Part 7 of a continuing Monday series.  If you have not been with us, you really need to backtrack and read the first 6.  Even if you have been, with a week off, it might help to reread at least the last couple.

            Remember those stop signs you made last week?  Run and get it before we start.  You are really going to need it this week.  And more than that you will need to be willing to examine what you truly believe and the words and phrases you commonly use. 

            First let me ask you this:  why do you pray?  Believe it or not, there is a theology out there that does not believe God will change His mind if you ask.  Now don’t be so quick to judge.  The word they use is “immutability,” which we often use ourselves, and which is NOT a Bible word. 

            First, let’s look at a few passages.  Will our prayers indeed influence God?

            In his discussion of the coming destruction of Jerusalem Jesus said, “Pray that your flight not be in winter or on a Sabbath,” Matt 24:20.

            He also says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matt 7:7-11.

            And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. Luke 18:1.

            Jesus seemed to believe our prayers would make a difference in God’s actions.  The word “immutability,” though, means “beyond the ability to change.”  Add that to the word “omniscience,” also a word not found in the Bible, which means “knowledge of everything past, present, and future, and therefore never surprised,” and you get a doctrine that says since God knows everything, then He knows the best course of action and the right thing to do and any change would mean He had made a mistake.  That is mainstream theology.

            STOP!  You are sitting there getting ready to say, “Yes, but---“  Don’t.  Just listen, and more important, read what God has to say about Himself.

            In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’” Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, “Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the LORD, and I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David's sake.” 2Kgs 20:1-6.

            And I[God] thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Jer 3:7.

            “‘I [God] said, How I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me. ​Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel, declares the LORD.’” Jer 3:19-20/

            And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Jer 7:31.

          And have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind-- Jer 19:5.

          They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. Jer 32:35.

          STOP!  You’re about to do it again, I know you are.  You are trying to explain away the plain statements of God about Himself.  What you are doing is trying to make an incomprehensible Being comprehensible to a human mind and that is the ultimate irreverence.  Guess what?  We are not finished yet.  This one will knock your socks off:

          He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” Gen 22:12.

          STOP!  Someone out there is thinking, “Are you trying to say…” I (and the teacher I sat under last summer) are not saying anything.  God is.  Do not tell God what He means to be saying and then call it respect.

          There are many, many times in the Bible that God says, “If.”  This one may be the most famous:

          Then the word of the LORD came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Jer 18:5-10.

          Here is the conclusion of all this; God always bases His action on men’s behavior.  And that means not everything is set in stone.  Even God says so.  When you try to push these un-Biblical words on people and define them so strictly, then you wind up with doctrines never taught in the Bible.  And when you do, you wind up with things that are totally inexplicable, like the following passage.

          David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, “Bring the ephod here.” Then David said, “O LORD, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O LORD, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.” And the LORD said, “He will come down.” Then David said, “Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?” And the LORD said, “They will surrender you.” Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition. 1Sam 23:9-13.

          Oops!  God said something was going to happen and it didn’t.  Why?  Because men’s behavior changed what happened.  When we force things on our understanding of God, we always get into trouble.  Better to let God tell us how He acts and thinks, and keep from putting both our feet into our mouths hip-deep. 

          Keep your stop sign handy.  There is more to come.
 
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

I tried to call Keith from the doctor’s office the other day.  I had just stepped out of the elevator and was standing in an enclosed “breezeway” between the bank of elevators and the eye clinic, lined with windows and a view of the city from four floors up.  The little screen on the phone showed “Calling work,” then suddenly switched back to the home screen.  I never did hear it ring on the other end.  I tried twice more but both times the phone stayed silent. 

            I knew I had called from that site before, so I stepped a few paces to the left and tried again.  This time I got a rough ring on the other end and Keith picked up.   We still had a difficult conversation between the phone connection losing every other word of his and him being so deaf that even an amplifier is not an instant cure, but at least we communicated the necessities—I had managed to make another trip into town without running over anyone or anyone running into me.

