Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. (RSV)

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Lord, You remain indescribable. How You have blessed us with Your presence today. And in Your presence, we are changed. All glory and honour belongs to You. Without You we are truly nothing.

This morning Maryna is using her gift of teaching and is talking about the Deity of Christ.

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“You shall not steal” (Exod. 20:15).

This seems like another no-brainer.  Stuff that’s not ours is off-limits, and we can’t take it.  Shoplifters break this commandment; so do people who cheat on their taxes and take other people’s cars.  But the majority of us are in the clear, right?

Not necessarily.  Even “church people” (we?) steal things every day like time (from employers while perusing Craigslist instead of working), space (when cutting off another car in traffic because of the terrible hurry we’re in), and entertainment (but I just had to watch that soccer game’s internet feed—even if it was in Arabic!).  While we might stop short of looting Dillard’s or something, it’s not because we’re inherently better than folks who do.  Maybe we’re just more subtle and care more about our reputations…

Worse still, we steal from the Creator of the universe.  The modern idea of tithing amuses me.  You can almost picture the irritable crank that sits in that same seat every Sunday putting his check into the church offering plate:  the look on his face is somewhere between that of the guy sitting in the dentist’s chair getting a root canal and someone passing a kidney stone.  But he puts the money in because he’s “holy” and “generous.”  That may be, but he forgets that “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7) and, besides, every bit of creation really belongs to the Lord in the first place.  That includes our finances, material goods, and even our time.  “All things were created by him and for him” in heaven who gives every good and perfect gift—and, despite the diversity of these bestowals, never changes (Col. 1:16, Jas. 1:17).

I’m probably most guilty of robbing the Lord of time.  Every day, I have the opportunity to point all my resources toward him and use them for his glory; a lot of days, though, Jesus gets the short end of the stick.  I think about him between all the other things I’ve got going on as opposed to considering him before I even start all the other stuff.  The day becomes about me and my responsibilities rather than about him and his glory…

Of course, the Lord accepts thieves like us.  Christ was crucified between two of them, one of whom he promised would enter paradise (Lk. 23:39-43).  Our Savior not only spent his earthly sojourn teaching in the synagogues but also hanging out with the supposed dregs of society—so we should have no issue of acceptance as far as Jesus is concerned.  However, everyone sincerely touched by Christ was changed—and that ought to be true of us as well.  Paul, in addressing some thieves he knew, offered:  “He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need” (Eph. 4:28).  Christ turns the tables, making an eager giver out of the erstwhile crook.  So it is that we, robbers all, are entreated to turn away from a life in which we take God’s blessings and use them to our own glory.  We are commanded to do something useful with our hands—serve the poor, give a hug, build a home.  And why?  That we may have something to share with those in need.  Jesus makes no bones about it:  the poor—and poor in spirit—will always be with us (Jn. 12:8).  It’s time for us to take what was never ours to keep and give it away.  The good news of Jesus, you know, is not something to keep hidden.  Even if it costs us a nickel, a meal, or our very lives…

“You shall not commit adultery” (Exod. 20:14).

One of the weirdest experiences of my life came shortly after I became a Christian.  My friends and I volunteered to help out with Vacation Bible School one summer at our church, and we got put in charge of the fifth and sixth grade Bible study.  This turned out to be great for me, because I didn’t know half the stories we taught and consequently had to read my Bible a lot more that week than usual.  Anyway, the theme of Vacation Bible School that year was the Ten Commandments, and our church had gone all-out:  the worship leaders had costumes, a constructed set, and even songs that went along with the theme.  Most of them were pretty good, but for whatever reason I was struck with cynicism when several hundred some-odd grade-schoolers sang in unison, “We will not be adulterers.”  Interesting choice of lyrics for six year-olds…   

In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t as silly as I thought (well, the song was silly; giving children the opportunity to learn an important biblical concept isn’t).  Many people take marital faithfulness for granted—when you’re “in love” anything else seems unthinkable—but there’s a reason this is one of the things God specifically addressed from atop Mount Sinai.  While many people brag about their spousal devotion and never actually carry out the physical act of adultery, Jesus’ requirements in this regard again move beyond the letter of the law:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-28).  Our Lord requires that our intent be pure as well as our actions; Job’s covenant with his eyes not to give any woman a second glance seems, then, not only the actions of a wise husband but also a man aspiring to holiness (Job 31:1-2).  And this is not a command directed only toward men; a woman’s inordinate desires can be just as destructive…

We would do well to remember that earthly marriage is, at least in miniature, a picture of the marriage between Christ and his church (see Rev. 19 for part of the ceremony).  The husband’s love for his wife mimics Christ’s love for all believers; the wife’s devotion to her husband echoes the church’s loyalty to her Lord.  I give way to Paul:  “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing with water through the word. …  For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.  This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and his church” (Eph. 5:25-26, 31-32). 

