Part 5 of a continuing Monday morning series.
 
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” ​​​​​​​God created man in his own image, ​​​​​​in the image of God he created them, ​​​​​​male and female he created them. Gen 1:26-27

            This passage contains one of the most discussed phrases in the Bible.  What does it mean to be made in the image of God?  The passage itself is full of repetition.  In the Hebrew language (I am told) repetition is used as emphasis because it contains no intensifiers like “very” or “most.”

            ​From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise, of glory to the Righteous One. But I say, “I waste away, I waste away. Woe is me! For the traitors have betrayed, with betrayal the traitors have betrayed.” Isa 24:16.      The repetition in that last line is obvious.  According to the Hebrew language, these traitors must be the most traitorous of the bunch.

            Now look at Ex 26:33.  You are to hang this curtain under the clasps and bring the ark of the testimony in there behind the curtain. The curtain will make a division for you between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place.  “Most” is not in the Hebrew.  Instead it reads:  “the holy holy place.”  The repetition is the intensifier.

            All of that means that the Genesis passage where we began is emphasizing that we are indeed created in the very image of God—“image” or “likeness” occurs four times.  Scroll up and read it again and see if you catch that.  Now let’s see where that takes us.

            This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. Gen 5:1-3

            The concept in this passage is of a father being presented with his newborn child.  He “creates” him, then blesses him, and finally names him.  That is what God did with man, vv 1, 2.  Adam did exactly the same thing with Seth.  He fathered (created) a son in his own image, presumably blessed him as was the custom in ancient times, and named him, v 3.  You only name what belongs to you.  The parallel shows that just as Seth was related to Adam and belonged to him, somehow we are related to God and belong to Him.

            Being in the image of God is so intrinsic to us that it did not change when man sinned.

            “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. Gen 9:6.  This applies to any man, not just godly men.  We are not to kill that which is made in God’s image.  It was still so after the flood.

            With [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the image of God. Jas 3:9  It is still true in this age.  James uses that fact to show us the severity of cursing another man.  So how are we made in the image of God?

            Refer back to part 2 of this series.  God is spirit, God is light, and God is love.  Obviously we are not invisible spirit, nor are we a light so holy that man cannot survive it. 

            So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 1John 4:16-17.  Love is what God is so when He gives love, He is giving of Himself.  We are thus “as He is” when we love others, and when we return love to Him.   God intended to create man with the ability to return or reject His love.  Love can only be genuine when it is given by choice.

            Sin is the rejection of God’s love.  When God gave us freewill, He gave us permission to hurt Him.  His wrath, then, is the wrath of a jealous lover, one who has every right to expect that His love be returned.  This righteous jealousy is for the relationship, not against the lover (Zech 8:1-8).

            When we refuse to love others we are rejecting our relationship with God.  We are denying our “image,” one of someone who loves unconditionally and of his own freewill.  Reviling and mistreating anyone, whether they deserve it or not, is a far more serious matter than we realize.
 
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Eph 5:1-2
 
Dene Ward

When we first moved over a thousand miles from my hometown, I eagerly awaited the mailman every day.  As the time approached, I learned to listen from any part of the house for that “Ca-chunk” when he lifted the metal lid on the black box hanging by the door and dropped it in.  Oh, what a lovely sound!

           My sister often wrote long letters and I returned the favor, letters we added onto for days like a diary before we sent them off.  My parents wrote, Keith’s parents wrote, both my grandmothers wrote, and a couple of friends as well.  It was a rare week I did not receive two or three letters.  This generation with their emails, cell phones, and instant messaging has no idea what they are missing, the joy a simple “clunk” can bring when you hear it.

            I was far from home, in a place so different I couldn’t always find what I needed at the grocery store.  Not only were the brands different—and to a cook from the Deep South, brands are important—but the food itself was odd.  It was forty years ago and the Food Network did not yet exist.  Food was far more regional. 

          The first time I asked for “turnips,” I was shown a bin of purple topped white roots.  In the South, “turnips” were the greens.  I asked for black-eye pea and cantaloupe seeds for my garden, and no one knew what they were.  I asked for summer squash and was handed a zucchini.  When I asked for dried black turtle beans—a staple in Tampa—they looked at me like I was surely making that one up.

          So a letter was special, a taste of home in what was almost “a foreign land,” especially to a young, unsophisticated Southern girl who had never seen snow, didn’t know the difference between a spring coat and a winter coat, and had never stepped out on an icy back step and slid all the way across it, clutching at a bag of garbage like it was a life line and praying the icy patch ended before the edge of the stoop.

