Family Devotional Idea #1

Hey everyone.

I had this idea for a family devotional that I wanted to share with you.  I got the idea while I was reading Good Enough Parenting by John and Karen Louis.  It comes from Luke 18:9-14, which the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. 

We looked at this passage recently in a family devotion that I called Acting 101.  We took turns acting out the two parts and trying to deliver the lines in the way that we thought each man may have said them.  First, we took turns acting our the Pharisees prayer.  Then we talked about his motivation, and what the prayer showed about the man and his heart.  After that we took turns trying to present the Tax Collector and say his one line, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner," with heartfelt emotion.  I even beat my chest in anguish just like the tax collector in the story.  (But even with all my heartfelt sincerity, Wendy and the boys laughed my over-the-top acting.) We also talked about his motivation and what his prayer said about him.  Then we had a good conversation comparing the two men.  We decided that the tax collector was humble, while that pharisee was full of pride.  Then we compared the qualities of humility and pride.  We then talked about how pride and humility can manifest itself in our behavior.  It was a really good conversation.  Together we were able to determine some things: 

• Wendy is the best actor in the family.     
• Aaron always speaks with a British accent when he is acting.
• God is pleased with humility and not so pleased with pride.
• Humility is always better than pride.
• We all prefer to be treated with humility.

It was a really good devotional.  Feel free to use it if you like.  I think the idea could be tweaked a little to make a good teen Bible talk.  Any way, the Hugheses had a good time with it.

Tom      

Zeal for His House

Hey everyone.

Shortly after returning from Teen Camp in which John 2:17 was the the theme scripture, I got to it in my own study of John.  I suppose that it would have made more sense to study it before camp, not after, but that's how it goes sometimes. 

Any way, it is the story of Jesus clearing the temple courts.  The story, recorded in John 2:13-25, tells how Jesus went up to the temple in Jerusalem and found merchants selling animals for sacrifice and exchanging money.  Jesus, in anger, makes a whip out of cords and drives the animals out and overturns the tables of the moneychangers.  It must have been quite a sight, with money and tables flying and animals running around.  Jesus was angry because, in his words, they had turned his Father's house into a market.  These men were dishonoring God's holy place by using it to turn a profit.  Jesus was not one to stand aside and allow people to make a mockery of the holiness of his Father's temple.  So he made a whip and drove them out.

Here is what I want us to think about today.  We understand that in the Old Testament times, as well as in Jesus times, the temple was viewed as God's dwelling place.  In the new covenant, however, God dwells in a different temple.  In I Corinthians 3:10-16 it tells us that we ourselves are God's temple and his Spirit dwells in us.  It tells us that we should be careful how we build our temple knowing that God dwells within us rather than in a building.  We are that building.  So consider this, if Jesus were to walk into the temple that you are building, would he be grabbing cords to make a whip?  Are there things that he would be driving out?  Are there tables he would be overturning?  Rather, may we all be building a temple that honors our Father.  Just something to think about.    

The Voice

Hey everyone.

I have started my study of the Gospel of John and in the first chapter I have found a new hero,  He is John the Baptist, and I will tell you some of his story today.  Now John is preaching and teaching in the wilderness and big crowds are coming to him.  In John 1:19 the leaders of the Jews in Jerusalem send some men out to question him.  They want to know who he is and why is doing what he is doing.  These are legitimate questions, I suppose.  The people have been looking for The Messiah, and John tells them right up front that he is not The Messiah.  So they continue to question him, "Are you Elijah?"  (v.21) He denies being Elijah and also denies being the The Prophet.  These men wonder, if John is not any of those things, then who exactly is he?  John's response to the question, "Who are you?" is "I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness."

There is a lot here that is interesting.  First, why would they ask him if he was Elijah?  Elijah had lived generations before, and if you remember had been carried off to heaven in a chariot of fire.  (2 Kings 2:11)  Were they expecting him to return?  In a way, they were.  The last passage of the Old Testament talks about Elijah returning before the "great and dreadful day of the Lord."  (Mal. 4:5-6)  Interestingly it says that when Elijah comes he will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents.  (This comes up later.)  So not only are they expecting the Messiah to come, they are also expecting Elijah to come.  So it seems a very legitimate question to ask John, "Are you Elijah?"  I will show you that according to scripture he was.  So then the question becomes, why did he say he wasn't Elijah?

OK. Time for some good old-fashioned Bible study.  In Luke 1:5-24 the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah and tells him that he is going to have a son.  He tells him in v. 17 that this son (John) would "go before the Lord in the spirit of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children."  It is clear that the angel Gabriel is saying that John is going to be this Elijah that Malachi has prophesied about.  Zechariah, being a priest, should have clearly understood what Gabriel was saying about his coming son. 

