rebuilding

Solomon's Temple was grand. Anyone who remembered it held the vision as the standard of excellence for a House of God. So the second building of the Temple brought tears to those old timers eyes. Cyrus the conqueror had decreed that the Jews could rebuild their Temple, according to his wishes and their plans.

Rebuilding is hard. It is more expensive than the first time. Rebuilding suffers from the grand memories of the old timers. Rebuilding restores the emotional baggage of the original structure. Rebuilding seems like such a second level effort. Can't we do something new?

The incredible failure of the Jewish people and their Temple leads one to ask, "Why bother rebuilding?" Why, God, why try this failed route again? Then again in another 500 years.

There is no easy answer to this why question. Perhaps the worship and attention of God was not yet fully developed to survive without an earthly outpost. The scattered people did not have a unifying factor of a Savior, or the Word. The Jews were like all the other nations and quickly diluting their heritage in the commerce of daily life. Syncretism was merging pagan beliefs into the Jews faith practices. The prophets were rapidly becoming irrelevant and out of date. The priestly class was ignored as out of touch. 

The reality of "The People of God" was slipping away on earth. 

The answer was to rebuild, jealously rebuild in the face of multiple threats. Restoring the focus of worship and Torah to daily life was the ancient answer for God. Turn back to engage forward seems to be the plan. 

We too, must rebuild when our faith crumbles. We may wail at the losses incurred. We often sense the new just isn't the same as before. We are older, wiser, more grace oriented, yet stiffer in the truths. God calls us to rebuild and the faithful respond. We copy God and start from the rubble left after the storm to build anew. To build different, but the same in function. To continue in the paths less worn. To last longer this time till that moment when this shell of a life is no longer needed and we are one with the Lord Our Savior. 

Friend, take heart, and do the hard work of rebuilding your crashed faith on a better foundation than before. And know that the Lord is with you through it all. 

even

if.

Today's reading centered on Daniel and the life of exile for the Israelites. During this time there were numerous pressure points for the worshippers of Yahweh. There were many who did not follow the ways of their overlords, nor did they want to conform. But how does a God follower manage when they are told to change their beliefs?

"even if" is the answer. Boiled down, the punishment may be death but the Lord God can deliver. Daniel's first recorded act was to turn down the royal food under threat of severe punishment. Daniel stood to meet the emperor and declare to him a dream with interpretation with the threat of death should he be wrong. Shadrach, Meshah and Abednego would not worship the gold idol, Daniel would not stop praying, Jeremiah kept on proclaiming from the bottom of a dry cistern, and so on. "even if" I die, I will not turn from my God.

Did many die? Of course. Their faith will never be forgotten in the annals of our Lord. Their names and deeds are in the book of Life. We will meet them someday and marvel. 

There is a great mystery: the importance of the Spirit when facing imminent trial. How did these men and women face certain death? They were empowered by the Holy Spirit with a shalom that filled their inner being. They didn't scream their devotion, or bewail their bad fortune, and they didn't recant to save their skins. They were at peace with their God no matter what the world through at them.

How different today in our affluent world. Especially in the USA where the open spirit of tolerance for other religions was made possible by prevailing Christianity's gospel of grace. We do not prosecute Hindu's, or Muslims, atheists or any other religion (unless they are dangerous). But now Christians and Jews are being targeted for anihilation. The stories are being told on a one to one basis now. "Convert or die." "Submit or die." "Just die." 

"even if" I die, I will not deny my God, my Lord, my Jesus. Is your faith ready for this moment?

portion

"The Lord is my portion..."

What one thing identifies a true and full faith?

Job answered the question through trial, so did Jeremiah who uttered the line above after Jerusalem fell and he was dragged to Egypt. Peter experienced this truth with his remaining apostles after Pentecost. Foxe's Book of Martyrs tells the stories of the many who found the power of a true and full faith. 

What one thing identifies a true and full faith?

What one thing remains when all else is peeled away from your life?