          Maybe that’s how the exiles first felt when they got Jeremiah’s letter, but the feeling did not last.  They did not want to hear his message.  They were sure the tide would turn, that any day now God would rescue Jerusalem and send Nebuchadnezzar packing.  But that’s not what Jeremiah said.

          The letter…said: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare… For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. Jer 29:3-8, 10.

          You are going to be here seventy years, they were told.  Settle down and live your lives.  It took a lot to get these people turned around.  Ezekiel worked at it for years.  They may have been the best of what was left, but they were still unfaithful idolaters who needed to repent in order to become the righteous remnant.

          Which makes it even more remarkable that they had to be told to go about their lives, and especially to “seek the welfare of the city,” the capital of a pagan empire.  To them that was giving up on the city of God, the Promised Land, the house of God, the covenant, and even God Himself.  And it took years for Ezekiel to undo that mindset and make them fit to return in God’s time, not theirs.

          And us?  We have to be reminded that we don’t belong here.  We are exiles in a world of sin.  Yes, you have to live here, Paul says, but don’t live like the world does.  This is not your home.  Peter adds, Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims… 1Pet 2:11.  Too many times we act like this is the place we are headed for instead of merely passing through.

          How many times have I heard Bible classes pat themselves on the back:  “We would never be like those faithless people.”  But occasionally even they outdo us.
 
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Heb 11:13
 
Dene Ward

I am still learning a few things with this laminate flooring.  Among them, I found out that you really cannot put off dusting under the beds.  I must admit, it doesn’t get done every week.  I usually do it a couple times a month, but a few weeks ago I found out that you simply cannot wait any longer if you want to save your reputation as a housekeeper.  Keith was getting warm as he dressed for church that Sunday morning, so he switched on the fan.  Suddenly, from under the bed, a veritable stampede of dust bunnies came rolling out, some as big as my fist.  At least there were no visitors in the bedroom with us.

            I thought of that little episode when I found the following verse:  Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low and tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below, Job 40:12,13.  I think Job means that God has no regard for the arrogant, that death will be their ultimate end, a place in the dust from whence they came. 

            God has special anger for those who do not rely on him.  He reminded the Israelites that everything they had came from him, not from their own hard work or from their own merit. 

            "The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The LORD will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you. And the LORD will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the LORD swore to your fathers to give you. The LORD will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. Deut 28:7-14.  I know that was lengthy, but do you get the point?  Everything the Israelites had came from God.  It was when they forgot this, when they turned to those other gods, that they had their biggest failure.  We, the Israel of God today (Gal 6:16), need to beware lest God hide us in the dust just like he did those people.

            I know we have trouble relying on God when we act like a financial setback is the end of the world, when we fail to pray because the doctor says there is no hope, even when we fail to pray for rain because the forecast is dry.  Just like Israel, we have taken on new gods—modern medicine, financial prognosticators, retirement plans, armies, and weapons.  God can change anything in the blink of an eye.  Do we believe it, or has our religion become a bit too reasonable and logical? 

            I wonder what Gideon would have thought of us, a man who beat an army “without number” with 300 weaponless men.  I wonder what the apostles would say to us, 12 relatively young, poor men who spread the gospel to an entire world.  Do we share the same God they do, or do we rely upon another, weaker god, maybe even ourselves?

            When Ezra returned to Jerusalem with his little band, he refused the king’s offer of an armed guard.  Why?  For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, "The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him." So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty, Ezra 8:22,23.  Ezra understood that relying on something besides God put the lie to his faith, not only to God, but in the eyes of the world as well. 

            What are you relying on this morning?  Would your neighbors know that you depend upon God for everything, or would God turn on the fan, burying you in the ensuing dust cloud with the rest of the idolaters in the world?
 
Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." Jer 17:5-8
 
Dene Ward

My sister and I stood near the end of the long pier that jutted into the Gulf, a steady breeze blowing our hair across our faces, the hot sun pounding our shoulders as only a Florida sun can.  The planks beneath our sandaled feet were thick and gray, old enough to have splintered on the surface here and there but still solid, only a faint vibration when anyone walked past us.  The waves rolled in, small and steady, splashing the pilings beneath us and sprinkling us with salt spray.
            We had cane poles that day, no fancy rods and reels—just throw it in the water and pull it up when the fish bites.  And all of a sudden one did.  At 11 and with very little experience in the sport, it felt like a monster and I am sure I must have squealed.  Suddenly I was surrounded and a hand helped me pull the thing up.
            “What is that!?” I asked no one in particular.  It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, about 5 pounds worth of ugly.
            A man I didn’t know laughed.  “It’s a cowfish,” he said, but actually the profile looked more like a pig’s than a cow’s to me.  He advised me to throw it back and I did—the only fish I ever caught.
            Fishing is a common theme in the Bible—and I bet you’re thinking of the gospels.  But Amos, Jeremiah, Habakkuk all used that metaphor too.
            ​The Lord GOD has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks. Amos 4:2
            “Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the LORD, and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. Jer 16:16
            You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. ​He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. ​Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever? Hab 1:14-17
            The prophets use the metaphor of God’s people being caught by a net or hook and carried into exile.  It was a fearsome image, one far removed from the picture we might have of a quiet man meditatively casting his line into a babbling brook. It takes Jesus to turn that scary prophetic metaphor on its ear.  Yes, we are “fishers of men,” but whereas the Assyrians and Babylonians made captives of those they caught, Jesus sets us free.
            For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Rom 8:2.  Free from the law, free from sin, free from the lusts of the flesh, free from death.  How could we be any freer?
            And it doesn’t really matter to him how ugly a fish we are.  Unless we struggle in his hands, he won’t throw us back. 
 
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32
 
Dene Ward

I was the typical first timer, scared to death that I would not know what labor was when it actually hit me.  All I had ever seen were television and movie versions of labor where the woman grabs her rounded abdomen and gasps, so that is what I expected.  Turns out I was right to worry.

            About twelve days before my due date I suddenly began having contractions.  This was surely it, I thought.  I told Keith and we waited it out for a couple of hours as they gradually faded, never having hurt at all.  Yes, they were the old Braxton Hicks contractions, so named for the English doctor John Braxton Hicks, who finally figured them out.  Some people call them “practice labor,” but that practice did not help me a bit.

            Four nights later I sat at the table trying to finish up a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  We lived in Illinois and I had been stuck inside most of the winter because I did not have a coat that would fit around me, so I wiled away some of the long hours with puzzles. 

            I had come close to finishing that night, when about 10 pm I noticed a little twinge in my back.  Pregnant women have backaches all the time so I thought nothing of it.  But about 2:00, when I had still not been able to get to sleep, that twinge suddenly became stronger.  “But this can’t be labor,” I thought.  “It’s just a bad backache.” Then my water broke.  Good thing because that was my only clue that it was indeed labor, a labor that, counting the time from 10:00, only lasted six and a half hours, and never found its way around front.  I might not have made it to the hospital on time if I had not suddenly found myself awash with the evidence.  At 4:45, I had a posterior birth, sunny-side-up the nurses call it, a nine plus pounder, twenty two inches long who, because of my anatomy and his size, could not make the final turn.  When that happens you get “back labor,” which is why I did not recognize it. 

            Two years and one week later, a day before my due date, I was in the front yard weeding my flowers.  We were in South Carolina this time so that early in May my plants were already blooming.  Suddenly I felt a little twinge in my back.  This time, because of my previous experience, I paid attention.  A half hour later I felt another.  Five hours later another sunny-side-up nine plus pounder entered the world.  This time I was ready for it because I could now tell the difference between false labor, a pregnant backache, and back labor.

            The Hebrew writer tells us, But solid food is for fullgrown men, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil, 5:14.  That tells me that sometimes deciding what I need to do in a given situation is not always a simple matter.  Just like I had to learn from experience what was and wasn’t labor, sometimes I need to “discern” the Word to decide between good and evil, or maybe between good and better.  In fact, “discern” is translated “decide” in 1 Cor 6:5 ASV, “weigh what is said” in 1 Cor 14:29 ESV, and determining what makes things “differ” in 1 Cor 4:7 ASV.  God gives us guidelines and we must determine the best course of action, always following those guidelines. 

             The Pharisees had a difficult time with this.  They took the easy way out and simply followed a set of rules without weighing the circumstances, and where there were no rules, they made some up.  Their guideline was often their own best interests.  “Instead of taking care of your aging parents, you must give to the Temple treasury,” they preached, Mark 7:11.  In other words, God always trumps people.  And even if that money never was given, as long as it was declared “dedicated to God” (Corban) they could keep it for their own use and not be counted guilty for not honoring their parents.