            Sometimes we have difficulty making connections with God, and usually that is our fault—we are standing in the wrong place. 
 
But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, so that he will not hear. Isa 59:2
If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear, Psa 66:18.
And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: For they are a very perverse generation, Children in whom is no faithfulness, Deut 32:20.
 
            We overstate the matter, and miss the point entirely, when we say God only hears Christians.  He heard Cornelius’s prayer before he was converted, Acts 10:4.  God answered that “prayer of a sinner,” not with the instant forgiveness promised by televangelists today, but by sending Peter to preach the gospel, Acts 11:14, “words whereby you shall be saved.”

            The passages listed above were all said of people who claimed to be children of God, “children in whom there is no faithfulness,” yet people we would have called “believers” today.  Faithfulness involves dependent trust.  When God’s people in the Old Testament began relying on the gods of their pagan neighbors, participating in their worship, while at the same time claiming to worship him, he had them carried into captivity as a punishment.

            What are you relying on besides God?  Whatever it is, it stands between you and the connection you so badly need to help you handle life’s difficulties.  If you pray and pray and pray, yet still feel deserted by God, look around.  Are you standing behind a pillar of self-reliance?  Do you count your financial preparations as the ultimate security?  Do you look at the life you have led thus far and find yourself so completely satisfied with your efforts that you think you have salvation “in the bag?”  Security in the promises of God is one thing—arrogance and self-righteousness is quite another.  When we trust in anything besides God, we have become the same faithless children as those ancient Jews.

            God never tells us that life will be easy.  He never says that nothing bad will happen to us as long as we are faithful.  What he does tell us, is that as long as we rely on him alone, he will not forsake us.  He will give us the help we need to get through the tough times, and ultimately to the eternal salvation that will make this life look like a mere blink of the eye.

            Are you having a difficult time making a connection with God these days?  Take a step or two in the right direction, and suddenly the signal will become loud and clear.
 
And Asa cried unto Jehovah his God, and said, Jehovah, there is none besides you to help, between the mighty and him who has no strength: help us, O Jehovah our God; for we rely on you…Oh Jehovah you are our God, 2 Chron 14:11.
 
Dene Ward

Last time we talked about knowing who and what God is, and the way He interacts with people.  Let’s look a little further at the reason and the method He chooses to interact with us.

            You shall not make yourselves detestable with any swarming thing that swarms, and you shall not defile yourselves with them, and become unclean through them. For I am the LORD your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the LORD who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.” Lev 11:43-45.

            And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the LORD your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal: I am the LORD your God. Lev 19:1-4.

            Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God. Lev 20:7

            You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine. Lev 20:26

            After reading those verses back to back, one cannot help but be impressed with the holiness of God, that this is the “why” of every command God gives.  After this beginning, whenever He gives a command, God merely says, “I am Jehovah,” and expects them to remember that His essence demands their holiness if they are to relate to Him at all.  Check out Leviticus chapters 18 and 19 to see for yourself.

            From the beginning, God wanted a relationship with his creation.  And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day... Gen 3:8.  It seems He had a regular date with Adam and Eve to get together and talk, an appointment that was lost in their sin and that He took great pains to regain.

            When He brought His people out of Egypt, He tried to set up the same sort of relationship. 

            And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exod 25:8

            There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory. I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God. Exod 29:43-46

            I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. Lev 26:11-12

            Once again His people rejected that relationship, but do not relegate that concept to the Old Covenant.  God is still trying to reach us in this intimate way.

            What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 2Cor 6:16

            in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Eph 2:21-22

            The first of those two passages applies to individuals and the second to the church, his spiritual Temple.  God wants to be among us.  In fact, God wants what He had in the beginning, a relationship that, this time, will continue for Eternity.

            Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband….through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations… And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God, Rev 21:1-2; 22:2; 21:3.
 