Jeremiah's life was characterized by an unwavering presentation of bad news. Jerusalem was going down, the Temple was doomed, the people were to be enslaved, the land laid to waste. He prophesied that the few remaining people would live just above a subsistence level. There was no hope in Judah or Jerusalem, except in the Lord their God. 

After the Babylonian devastation of Jerusalem the poorest of the poor and Jeremiah were left to survey the damage. There were no stones still in place, except under mounds of rubble. Acrid tendrils of smoke remained of the Temple and great Palace. The wall was torn down and cast down the slopes. The emaciated bodies left were tossed into the pit known as Gehenna, The waste pit that never stopped burning. 

Jeremiah saw deeper than the devastation, however. He saw that the high places and Asherah poles were gone too. All the false gods of the land were scrubbed away by the Babylonian flood. Finally there was a vacuum where the people who were left could begin to live according to the Law and faith without major influence from foreign people, their gods, their money or their ideas. The first step for rebuilding the people of Judah was to recognize forever "The Lord is my portion..." no matter what happens in this life that comes against me. 

Christians in the USA have enjoyed wealth, favor, high places of power, influence and shown that with erecting great houses of worship and organizations that claim the favor of the god. But the public presentation of faith has been bastardized beyond recognition into commercial displays that are repugnant to the average unbeliever. 

The call is simple in this time of degradation, if you call upon the name of Lord make sure that He is your portion, your slice of life, and it will never be taken. Build on that, my friend, and the trip to Egypt won't be so bad.

prophets

Prophets were the most notable of God's attempts to gain and secure man's enduring attention. How can you argue with a man who can call down fire on a water soaked mountaintop in defiance of 450 religious zealots? Yet the war with God is fought with the flesh on a person to person basis. Though the prophets are powerful witnesses to God, they were also local people with limited reach. Their mission was spectacular and dangerous, truly radical emissaries for the omnipotent God.

A prophet was a forth-teller and a fore-teller. As a forth-teller he used the known truths about God and man in order to lay out the probable future. Sometimes one trained (yes, trained) as a prophet would hear from God directly. Most of the time these trained individuals had a gift for insight and application so their words were true. The fore-teller was divinely anointed to be able to see what could not be discerned by man's skills. Elisha knew every move of the Aramean army because God told him what to expect. Elijah saw Jezebel in the dust being devoured by her own dogs. 

The purpose of the prophet was to provide evidence that could not be refuted and call the people back to God. They fought the false gods, foreign armies, traitors and the Israelites themselves. God protected them, spoke the words of truth through them, and in Elijah's case took him to heaven directly instead of death. 

Yet the Israelites and others around them would not submit to the God of the prophets. I am reminded of the taunt of Satan to Jesus to become a spectacle of miracle. Been there, done that Satan. Didn't work then won't work now. And so the call for a clear show of God on earth is a test of God that has been done and ignored by those who called for it. We can point to the prophets when someone says "Where is your God?" or "I'll believe in God when (insert miraculous event) happens." 

Prophets, God's ambassadors to an unbelieving world that was trying to ignore the Living Lord. They are proof that God can, when He so desires, totally turn over the world for his purposes.

Someday he will again, only this time through the precious return of His Son, Jesus Christ. 

fathers

Do the father's faults flow to the next generation more easily than their virtues?

That is the observation after a brief review of the kings of divided Israel. The kings of the north are judged against Jeroboam, their first king. The review is commonly "did even worse things than Jeroboam". The kings of the South are compared with either David as good or Rehoboam as bad. A much more common theme is the steady decline of the moral fiber of both nations until God gives up on the monarchy to disband the nations with foreign conquerors.

Solomon the wise loved foreign wives: he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. The one significant failure of David, his sinful management of the affair with Uriah's wife, multiplies in the next generation. The multitudes of women drew him to worship their gods in sacrifice. Solomon was known to travel to these sites even as he was building the Temple to the Lord! In the very next generation the unity of the kingdom is lost and the downward moral spiral becomes a freefall.

