 “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” to the term hostility? 

What was going through your soul at that moment? What did you see, hear, feel or believe?

What we do know is that the attitude and thinking you entered this encounter with endured in your son and his descendants. And yes, they are numerous on the earth. They have always been more numerous than the descendants of Isaac, Abram’s son by Sarai (later Sarah). For those sons are known crudely as Arabs, and most follow the religion of Mohammed today. To this day the common dialogue is the same as that uttered in this fateful description of the child, Ishmael.

• Oppressed, miserable, at a disadvantage because of the people of Isaac.
• Wild and donkey-like: obstinate and strong, self willed and clannish.
• His hand will be against everyone: not just Abraham, Isaac and their line… everyone.
• Everyone’s hand against him: this is a conflict that must be resisted, and will be resisted.
• He will live in hostility toward all his brothers: this child and his offspring will never value shalom.

Never.

Mohammed simply codified the angel’s pronouncement and added regulations to make it work. Then by conquest and dominion sought to establish what was believed to be a birthright. 

Ishmael, firstborn, rejected because he was not a purebred child of the promise, sired a people with the same attitude as he grew up with. In the ancient world birth order meant something important: double portion of the estate, control of the family business at the right time, authority that was second only to the master of the house and the blessing of the patriarch. Ishmael, the unchosen one, was excluded from all of this. Ejected from the family because of his arrogant, haughty and threatening behavior he worked his life and built his line on his own with a huge chip on his shoulder. A chip so huge the splinters remain on a billion shoulders to this day.

So what are we to make of this? Especially today, with the decedents of Ishmael convulsing the peoples once again?

1. Do not be dismayed, as the Lord God has protected his people so he will do so now.Though some may die at the hands of Ishmael's seed, the Remnant will remain.
2. Be aware of the language of victimhood, and the passive resignation to battle that stems from it. It is fuel for the hostility and anger.
3. Do not be amazed at the brutality or universal nature of the hostility. No one on earth is spared this constant barrage of mistrust, aggression or attack.
4. Salvation is open to all, as evidenced by the many of Ishmael’s line who have come to understand, trust and follow Jesus as Messiah of the world. Acceptance and shalom only come through Him.

naked

naked

Genesis 3:7 & 10

• Genesis 3:7 “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made covering for themselves.”
• Genesis 3:10 “He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.””
• Naked: Adam and Eve had no coverings when they were created. It was no big deal. 
• Naked: Adam and Eve had nothing between them and the still small voice of God either. They existed in total openness to the Creator.
• Until they were introduced to the knowledge of good and evil.
• Welcome to the dawn of mental illness!
• Self doubt, paranoia, a vague sense of dis-ease with the natural order of the world, that began to manifest itself by odd behaviors that interfere with the very source of restoration: God. 
• Adam and Eve hid their nakedness behind makeshift coverings.
• Adam and Eve hid their whole bodies from God.
• This has been passed down through the ages from parent to child. 
• It is why thoughtful people still have an issue with nakedness, there is a knowledge that somehow there is an evil attached with total exposure that needs to be hid. 
• It is also why those who thrust their nakedness on others are not liberated from that knowledge, but instead emulating the serpent in declaring “Did God really say you will die?” if you gaze on my naked frame?
• God’s original Creation was that Adam and Eve, and all Creation, should not have coverings or shame. God intended that his Creation should be open, honest and avoid the temptations associated with the lingering glance at nakedness. 
• But because of Adam and Eve’s introduction of what is “good and evil” into the human psyche people are trapped in the endless debates about morality and mores. People are bent toward suspicion and aggression. People have rejected God's order and find there is no order in their own crooked thinking. 
• People are naked, they know it, and they don’t like it. All because the knowledge of good and evil was introduced.
• And so what to do with this revelation?
• 1. Recognize our inbred tendency to hide. Even when we are not wrong!
• 2. Understand our desire to be known fully.
• 3. Seek diligently the truth of God that helps us come to think and live in shalom with God.
• 4. Learn to relate to others in ways that help them to shalom with God and themselves.
• We cannot recreate the pre-Fall Garden of Eden state simply by taking our clothes off. But we can come to peace with our broken natures and world through the freedom given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus. Then we are set right with God, and can begin to be set right with one another.
• Until He comes again and sets all things new, we have this covering for our nakedness: His blood and body broken for you for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of the relationship between God and man.

Tom

A young man stopped me in the waiting room of an ACT. Let's call him Tom, though I don't really know his name at all. But he knew mine because of the name tag I wear as a representative of my company. 

Tom is mentally ill, he said so. He was aggressive and interested. He was open and inquisitive. He probably had a lot of pain in his past, present. His future was uncertain. 

He wanted to know about his medicines.

He wanted to know why he wasn't getting better.

He wanted to connect with someone who could negotiate the future. 

He probably would reject such a person because they would abandon him in frustration... just like so many before.

He asked for my phone number so we could talk. I refused and referred him back to the "proper authorities". 

Did I break any of man's laws? No. 

Did I break any holy laws? Yes. 

Tom was clearly "lost" and in need of a guide. He was asking for help. A different kind of help than the agency could offer. But would he get it? 