Dene Ward

When I am speaking to several hundred ladies, I cannot see the faces in front of me much past the first row.  But more often than not, I speak to much smaller groups, as few as a dozen up to fifty or sixty.  I can usually see more of those faces, at least the ones in the front half of the room.  Other speakers do not have my problem.  The preacher in your congregation may well be able to see every one of you.  You might be surprised at what you tell him as you sit there.  I have seen all of these things myself, just in the first few rows, so I know it’s true.

            A speaker knows when your mind is on something else.  You have a tendency to stare.  Your eyes glaze over and you miss all the cues—everyone laughs but you don’t; people turn pages in their Bibles and yours sits in your lap untouched; an inappropriate smile creases your face after a serious and sober statement.

            A speaker knows when you have somewhere to be right after services.  You keep looking at your watch.  You start patting your foot about 5 minutes before the usual ending time.  You stack up your Bibles before he even begins the invitation and have the songbook ready as if you could actually rush the song leader through the invitation song.

            A speaker knows when you are bored.  You stop looking at him and start fiddling with things—doodling, flipping through your Bible or the song book, making notes about something even when he hasn’t clicked the Power Point or listed a passage. 

            A speaker knows when you disagree with him.  You squint and pull that lower lip into a frown.  You start rapidly flipping through your Bible and running your fingers down the pages looking for ways to contradict him.  You cross your arms and huff.  Sometimes you even shake your head for all to see.

            A speaker knows when you are sick or just plain tired.  You try your best to listen, but keep losing interest.  You grimace.  You touch your stomach or rub your head or try gallantly not to nod off, only to do so at least three or four times.

            A speaker also knows when you are eagerly listening, trying your best to take in what he is saying and accommodate it to all the other things you have learned about that particular subject.  He recognizes a lover of God’s Word and that person, and his fellows, are why he does what he does, week after week, no matter how few of you there might be.

            Do you think God doesn’t know the same things about us?  Sometimes I wonder.  It doesn’t really matter what the preacher sees on our faces or in our actions.  No matter how far back I sit, God still knows the heart I bring to His worship.  He knows whether I am coming to please Him or to see how much everyone can please me.  He knows whether I have a heart of repentance or one that just goes through the motions.

            So this Sunday, be careful the tales you tell from your seat—even without opening your mouth.
 
“As for you, son of man, your people who talk together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, say to one another, each to his brother, ‘Come, and hear what the word is that comes from the LORD.’ And they come to you as people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear what you say but they will not do it; for with lustful talk in their mouths they act; their heart is set on their gain. And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it. Ezek 33:30-32
 
Dene Ward

I remember it like it was yesterday.  A young woman in the church, an early thirty-something as I recall, asked me to go to her friend’s house and talk with her.  The woman had some “questions” and she thought a preacher’s wife would be the perfect person to answer them.  Now throw this into the mix:  I was 21.  I had been married a little over a year and had been a full time preacher’s wife for about 6 months.  This was my first time in the counselor role, and it was a doozy.

            Why?  Because this young woman’s marriage was on the rocks.  She was a member of one of the standard cult-type denominations and her church leaders had told her it was up to her to keep her marriage intact, even though her husband was not a member and was threatening to leave her.  “What do I do if he does?” she asked, near tears.

            At that point I knew there was no sense talking “the plan of salvation” or the church with her.  What I saw was a desperate young woman in pain.  She was three or four years older than I and judging by her young children, had been married about that many years longer, but she still looked to me to answer her question, even though at that point in my life I looked about 16.  I turned to 1 Cor 7:10-15 and read it to her, culminating in, “If the unbelieving depart, let him depart, the brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases.”

            She looked at me in amazement.  “Why didn’t my own leaders show me this?  Why did they tell me I was in sin if I didn’t figure out a way to make him stay?”  Because, I was thinking to myself, they read something besides the Bible, but it was not the time for that conversation.  Even my young, inexperienced self knew that.