If this is the case, it’s easy to see why even a second glance is a big deal:  if we give up on our earthly spouse, we’ll be that much more apt to give up on our heavenly Bridegroom.  This perverse world harbors many temptations that attempt to woo us from both types of lovers, essentially rendering us all adulterers—concerning our relationship to Jesus—everyday.  Still, Christ has the last word and remains faithful to us; as such, when the Lord of the universe returns, may we be among those who have set ourselves apart to be faithful to him.  Job covenanted—made a promise—with his eyes in a seemingly small matter, and his submission to the Lord was rewarded even in this life.  May we find ourselves dancing to the rhythm of the Lord rather than the siren’s songs of this world.  Christ reminds us, “heaven and earth”—and all they mockingly offer—“will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Mk. 13:31).  And later in Scripture:  “Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 Jn. 3:2-3).  Do we have this hope?

“You shall not murder” (Exod. 20:13).

As we have traversed the first half of the commandments, one thing has become clear:  we’re not very good at actually keeping them—not totally and completely, anyway.  Sure, we might not have a wooden idol in our home, but we still carve emotional and material idols to which we devote more of our lives than we do to God.  We don’t say the Lord’s name before a “wordy-dirty,” but we are occasionally guilty of twisting our words into oaths in efforts to convince people of our statement’s sincerity.  And so on…

Which is why the sixth of the Lord’s commandments comes almost as a welcome surprise:  You shall not murder.  Yes, we scream:  here’s one we can actually keep!  We don’t want to kill anyone; that would really be a sin!  Maybe we aren’t as bad off as we think…

A lot of the Hebrews of Jesus’ day thought this way, too, particularly the ultra-conservative teachers of the law we know as the Pharisees.  They were all about quoting commandments like this as supposed proof of their otherworldly holiness.  Actually, they were really good at following all the rules; Jesus, in a half-mocking statement, gave them their due when he remarked that, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).  Their proficiency in keeping the letter of the law was second to none…

But that, in Jesus’ estimation, was not good enough.  “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder.’ …  But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell” (Matt. 5:21-22).  In this statement, Jesus transcends the letter of the law and cuts to the quick:  if you harbor hatred in your heart, you have committed murder—not the physical act, granted, but the spiritual effect on your soul is exactly the same. 

Why would Jesus go further?  Are not outward regulations adequate to control the human machine?  Evidently not:  Paul relates that followers of Christ have been made “adequate as servants of a new covenant”—one based on the indwelling presence of God through his Holy Spirit rather than a law code to be obeyed—“not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6).  Our experience proves this to be true:  those concerned with making check marks to prove their “godliness” generally live dried-up, dead lives.  Their faith shrivels because it is not combined with an inward change.  The message may spring up quickly (i.e. Jesus’ statements about the seed falling into rocky soil), but exhausting attempts to “keep all the rules” can dehydrate anyone. 

Who then can be saved?  At some point, we are all guilty as charged of less-than-the-best motives concerning those around us.  Thankfully, “what is impossible with man is possible with God” (Lk. 18:27)!  Scripture is full of people whose lives were turned upside-down by the God who gives the gracious Gospel!  The two men who penned many of the Bible verses we have perused today—Moses and Paul, who wrote the first five books of Scripture and most of the New Testament, respectively—were both murderers as young men.  Moses slew an Egyptian and buried him in the sand before fleeing to the desert for forty years.  Paul (then named Saul) was a zealous Pharisee who kept the rules as well as anyone—and thought he needed to ransack anyone who followed Jesus of Nazareth.  The Lord changed them both:  he showed up to Moses in a bush that wouldn’t quit burning (Exod. 3) and appeared out of nowhere to Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9).  They laid down their lives at his feet and were never the same…

There was also a guy named Nicodemus.  He was one of the bigwig, high-ranking Pharisees but was evidently unsatisfied by a life of rule-keeping.  He’d never murdered anyone (probably never even hurt a flea), but his soul yearned for more.  He went to Jesus at night, and St. John’s account seems to indicate that his life changed (Jn. 3, 7:48-53).  Might today be your day to see Christ—not necessarily in a burning bush, but with eyes of faith?

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you” (Exod. 20:12).

The fifth of the Lord’s commands from atop Mount Sinai is quoted often by parents.  It is not quoted as much by younger people, especially younger people who live at home with their parents.  These younger people usually see its significance about the same time they have children:  Yes, this verse is true—I don’t think I’ve ever even seen this before!  We must apply this in our home from this day forward.  I am thankful that our children will see our vast, unchecked wisdom and honor us.  Amen.

