6/30/05: Why Did God Give Us the Big 10?

The big news story this Monday was the Supreme Court's mixed ruling on Ten Commandment displays.

Often we think the Ten Commandments exist to help us be better people...if we would just follow those 10 rules, we'd be okay.

Did you know that is NOT why God gave us the Decalogue?

He gave us the 10 Commandments to be an "in the face" indictment that we aren't good people... none of us.

Feeling smug about your goodness? "Do not covet"--ever wanted somebody else's wife, car, job, money? Or are you sweetly content with yours? "Do not bear false witness"--ever intentionally or unintentionally say something about someone that was not the complete, unbiased, absolute truth? "Do not take God's name in vain"--ever curse, swear, or treat God lightly?

Go on through the list..."Remember the Sabbath Day"...do you give God His Time, that is His and His alone? "No gods before me"...how about money? your job? your favorite guilty pleasure?

That's only half...do you ever steal, cheat, or bamboozle anyone (e.g., "Boss, I'm sick today..."); contemplate sex with anyone other than your spouse (adultery); kind of make God out to be like you wish He was, instead of who He is (aw, God doesn't mind me doing this...); fail to honor and provide for your parents? Wish somebody were killed?

I bet you are not perfect in the above areas. Neither am I. And if you tried to change today and get better, five years from now you'd still be breaking many of the same commandments.

No, rather than a guide to a better life, the 10 Rules rather shout to us, "You are GUILTY, and you will pay!" No wonder people get so upset when somebody posts them on public property! We don't like to be reminded that we are NOT good...and never will be.

So, why did God give them?

To let us each know that we need a Savior...someone outside of ourselves who can forgive us for our lawlessness, take care of doing our time for our crimes, pay our citations in full, and save us from our tendency to keep on breaking the Law. The 10 Commandments show us we need Jesus Christ to take away our guilt problem.

Click on "Salvation" to see how you can be declared "NOT GUILTY" for breaking all the commandments you've already broken.

Courts may order them to be taken down, but we'll all have to face up to them some day.

I hope you have your case already represented by the only Lawyer who can get you out of this mess...

and its not the Tiger, the Heavy Hitter, or the Becker Law Office!

~Pastor Brian

6/26/05: Look, Feel and Smell NEW Again

I used to teach school and, every fall, I loved walking back into my classroom because during the summer all the classrooms would be repainted.

True, people could've scrubbed and cleaned, but they could've never accomplished with hours of work what a painter could do in a matter of moments ... not only were all the scuff marks from the kids' desks and backpacks erased, but the room itself smelled .. well ... new.

I often wished the room could be repainted every week ... along about January, the scuff and stray pencil marks were back, and the fresh clean smell was gone. Ah, such is life.

Do you remember when you first believed in Jesus Christ? One moment, the walls of your life were scuffed by sin that, no matter how hard you tried, you  couldn't scrub clean. Then, boom, the next moment, the room of your heart was clean, white, new. Things even seemed to smell differently! But time has passed and now there are new scuff marks, stray pencil marks, and things don't seem so new anymore.

1 John 1 is written to just a Christian like you. It says that, unlike my classroom, your heart can be painted new continually. If we simply keep short accounts of sin (that is, don't let 'em pile up, but rather confess them as soon as they happen) and keep close to God through daily communication (prayer, praise and Bible reading,) then, He promises, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses (continually) us from all sin.

There's no need to scrub your life of skid marks or to be content with a dull, faded relationship ... let's continually be painted by that Crimson Coat, so that we look, feel and smell new in our faith every hour.

~Pastor Brian

6/20/05: The Ultimate Vacation

I remember every summer from about 8th grade till I graduated from high school being so excited about an annual trip to King's Island. The night before we left for that amusement park, I would lay awake planning which roller coaster I was going to ride first, what food I was going to eat, and imagining how wet I'd end up after the water rides.

I knew where I was going, I knew how much fun I'd have, and I knew I couldn't wait till morning!

But you and I today often look at our final destination without any of that excitement.

Come on, admit it. When someone says "Heaven" you think of a fluffy cloud, some guy with a harp, a bunch of gaudy yellow streets, and an interminable church service...don't you?

No wonder we Christians get so attached to life here on earth, if that's all we have to look forward to!!!

But the Bible paints a much different picture than that distorted image.