            Though it was told as a story, one can easily imagine the priest and the Levite saying, “Going to the temple services is more important than stopping to help this poor man because God must always come first,” in Jesus’ narrative of the Good Samaritan.  It perfectly fit their little formula for how to determine the “right” course of action.  What they forgot was that serving his children is one way we serve God—“inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me.”  They would pull their oxen out of the ditch, but castigate our Lord for healing on the Sabbath.  Their pious formula, “God trumps people” was an out that served only to make him angry, Mark 3:5.

            Jesus said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone, Matt 23:23.  They had forgotten the obligation to “discern,” to “weigh things out,” and make a decision based on years of experience with God.  And maybe that is our problem, too—we don’t have enough experience with God in his word.

            Over and over Jesus reminded those people that it was not simply a matter of a rote following of the Law. Sometimes you have to think, “What is the greater good here?”  That “good” must always be lawful, which should go without saying or it would not be “good,” but when our decisions always ignore grace and mercy, we are forgetting the very thing that caused our Savior to die for us.  How can we possibly think we will receive those things from him?
 
And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless, Matt 12:7.
 
Dene Ward

Part 4 in a continuing Monday morning series.  Read this one carefully, and do NOT skip the scriptures!
           
Last time we talked about God’s immanence, his desire to connect with us and have a relationship with us.  God wants “to dwell in our midst.”  But what makes that even more amazing is God’s transcendence, His “Otherness.”  God is so far beyond our understanding that we cannot even comprehend the difference between Him and us.  But the ones who truly realize this show it in fear.  Please note:  “fear” is not a naughty word in the Bible.  It is an entirely appropriate emotion in the right place.

            For the LORD spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. Isa 8:11-13.  Whom you fear shows your faithfulness to God.

            There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. Isa 11:1-2  Even the Messiah would “fear the Lord.”

            That fear did not stop in the first century, under the New Covenant.  So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. Acts 9:31

            That word, while it can be translated reverence, also means dread and terror.  Do not minimize it or weaken it because then you will miss the point of God’s transcendence.  In Ex 33 18-23, Moses asks to see God.  God tells him that He will allow Moses to see His goodness, but “you cannot see my face for man cannot see my face and live” (Ex 18:20.  It isn’t that God will kill someone who sees Him; it’s that we mere humans cannot stand to see such a glorious Being—we would die from it; our physical bodies cannot take it!

            Think for a minute about the call of Isaiah.  Chapter 6 begins with the statement that he saw God on his throne, but what did he really look at?  The throne, the train of his robe, the seraphim above the throne, and the smoke filling the room.  Nothing at all is said about how God Himself looks, but even those surrounding things send Isaiah into a panic, sure he will now die because he, a man, has been in the presence of such holiness.

            Look at Ezekiel’s experience in 1:26-28.  He uses the words “like,” “likeness,” “appearance,” and “as it were” again and again.  Is he really seeing God or something that looks like it might be God?  And even that causes him “to fall on his face.”

            When we weaken the concept of fearing God, we lose even the minute understanding we can have of God’s greatness, His glory, His holiness, and His might.  Even the term we often sing about—awe—has become a word denoting the trivial.  “That’s awesome,” we say of everything from basketball shots to a free ice cream cone on your birthday.  We’ve turned God into a big Granddaddy whose lap we can jump into and say, “Hi Pops!”

            When we lessen the fear, we lose the thing it was designed to create as well.  that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son's son, …by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Deut 6:2, and in Ex 20:20, that the fear of Him may be before you that you may not sin.  The fear keeps us from sinning.

            And do not for a minute think that fear lessens love.  For one thing, recognizing the awesomeness, in its true meaning, of God, and knowing that still He wants to have a relationship with us in spite of the great divide in our beings, should inspire love.  God expects this love to be a natural reaction from us.  “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, Deut 10:12.

            A proper recognition of God’s transcendence, a being so far above us that He should not even care about us, yet He does, is essential to serving God properly. 
 
