Our Towers

Genesis 11:4,  "Then they said, come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

    Author Warren Wiersbe calls the tower of Babel "one of the most arrogant revolts against God anywhere in the Scripture."  God had commanded the people to be fruitful and multiply and scatter across the earth, but instead they moved to the city of Babylon with the intention of settling there together.

    The tower of Babel was the forerunner of modern day Humanism, which is the deification of man and the exclusion of God.  Anne Graham Lotz wrote, "The stated purpose was to make a name for themselves--to elevate man and his accomplishments above anything else."  Karl Barth, a twentieth century theologian, said that all religion is man reaching up to God in his own way, according to his own terms, on his own merit, in his own strength.  Christianity alone is God reaching down to man."

    The tower of Babel was built with bricks.  Bricks are made from hardened clay, a fitting symbol for mankind.

    In one sense, Pentecost was a reversal of the tower of Babel, because the people in Jerusalem that day each heard Peter's message in his own language.  One day all the people from every tribe and nation will praise God in heaven with one voice, and the judgment of Babel will no longer be in effect.

    There are people in every generation who build their own humanistic towers.  But, any person who rebels against God is fighting a losing battle.  As Thomas a Kempis wrote, Man proposes, but God disposes."  An expanded version of that proverb says,  "Man does what he can.  God does what He will."  Proverbs 19:21 underlines that thought when it say,  "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails."

    Are there any towers of rebellion or self reliance in your life today?  If so, what will you do about them?

Father, may my life be all about You rather than all about me.  May I tear down any tower of rebellion or self reliance that ever enters my life and depend completely and entirely on You.  Amen.  

The Rainbow

Genesis 9:13,  "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth."

    Obviously, the rainbow is a symbol of God's promise that He will never destroy the earth by a flood again.  But it is also a sign of God's grace and mercy to mankind.  The story of the ark is a picture of God's provision for man's spiritual salvation.  The ark of safety in the flood symbolizes Jesus Christ, who is our Ark of safety from the punishment for sin that we all deserve.  Noah and his family had to enter the ark in order to be saved from the flood, and we have to enter into a covenant with Jesus, accepting Him as Savior, in order to be rescued from sin's power and eternal consequences.

    Rainbows appear after rainstorms.  God hasn't promised us that we won't have any storms in our lives, but the rainbow reminds us that our heavenly Father won't let the storms destroy us, nor will He leave us to face the storms alone.

    Rainbows are formed when the sun and the water droplets align under just the right conditions.  The colors of the rainbow reflect the sun's rays as they hit falling mist or watery spray.  When we reflect God under difficult circumstances, people will see in us something even more special that a rainbow.  Our lives will be a beautiful reflection of God's nature and faithfulness if we allow Him to shine through the storms in our lives.

Father, may we reflect Your grace, Your faithfulness, and Your glory through all the circumstances that come our way.  May people who see us be drawn to You.  Amen.   

A Righteous Man

Genesis 6:9,  "This is the account of Noah.  Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God."

Genesis 6:22,  "Noah did everything just as God commanded him."

    After teaching Bible studies and Sunday School for forty years, I would sum up the way to live the Christian life in this one sentence, "Choose to trust and obey, abide and pray."  If I were to distill the

instructions further, I would shorten it to "Trust and obey."  This is exactly what Noah did.

    When I was growing up, it was not so hard to be a Christian.  The same values taught in church were also taught in school and in most homes.  This is not so today.  Many parents fail to teach their

children about God.  The public schools no longer have prayer and Bible reading on a daily basis.  We live in the most technologically advanced and affluent era in human history.  Society in general promotes a selfish, self-centered, materialistic, and humanistic viewpoint and lifestyle.  People who want to please God today must swim upstream against a current of godlessness, much as salmon swim upstream to spawn.  Noah lived in an even more godless world than ours.

    The tasks that God assigned Noah must have seemed overwhelming. The ark was an enormous boat.  It was 450 feet (or 1 1/2 football fields) long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.  Until 1850 it was the largest ship built.  In addition to building the ark, Noah was instructed to bring aboard every kind of animal, male and female (or, as my granddaughter Heather once said, "male and email')  and 7 of each clean animal.  Don't you imagine Noah wondered how in the world he would ever be able to build a boat that big, much less get all those animals aboard?

    What did Noah do?  First, he shone like a star, lighting up a dark, depraved world by his righteous life.  He is such an influence for godliness that he is mentioned 50 times in 9 different books of the Bible.  Then he did what he could and trusted God to do the rest.  He trusted and obeyed God.  By those simple steps his life is a challenge to us to fulfill the Scripture in Philippians 2:15-16a which exhorts us to "become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life..."

Father, may we follow the example of righteous Noah in trusting and obeying You and walking closely with You.  Amen.

The Green-eyed Monster

Genesis 4:4b-5,  "The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.  So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast."

