Bowels of Mercy

Hello everyone.

Well, the school year is over.  Aaron, my youngest, graduated from high school last night. It's hard to believe.  Where did the time go?  Any way, I wanted to continue sharing from my study in the book of Luke a little tidbit that I have enjoyed recently.  In Luke 1:67-80, Zechariah the priest and father of John the Baptist prophecies.  It appears that the Holy Spirit has given Zechariah a great deal of insight, because he seems to understand what is about to happen, a lot more than other people do.  He says a lot of great things about the coming Messiah in his prophecy, like, "He has come to his people and redeemed them (v. 68)," and "He has raised up a horn of salvation for us.  (v. 69)"  Now, Jesus has not been born yet here.  John was just born, and Jesus birth is still a few months away, but Zechariah seems to understand that God is soon to dwell among the people, buy them back and offer to them salvation.  In verse 77, Zechariah talks about sins being forgiven.  So it seems that Zecharaih, through the Holy Spirit, understands that the Messiah was not about a great rescue from Rome, but a rescue from our sin. It is on verses 76-78 is where I want to focus for today.  It says:

   And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
      for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him,
   to give his people the knowledge of salvation
      through the forgiveness of their sins,
   because of the tender mercies of our God,
      by which the rising sun will come to uss from heaven.

I want on the phrase translated here as "tender mercy."  It is because of this tender mercy that God offer us salvation through the forgiveness of our sins.  So I was curious about this phrase and decided to look it up in the Greek.  To be honest, my knowledge of the Greek is very limited, but I do own a Zondervan parallel Greek and English New Testament and a Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of New Testament Words, with a rudimentary knowledge of how to use them.  So from the Grrek, I looked at Luke 1:78.  The word that is translated "tender" is σπλαγχνα (splagkna).  According to Thayer's it means of "bowels or intestines." Both the KJV and NIV translate it into the word "tender," because, I think the phrase, "bowels of mercy," makes very litle sense to ur western ears.  We would probably use "heart" to express this type of emotion.  Thayer says this though, "the Greek poets fr. Aeschylus down the bowels were regarded as the seat of the more violent passions, such as anger and love; but by the Hebrews as the seat of the tenderer affections, esp. kindness, benevolence and compassion."  I thnk that what I and getting from Zechariah and Thayer is that God's mercy for us resides deep within Him, as deep as His intestines.  Let us all enjoy God's bowels of mercy.

Tom

Highly Favored

Helloeveryone.

I haven't posted anything since December.  It has been a while.  Between family, job, graduate school and youth and fimaily ministry, I am not finiding a lot of time to write.  Any way, the school year is winding for me and I am hopeful that I can find more time to post on this blog some of the things that I have been learning in my own Bible Study.  When I last posted, I was studying Exodus.  I finished that and moved onto a study of the book of Luke.  I have studied through Luke before, but I have studied through all of the Gospels now, so decided togo through Luke a second time and see what else I could learn.

In Luke 1:26-38, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary and says, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."  Later, he says, "Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God."  So Mary is not only favored, she is highly favored.  I have been pondering what that means for Mary, because I like the idea of being hughly favored by God.  So what does it mean? and how does one accomplish this? 

I would assume that being highly favored means that someone, in this case God, is going to do you favors.  Makes sense.  I like that idea, because it seems that God can grant some pretty awesome favors.  My mind automatically goes to ward material blessing.  But that is what what I see happening for the highly favored Mary.  Instead, the only windfall I see coming Mary's way in her highly favored status is some gold, frankensence and myrhh.  She and Joseph probably used this to pay for their passage to Egypt, after Herod send out his edict to kill all the little boys.  As far I call tell Mary lived her life in poverty.  So being "highly favored", must mean something else.  What we see is that Mary was given a tremendous honor, but also a tremendous responsibility.  She was to give birth to and raise the son of God. So, it seems that being highly favored doesn't mean that God gives us things, but rather entrusts with His things.

So what made Mary so favorable to God.  We can see this in the same story.  God was asking Mary to become an unwed expectant mother.  Her explanation for her finace and family, taken at face value, was ridiculous and impossible.  She would face the possibility of being cast aside and stigmatized for doing what God wanted her to do.  But she was willing. In Luke 1:38, she responds, "I am the Lord's servant, may your word to me be fulfilled." I'm sure God knew her heart in advance and knew that she would respond this way.  I doubt He would have asked her otherwise.  So there it is.  How does one become highly favored of God, you have a heart that is willing to do whatever is asked.  Any wany, that is what I think based on the srciptures. 