Unfortunately, not from me. I can pray for him, but I cannot be his mentor due to time and distance. But I can pray for Tom. That the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, would descend upon his soul and bring life to his tortured soul, and mind.

2014: Year of Action

Obama's tag line will be heard a million times, just like the tag line "Summer of Recovery" which meant nothing and amounted to fewer jobs, roads crumbling and public union pension plans fattened for the later slaughter.

Year of Action. I agree. We should aggressively strip the FDA from the power to lie to the American physician about industry, drugs, and promotion.

We should aggressively portray life as valuable, and abortion as the hell it really is. The life killing, hope killing dead end for relationships.

We should act on the outrageous deficits that governments have piled up, forcing our legislators and administrators to responsibly handle our money today, and for our children.

We should act to preserve our simple rights to life, liberty, voice, assembly, self-protection, property, a good (not political) education and family.

We should act to reduce the burden of taxation on the individual and corporation by half. 

We should act by clearly voicing the truth about government feel good programs that disempowered the common man from action, and we should point out in history where we went wrong from the concept that a man is responsible for his own life, rather than government owning your livelyhood.

We should act, and speak, and walk, and vote, and influence anyone around us to become accountable for their life and throw off the shackles Obama surely wants to burden us with in a strange hateful retribution for actions committed 200 years ago. 

2014 needs to be a year of action.

Are we returning to 200 AD?

Saeed Abedini is Iranian, a father of two, and a Christian Pastor. He returned to Iran to establish a secular orphanage for children he knew were abandoned and on the street. 

One year ago he was arrested and sent to a notorious prison until his trial. Recently he was transferred to a prison which is a warehouse for the most violent criminals in Iran. Sources in Iran declare that no one gets out alive. 

President Obama has brought up this case with Iran's hierarchy, and asked for his release, once. In the meantime he has loosened economic sanctions on Iran (unilaterally) held secret talks with many Islamic nations, and destabilized Israel's position by isolating her from the decisions being made. It does not seem like the President is supporting Judeo-Christian anything.

Thus the title, which describes the last era that had such a weak support for anything Christian. As a result, Christians will have to rely on God, not the State, for their freedom of religion. To have freedom of religion, without imposition, is a wonderful gift. America has enjoyed that gift for centuries. America has prospered because of that gift I believe. 

Now the world's great thoughts are deteriorating before our lives come to a close: philosophy has run into a dead end, art is fragmented and degrading in quality, science is particularized and stagnating. Politics is no longer about great ideas but about dealing the most vicious lie at the last minute. Virtue is in guerilla warfare with raunch in all spheres of entertainment, education and civil life. 

In the degradation comes a religion that prides itself on total control and domination over all aspects of life. Society, politics, and private life are ruled by strict and brutal law. There is no mercy, no grace. That is Islam. 

So America is now led by a man who will bow to the Islamist, and take advantage of the "weak" Christian or secularist. Islamists have become important minorities in the Western world countries, increasingly imposing acts of terror on unwilling populations. The question now arises with the leaders of Christian nations have the will or ability to protect the "weak"? Aggressively, the answer is no. Especially in other nations.

Christian towns in Egypt are reported to be destroyed and the inhabitants raped, murdered, and driven into exile. Christian Kurds are now the object of Islamist hunters in Iraq and surrounding nations. Syrian Christians are the first casualties in a war they want no part of. And Israel is left to fend for itself in a militarized and vicious region of the world.

President Obama has the chance to pressure Iran to release one man out of a prison known for short sentences due to murder. This orphanage planter, Saeed Abedini, could be saved... unless we are living in 200 AD and the rules of religious freedom or toleration have been suspended. Hundreds of thousands of people are watching the leaders of the free world to find out if there is a refuge left. Yes, President Obama, it is that important.

Revelations

I talk to a lot of people. 

Sometimes we talk about issues that are personal in nature. Perhaps a child is dealing with learning difficulties, an adult is dealing with a spouse that has lost hope, or maybe the issue is deeply personal and its being revealed for the first time. I don't ask for details but the situation is quiet and private and the interpersonal veil is parted for a few minutes. A real connection is made, a real issue bubbles to the surface.

Its a privileged moment. I don't forget those conversations. But when I remember them with a quiet question at a later time more often than not I get an embarrassed look and a quick "Everything is fine now" review. 

Everything is not fine. The pain is still bubbling under the surface, the issue is not resolved, and the solutions are still murky. I really hate to hear that a divorce has been filed, a child is pregnant, or someone attempted suicide. And if I knew about it personally and was not allowed reentry to the situation it makes me wonder about the state of people today. 

Are we so closed off from others today that communal living, sharing life with people around you daily, is too much of a threat? Are we at the point where we do not create confidants, only party-pals and work acquaintances? 

Perhaps so. In that regard, I'll be faithful to remain open to those moments to point to the Solution and Way. Harmony can only exist in a soul when it is in tune with the Creator. 

Perhaps that is why I get put off... the answer to divorce, out of wedlock pregnancy and utter hopelessness is out of tune with our fallen world. I'm being asked to endorse a course of action that is on the wrong side of harmony.