Tag: bad religion

1 SAMUEL #4: THE GOD-IN-THE-BOX

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Bible, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon1 Comment

Sometimes we confuse good spiritual things with God himself. We put our trust in things like baptism, or prayer, or “getting saved” rather than trusting in the Lord himself. We also, at times, make the mistake of thinking that God is on our side, rather than asking if we are on his side. Our text today shows us the pitfalls of that sort of thinking, and encourages us to find a better way.

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1 SAMUEL #4. PLEASE READ 1 SAMUEL 4:1-6:21.

When I was a kid, I was a little bit scared of lightning. But somewhere I had heard that rubber or plastic could protect you from electricity. Now there is a kernel of truth in that. If the rubber is between you and the electric current, the electricity can’t even reach you. Or, if the rubber is between you and the ground, the electricity won’t pass through you, and it will cause no harm. In other words, it insulates you from electricity. But as a child, I didn’t have the complete picture. I thought that simply holding something made out of plastic or rubber would protect me from any form of electricity, no matter what direction it came from.

I had a toy tomahawk that was made out of rubber. It said so, right next to “made in Hong Kong” (which is where I got it). I believed without question that if I held this tomahawk, I was safe from electricity. In New Guinea it rained a lot, and puddles formed on the top of the ground very quickly. It wasn’t uncommon for a large area in a flat field to be covered by a foot of water or more, at least for a few hours. The ditches and low places would quickly fill up to three or four feet of water sometimes, creating instant, temporary swimming holes. The rain was warm, so my friends and I actually swam in the low places in the fields and ditches. At times the rain would be accompanied by lightning and thunder. In those circumstances, I took my tomahawk with me. I would frequently stand up to my knees in water in the middle of a thunderstorm, secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be hit by lightning because I was holding my toy rubber tomahawk.

Now, I had a piece of the truth here. It is true that rubber won’t conduct electricity. I was close to something real. But even though there was something true about rubber protecting me from electricity, I had twisted that truth into a practical application that was nothing more than superstition. It is only by God’s grace that I was never struck by lightning. The rubber tomahawk had nothing to do with it.

1 Samuel chapters 4-6 describe a series of events where the people of Israel were close to something real and true about God, and yet they twisted it into mere superstition. Unlike me, they paid a difficult price for it.

As we go through 1 Samuel I want to occasionally point out some important thoughts for bible study and reading. The Jews in Jesus’ time divided the Old Testament into two parts: The Law (which was the first five books of the Bible) and The Prophets (everything else). That means that even though 1 Samuel is basically a history book, it was considered by the Jews to be “prophetic” in the sense that the history recorded here teaches us many things about God. I myself might call it, “prophetic history.”

We need to read prophetic history with a different approach than we might read most of the New Testament. The truths about God are contained in the telling of historical narratives, rather than in a straightforward letter or in teachings given by Jesus. “Narrative” is another word for “true story.” So when we are looking at the New Testament, you may have noticed that we often spend a great deal of time on just a few verses. Now, as we study prophetic history, I think that generally we need to look at whole narratives, rather than merely the individual verses within those stories. I think when we read this part of the Bible, we will miss the main meanings unless we consider things in the context of the overall historical narrative that is being told.

This week, the narrative happens to span three chapters – four, five and six – of first Samuel. You may remember that as a very young boy Samuel started hearing God speak. One of the first things God told him was that Eli and his sons were going to be judged for being such bad leaders. This is how that happened, and more.

One of the problems that the people of Israel had at this point in history is that they had not obeyed God and driven out all the pagan people who lived in the land. As a result, they were surrounded by people who worshiped false gods and demons. When the Israelites made friends with these people, they were led away from God into the worship of these demonic pagan gods. When the Israelites “woke up” and remembered the Lord, they refused to worship with their pagan neighbors, and then those people became enemies of the Israelites, and made war on them.

One of these pagan people groups was called the Philistines. They lived in an area along the Mediterranean coast of Israel, where they had five main cities, with five main Chieftains for each one. They worshiped two main false gods: Dagon and Ashtaroth. During the time of Samuel and the history recorded here, the Philistines were the biggest threat to the people of Israel.