Heaven will be a new universe, with a new planet earth.⁽¹⁾ There will be stars, a sun, a moon.⁽²⁾ On the planet there will be a fantastic City...lit up from within so that it is never night within its walls⁽³⁾...awesome architecture, grand views, perfectly clean and crime free.⁽⁴⁾

In this new universe will be everything we are familiar with here on earth...trees, grass, animals...everything God made will be made anew.⁽⁵⁾

You won't be a ghost floating around, but rather will have your exact same body...except that it will be made perfect and made of the same material as heaven.⁽⁶⁾

We will feel pleasure, we will eat, we will play, we will rest, we will serve God with joy the way we were meant to on earth...by creating and perfecting and discovering his creation, without any disappointments or drudgery.⁽⁷⁾

Want to ride over a waterfall, bounce across the surface of the moon, do fifty summersaults down a snowcapped mountain, eat a meal with a friend, take a nap in the sunshine, or sit and talk to Jesus in a verdant valley? Want to fly through a star, build a skyscraper, throw a football into planetary orbit? Want to sing in a choir, compose an anthem, or give someone an awesome present that's perfect for them?
That's what heaven will be like!

Now, none of us want to die, but...aren't you just a little excited now about taking the ultimate vacation? Just make sure you've made your reservations (click on "salvation" to see how you can make them today).

~Pastor Brian

***
NOTES:
(1) Revelation 21:1. "Heaven" in this passage refers to outer space. When we say "heaven" we are really referring to this perfect universe (new heavens, new earth) that God will create.  [go back]
(2) Psalm 72:5,7; 89:37. These passages state that there will always be a moon. How can this be if the present universe is to be destroyed? Psalm 102:25,26 explains that the old stars, sun and moon will be exchanged for new ones at the new creation.  [go back]
(3) Revelation 21:23,25. Some have misunderstood this passage to mean everywhere in heaven will be daylight all the time. How disappointing for those of us who love stars and lightning bugs! A careful reading shows that the topic here is the CITY, not the whole new earth. Many cities today are lit up all the time, but this one is illuminated by God Himself instead of LG&E. Some also misread these verses to believe that there will be no sun or moon in heaven; but notice the passage says that the CITY has NO NEED of them, not that they do not exist.  [go back]
(4) Rev. 21:4,27. That is why no person who has not been born again as a child of God may enter this creation (see also verses 6-8).  [go back]
(5) Rev. 21:5. The verse is very clear in the Greek...He will not make all new things, that is, things alien and strange to us, but rather, He will make all things new. This world we are on is like the pattern for a wedding dress. It's not the dress, but the dress is like it, just more glorious. There will be sunsets, rainbows, animals, and plants in heaven, but they will be more glorious than they ever were, even in the Garden of Eden.  [go back]
(6) I Corinthians 15:35-58. We will have bodies, but they will be glorious! We will not be disembodied spirits after we are raised from the dead.  [go back]
(7) Rev. 22:3-5; 21:6. Throughout scripture people served God by doing any number of tasks...building, singing, etc. Scripture says we will reign over this new creation, which has the idea of mastering it. As we make glorious things, we will bring that glory to Christ as an offering. We will serve God by ruling over His creation as well as by verbally praising Him.  [go back]

6/19/05: What Do You Fear?

One way Satan temps us is to cause us to go to one extreme ... by making us think we've gone to the other!

Have you ever seen the extremely skinny person who gets more unhealthy because they're afraid of getting fat? The same can happen in the spiritual realm.

"I don't want to become a religious fanatic," might mean that you're already a lackadaisical Christian worshipping money or pleasure instead of God.

"I don't want to be too hard on my kids," might mean you're way to permissive of disobedience by them.

"Now, I can't get too consumed with work," might mean, you're lazy, while, "I can't neglect my job," might mean you're neglecting your family.

"I don't want people to walk all over me," might mean you're a tyrant, and the man who says, "I don't want to be dictatorial," might not be leading his family at all.

Satan is very tricky ... and for that reason we should all examine ourselves ... perhaps we need to move closer to the thing we fear, and learn to fear the opposite thing.

The skinny person needs to get nourishment, not diet more.

What do you fear? Are you being deceived by it ... and making the opposite mistake?

~Pastor Brian

6/13/05: Madagascar ... What a Wonderful World

While it's no Finding Nemo, the current movie Madagascar is an entertaining movie about some animals who escape from the New York Zoo and end up in the Wild. Once there, they find out that in the wild, life can be a very dangerous place. There is a scene where the animals walk through the beautiful jungle, to the tune "What a wonderful world", only to see cute little birds and fluffy mammals devoured by carnivorous plants, alligators, and other predators. This scares our friends from New York almost to death...especially when one of their own, the Lion, suddenly begins to revert to his natural instinct and begins to see his best friend, the Zebra, as his next meal.