Tom

A Test of Leadership

Hello everyone.

Two weeks ago I wrote a lesson that I learned form the story of the Israelites and the golden calf in Exodus 32.  Today I will share the other lesson that I took away from the story.  It was a lesson about leadership.  There are two leaders in the story and both are tested.  One fails miserably and the other succeeds in a big way.  I'm sure you see right away that the leaders I am talking about are Aaron and Moses.

Let's look at Aaron first.  When the people came to Aaron to complain that Moses had been gone for so long, and suggest that they make gods to go before them, Aaron could have encouraged them to remain faithful to the Lord. He could have reminded them of all that God had done them in leading them out of bondage to the Egyptians, all the miracles that He had done, including the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea.  He could have reminded them of the manna from heaven.  Maybe he did try to do this.  If he did, the Bible doesn't mention it. What ever effort Aaron may have made to keep the people from this terrible path, they eventually wore him down.  Aaron stopped leading, and allowed the people destructive and sin desires to lead.  He actually helped them in their sin.  Taking their jewelry, melting it all down and fashioning a calf out of gold for them.  So the golden calf, prompted by the impatience of the people while Moses was on the mountain with the Lord, was facilitated by a collapse of leadership.  Aaron was left in charge, and he should have been saying "We will not sin against God like this."  Unfortunately, the guy who should have been leading, was following. It's hard to know why Aaron was so willing to give up his leadership to the crowd.  Maybe he was afraid. His failure to lead could have just seemed like self-preservation. We can't know for sure what Aaron's motives were. Whatever the reason, it was bad leadership. 

Meanwhile, on the top of the mountain, Moses was receiving the law from the Lord, when God informed him of what was going on below. (Ex. 32:7-14)  God was so angry that He told Moses that He would wipe out the Israelites and make a nation from just Moses.  God would still be keeping his promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob if He did this.  Moses pleaded with God not to wipe out the nation.  Later, Moses talks to God (Ex. 32:31) again and asks God to forgive the nation or blot his name out of God's book as well.  Moses recounts the golden calf story in Deut. 9.  In verses 18--20 and 25-29, Moses tells about his prayers for the nation and specifically Aaron.  How God was going to kill them.  God spared the nation and He spared Aaron, because Moses loved them enough to put his own well-being on the line for them.  That's good leadership.

Two leaders are tested.  One fails his test because he stopped leading and started following the crowd.  The other passed his test because because he put those he was leading ahead of himself.

Tom

A Little Patience

Hello everyone.

I haven't written anything in months.  Here is why:  I enrolled in a Master program in Biblical Studies with Languages.  I am currently taking a course in Basic Hebrew, and let me tell it is both difficult and time-consuming.  Any way that why there been such a big gap between posts.

Any way, I am still studying the book of Exodus in my own Bible study and have now reached Exodus 32.  Perhaps some day soon I can backtrack a little and share a few of the things that I have learned that brought me this far, but today I would like to share from yesterday's quiet time out of Exodus 32:1-6.  It is the story of the golden calf.

You are probably familiar with the story.  Moses has gone up on the mountain to receive the law from God. He is there a long time.  While he is gone, it seems that the people grow impatient, waiting for his return and begin to make some rather ungodly demands of the leadership.  They want Aaron to make them a god.  So he does.  He takes their earrings, melts them down and fashions a calf out of  the gold. Aaron announces that there will be a festival to the Lord, and before long the people of Israel is indulging themselves in all kinds of revelry, breaking several of the Ten Commandments.

There are two points from this story that struck a cord with me.  I will share one today. It is that impatience leads us to sin.  They were impatient with Moses, and ultimately with God.  There impatience led them into idol worship who knows what else. We can only imagine what else the words "indulge in revelry" actually mean here.  Had the people trusted God and been patient this would have never happened.  It's the same with us.  When I have been impatient with other people, it leads me to anger.  Then I end up saying and doing things I later regret.  In other words, sinning against people, usually those closest to me. That is why the Bible says, "Love is patient."  The challenge for me is to remember that in the moment and continue to love in spite someone else's irritating behavior.

When I am impatient with God, I try to force issues and make things happen myself, and it never ends the way I want it to.  I always try to remember what Peter says in 1 Peter 5:6 "Humble your therefore, under God's mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time."  God's time-table is different than ours.  His usually take s longer.  But is is better.  We don't want to be like the Israelites who apparently had forgotten God's deliverance from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea and the Bread from heaven that God had given them.  They had forgotten how God had taken care of them every step of the way. Let us make sure that we are trusting God and waiting on Him, because He knows that best for us.

