We read about two men, Bezalel and Oholiab, in Exodus 31 and 35-40. Until Exodus 31, we have not read anything about these men. It appears that they were essentially unknowns. They were not leaders of the people of Israel. But they were known to God.
The Lord set them apart to do His special work in building the tabernacle and its furnishings. In Exodus 31 we read: "The LORD said to Moses, 'See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. And behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. And I have given to all able men ability, that they may make all that I have commanded you....'" (31:1-11).
God called (by name) and equipped these two men, filled them with His Spirit, and set the task before them. Does this sound familiar, dear Christian? It should. We, too, have been filled with God's Spirit and given at least one spiritual gift with which to serve the Lord and His church. He has a role (or roles) for each of us to fulfill in our local church family.
Bezalel and Oholiab faithfully served the Lord as He had called and equipped them. The tabernacle was completed, as we read in the last few chapters of Exodus.
But as I read these accounts, I began to wonder: What if Bezalel and Oholiab had said "No"?
What if they had preferred to use their great skill to create other things besides what God had called them to do?
What if they had believed they weren't really gifted enough to do what God called them to do?
What if they had held back because people didn't really know them?
What if they had said they just didn't have enough time to do the work?
What if they had said the work was too large for them to do (and it was indeed a huge task!), so they just didn't want to try?
What if they were too afraid to step out and take on the project?
What if they didn't want to do it because they were afraid of what people might think?
The work was vast in scope, time-consuming, and painstakingly detailed. What if they had decided to give up partway through, because the task was too hard?
Dear Christian brother or sister, far too often we can tend to use excuses like these to delay or avoid serving the Lord with the talents He has given us. Rather, we want to be obedient, as were Bezalel and Oholiab, and as have been so many of God's people throughout the centuries. We can each join the "great cloud of witnesses" (see Hebrews 12:1-2) in serving our Lord faithfully in the tasks He has given each of us.
What has God called and equipped YOU to do in your church family? Will you do it faithfully, in the power of His Spirit?
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
The Fall of Aaron
Moses' brother Aaron helped lead the nation of Israel. This morning I was struck with the highest point and the lowest point of his life, only a short time apart, and how great his fall actually was.
Aaron's highest point had to be the account recorded in Exodus 24. "Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank" (24:9-11, emphasis mine). Imagine that--they SAW the God of Israel and ate and drank in His presence! That is an honor that only a few people have ever had.
Then we have a number of chapters in which the Lord gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, along with clear instructions for the building of the tabernacle. If I'm reading Exodus 24:15-18 correctly, after Aaron returned to the people, Moses was on the mountain another 46 days.
During that month and a half, the people of Israel convinced Aaron to build a new god, representative of one of the gods of Egypt. Worse, Aaron led in sacrifices and worship to this god in place of the true God of Israel. We read about all of this in Exodus 32:1-20.
Still more, when Moses confronted Aaron about his sins, Aaron both lied and tried to minimize the sins he had committed (Exodus 32:21-24). He even said that the calf just magically popped out of the fire when he threw in the gold jewelry brought by the people (see Exodus 32:24)!
Aaron went from being in the very presence of God to worshiping a golden image (and lying about it) in just a few weeks' time! How high was Aaron's high, and how low was his low!
Reading things like this makes me all the more determined to be ever-vigilant to follow Christ closely EVERY DAY. I--you--we are all quite capable of committing horrible sins that dishonor our Lord. Even when we have followed Him closely and experienced His work deeply in our lives, our sinful hearts can deceive us and cloud our memory and lead us into any of a number of sins. Our enemy, the devil, would love nothing more than to cause God's children to fall into grievous sin. First Peter 5:8-9 tells us, "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world." The devil wants to pull us away from God, but we can effectively resist him as we stand firm in our faith.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, please join me in being faithful to God and watchful against any sin that could dishonor our Lord. Where we might have a particular weakness for one sin or another, let us be extra-vigilant. Let's not make the kinds of mistakes Aaron did, nor commit even smaller sins. Rather, let us stay faithful to our Lord every moment of every day.
Lord, please grant myself and every reader the grace to do this. Amen.