God’s directives take an interesting shift with this commandment.  The first four mandates—keeping God first, the prohibition of idols, care for the name of the Lord, and the obligation to keep the Sabbath day—are all primarily vertical:  that is, they deal with man’s relationship to God.  Clearly, observing these commands will affect how we treat other people, but the main thing with each of them is how we ought to share life with God.  The final six commandments, however, are chiefly horizontal—dealing with interpersonal relationships.  And the Lord starts by addressing proper behavior in the family.  Not only that, he puts a promise on the end of this one:  Honor Mom and Dad, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you (Deuteronomy adds and that it may go well with you).  Long life is a big deal for us, but for the Hebrews it was huge.  This was a big deal, and God means business…

When Kimberly and I were going through premarital counseling with our pastor in college, he made an interesting comment:  the family was created before the church.  I had never really thought about that before, but he’s right:  Adam and Eve—and later little Cain, Abel, and Seth—were the first ones with a relationship with God.  Throughout the Old Testament, the family is seen as the primary vehicle for the transmission of faith (see Deut. 6:4-9 for one example).  In fact, it is no stretch to see that the church—the universal body of all followers of Jesus from every age—is an extended family of sorts, one Paul refers to as so closely knit that we are “one body” (1 Cor. 12). 

As such, one can see easily why God might choose to start here, with this most important venue for interpersonal relationships.  Honor your father and mother.  Wise words, but it seems easier to apply them to little kids than grown-up kids:  aren’t grown-ups supposed to make their own decisions?  Are we, in our western and individualistic mindsets (very few joint families all living under the same roof here as in, say, eastern cultures), missing the boat completely?  How can we apply this tenet in a practical way to our lives?

It’s easy for adults—particularly here in America—to get so busy with their own lives they almost forget about their parents; taking advice from them seems like a sign of weakness.  This is not the case in many parts of the world, where what the patriarch—or matriarch—decrees is absolute law.  This, of course, may be a case of the pendulum swinging too far the other way (how many young Hindus or Muslims refuse to come to Christ because of what their fathers would say?).  Where is middle ground—or wherever it is that God wants us? 

In a word, whether we are six or sixty, God is calling us to take our parents seriously.  Mother and Father are not to be dismissed but esteemed, not laughed off but respected.  We are to treat our parents—even the legacy of our parents—with grave sincerity.  We are obviously responsible for our own decisions, particularly concerning how we respond to Jesus Christ, but honoring our parents—both physical and spiritual parents—flows from any true faith.  And the land God has promised us—C.S. Lewis refers to heaven as high countries—is better even than the Canaan he promised the Jews.  May we seek the land of everlasting milk and honey and pray fervently for our parents in the meantime that it may go well with us.  God’s Word will not return void…

Finally, the day has arrived that we have been looking forward to  and have been praying about for a long time.

24 Pastors and leaders have made the Veritas building in Vanderbijlpark, their home for the next 2 weeks. John, Jason, Brian and Beth from the Global Leadership Institute in the USA have joined us at Life Christian Foundation for the 2011 Global Leadership Training in Vanderbijlpark.

Keep you eye on the blog for testimonies, photos and videos.

“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God” (Exod. 20:8-10).

I blinked sleepily at my computer, somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning on what could have been just about anytime during my freshman year of college.  My weekend had gone fairly well:  the spring weather was beautiful for an outdoor project Saturday morning and early afternoon, which was followed by a consequent outing with a bunch of friends that night—but that wasn’t the best part.  Sunday morning my buddy Chuck—our goalkeeper at Hardin-Simmons—picked me up a little after 5 AM and we drove from Abilene to Richardson to meet the rest of our college team and play in a small-sided (seven players on each team) soccer tournament at the University of Texas-Dallas.  Chuck is still one of the funniest people on the face of the globe, and he and I had a great time on the way there and back.  Our particular squad ended up finishing third or something and not playing all that well, but Chuck and I had great conversation—even about the Lord some—and it was a sweet day.

Except for the fact that we got back to Abilene around 10 PM and I had a paper due the next morning.  Upon returning, I hastily did some research and eventually lumbered my sleepy self to the computer, where I promptly began groping for words in the wee morning hours.  My treatise’s topic just mocked me, too:  the paper was about the necessity of keeping the Sabbath…

Our generation is task-oriented if nothing else.  We get stuff done.  Forgetting the measly forty-hour work week (more gets done if we work sixty), we push the envelope every which way to squeeze as much out of life as we possibly can.  And, sometimes, we see a little fruit from our labor:  the project gets done, the report gets finished, the house gets built.  We rejoice in a job done (if not well done)…

But we miss the rhythm God has woven into the very fabric of creation.  Remember the Sabbath day—a day to focus on more than this world—by keeping it holy.  This is an interesting command from our Lord, because the two accounts—Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5—give divergent reasons for carrying this out.