Need more witnesses.  Jesus says in Matthew 11:13 that John the Baptist was Elijah.  He says it again in Matthew 17:11-13.  When Elijah (the OT one) appeared along with Moses at the Mount of Transfiguration, the disciples mention this idea that Elijah had to come first.  Jesus tells them that Elijah had already come, but that they did not recognize him. The disciples understood at this point that Jesus was referring to John the Baptist.

This brings us back to our question.  Why did John say that he was not Elijah, when clearly he was.  All we can do is speculate, but I will give it a shot.  Of course, it is possible that John was this Elijah, but did not know it.  It's possible, but I think that there is more to his denial than just not-knowing.  It think that the answer is found in his response toe their question, "Well then, who are you?"  He responded, "I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way for the Lord."  John recognized that he wasn't doing all this to call attention to himself.  It was his job to point people to Jesus, not himself.  So when asked who he was, he referred to a passage in Isaiah 40:3 and basically "Me?  I am just a voice."  John demonstrates both here and in other places an incredible humility.  With John, it is never about John, it is about Jesus.  Later in John 1, when Jesus appears, John points him out to two of his followers, Andrew and John, who become two of the apostles.  Again, John is not thinking of himself, but is pointing people to Jesus.  So I think was his humility that led John to say that he wasn't Elijah.  He just to continue his work preparing the way for the Lord and pointing other people toward him.  Which is, by the way, what we are to be doing as well.  We can learn a lot from John.

Tom           

Celebrate Good Times, Come On

Hey everyone.
The school year ended and we went immediately went on vacation.  We had great time and now we are settling in to our summer routine. 

Any way, I wanted to continue to story of Nehemiah.  Nehemiah and the citizens of Jerusalem finished the wall and then in chapters 12 and 13 they have a dedication of the walls.  In other words, they celebrate what God has done.  If you read 12:31 and following you see that Nehemiah, all the leaders and two large choirs stood on top of this wall. (It is an interesting side note to remember that Tobiah, one of Nehemiah's detractors had said that a single fox could knock these walls down, now a great number of men were standing on it and it was in tact.  The work of God was far greater than whatever negative buss was going on around it.) 

So Nehemiah bought the people together and they celebrated.  12:43 says that they rejoiced "because God had given them great joy."  It is important to celebrate accomplishment and victory. they had worked hard and deserved this celebration, but they were not celebrating themselves and what they had done, they were worshiping and celebrating what He had done.  And apparently it was quite a party.  12:43 further says, "The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away." 

We began a while back looking at Nehemiah, and how in 52 days he rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem that had lain in ruin for over 100 years.  My hope was to learn some things to help me in "building" my own spiritual life and ministry.  For those who have come along on the journey we have seen Nehemiah, a man who cared deeply about God and his people, who prayed intently, whose trust in God led him to great boldness in dealing with the king and with his enemies.  He would not be discouraged or dissuaded for the great work God had placed on his heart and he worked to get everyone involved.  He had some things to say about parenting too.  Then he celebrated what God had done. 

This finishes my study of Nehemiah.  I learned a great deal from it, I hope that something has benefited you as well.  I have started studying the book of John and will start sharing thoughts on it soon. 

Tom

Everyone does their part (well, amost)

Hey everyone.

If you remember back when I started writing about Nehemiah, I started with the idea that Nehemiah accomplished something in 52 days that had not been done in over 100 years.  He rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem that had lain in ruins for over a century.  The idea we were thinking about was this, "What did Nehemiah do, that I can do as I build my own ministry?" 

This next post comes out of Nehemiah 3 and at first glance can seem rather dull.  It is a long list of men and the section of the wall that they repaired.  But if we dig a little deeper we realize a few things here.  First, we see that Nehemiah did not have to rebuild the walls all by himself.  It would be too much work for any one man.  He inspired the city with his own faith and hard work to rebuild the walls, and they did it together.

We can see that people from all walks of life came and did their part.  The priests rebuilt the Sheep Gate. (3:1)  Men came from Jericho, Tekoa and the surrounding region to help.  Levites helped, as did goldsmiths and perfume-makers. (3:8)  Men who were not carpenters, never-the-less came and build a section of the wall.  Many other men are mentioned by name here without their profession being given, maybe they were just ordinary farmers.  Who knows? (Whatever their profession, they got their name in the Bible as a reward for their efforts.) The lesson here: one does not have to be an evangelist to do his part in building a ministry, one only needs faith and a willingness to work hard.

It would be wonderful to stop right there, but unfortunately there is a sad lesson in this chapter as well.  Neh. 3:5 says "The next section was repaired by the men of Tekoa, but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work under their supervisors."  The Bible doesn't really say the motivation behind their refusal.  It just says that they would not work under their supervisors.  Perhaps they thought their nobility entitled them to be supervisors.  Many they were just lazy.  We can only speculate.  The sad lesson is that there were people who refused to be a part of this great work of God.  Sadder still, there always will be.  Let's hope, though, that like the rebuilding of the walls, that number will be small.