Aaron's highest point had to be the account recorded in Exodus 24. "Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank" (24:9-11, emphasis mine). Imagine that--they SAW the God of Israel and ate and drank in His presence! That is an honor that only a few people have ever had.
Then we have a number of chapters in which the Lord gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, along with clear instructions for the building of the tabernacle. If I'm reading Exodus 24:15-18 correctly, after Aaron returned to the people, Moses was on the mountain another 46 days.
During that month and a half, the people of Israel convinced Aaron to build a new god, representative of one of the gods of Egypt. Worse, Aaron led in sacrifices and worship to this god in place of the true God of Israel. We read about all of this in Exodus 32:1-20.
Still more, when Moses confronted Aaron about his sins, Aaron both lied and tried to minimize the sins he had committed (Exodus 32:21-24). He even said that the calf just magically popped out of the fire when he threw in the gold jewelry brought by the people (see Exodus 32:24)!
Aaron went from being in the very presence of God to worshiping a golden image (and lying about it) in just a few weeks' time! How high was Aaron's high, and how low was his low!
Reading things like this makes me all the more determined to be ever-vigilant to follow Christ closely EVERY DAY. I--you--we are all quite capable of committing horrible sins that dishonor our Lord. Even when we have followed Him closely and experienced His work deeply in our lives, our sinful hearts can deceive us and cloud our memory and lead us into any of a number of sins. Our enemy, the devil, would love nothing more than to cause God's children to fall into grievous sin. First Peter 5:8-9 tells us, "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world." The devil wants to pull us away from God, but we can effectively resist him as we stand firm in our faith.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, please join me in being faithful to God and watchful against any sin that could dishonor our Lord. Where we might have a particular weakness for one sin or another, let us be extra-vigilant. Let's not make the kinds of mistakes Aaron did, nor commit even smaller sins. Rather, let us stay faithful to our Lord every moment of every day.
Lord, please grant myself and every reader the grace to do this. Amen.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Can You Help Me?
This summer at family camp, my 2 1/2 year old again climbed to the top bunk. Kristin and I were nervous every time she was up there. Several times during the week she had climbed to that same bunk bed, and we had to help her down every time.
This particular time I asked, "Sweetie, do you want me to help you back down?"
With confidence she replied, "I wanna get down ALL BY MYSELF!" Without a moment's pause, she followed with a much more humble, "Can you help me?"
Kristin and I laughed at the contrast, and of course, helped her down.
We tend to live our lives in fierce independence. After all, our society most often values people who are self-sufficient, capable, and successful. At the same time, our society tends to ignore or look down upon those who cannot do for themselves and always have to ask for help. Think of your own friendships: to whom are you most often drawn...the strong and successful, or the weak and needy?
Independence is not a bad thing in and of itself. We should seek to live lives that contribute to the world around us, not drain its resources for ourselves.
But independence is deadly when we bring it into our relationship with the Lord. In our relationship with the Lord, we must strive for dependence. Not "I wanna do it by myself," but "I need You."
In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus talks about this kind of dependence. Verse 33 tells us, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [the daily needs of life] will be added to you." We spend so much of our lives chasing after things in the world...even good things that we legitimately need. But Jesus up-ends our priorities and tells us that dependence on the Lord is the most important priority above any of these other needs.
Psalm 37:3-7 remind us also of dependence. Verses 4 and 5 say, "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act."
Proverbs 3:5-6 say this: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths."
The theme of these verses, and really of the whole of scripture, is that we are to depend fully on the Lord. It goes against our natural instincts AND against the world around us, and I am finding it to be a lifelong battle to keep a heart of true dependence on Him. It's not that I don't want to be fully devoted to the Lord, but my independent spirit gets in the way so often. Yet true joy, true peace, true fruitfulness...these only come when I am fully dependent on the Lord, seeking Him first and foremost above every other thing in life.
How about you? How are you doing in expressing your utter dependence on the Lord every moment of every day? Are you asking Him, "Can You help me?"
May God give us grace to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23) and depend on Him completely!
This particular time I asked, "Sweetie, do you want me to help you back down?"
With confidence she replied, "I wanna get down ALL BY MYSELF!" Without a moment's pause, she followed with a much more humble, "Can you help me?"