            But I had taken an “older” woman with me—she might have been 30—and after we left, she got all over me.  How could I possibly give marriage advice?  What was wrong with me?  How could I tell her to leave her husband (which I did not do and could never figure out where that accusation came from)?  All I did was read the Bible to her.  And that conversation led to more, some even more ticklish, like the time she asked me about something in their sexual relationship.  But she kept asking and I kept going, and we did eventually talk about the gospel.  All too soon we left that place, and as far as I know, no one from the church ever went to talk with that young woman again.  I planted the seed but no one bothered to water it because it was too “difficult” a situation.

            That was my first experience with difficult questions.  By difficult, I don’t meant theologically difficult.  I mean the intimate ones, the ones that deal with things seldom discussed—especially among Christian women.  All my life I have seen young women too afraid to ask those questions.  Too often they are ignored because no one wants to deal with them.  Other times they receive a hastily muttered response amounting to, “Oh, you’ll get over it,” or “It’ll go away if you leave it alone.”  And worst of all, because she admits she has a problem with anything involving sex and asks how to deal with it, she is told that if she were truly a Christian, she wouldn’t have such disgusting issues in her life.

            It’s long past time for that to stop.  If we older women truly want the younger women to come to us, we need to change how we receive them.  We need to act like their problems are real—because they are!—and nothing that isn’t common to others.  We need to be able to say those words we usually avoid because we are “ladies.”  In a society where sex imbues everything from automobiles to hamburgers, it’s time we faced the truth:  even Christian women have problems that maybe our own generation or the ones before it did not, not because we were better than they, but because our noses weren’t rubbed in it every day.

            It’s time we realized that Christian women can become addicted to pornography, as early as middle school.  It doesn’t make them any less a Christian than the one who is addicted to gossip.  Now deal with it, don’t sweep it under the rug and allow a floundering child to die in sin because we don’t want to face the facts.

            We need to be able to look teenage girls in the eye and say, “If he has ever laid a hand on you in anger, get away from him.  It will only get worse after marriage.”  Yes, I have seen “Christian” abusive husbands.  We need to give these girls a list of things to look for, and we need to give that list to the men to teach the boys how to avoid becoming those abusers.

            We need to talk about what does and does not constitute intercourse and more than that, teach the attitude that strives for purity, not just toeing the line as closely as possible so we can still call ourselves virgins.  My daddy used to say, “We keep putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LAB-le, and look where it’s gotten us.”

            We need to talk about the place of the sexual relationship in marriage, not only its problems and pitfalls, but its glories too.  We need to tell our young people that God meant us to love the look of one another and not be ashamed of it.  We need to teach young women about the needs of their husbands in plain language they can understand.  We need to physically pull their heads out of the sand if they won’t do it themselves.

            But more than anything else, we must teach our young people that we are happy to talk about anything with them, even things that might feel uncomfortable to us.  And we need to hide that discomfort at all costs if we expect to form a relationship with those precious souls.  They need to know how important they are to us, and that their questions will be held in confidence.  They need to see this in us as we give them our full attention and really listen.  (Obviously, situations can arise where health and safety of both body and soul may require us to speak to someone in authority.  That should go without saying.)

            There will always be hard questions.  I have seen a few young people who seem to ask them just to see the reaction they might get.  Don’t give them any excuse to assume you are “just like all the other old people—fuddy-duddies who don’t really care anyway.”  Instead, surprise them and prove them wrong. 

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure…Titus 2:3-5
 
Dene Ward

I grew up with knickknacks around the house, with pretty centerpieces on the dining room table when we weren’t actually eating there, with paintings on the walls, and a coffee table adorned with crystal bowls, flower arrangements, and porcelain birds.  The first time I visited my in-laws I was almost shocked that I saw none of that anywhere.  Everything was strictly utilitarian.  Tables were for putting necessary items on and they were placed with the same thing in mind, whether the room looked balanced or not.  It’s not that my mother-in-law did not have a decorator’s eye; it was my father-in-law’s understanding of beauty.  If he asked the question, “What’s it good for?” and all you could say was, “To be pretty,” then it was useless in his eyes and did not deserve a place among his things.  It was simply “in the way.”  Over the years I suppose she just gave up, though to be fair, if a thing wasn’t a necessity, they had little money for it anyway.