To end on a more positive note, the nobles of Tekoa may have refused to work, but the ordinary men of Tekoa were actually more "noble."  They rebuilt two sections of the wall, the only group mentioned to do so.  (3:5 and 3:27)

Tom

Nehemiah's Mesage to Dads Part II

Hello everyone.

With Father's Day rapidly approaching, I thought that i would go ahead and tell you about the rest of Nehemiah's message to fathers.  Here is what happens:

At some point after Nehemiah has successfully rebuilt the wall, he returns to King Artaxerxes in Susa.  The Bible does not say how long he is away from Jerusalem, but when he returns he finds that in his absence, Jerusalem has a whole new batch of problems that he needs to deal with.  One of the enemies of the people of God, Tobiah, who had created much of the opposition to their work, was now living in a room in the temple.  The people had stopped paying the Levites and musicians of the temple, so they had left the their work in the temple to work in the fields in order to survive.  People were not keeping the Sabbath. 

Nehemiah returns and he starts fixing these problems.  But there is one more issue that finds, one related to fathers, and this one makes him really angry.  This is the issue:  Back in chapter 10, the men of Israel vow that they will not give their sons or daughters in marriage to the people around them.  By chapter 13, in Nehemiah's absence this vow has been broken many times over.  Many men of Jerusalem had wives from among the Ammonites, Moabites or from the people of Ashdod.  Naturally, they have children.  What Nehemiah finds is a number of these children in Jerusalem who don't even speak Hebrew.  They speak only the language of their mothers. This makes Nehemiah so angry that he starts calling curses down on them, beating them and pulling out their hair.  

Warren Wiersbe, in his commentary on Nehemiah, explains it like this:  The men most likely worked in the fields, while their wives stayed at home with the children speaking in their native language.  The children were growing up not knowing Hebrew.  this meant that they could not read the law or participate in the temple worship.  These men were making decisions that were detrimental to their children's spiritual well-being, and it made made Nehemiah hair-pulling mad.  Now, I don't endorse in any way pulling out hair as a means of correcting someone.  (Especially if you've seen my hairline.)  We should recognize, however, that with all of the bad things going on in Jerusalem, the one that made Nehemiah the most angry was the fathers who were looking after their children.

We have ask ourselves then, "if Nehemiah were around today, would he be reaching for my hair?"  This is serious stuff.  Nehemiah's message to dads is that we have to take the long-term spiritual well-being of our children very seriously.  We are fortunate today, in that it doesn't matter what language we speak, God's word has most likely been translated into it.  Our challenges are different.  Dads, we have to ask ourselves if we are doing all that we can for the spiritual well-being of our children.  These guys in Nehemiah's time were just living their lives, working hard to provide for their family and not really giving thought to those little decisions that they made every day that were keeping their children from knowing God, and before they knew they had children who spoke a different language, couldn't read God's word or participate in the worship.  We can't make the same mistake, where we are busy to get our children into good spiritual situations.  Nobody is going to come pull your hair out, but your children will still suffer.  Better that we make every effort for our children's long term spiritual well-being.  God will bless that.

Tom

Nehemiah's Message to Dads

Hey everyone.
Here in the New Jersey ministry, we have been going through Good Enough parenting by John and Karen Louis.  It has been tremendous and I have learned a great deal.  I am working really hard to be a better father to my two sons.  Perhaps it is because of this focus that I am seeing a very clear message from Nehemiah for fathers.  Let's have a look:

In Nehemiah 4 the Israelites are facing much opposition for those who do not want the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt.  Nehemiah posted guards with swords, spears and bows to insure that the important work continued.  He called out to the men of the city in 4:14 and said, "Don't be afraid of them.  Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes."  He said this because he understood that they were in a battle to accomplish something great.  This great work would benefit these men and their families (and future generations) and the men of Jerusalem needed to take up this cause and be willing to fight for the benefit of their families.  We, likewise, are trying to build something great, whether it is a great ministry or a great family.  We must be involved and in the fight if it is to be great.  Obviously, my battle is different.  As I fight for my children, I will not be taking up a sword or a spear.  My fight will more likely be with myself. 

I fight for time.  It is easy to just drift along from day to day, caught up in the busyness of life, and not make the needed time for my sons.   I fight for humility. (If I don't win this fight, I end up fighting with them and not for them.) 

I have to fight for self-control. Without good organizational skills I don't make the time my boys need.  Perhaps we are not getting the one-on-one time they need, or we are not getting into the word as a family.  When this happens, I am losing the battle.  If I have no self-control over my emotions, the fights get louder and louder, and my boys get hurt.  I am losing the fight again.  I may not be facing Sanballat and Tobiah, but the fight I face for my family is just as real, and these are battles I can't lose.

The good news here is that Nehemiah gives good advice.  We fight for our families within the context of remembering the greatness and awesomeness of God.  As a father, I need to remember Nehemiah's clear focus on God and on prayer.

Tom