     My little chihuahua, Honey, loves to jump up into my lap and nestle.  She considers that her territory.  My pomeranian, Missy, has a fat body and short legs and cannot jump that far.  But sometimes I pick her up and put her in my lap to pet her.  When I do, Honey goes into a frenzy of growling and snapping at Missy.  Honey is very jealous when Missy invades her territory and claims my attention.  So there is a kind of sibling rivalry even in the animal world.
     Anyone who has ever been in a family where there is more than one child has either participated in sibling rivalry or observed it.  When a new baby comes into a family where there is already another child, it is anticipated that the older child will have some feelings of jealousy toward the newcomer. I was the older child in my family, and about a week after my brother was born I asked my mother when we were going to take him back!  Jealousy is the nature of human nature.  But, while jealousy is a characteristic of the natural man, it is not a spiritual attribute.  It is not a lovely quality.  To be jealous is to be resentful and envious of something someone else has.  To be envious is to desire another person's advantages, possessions, or attainment.  It is to be discontented because someone else has something you lack but want.
     In the story of Cain and Abel we see jealousy taken to the extreme of murder.  While we would probably not kill someone because of envy, we may well harbor some dark, murderous thoughts that cause unrest in our souls and greatly displease God.  Discontentment with what we have been given is actually a criticism of God and His provisions for us.  It shows our dissatisfaction with our Heavenly Father to Whom we owe life and breath and every good gift.  It reveals a great lack of appreciation on our part.  If there is any root of jealousy, envy, resentment, or discontentment in your life right now, won't you ask God to clean it out and replace it with a thankful heart?

Father, may we have grateful hearts for all Your goodness to us.  Amen.   

In His Presence

Psalm 5:3,  "In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation."

     One of my daughters, Weety, was telling me what some of her grandchildren like to do when they visit her.  The two little boys--one three and the other almost three--like for her to play trucks and cars with them.   Her youngest granddaughter loves to play "babies."  She and Weety feed, bathe, dress, and rock her dolls.  In other words, these grandchildren just want their grandmother to hang out with them.  What they want is her PRESENCE.
      There is tension with many parents as to how much time and energy they should spend working to buy things for their children--to give them PRESENTS of all kinds, including the necessities of life--and how much time they should spend just hanging out with their children.  As much as young people love getting PRESENTS, often what they want and need most from their parents is just their PRESENCE.
     Our Heavenly Father wants us to spend time just hanging out with Him too.  He likes it when we spend time reading His Word and talking things over with Him in prayer.  He wants our PRESENCE.  Perhaps too often we allow the PRESENTS of our gifts to Him and service for Him to substitute for spending quality time with Him.  But there is absolutely no substitute for spending time in the PRESENCE  of our Heavenly Father.  That is where we find peace and strength and wisdom and all the other qualities we need to live abundantly.
Father, thank You that, as the song says, "In the PRESENCE of Jehovah, God Almighty, Prince of Peace, troubles vanish, hearts are mended, in the PRESENCE of the King."  May we make spending time with You our number one priority.  Amen.

In God's Image

Genesis 1:26a,  "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.....Genesis 1:27,  "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

    Possibly you also read this online:  When God created Adam, He looked at him and said,  "I can do better."  Then He created Eve!

    Mankind was originally created in the image of God.  Actually, even God couldn't improve on that!  But sin marred us all.  Ever since Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, every person is born with a sin nature.  We are not so much sinners because we sin.  We sin because we are sinners.  We are born into the world wanting our own way rather than desiring to do what pleases God, and we will do almost anything to get it.  A baby gets its way by crying until someone gives it what it wants.  People fight to have their way.  They scheme and manipulate.  We are all sinners through and through, bad to the bone.  Thankfully, God loves us the way we are, because otherwise our situation would be hopeless.  "But God"--what wonderful words!!!   When we acknowledge that we are sinners and accept God's Son as Savior, God forgives us and gives us a new nature, His nature, to reside within us.  However, there is a problem.  When God gives us this new nature, He doesn't remove that old sin nature with which we were born.  All our lives we will struggle because the two natures are in opposition to each other, and they both want to control us at the same time.

    God's purpose for each of us is to make us more and more like Jesus, to restore us to the godly state which we lost through Adam's sinfulness.  Oswald Chambers wrote,  "The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God likeness."  The more we allow the nature of God, which resides in us in the Person of the Holy Spirit, to control our lives, the closer we will come to the image of God, to God likeness.

Father, make us more and more like You and Your Son Jesus through the indwelling presence of Your Holy Spirit in our lives.  Amen.

Lessons from Nature

Genesis 1:1,  "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

     There are endless life lessons as we contemplate nature--God's creation.  As I suggest a few, I bet you will begin to think of many others.
     Both physical and spiritual life are totally dependent upon the Creator.  Without God, we aren't able to take the next breath nor can our hearts throb with the next heart beat.  Everything we have and are is a gift from God.  He is due all our worship and praise and gratitude.
     What we sow we will reap.  If we plant squash seeds, we will get squash.  We will never reap turnip greens from okra seeds.  The law of the harvest works every time, and it works in our lives as well as in our gardens.  If we have sown some wild oats, it won't do any good to pray for crop failure!
     We see God's incredible creativity in nature.  Each individual part of the plant and animal kingdoms has its own distinctions, attributes, and special purposes in the world.  We also observe God's amazing creativity in people.  Each person has his/her own distinctions, attributes, and special purposes in God's plans.  God doesn't expect or intend for any two people to live life the same way.  We are interdependent and need to help each other, just as the different parts of nature work together.
     The newly washed earth after a rain is a beautiful picture of the cleansing that takes place when we confess our sins.  The rainbow is a reminder of the truthfulness, the promises, and the faithfulness of God..
     Everywhere we look at creation we can learn lessons about living if we are open and sensitive to what God wants to teach us.  Have you already thought of some more lessons?

Father, thank You for filling Your creation with lessons and analogies for us.  May we be eager to learn everything You want to teach us as we walk through Your world.  Amen.