The monarchy is a failure to bring a people into shalom with God.

The third generation loses the family business.

An earnestly desired government becomes the oppressor in less than 100 years.

Man's thoughtless rebellion against God is manifest in the crying against unrest or war. Man wants shalom, peace with God, but continues to indulge the Fall of Adam's flesh. 

Surely a Savior to show the way is needed!

But in most of our lives we need an example of what good looks like, and then emulate that example. I'm talking about fathers. David was never perfect, but if he stayed true to the Law then peace was the theme of his family. But the introduction of unforgiven sin led to the downfall of his house, Abasalom rebels, and his line through Solomon. God promised One from the line of David who would be the Messiah, but never promised one from the royal side of the family. David continues to be the example for the generations of the upright godly man. 

Fathers, are you taking this lesson seriously on a day to day basis? Are you doing the godly actions that will be remembered for ages? Will your stories be of devotion to drink or driving to worship through horrible weather? Will your children smile at the examples of loving discipline that have served them well through the years or will your children be angry at life because they don't get their way like they did at home? Fathers, how will you be remembered? From the line of David or the line of Rehoboam?

confession

Or cover up? 

We all view life through our own lens. My reading glasses don't work for my wife, and vice versa. The title of this entry belies my New Testament understanding of God's desire for mankind. Why? Because in the place of an opportunity for confession and forgiveness we have a devastating downward spiral of a man of God. Yet, what recourse did David have with his knowlege of the ways of God?

Do not commit adultery, the Commandment reads.

"If a man commits adultery with another man's wife - with the wife of his neighbor - both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death." Leviticus 20:22

I don't read much wiggle room in there for David.

And thus the "Man of God's Own Heart" did not even conceive of the amazing gift called confession and forgiveness. In those days sin was managed with blood: either the blood of the sinner or a substitute. David refused to expose his failure and face the ramifications. Abraham trusted God with his son's life. David did not trust God with his own life. 

Today we know of the grace called confession and forgiveness. Blood is still required, but it was spilt on Calvary from the body of Jesus. As Jesus forgave sinners when he walked on earth, he does so still. 

David went through agony before he confessed his sin. Don't do the same thing, dear reader. Keep that list short and seek confession with forgiveness. Then perhaps you can avoid the horrible soul eating darkness that consumed David until the child born of adultery died. 

how

 How did David fall with Bathsheba? 

How did a man so close to God make such a brazen basic mistake? Its a shock to the reader, but a severe lesson to any man or woman who is serious about their faith.

David fell because he was in an unfamiliar place. He should have been on the battlefield. He had lived every spring in the field. Sheep, early skirmishes, constant battles in the spring against border enemies. But not at the same place he spent the cold months. Be careful when you are away from your normal habitation.

David fell because he was out of his usual routine. What was usual? Being all primed to lead troops into battle. Planning, executing, engaging and the constant thrill of the confrontation. Instead he was home wondering what to do with all the pent up battle ready aggression. Time to conquer something, his body said. But his soul was weak to understand the battle of sexual temptation or to stop it before the damage was done. Beware the times when you are out of your routine.

David was in the wrong place, wrong time. He handled his amped up body with a late night walk on the rooftop. He was witness to anything at anytime from up there. And there was the custom of women bathing after their period of uncleanness... on rooftops. Lets not dig too deep here, just stop and turn around when you are going alone into the wrong place at the wrong time.

David fell because he did not recognize the temptation. David was given a wife, no choice. David made alliances with nations by marrying a daughter of their king. David collected his women as a position of his office. So he had women at his disposal. However, David did not have experience with wanting, lusting for someone he spotted. The view quickly became a thought became a response became a "need". The temptation was the view, David neither had the knowlege nor a companion who could point it out. Beware your body or mind when it begins to wind up with expectation. Ask quickly if you are being tempted out of God's will.

There are others but these are a good start. Examine your life on the fly during these types of situations and save yourself a grief point in your life.