War broke out between the Philistines and Israelites, as it often did. The Israelites were defeated in battle. They asked an interesting question:

And when the troops came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, “Why has the LORD defeated us today before the Philistines?

(1 Samuel 4:3)

Another translation says, “why did the Lord let us be defeated today?” They blamed God for their defeat. They didn’t come back and say, “we stink as warriors,” or “the Philistines are really good.” They said, “it’s God’s fault.”

In a sense, I understand this. God could have given them the victory, but he did not. Since it was in his power, and he didn’t do it, they blamed him. But it isn’t exactly that God made them fail. He simply did not intervene to make them succeed.

They had forgotten something that happened centuries before, when the Israelites first came into the land. At that time, their leader Joshua experienced an interesting incident:

When Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in His hand. Joshua approached Him and asked, “Are You for us or for our enemies? ”

“Neither,” He replied. “I have now come as commander of the LORD’s army.” Then Joshua bowed with his face to the ground in worship and asked Him, “What does my Lord want to say to His servant? ”

(Josh 5:13-14, HCSB)

You see the proper perspective is not “Is God on my side or not?” but rather, “Am I on God’s side or not?” In the battle with the Philistines, the Israelites blamed God for not being on their side. But they never confronted the idea that they were not necessarily on God’s side.

Isn’t this what people still do in so many situations these days? We moan and gripe: “Why didn’t God let me see the policeman before I ran the red light?” That one may seem a bit obvious – because you should not have run the red light!

 But maybe our situation is more serious and complex: “Why didn’t God heal my mother?” Believe me, I understand that those types of questions can be real and difficult. You know that I live with this kind of question on a daily basis. In some ways, such questions are natural. And yet, I think we have the wrong perspective if we think that God is obligated to help us and do what we want him to, rather than the other way around. The question is never “Is God on our side?” If you insist on thinking in that way, the only appropriate question is, “Am I on His side?” Personally, I think the whole question of “sides” is counterproductive. We don’t want God to control us and make us do only the things he wants us to do. As it happens, God does not do that to us. So why do we think we should get to control him, and make him do only what we want him to?

Instead of confronting this problem in their relationship with God, the Israelites did something to avoid it. They decided to ignore the problem in their relationship with God, and put their trust, not in God himself, but rather in a shadow of him, a symbol: the ark of the covenant.

The ark of the covenant was a carved wooden box, about four feet long, overlaid with gold. Inside the box were the tablets on which Moses had carved the ten commandments. It was a symbol of God’s presence with his people, a symbol of the agreement that he made with them at Mount Sinai. It may have looked a little bit like the picture at the top of this post.

The leaders of Israel decided to bring this box into battle with them. The idea was, if the ark was there, God must be there with them. This way, they didn’t have to face the fact that they had turned away from him. They didn’t have to deal with all those uncomfortable ideas like repentance, and surrender to God’s purposes for their lives. All they had to do was bring a box into battle, and God would automatically fight for them.

Some of the other leaders, perhaps some of the priests, probably thought about it in a slightly more complex way. They thought that by bringing the ark into battle, they could manipulate God into fighting on their side. After all, if God didn’t fight and protect the ark, it would send a message to the Philistines that God either wasn’t real or wasn’t very strong. So even if the Israelites didn’t repent and seek out a true faith-relationship with the Lord, he would still have to fight for them, to protect his own honor, in the form of the ark, to make sure the truth about him was known.

So they sent the ark into battle. Along with it, went Hophni and Phinehas, priests, the sinful, unrepentant sons of Eli, the chief priest. Obviously, those two did not take relationship with God seriously.

Here’s one lesson from this incident: never try to manipulate God.

The Israelites lost the battle. In fact, the writer records “a very great slaughter.” Among those killed were the evil priests, Hophni and Phinehas. When the news was carried to their father Eli, he fell and died. His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, went into premature labor, and she died. As she died she said, “The glory of the Lord has departed Israel.” This reveals what she and most of the people around her believed – that God lived in that box called the ark. The deaths of this priestly family fulfilled those first words that Samuel had heard from God.