            Yet I think that beauty does have a use.  Why else would God have made blossoms of every size and color?  Why make a bird called a painted indigo, a whole patchwork of brightly colored feathers that thrills me every time he perches on my feeder?  Why would he have made vistas that take your breath away, the Grand Canyon, the rolling green and blue or snow-capped mountain ranges, the tropical rainforests where flowers and birds and even creeping things seem to grow both larger and more vibrantly colored than anywhere else in the world?  Why, in fact, would we classify color blindness as a disorder if seeing beautiful colors is useless?

            But God did make us able to see beauty and appreciate it.  Where do people want to go when they are tired and troubled?  A place of order instead of chaos, a place of beauty instead of ugliness.  Beauty can calm the soul or it can stir the heart.  It can inspire.  It can bring joy.  It can also teach.  Just as eating baby food gradually enables us to eat solid food, learning to appreciate outer beauty can eventually lead us to an understanding of true beauty.

            God told Moses, And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty. Exod 28:2  It mattered to God that the garments of the men who served Him be beautiful.  It mattered to Him that they understand that outward beauty was representative of something truly beautiful—the sacred and the holy.  One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple. Ps 27:4  Putting God’s priests in sackcloth would have been an affront to a beautiful God.

            And as we learn to appreciate the spiritual beauty of our God, so we must also learn to recognize the true beauty of people. 

            How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” Isa 52:7  Feet must be the ugliest part of the human body, yet feet that take the gospel to others are “beautiful.”

            The glory of young men is their strength; And the beauty of old men is the hoary head. Prov 20:29  Gray hair is nothing to be ashamed of.  What it should represent is knowledge and wisdom, and the ability to help others along their path.

            Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like unto whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness. Matt 23:27.  Inward beauty makes our service acceptable to God.

            When the Messiah came, few recognized him.  He did not look like the Savior they expected.  For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. Isa 53:2.  They had not learned the lessons of true beauty and missed out on the most beautiful thing of all, a Lord who sacrificed himself for our salvation.

            What are you missing in life?  A good marriage to a godly mate?  A church that teaches the truth of the Gospel?  Brethren who would love you more than family?  Have your learned to look beyond the outside and see the beauty within?  If not, then you have completely missed the lessons God has given us since He created this world and pronounced it “Very good.”  Beauty is useful, but only if you learn the lessons it teaches.
 
For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Ps 96:4-6
 
Dene Ward
 

We were on the way to town, the bucolic scenery passing us out the windows, only the soft purr of the engine penetrating the comfortable quiet in the car.

            Just before the second four-way stop Keith said, “I think you should call.”

            It came out of the clear blue, a topic we hadn’t spoken of for over an hour, but I knew exactly what he meant.  After all these years, our minds tend to run on the same wavelength.  Not always, I will admit.  Sometimes I look at him and say, “What in the world are you talking about?”  Sometimes he says that to me.  Yet most of the time our concerns are the same and our interests the same.  What worries him, worries me.  We’re both trying to solve the same problems.  We are as much “of the same mind” as it is possible to be, but it took awhile to get that way, and it took effort.

            Jesus expects the same from his disciples.  Once he looked at the apostles and said, “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt 16:6).

            They looked at one another and said, “Uh-oh.  We’re in trouble because we forgot to bring lunch.”

            Jesus was not pleased.  In the first place it had not been that long since he had fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  How could they ever worry about going hungry from then on?

            More than that, he expected them to be thinking in spiritual terms by now.  “How could you think that physical bread was any concern to me at all?” he asked, and then they got it.  He wanted them to beware of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.  He expected them to be thinking in spiritual terms just as he did.

            He expects the same spirituality from us.  “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ,” Paul gives as one example in Phil 2:5.  He told the Romans we are to have “the mind of the spirit” not the flesh (8:5).  He told the Corinthians he couldn’t even talk to them because they always thought in physical terms, not spiritual (1 Cor 3:1-3).