In our comfortable city lives, we often forget how dog-eat-dog nature really is. Why would God create a world full of such death and tragedy?

He didn't. When God made everything, He said, "It's very good," or, "What a wonderful world!" But then we humans, whom he placed in charge, decided to rebel and obey Satan rather than God. Along came death, heartache, destruction, and a cruel mother nature that heartlessly takes the innocent to the slaughter along with the guilty.

And, because of human sin, our nature changed as well. Just like the lion in Madagascar, who felt bad about trying to eat his best friend, but couldn't stop it, we too find ourselves naturally doing the things we hate and not doing the things we know we should.

The good news is, God Himself entered our jungle and made everything right by Himself suffering death.
He transforms our hearts and gives us a new nature when we believe in Him, a desire to do good and the power to start working toward good.

One day He will return to set all of creation right, as it was at the beginning in Paradise, and He will also completely change our natures so that we naturally will always do what is good.

But He gives to each of us the choice now as to whether we want to be changed like this in the future, or not.

By believing in Christ, you someday will be a wonderful person, walking around in a restored creation, and saying to yourself, "What a wonderful world!"

~Pastor Brian

6/7/05: Should Women Be Allowed to Drive?

Would anyone other than a chauvinistic male even ask such a question in 2005?
Believe it or not, it is being asked, and has stirred an uproar, in Saudi Arabia.
Yes, the Saudi Arabia from which we get all that oil. The Saudi Arabia that is wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. The Saudi lawmaker who asked that question is being publicly berated because he wants to change the status quo--the current rule that no woman in the country is legally permitted to drive! Of course, the Moslem religious leaders are furious, because this man dared suggest that women should have this freedom.

I think most Americans don't understand that this is the mentality of the enemy we face in the War on Terror. Oh, we understood it briefly on 9/11...we saw the evil of a religious movement that would inspire its followers to kill 3,000 innocent people in the name of God, but that thinking is so foreign to us we easily forget it exists to the extreme it does. Because this is the enemy we face, bombs and bullets alone are not enough to win this war. An evil religious movement must be fought on the battleground of ideas as well. It must be fought with an alternate viewpoint...the fire of evil religion must be fought by the fire of another religious idea.

The Japanese were radical fighters during the second world war and you would've thought the fanatical devotion that had led so many to be kamikazes would've continued unabated after the war ended... that America would've had the same kind of problem occupying Japan as we've had with Iraq.
Not so.
What changed the radical Japanese?

General Douglass MacArthur, who oversaw the Japanese surrender and occupation, knew the battle to occupy Japan must begin with religious freedom. So he called for American churches to send Christian missionaries to Japan. (Could you imagine what the "PC" crowd of today would say if one of our Generals or President Bush called for the same thing for Iraq?) The missionaries came. Their beliefs were not forced on the Japanese people, but they were given freedom to hear a message different from the one of violent Shintoism and Emperor worship that had been preached in Japan for decades. Now, they heard both messages side by side.

Most did not become Christians, but the Japanese instead saw good people from America practicing another faith freely in their midst, and they learned that perhaps they were wrong to characterize those Americans as evil: their preconceptions of us were shattered, their unyielding commitment to Shintoism was shaken, and they lost the will to fight their fanatical war.

Only when our government gains the courage to demand from Saudi Arabia and the other exporters of terror religious freedom...absolute, true, and complete freedom to speak or write or practice any religion without any kind of government interference or support, only then will the people who live in these countries discover who Christian Americans truly are. And only then will they lose the will to die fighting us.

The truth will set them free.

~Pastor Brian

06/06/05: Halfway home:

On trips, I always like to mark the "halfway" point. Halfway there; halfway home; or halfway through the vacation itself.

Halfway points are a good time to take stock of how things are going. And, they're a useful reminder that eventually the trip or vacation will end.

Today, I'm 35 years old.

I don't feel 35. I still feel like a kid playing "grown-up." But I am 35, regardless of how I feel.

The Bible, in the Book of Psalms, says a man's days are threescore and ten ... 70 years.

If I live a normal life span, I'm halfway done.

Those sins in my life that I keep planning on conquering, those goals that I hope to see fulfilled, the difference that I hope to make for others, and , the relationship I hope to have with God ...

It's halftime.

I'm behind in some of those categories.

I need to huddle, get motivated, get in the game.

Where are you in life's game?

Maybe you've just graduated from high school ... you've just finished the first quarter.

Maybe you're in your fifties ... last quarter ... sixties ... crunch time.

The Bible says, " Let us number our days, that we might apply our hearts to wisdom"

Look at the clock, take stock, get in the game!

~Pastor Brian

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