Now, God did indeed want to show the Philistines that he was real, and all powerful. But he could not do that through the Israelites, because they had rejected a true faith relationship with Him. He could not reward the Israelites for putting their faith in a gold-covered wooden box. He needed to reveal the poverty of their faith. So they lost the battle and the ark was captured.

Even so, once the Philistines had the ark, God began to confront them with their own false worship. They took it first to the temple of their idol, Dagon, probably as a representation that Dagon was greater than the Lord, and had arranged for the Lord to be captured. The next morning, the statue of Dagon was found toppled over, face down in front of the Ark. The Philistines put it back. But the morning after that Dagon had fallen again, and broken into pieces.

In addition to the problem with their idol, the Philistines began to get sick. Somewhat skeptical, they sent the ark to a different Philistine city, but got the same results. Finally, they decided to see if God wanted the Ark back in Israel. They put it on a cart with some offerings of gold. They hitched the cart up to two cows that had never pulled anything. They took the calves of those cows, and penned them up at home.

In fact, this shows us that the priests of the Philistines really did not want anyone to believe that it was the Lord who was behind the sickness in their cities. They said, “if the cows take the cart to Israeli territory, then we know it was the Lord. But if they don’t, we’ll know it wasn’t him. This is sort of like saying: “If we toss a coin and it lands on heads, I win. If it lands on tails, I also win. But if it lands on the edge, you win.”

We had a cow with a calf on our little farm a couple of times. One time, the mother cow was keeping her calf far from the safety of our barn, so I picked it up and carried it to the barn. Let me tell you, that mother followed uncomfortably close behind! (She had horns, too). In the normal course of things, cows do not leave their calves behind. That’s why the Philistines did this. They really wanted to make it unlikely that the ark would go back to Israel. In fact, in the normal course of things, this was a totally rigged experiment. In such a scenario, the cows should always return to their homes, and their calves. Even so, these cows walked away from their home pastures and their calves and went straight to an Israelite town on the border, a town that was originally set aside for the Israeli priests. The Philistine priests must have been flabbergasted and enraged.

So God made it clear that he was real. He made it clear that there was significance to the agreement he had made with Israel, the agreement which the ark represented. But at the same time, he did not affirm or reward the superstition and manipulation of the Israelites.

You see the Israelites were close to something real and true. God had made promises to be in a special relationship with them. That was true. God often intervenes to help his people. That was also true. But there were some other truths that they ignored – that the special relationship with God involves faith and surrender on the part of God’s people. By surrender, I mean that God’s people are supposed to make their lives available for God to use and work through. The old time language for this is “obedience.” Sometimes that gives us the idea that we have to obey God in order to be holy, but that isn’t it. Through Jesus we have already been made holy. Our obedience is so that God can live his life through us.

These days, we are often as superstitious and manipulative as those Israelites. If you come from Lutheran, Presbyterian or Episcopal traditions, you might feel that if you just get baptized as a baby, confirmed as a teen and take communion sometimes, you will be saved. Baptism and communion and confirmation are all useful things, and they are engaged with true spiritual reality. But they are useless without faith. By themselves they won’t help you at all. If you use them and receive them in a way that strengthens your relationship of faith and obedience/surrender, then they will indeed be helpful. But if you do them for their own sake, without faith, you might as well forget it.

Those from the Baptist/Methodist/Church of Christ type traditions do the same thing, usually with an event called “getting saved.” I’ve met many people who “got saved” when they were twelve or fifteen years old. Since then, they’ve had nothing to do with God, but they are putting their trust in the fact that one day in their distant past, they walked down the aisle and “got saved.” I’m afraid this is nothing more than empty superstition. There’s something real and true that can happen when a person is saved, but it must involve true faith and surrender to the living God.