Tom

God vs. Egypt, Part 2

Hello everyone.

In my most recent post I discussed how God passed judgment on the gods of Egypt with the tenth plague,  (Ex. 12:12) and perhaps with all of the plague (implied in Numbers 33:4).  We looked at the first five plagues and talked about some of the specific gods that the Lord may have passed judgment on with each particular plague.  I would like to continue this discussion with plagues six through ten.  We will see that God is victorious over all comers.

Sekhmet

The sixth plague was the plague of boils.  Moses took soot from a furnace,and through it up in the air. The soot became a fine dust over Egypt and boils broke out on the people and animals of Egypt.  Pharaoh's magicians, who had tried so hard to compete with God, were in too much pain to even stand before Pharaoh (Ex. 9:11).  This could have been God's attack on several Egyptian gods related to health and medicine.  Most interesting of these is Sekhmet. She was a warrior goddess, but also the goddess of healing.  She had a lion's head.

The seventh plague was the plague of hail.  Before bringing this plague, God has Moses tell Pharaoh that he would now bring the full force of his plagues against Egypt and teach the Egyptians that there was no one like Him.  God would bring a hailstorm unlike any they had ever seen.  He even warns them to bring in the livestock and people out in the fields.  Those who feared the Lord obeyed the warning.  Those who were foolish enough to ignore it, did not.  Moses stretched out his hand and the Lord brought the wort storm in Egypt's history.  It beat don everything in Egypt, but left Israel's land of Goshen alone.  God is still showing a distinction between those who are His and those who are not.  This could be judgment on the goddess Nut, Egypt's goddess of the sky.  Nut was married to Geb, god of the Earth, whom God may have already passed judgment on.

Osiris

The Eighth plague was the plague of locust. Prior to the coming plague, even Pharaoh's advisers are telling him to let the Israelites go and worship God, saying "Let the people go, so that they may worship their God.  Do you not yet realize that Israel is ruined?"  But Pharaoh is stubborn and God brings the plague of locusts on Egypt, and any crop still left in tact by the hail, was devoured by the locusts.  There were several gods associated with crops in Egypt.  The most interesting is Osiris.  Osiris was the god of the afterlife, but was also the Egyptian god who made the crops grow.  Now the crops were basically gone, The God of Israel had shown himself to be more powerful than Osiris.

Plague number nine was darkness.  The places where the Israelites lived had sunlight, but for three days, the Egyptians wandered around in total darkness. This ninth plague appears to be God's judgment on one of Egypt's most powerful gods, Ra, the god of the Sun.  If Ra was that powerful, why did the Egyptians live in darkness while the Israelites lived in light?

Finally, we come to the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn.  Now, up to this point, everything has been speculation, but on the tenth plague we have the Biblical statement, that with plague God is bringing judgment on all of the gods of Egypt.  It can be pointed out that Horus, a god with a falcon's head was considered to be the protector of Pharaoh.  Pharaoh was left unprotected when the destroyer killed his son, as well.  We could look at this plague as an attack on Pharaoh himself.  He was worshiped as a god in Egypt, and it had been he who asked of Moses, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?"  But now he knows the answer to that question.  The Lord is a god, but The God.  The Lord is not a power, but The Power. So finally, with Egypt is ruin and his family and country in mourning, Pharaoh is broken and he lets the Israelites go.  In the end, the Lord took on all of the gods of Egypt and prevailed.  He always does.   

Tom

God vs. Egypt

Hello everyone.

As I continue my study of the book of Exodus, I wanted to share some things I have been learning in my study. When Moses first appeared before Pharaoh in Ex. 5:2, Pharaoh says, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?"  Pharaoh is going to learn the answer to that question, the hard way.  God is going to bring the plagues against Egypt, and bring that powerful nation to its knees.

Hapi

In Exodus 12:12 and Numbers 33:4, the Bible says that with the tenth plague, God brought judgment on all of the gods of Egypt. As I have been reading about this, one could make a case that all of the plagues were judgment on the gods of Egypt, and at times, judgment was made on specific gods of Egypt. This judgment is what I want to examine today.

In the first plague, God turns the Nile River into blood.   There were many Egyptian gods associated with the Nile River, but this plague could be judgment against Hapi, god of the Nile.  God turned the Nile to blood. Egypt's magicians were able to duplicate the miracle.  But it would make more snse to counteract the miracle and turn the blood back into water.  The magicians and their god, Hapi, were powerless to do that.  Winner: God.