Kristin and I laughed at the contrast, and of course, helped her down.
We tend to live our lives in fierce independence. After all, our society most often values people who are self-sufficient, capable, and successful. At the same time, our society tends to ignore or look down upon those who cannot do for themselves and always have to ask for help. Think of your own friendships: to whom are you most often drawn...the strong and successful, or the weak and needy?
Independence is not a bad thing in and of itself. We should seek to live lives that contribute to the world around us, not drain its resources for ourselves.
But independence is deadly when we bring it into our relationship with the Lord. In our relationship with the Lord, we must strive for dependence. Not "I wanna do it by myself," but "I need You."
In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus talks about this kind of dependence. Verse 33 tells us, "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [the daily needs of life] will be added to you." We spend so much of our lives chasing after things in the world...even good things that we legitimately need. But Jesus up-ends our priorities and tells us that dependence on the Lord is the most important priority above any of these other needs.
Psalm 37:3-7 remind us also of dependence. Verses 4 and 5 say, "Delight yourself in the LORD, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him, and He will act."
Proverbs 3:5-6 say this: "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths."
The theme of these verses, and really of the whole of scripture, is that we are to depend fully on the Lord. It goes against our natural instincts AND against the world around us, and I am finding it to be a lifelong battle to keep a heart of true dependence on Him. It's not that I don't want to be fully devoted to the Lord, but my independent spirit gets in the way so often. Yet true joy, true peace, true fruitfulness...these only come when I am fully dependent on the Lord, seeking Him first and foremost above every other thing in life.
How about you? How are you doing in expressing your utter dependence on the Lord every moment of every day? Are you asking Him, "Can You help me?"
May God give us grace to deny ourselves (Luke 9:23) and depend on Him completely!
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Breaking Free
This morning I (again) read the account of Isaac in Genesis 26. Isaac was afraid that ungodly people in Gerar would see Rebekah's beauty, take her for a wife, and kill him. So he lied and told everyone she was his sister. As with most lies, he was found out, but in this case he was found out before there was much collateral damage from the lie (see Genesis 26:6-11).
We shouldn't be surprised by this crazy idea Isaac had. Although he was not yet born when it happened, we have two recorded times when his father Abraham did the same thing (see Genesis 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-18). In Abraham's situations, the lies brought greater harm, though still God protected Sarah from being violated or harmed in any way. Abraham's lie was at least half true (see Genesis 20:12)--Sarah was his half-sister. But what he told was still a lie, bringing difficult consequences for him as well as for those who tried (in innocence) to take Sarah for their own.
When I ponder these three accounts, I remember again the danger of a lie. But that is not what hits me most today. The questions now on my mind are these: Why didn't Abraham teach Isaac about the lesson he learned so Isaac wouldn't make the same mistake? Or what was it in Isaac that caused him to want to follow in Abraham's footsteps in unrighteous decisions rather than righteous decisions (at least, in that instance)? We don't know, maybe Abraham did tell Isaac about the mistakes he made and warned him not to repeat them, and Isaac still stumbled into the same sin. Personally, I wish we knew more about these situations so we could learn from them, but the Lord didn't include every detail in His Word, though He gave us exactly what we need to know.
Today as a father, I think often about the things I have brought into my life from my parents, as well as the things my children will take from me. I have great parents, who raised me to love and serve the Lord, but I still made some enormous and painful mistakes of my own through the years. And now I pray daily for my own kids, but realize they, too, will sometimes perpetuate my mistakes rather than the things I most want them to gain from me. I wish for them to follow only my good examples, but inevitably they will make their share of mistakes in life.
Each of us has a challenge to break free from the mistakes of our parents (mine weren't perfect either (sorry Mom and Dad!)), and pursue the righteous life that our loving Lord has called us to. And although we will not be perfect parents, we want to let our kids see our God-honoring lives in hopes they will learn more good than bad from us. Sin is a horrible master, and we are all slaves to sin until we find the grace of God, then we continue to struggle with sin the rest of our lives. Hebrews 12:1-2 encourages us to "throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and...run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Yes, the sin hinders and entangles us, but we--with the strength that Jesus gives us--work to cast it aside and pursue the things that most please the Lord.