Other people might do this with a special kind of prayer. A few years back there was a whole thing about “the prayer of Jabez.” People were buying books and learning how to pray a certain way, because it was supposed to get the kind of results people wanted. Traditional Roman Catholics might do this with the rosary, or “hail Mary.”

Others do it with going to church. I think there are many positive reasons to come to church on a regular basis, but if you are doing it to try and get God on your side, or for him to do you a favor, I’m afraid you are in for disappointment.

All these things are like expecting a rubber tomahawk to protect you from lightning. There is something true about rubber and electricity, but it doesn’t work like a magic wand. The rubber and the electricity need to be in the right relationship to each other for the insulating power of rubber to work. There is something real and true about getting saved, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, prayer, and coming to church, but it all has to come in the context of faith and surrender in relationship to Jesus Christ.

So what is the Lord saying to you right now? Have you been upset with Him because he’s not acting like he’s on your side? Have you been putting your faith in religious activity or a religious symbol instead of in Him alone? Take a moment right now to surrender your life to him in faith.

COLOSSIANS #21: EYES ON THE PRIZE

On By Pastor TomIn Bible, Bible Teaching, Colossians, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

men and woman in red tank top is ready to run on track field

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
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Colossians #21. Colossians 2:18-19

We are continuing from last time. Paul set the stage by telling us to continue to walk in Jesus in the same way we received him: that is, by grace, through faith, not trusting in our own goodness or good works, but trusting Jesus to be enough. He reassures us that we have all the fullness of Christ living inside of us, and in Christ is the fullness of God. Then he again reassures us, telling us that through grace, by faith, we were buried with Christ in baptism, and raised to new life. Our sins have been nailed to the cross of Christ, and so have all the judgments that were against us.

Remember that last time we talked about the picture of a road: the good, safe road is love for Jesus, and through Jesus, love for others. On one side is the ditch of legalism, and the other, lawlessness. In our verses today, Paul is continuing to warn about legalism.

Last time we considered Paul’s exhortation to not let anyone judge us for things that are neither commanded, nor forbidden, by Christ or his apostles. These sorts of things include worship ceremonies, food and drink, church festivals, the day of the week that we worship, and so on. Now, Paul continues his exhortation:

18 Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, 19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.(Colossians 2:18-19)

In verse 16, Paul says, “let no one pass judgment on you.” Now he says, “Let no one disqualify you.” There is a difference in the two. I think it’s worth thinking about. Last time we talked about judging and being judged for things that don’t matter. Now Paul is taking this attitude: You already have the prize: Jesus Christ. Everything you need is found in that prize. Therefore, don’t let anyone suggest you don’t have all that you need already to be a Christian. Don’t let anyone put doubt in your mind about whether or not you’ve been given the prize. Don’t let anyone shake you loose from the prize that you already have.

Paul talks about a certain kind of person who might try to say that you have been disqualified. This is someone who insists upon false humility. The NIV translates the Greek this way, while other versions use “asceticism,” but I think false humility captures the sense of it.

This is a tricky one, because true humility is an important part of following Jesus. Just as Jesus knew who he was, yet felt no need to rub the noses of others in it, so we should be the same. We don’t need to insist on our own way, even if we know we are right. We don’t need to insist on receiving the honor that we might rightly deserve. We should delight in honoring others, even if we don’t get the honor we think we should have. We don’t have to pretend to be less intelligent, or weaker, or less attractive than we are, but neither do we need to insist that everyone recognize these things. We can be humble in this way because we know that God knows who we are, and nothing we do escapes his notice. Through Jesus, he honors us, even when others fail to do so when they should.

And we should live with a recognition that everything we are, and everything we are capable of doing, are gifts from God, not something we somehow got for ourselves. It is not as if we were smart, or beautiful, or strong because we designed our own physical bodies. This is true, even when we have worked hard to use what we have. For example, say I have worked hard to study the Bible and be good at teaching it to others. But I was given the ability to learn and understand, and without that gift, my hard work would not have amounted to much. If I had not been given the opportunity to take time to learn and to have good people to teach me, my hard work would have come to nothing. Even my own motivation and self-discipline to work hard was originally given to me by God. This is true of each one of us, no matter what area of life we have become good at. True humility recognizes these things.