Heqet

The second plague was the plague of the frogs. This was possibly a judgment against the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Heqet.  Frogs were associated with fertility and Heqet had a frog's head. The magicians of Egypt were able to duplicate this miracle of God as well and add frogs to the overwhelming population of frogs.  But they could not get rid of the frogs.  In God vs. Heket, the clear winner was God.

The third plague was the plague of gnats.  If God had a specific target in mind for this plague, it is not as easy to see.  Some Bible scholars have hypothesized that the target here was Geb, the god of the Earth.  The reason for this, is that God had Moses strike the dust of the ground and the dust turned into gnats.  Egypt's magicians could not duplicate or counteract this miracle.  In fact, they began syaing things like, "This is the finger of God," (Ex. 8:19) differentiating The God, for Egypt's many gods.

The fourth plague was the plague of the flies.  This plague was significant because, this plague only happened to the Egyptians.  The land of Goshen, were the Israelites lived was free of flies.  God began to distinguish between those people who were His, and those who were not. (Ex. 8:23)  Of all of the plague, this one was the most difficult to find one god or goddess that was an obvious target for God's judgment.  I read a few different ideas from different writers.  Personally I like Khepri, but only because he had a dung beetle for a head.  It was Khepri's job to move the Sun across the sky. 

The fifth plague was the death of the livestock.  Like the fourth plague, this happened only to the Egyptians.  Afterwards, Pharaoh had it investigated to see if indeed only Egyptian livestock had died.  His investigators confirmed that this was true.  This could have been an attack on the Hathor, and Egyptian goddess, who is often depicted having the head of a cow.

At this point, after five destructive plagues on his nation, Pharaoh may have wanted to take back his arrogant question, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?"  He, his magicians and his gods are failing miserably against the one and only true God.  In fact, they never had a chance.

I'll finish this story in my next post, real soon.
Tom

God has a Plan, Part 2

Hey everyone.

Two weeks ago I wrote about God and his plan for Moses.  How Moses' young life was spared and in fact how he ended up becoming a part of the household of Pharaoh.  Too many things happened for it to have been just coincidence.  God had a plan, I believe, not only for Moses, but for all of his people to be liberated from the bondage of the Egyptians.  I would like to continue to look at that plan today.

Exodus 2:11-15 tells us how Moses, when he had grown up, killed an Egyptian who had been mistreating one of the Israelites.  This situation eventually put Moses on the run for his life from the vengeance of Pharaoh.  Stephen shed a little more light on this story in Acts 7:22-25.  He says, "Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.  He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.  Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not." 

At forty, Moses was well-educated and powerful.  He believed that he was part of the plan to set his people free.  (Indeed he was, but not yet.)  His plan made sense. He was a powerful, that the Israelites could rally behind and be free of the Egyptians.  So he tried to rally the people, but they did not rally behind him. Instead, he becomes a man of the run for his life. 

He ends being a shepherd for the next forty years, until in Exodus 3, God calls him, at the age of eighty, from a burning bush.  Now God is ready to work his plan.  But why did God wait an extra forty years to free his people?  I don't know.  All we can do is speculate.  Perhaps Moses was not ready. At forty, he thought he was ready, but perhaps he was not.  Maybe, he needed that time in the Maybe the Israelites weren't ready.  Maybe they needed that extra time of suffering to really appreciate what God would later do for them.

To us, we can think, "OK, why the delay? Doesn't God care that His people are suffering?"  Think about all of the Israelites that died in captivity during that extra forty years, that could have been free if Moses had led the people out forty years earlier.  The truth is that God really does care, and works in way for our benefit, even if we don't see.  God had a plan for Moses and for His people.  It was just a very long plan.  So far the plan has taken eighty years and in truth, from the time of Moses birth, to the people of Israel actually entering the Promised Land, the plan took one hundred and twenty years.  Makes you think, doesn't it? Don't we sometimes wonder why God is taking so long in giving us what we want? Does is cause us sometimes to question His power?  Like Moses and the Israelites, however, we have to trust in His plan for us.  Peter wrote in I Peter 5:6, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."  God has a plan for us, It just may not work as fast as we want it too.  But he will lift us up in "due time."  Moses waited until he was eighty, but God lifted him up.  If you are waiting for your "due time," let's hope that the wait is as long as Moses" wait, but have confidence that God does have a plan.
Tom