The account in Exodus 20 offers:  “Remember the Sabbath day…  For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day” (20:8, 11).  We are told to rest because that’s what God did.  He didn’t rest because he was tired or because he needed to; he rested because, for whatever reason, he felt like it was time to cease.  And he told us to do likewise. 

The Deuteronomical account, on the other hand, gives us something else to chew on:  “Observe the Sabbath day…  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” (5:12, 15).  Interesting:  the day of rest was to be a day of remembrance.  The Hebrews were to remember the escape from Egypt, to recall the power of God on their behalf.  They were to rest—and think.

Of course, in the hindsight that 3000-plus years bring, we see the necessity for both facets of the Sabbath.  Every now and then (like, say, once a week), it’s just time to stop and relax.  Furthermore, this rest affords us a perfect opportunity to intentionally set our minds “on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:2).  The day of rest is, of course, only a shadow of the reality to come in heaven:  our salvation was not bought with our own good works and slaving away at the holy life, but by resting in the finished work of Jesus.   Make no mistake about it:  the Sabbath will find its fulfillment in heaven, and only those who have forsaken relying on their own efforts will find themselves there.  For “all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world” (Heb. 4:10).  Our need to accomplish does not put us in right standing with the Lord; Jesus already did that, if we will but accept it…

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them…” (Exod. 20:4-5).

In the Old Testament, idolatry generally took one of two forms.  Both forms are still alive and well today in some fashion, and we would do well to heed the Lord’s words:  Don’t make for yourself an idol…Don’t bow down to them or worship them.  Let’s look back at the audience to whom those words were originally addressed…

Often, the people worshiped just about any supposed incarnation—wooden poles and golden animals were favorites—of one of several false gods.  See Judg. 6:25-27, where righteous Gideon destroys an altar to the fake god Baal and a large pole devoted to another phony deity, Asherah.  The worship of false gods was obviously in direct disobedience to the first commandment, in which God declared that there should be no other deities beside him.  Despite hearing God’s words on the mountain and passing down this tradition, this was difficult for the Hebrews.  They wanted to worship a God they could see—just like all the other nations around them. 

The Hebrews gradually left off the worship of literally carved images of false gods.  However, that did not stop them from making physical images of Yahweh, the One True God.  This, in turn became just as big a snare as the old false gods:  under a veneer of pompous religiosity, the people constructed their God in whatever image they saw fit—effectively cutting themselves off from the God who neither lives in houses built by hands nor is served by human hands (Acts 17:24-25).  However well-intentioned it may have begun, images of God have been a scourge of the church throughout the ages.  A more recent example of this can be seen in the veneration of saints’ bones, icons (pictures of Christ), and holy relics:  in all these situations, a supposed mystical power is given to a physical object rather than ascribed to God. 

So what does this have to do with us?  I would venture to guess that not many of us have a wooden idol sitting on our coffee table at home (on the other hand, many people certainly do!) to which we burn incense and offer prayers.  There’s no gigantic pole in our town square devoted to a goddess (like Asherah), and most of us find it despicable to offer our children to a demon-god for good luck (see the Ammonite deity Molech).  Perhaps, as was discussed yesterday, our idolatry is just more sophisticated—but no less deadly.  We too want to worship things we can see, so we devote ourselves to jobs and money and hobbies in hopes that they will fill us up.  “They will perish, but God will remain” (Heb. 1:11).

And the second trap may be even more dangerous.  Every day we are bombarded with messages contrary to Scripture.  In the absence of personal Scriptural revelation, the temptation is ever-present to leave the God revealed in Christ and construct a “God” who plays by our rules.  The fact that Jesus is the only way is not politically correct—and, to be honest, it’s a little uncomfortable—so it is decreed that all paths to God are valid, that God will open heaven’s doors to every good person out there regardless of whether or not they trust Jesus.  Trials are tough and sickness stinks, so a God who physically prospers anyone with enough faith—the “name-it-and-claim-it heavenly Grandfather—is created.  Pornography, alcoholism, and addiction to work—or any other sinful habit you can think of—are too hard to walk away from, so the God who is ruler of church but not of secular life is born.  The God not bound by anything is replaced with a helpless god who reshapes at our every whim…

And so it was that God told a bunch of scared Hebrews not to make for themselves an idol.  They were not to worship an image; they were to worship the God who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).  The changeless One.  The Creator and Sustainer—and “Author and Finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2).  He who claims, “I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God” (Isa. 45:5).  He is our God…