It might be helpful to use the road analogy. This is a smaller road, the road of true humility. On one side is the ditch of no humility (overt pride) and the other is false humility. So, false humility is something different from the real thing. False humility is a tool used by some to try to either shame or control other people. It can be very dangerous, because it is also, often, very subtle. Someone who is humble in a false way puts their pious Christian behavior on display. It is hard to argue with them, because they seem so spiritual and right. They might even say words that are good, but you can see from their tone that something else is going on. They often find ways demonstrate (sometimes without even saying it) that you aren’t as religious as they are. Some of these people might also insist upon some sort of outward pious behavior. This could involve telling people that they must fast at certain times, or implying that they ought to pray a certain way, or do certain specific good works. Usually, you will feel like you have to do these things in order for such a person to accept you as a real Christian. Now, it is good to fast. It is good to do good works. But we cannot insist upon certain fasts or certain good works. Especially, it is wrong to think that those things earn us special favor in the eyes of God.

Paul warns about two additional types of things that such people might be involved in. First the worship of angels. This is more or less a literal translation of the Greek, and it leaves us a with a slight problem. Does it mean that certain people worship angels? Or does it mean that some people claim to know how the angels worship God, and insist that we should worship the same way?

We might not be wrong to take it both ways, but I lean toward the second, for various reasons. In the first place, Paul is talking to Christians, and Christians are pretty clear that we must worship God alone, and never worship anyone else, not even an angel. In the Bible, several times, angels themselves told people not to worship them. (for example, Revelation 19:9-10)

Paul has been talking about things that are neither commanded nor forbidden in scripture, and the way we worship falls mostly into that category, so I think that this the point here. We know that there are some things we should do as we worship (like praising God, and praying, celebrating the Lord’s Supper) but the way we do those things is more or less up to us, as long as we honor the Lord. We are certainly never told to find out how angels worship, and then to imitate that.

The next thing Paul warns about it someone who has an unhealthy obsession with visions, and is probably proud about the visions and spiritual experiences she has had. As I describe this, keep the idea of the ditches in mind. All of these things might be done in healthy ways that honor God and encourage other Christians. We don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water. At the same time, many people do engage in behavior that seems spiritual on the surface, but is full of false humility, real pride and with no true connection to Jesus, the head of the body.

Let me describe some of what Paul is warning about. For several years, I tried to be a part of a certain pastors’ group. I never felt comfortable in that group. One reason I didn’t like it is because whenever we met, it sounded to me like the pastors were boasting, under cover of false humility. They might say things like this:

“We felt like we ought to hold a revival. We brought 176 souls to Jesus in one week.  All we were doing was stepping out in obedience to the Lord, and he provided.”

When I write these words, I realize that you can’t hear the tone of voice, or see the expression. But when it was spoken, it was clear that this person was proud as a peacock about the revival, and felt pretty sure that 176 people came to the altar because he was the best preacher this side of Memphis. These are spiritual words. We should be glad that 176 people came to Jesus (if in fact that’s truly what happened). He gave lip-service to the idea that it was God who did it, but he made sure to not only tell us the number of people, but also to emphasize his own act of stepping out in obedience. This is someone who uses spiritual words and spiritual activities to build himself up, especially in contrast to others.

Another time we pastors were gathered around a meal, and someone volunteered to bless the food. His prayer probably lasted three minutes, which is a long time when you’re hungry, and completely unnecessary for a table prayer. Certainly, the “thank you for the food part,” took less than ten seconds, and the rest of the prayer was spent on other things. Mostly what I remember is that his prayer proved that he was eloquent, and spiritual, and that he had a great speaking voice. It felt like a competition, and he had just thrown down a challenge. He even sort of smirked when he was done, sort of like: “Try and beat that, fellas.” That was the last day I spent with that gathering.

Now, it is good for pastors to gather together. It is good to talk about what’s going on with our ministries. It’s good to pray. But we can do that in a way that is genuine and that builds each other up. Or, as with my experiences, we can engage in false humility.