In this we will find great freedom and joy.
We shouldn't be surprised by this crazy idea Isaac had. Although he was not yet born when it happened, we have two recorded times when his father Abraham did the same thing (see Genesis 12:10-20 and Genesis 20:1-18). In Abraham's situations, the lies brought greater harm, though still God protected Sarah from being violated or harmed in any way. Abraham's lie was at least half true (see Genesis 20:12)--Sarah was his half-sister. But what he told was still a lie, bringing difficult consequences for him as well as for those who tried (in innocence) to take Sarah for their own.
When I ponder these three accounts, I remember again the danger of a lie. But that is not what hits me most today. The questions now on my mind are these: Why didn't Abraham teach Isaac about the lesson he learned so Isaac wouldn't make the same mistake? Or what was it in Isaac that caused him to want to follow in Abraham's footsteps in unrighteous decisions rather than righteous decisions (at least, in that instance)? We don't know, maybe Abraham did tell Isaac about the mistakes he made and warned him not to repeat them, and Isaac still stumbled into the same sin. Personally, I wish we knew more about these situations so we could learn from them, but the Lord didn't include every detail in His Word, though He gave us exactly what we need to know.
Today as a father, I think often about the things I have brought into my life from my parents, as well as the things my children will take from me. I have great parents, who raised me to love and serve the Lord, but I still made some enormous and painful mistakes of my own through the years. And now I pray daily for my own kids, but realize they, too, will sometimes perpetuate my mistakes rather than the things I most want them to gain from me. I wish for them to follow only my good examples, but inevitably they will make their share of mistakes in life.
Each of us has a challenge to break free from the mistakes of our parents (mine weren't perfect either (sorry Mom and Dad!)), and pursue the righteous life that our loving Lord has called us to. And although we will not be perfect parents, we want to let our kids see our God-honoring lives in hopes they will learn more good than bad from us. Sin is a horrible master, and we are all slaves to sin until we find the grace of God, then we continue to struggle with sin the rest of our lives. Hebrews 12:1-2 encourages us to "throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and...run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Yes, the sin hinders and entangles us, but we--with the strength that Jesus gives us--work to cast it aside and pursue the things that most please the Lord.
In this we will find great freedom and joy.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Rescue
Today it has been amazing to watch as miners in Chile, trapped underground for 69 days, have been rescued one by one. I don't know any of them personally, but I still respond with joyful tears to see them emerge.
The CNN website has a running tally of "Underground" and "Rescued." One by one the numbers are decreasing on the left and increasing on the right.
Beyond the amazing details of this particular entrapment and rescue, I think of the rescue of a person coming to Jesus Christ in faith and trust. One by one, people all over the world are coming to faith in Jesus, and there is great joy in heaven over each one (see Luke 15:3-7). It is truly a blessing to be a small part of rescuing someone: sharing with them the life-giving gospel message and seeing them come to Christ.
The Lord is the one doing the most heroic rescue; we're just a small part of the process as we obediently share the Good News. Colossians 1:13-14 says, "For he [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
As we celebrate the rescue of each person from their entrapment in the mine, let us also celebrate our own rescue, and look for opportunities to help free others who are captive to sin, rescuing them with the truth of Jesus Christ.
The CNN website has a running tally of "Underground" and "Rescued." One by one the numbers are decreasing on the left and increasing on the right.
Beyond the amazing details of this particular entrapment and rescue, I think of the rescue of a person coming to Jesus Christ in faith and trust. One by one, people all over the world are coming to faith in Jesus, and there is great joy in heaven over each one (see Luke 15:3-7). It is truly a blessing to be a small part of rescuing someone: sharing with them the life-giving gospel message and seeing them come to Christ.
The Lord is the one doing the most heroic rescue; we're just a small part of the process as we obediently share the Good News. Colossians 1:13-14 says, "For he [God] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."
As we celebrate the rescue of each person from their entrapment in the mine, let us also celebrate our own rescue, and look for opportunities to help free others who are captive to sin, rescuing them with the truth of Jesus Christ.
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