            What is filling your mind this morning?  Perhaps more telling, what does your mind run to whenever you hear a comment, see an action, or experience an event in your life?  Do you let it frustrate you?  Do you feel insulted or get your feelings hurt?  Do you worry about the other person or yourself?  Do you chafe at the inconvenience, or do you try to find the lesson?  Is your mind so much on spiritual things that you think, speak, and behave as Jesus would, or are you still stuck in a physical world where you matter more than He does? 

            We can all predict how certain people will act and what they will say in a given situation.  We say they have a one track mind.  Having a one track mind is not necessarily bad, as long as we are on the same wavelength as the Lord.
 
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart… But that is not the way you learned Christ!-- assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus… be renewed in the spirit of your minds, put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, Eph 4:17,18,20,21,23,24.
           
Dene Ward

As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.” But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. Gen 19:15-16
 
              Here the Lord offers salvation to Lot who, by what we have previously seen, truly believes in the coming destruction and truly hates the sin in Sodom.  But what does he do?  “He lingers…”  And finally, and only because God is merciful and that probably because of Abraham (Gen 19:29), the angels grabbed them all by the hands and pulled them out of the city. 

              How many times do we linger where we have no business being, even after we know we should be gone?  Sin has a pull of its own, and if God were not pulling in the opposite direction, many of us would be gone without a fight.

              But we have talked much about sin in this short series.  How about things that are not necessarily sins?  How about those resolutions we make, not just at the New Year’s dawn, but when suddenly we realize we are not what we should be?  When a lesson suddenly slaps us in the face and we recognize our failures.  How many times have I heard things like, “I am going to start studying more.  In fact, I am going to come to your classes.”  But when reality hits, when they find out it takes work and commitment and maybe canceling a few other things that are a lot more fun, suddenly it is not a priority.

              Most of the members of my classes are older women.  Don’t tell me, “Well, they have the time.”  When we started this class almost thirty years ago, they were the young women with families, and some had jobs too.  Yet they also had their priorities in order.  It is as simple, and as damning, as that.
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              So you need to make a change of some kind, be it more study, more prayer, more service, or some other neglected virtue.  Then make it, but recognize from the get-go that you will have to leave some things behind in order to make the time.  Don’t “linger” in Sodom.  It will only make the transition more difficult. Jump in with both feet, whatever the change you want to make, and don’t look back.  Before long you will love the new you.
 
When I think on my ways, I turn my feet to your testimonies; I hasten and do not delay to keep your commandments. Ps 119:59-60
 
Dene Ward

So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the LORD is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting. Gen 19:14
 
            “And the second is like unto the first,” as the scripture says in another place.  Lot told his sons-in-law of the coming destruction and they laughed in his face.  I can just hear them saying, “Are you crazy, old man?” 

            And that is not the first time that accusation was wielded.  Noah comes to mind.  Maybe this reaction is even older than the one we discussed last time.  Peter warns against it in 2 Peter 3.  “Mockers” will come and make fun of your belief in a final judgment and the end of the world.  Any time you preach something that demands accountability of the sinner, you are a lunatic, an old fuddy-duddy, a spoilsport, a prude, or any of a dozen more rude epithets.  It is yet another universal and timeless attitude, another instance in which we are living in Sodom today.

           But we can ask the same question we did last time.  Has anyone called me those names lately?  Have I talked about God, my Lord, my salvation, my church family, and my hope of Heaven enough that it bothers them?  Have I mentioned Hell at all?

           God expects people to know who we are.  He does not want us hiding in plain sight.  What is important to us should be in our hearts and on our tongues.  Maybe that is the problem:  those things are not really that important to us.  Our faith is an embarrassment.  Remember what Jesus had to say about that?
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So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. Matt 10:32-33.

           At least Lot acknowledged God, the reality of His authority over us, and our accountability to Him in the coming destruction to those sinful people.  Do we?
 
Dene Ward