I was part of another prayer group for about two years. I really connected with some of the people there. But prayer became a performance. Everyone began to pray very long prayers, with many words where few words would have been sufficient. Their attitude was something like, “Why use two sentences when we could make it last five minutes?” Their voices trembled with emotion, and their words were replete with thick eloquence. In short, they were showing off. Every week I thought of what Jesus said:

5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (ESV, Matthew 6:5-8)

Jesus says, don’t do that, don’t be like them, yet these Christians did that again and again, every week for the two years I was with them, and presumably much longer.

Let’s cover the next thing Paul mentions: an obsession with visions. I believe in the fullness of the work of the Holy Spirit today. I believe the Spirit empowers miracles of all kinds – everything that we see in the New Testament is still happening today, and can still happen among you and I. But once again, there are ditches here. One ditch is to say that God does not speak in any way at all except through the Bible. The other ditch is to become obsessed with the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. People who are obsessed are often much more interested in the supernatural activities than they are in the fact that the Spirit of God lives inside those who trust Jesus, and has power to change lives from the inside out. They are very concerned about the outward, dramatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit, while they do not cultivate the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their own daily lives: love, joy, peace patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

The Spirit of God will never contradict what is written in the Bible. So, if someone speaks about a vision that does not seem to be in accordance with the Bible, then that vision is not from the Holy Spirit.

Some folks may have prophecies or visions that don’t directly contradict the Bible. However, they seem to give as much, or more, weight to the visions as to the Bible. The fact that they have a supernatural experience makes them feel superior to those who have not. Their focus is not on Jesus, and not on the Bible, which reveals Jesus to us. Instead, their focus is on their own special revelation, which, even if it is genuine, is not as important as the Bible.

I want to speak about a few more types of people who might try to disqualify us (or make us believe we are disqualified) from the kingdom of God. For instance, I know a couple of people who live by faith in a fairly unique way. They don’t have regular jobs. They wake up in the morning, and look for whatever opportunities the Lord seems to be putting before them, and, as best they can, they follow his leading. They have some amazing and wonderful stories of God’s work and provision. There are also problems and pitfalls with this sort of life that, sadly, these people seem blind to. They might empty their bank accounts for a homeless person they just met, but then they go home and refuse to help their families with simple household chores. They are focused on big dramatic gestures, and they are easily bored or irritated by the ordinary things involved with following Jesus every day.

Related to this are people who feel a certain kind of calling on their lives, and then they try to impose their unique calling onto everyone else. The two I mentioned above seem to think that everyone should live the way they do. Here’s another example: suppose I am called to overseas missionary work. If I was an immature Christian, I might think that my passion for missions means that every single Christian should be a missionary. If I met someone who claimed to be a Christian, yet they weren’t missionaries, I would judge them. Now, I could make a pretty good case from the Bible that missions is important. But I might overlook the fact that if everyone went overseas as missionaries, there would be no Christians left in my home country to lead people to Jesus, and, also, no one left to give financial support to all the missionaries.

We are all called to follow Jesus. Certain parts of following Him are the same for every single person. But we are also all unique members of the body of Christ. Just because one person is called to a certain type of ministry and lifestyle, does not mean every person is:

14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many (ESV, 1 Corinthians 12:14)

17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. (ESV, 1 Corinthians 12:17-20)

Our text here is to remind us that we should not let such people disqualify us. They aren’t better Christians than you, because you, dear friends have Jesus. Jesus is the sum total of what any of us has – no Christian has any more, or any less than Jesus. Long winded eloquent prayers do not make us into God’s favorite disciples.  Supernatural experiences and visions cannot replace the everyday, ordinary life of following Jesus, and they sometimes even hinder people from day-to-day discipleship. Don’t be fooled by their cloak of piousness. You, dear friends, focus on Jesus. He is the head from which the holy body is nourished and grows. If you want true life, abundant, everlasting life, spend your time, energy and strength on Jesus, getting closer to him.