If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. Ps 130:3-4
 
Dene Ward

And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: ​There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” --- And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?”  (Mark 7:14-19)

            You would think that a generation that is so big on “the heart” and emotions and how worship “makes me feel” would have little trouble understanding that true beauty and goodness have absolutely nothing to do with what you eat.  But more and more I see young Christian women obsessed by their diets and exercise programs.  Understand, I have nothing against diets and exercise.  When the time comes to lose a few pounds I will willingly push away the food as easily as the most conscientious dieter out there.  I used to jog 5 miles 6 days a week—until my feet gave out on me, and now my eyes.  So I hop on the elliptical machine 4 or 5 times a week for 45 minutes at a whack.

            But I will never stand in front of a mirror and tell myself that I am not beautiful today because I ate a doughnut for breakfast, particularly if it’s the first one in 6 weeks.  Jesus very plainly tells us in the above passage that we are defiled by sin, not by what we eat. 

            In fact, when my diet and exercise regimen keep me from practicing hospitality or fellowshipping with my brethren at a potluck, maybe my diet and exercise program have defiled my heart instead, making me ugly before God.  I hope that everyone has the sense to know that I am not talking about celiac disease or IBS or deadly peanut allergies.  I am talking about fads that mean far more to us than our discipleship seems to, taking up more time researching them than studying the Word, obsessions that make us anxious about the wrong things and keep us from practicing the right ones.

            And this is not meant to give you license to become a glutton.  It does however give you Biblical authority to graciously receive a meal offered you by another brother and sister who have worked all day to prepare for you the best they have.  It allows you to accept gratefully that piece of warm banana bread from the elderly widow you stopped by to see, who went to that trouble because she so seldom has visitors any longer and who will be hurt if you refuse.  It permits you to go to lunch with that group of sisters after an hour or two of intense Bible study, to cement your relationships with one another around a shared table.  If your regimen does not allow for these things, you need to consider again what Jesus said as well as the many scriptures commanding us to offer hospitality to one another, and the examples of Christians meeting house to house to “break bread” together on an almost daily basis.

            Doing these things makes us beautiful in the eyes of God.  It has nothing to do with a svelte, sexy figure and everything to do with service, gratitude, and graciousness.  Don’t judge yourself ugly because you ate a doughnut today.  We are made in the image of God, and when you have your priorities straight, those who are His children will not see you as anything but beautiful.
 
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear— but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. 1Pet 3:3-4
 
Dene Ward

The story of Jehu has always left me a little perplexed.  God sent a prophet to anoint him king over Israel and to give him this mission:  You shall strike down the house of Ahab your master, so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, 2 Kgs 9:7.

            Jehu accomplished the mission God gave him, throwing King Joram’s body into Naboth’s vineyard in Jezreel, and becoming king in his place.  He went on to kill Jezebel and completely wipe out both Ahab’s descendants and the prophets and priests of Baal as well. 

            Yet, in the first chapter of Hosea you read this:  And the LORD said to him, "Call his name [Hosea’s son] Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, v 4.  Now is that fair?  God gave the man a mission and he fulfilled it, and now his descendants will be punished for the very thing God told him to do?

            No, God did not punish Jehu for his obedience.  In fact, he rewarded him.  And the LORD said to Jehu, "Because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel," 2 Kgs 10:30.  The problem was the reason he obeyed.  Later on, when far more needed doing to restore Israel to God, he failed.  But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin, v 31.  When you pick and choose the commands you will obey, you are making it obvious that you are only doing what you want to do, not what God wants you to do.  What should have been the hallmark of his obedience became the thing that made his rebellion obvious—he hadn’t really obeyed then either.

            Obedience doesn’t count when it’s what you want to do anyway.  The true test of obedience comes when you don’t want to do it, when it costs you something, when it makes trouble in your life. 

            When you say, “It’s just this time, God won’t care because I have done everything else right,” you are condemning yourself just like Jehu did.  Killing the house of Ahab made him king; of course he wanted to do it.  But getting rid of the golden calves?  Now that might have angered his new followers.  Don’t want to rock the boat, do we?  After all, God, I can accomplish more if I stay in power longer, right?  I can just imagine such rationalizations springing to Jehu’s mind, the same sort of rationalizations we use when we want to get out of a difficult moment our faith has put us in.

            Examine your faith this morning.  Why are you faithful?  Have you ever fudged a little?  Was it because of your own likes and dislikes, or maybe your fear of the consequences?  Did you fail to obey because in that one instance you simply didn’t want to?  If so, then the fact that you have ever obeyed only means that in those cases you didn’t mind doing so, and that means you were only serving yourself and not God. 
 
Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you, to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul…. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. Josh 22:5;  James 2:10.                                                   

Dene Ward