I’ve usually taken this to mean that Jesus had no home and just kind of wandered around all day every day teaching whoever came to him and healing the sick.  But then the other day I ran across Matthew 4:12-13, “When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee.  Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum…”  The wording here indicates that he left the home town of his parents and went out and lived on his own.  Jesus packed up his donkey and moved.  He set down roots in a new community.  Whether he lived above someones garage or in their basement, I do not know, but for some reason it helps me to know that Jesus had a home base.  A place to go at the end of the day.

It makes Jesus seem more human.

Now, with this understanding, much of Jesus’ ministry seems more doable to me.  Jesus became more of a church planter than a wandering homeless nomad.  Now don’t get me wrong – what Jesus was doing was certainly living a radical life.  He had very little other than clothes and shoes to call his own.  He was completely devoted to this mission of calling people to repentance and new life in the Kingdom of God, and nothing distracted him from that.  It’s not like I think he was coming home, kicking off his sandals, cracking open a beer, and watching March Madness from beginning to end.

But the scriptures telling us that Jesus moved and lived in Capernaum lends just enough normalcy to the radical to make it seem possible to actually follow him.  And “follow”, by the way, means more to believe in and obey than it means to literally walk where he walked.  Jesus wasn’t creating a collective of brown nosing lap dogs.  Jesus was empowering others to do what he did.  After moving to Capernaum, he invited some other folks to join him in his mission and they did.  After ministering with him for a bit, Matthew 10 tells us that he entrusted them with the power from God to drive out evil spirits and heal disease.  Huh, I think that’s a message for us.

Anyway, my point is this, by bringing Jesus a bit more down to earth (he moved and set down roots in a new home town), maybe we can be brought a little more into heaven.  Maybe this simple side note will help you see that the life of Jesus is not beyond reach.  Difficult?  Yes.  Radical?  Yes.  Impossible?  Not hardly.

Peace.

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Want a safe place for your kids to go trick-or-treating, but a dangerous place for your tastebuds?  We have it for you!

Come to our fourth annual Trunk-or-Treat on Oct 31 and enjoy some great people willing to empty their trunks of candy to adorably dressed up girls and boys.

But what about the parents?

Come inside and warm up with a dazzling display of cullinary craftsmanship!  Our second annual Chili Cook-off will be taking place and last year’s co-champions have come to play.  But so have the challengers.  By the way, do you think you have what it takes?  Come by any time between 4:30-5:30pm on Oct. 31 and set up your own pot of chili.  We have prizes for the winners and everyone is encouraged to dress up.  Judging will take place at 6:30.

Come for a night of fun for the whole family!  Oct. 31,  5:30-7:00pm

So in these stories, healing comes through faith – miraculous healing, as a matter of fact. Sometimes it is the faith of a person, and sometimes it is the faith of the friends or families of that person. In Hebrews 11, we are told that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

I have heard stories of people being miraculously healed. Someone has cancer that is inoperable, a prayer meeting is held, and at the next doctors visit, the mass is gone. And the doctors have no explanation. Praise God and may God’s name be magnified!

There have been other times where I have prayed for people (and I’m sure you have too) and healing did not come. Jesus has the power to raise people from the dead and to cast out demons. In Matthew 10:8 he gave that authority to the disciples. In 9:8, Jesus apparently gave the authority to forgive sins to human beings. So the question is, do we still or can we still possess this authority? I hear about miraculous healings often from places like India, Africa, and South America. Those countries and continents are sending missionaries to the United States now. Do they have something we do not? Is the Spirit present there, but lacking here? Or does faith not always activate healing power? Or, have we duped ourselves into thinking we have faith, but we really don’t have much?

I grew up in a way where I was never allowed to be the victim (or at least my parents never let me know they thought of me this way). If something bad happened to me, there was something I could have done differently to avoid it. It could have been another person’s fault, but if I was implicate with the other person, it was my fault for hanging around that person. This nurturing leads me to always believe things are, at least in part, my fault.

I often pray the prayer “Lord, help my unbelief.”

I need God’s help. It is much easier to trust in what I can see. The thing with those in the stories who were struggling was that they were on the last rung of their ladder. The woman had been bleeding for a dozen years. She had tried everything else she could have seen. Jesus was her last hope. Imagine being paralyzed in the first century. They didn’t have back surgeons or noninvasive procedures. Same with blindness. Talk about being sure of what you cannot see. There was no hope for them. But Jesus comes along and crashes their depressing party. Hope comes to the desperate. Faith is given to those who recognize it is their only thing of value. Maybe that’s why it is so richly found amongst the poor.

James 2:5 says “Listen brothers, has God not chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him?”

So do you want to be made well? Maybe you should make yourself poor…or at least find someone poor to pray for you.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Dave

And then we see some of this freedom worked out. Jesus heals a man who has been overcome by demons for many years. In Matthew’s account there are two, but in Luke and Mark there is only one. It could mean that there are two different stories about this, but the details of these accounts leads you to believe that this was a specific, one time occurrence. I don’t think the pig farmers would let Jesus near the shore after the first time.

So does the inconsistency in the accounts bother you? Does it call into question the accuracy or the truth of the bible? I mean, technically, one of the accounts is wrong, right? And if one of them is inaccurat or untrue, what does this say about the Bible?

Now, we could say that these aren’t inaccuracies and that there were two men (which Matthew states), and since there were two then there was most certainly one (which Mark and Luke attest to). Mark and Luke just failed to mention the other guy, but they can’t be expected to give an account of everything that Jesus did. One release from demon possession what sufficient for them to make their point.

Sometimes that flies with me, other times I think it’s a pretty easy cop out. I think the reality is that the scriptures have been written by human beings, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and the accounts they tell are True. I did intentionally capitalize that. The point of the story is that Jesus has power and dominion over the demons. This story is made no less true if he casts demons out of one man or a hundred.

But we have to wrestle with this a little bit. There are more instances of this in the scripture. The genealogies in Matthew and Luke of the ancestry of Jesus are different. But both gospels make it pretty clear that Jesus came from God. The different genealogies do not change that. I actually think it opens things up a bit. The Bible is the best selling, most widely read (though admittedly not as often as it should be), most popular book on the entire planet. God had something t do with that, but so did people. God inspired it, but people wrote it. God then used councils of people, filled with the Holy Spirit to keep some books in and leave others out. The Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible are different. The Catholic Bible has books in it that the Protestant doesn’t, though most Protestant denominations recognize these books and authorizing their reading. But does it mean anything to you that this most powerful and living book is a partnership between God and human kind? If that partnership could produce a book like this, what else could it do?

(just to get myself out of some trouble on this one, I do believe the scriptures reveal the revelation of God, not the general learning of human beings)

I wonder if the answer to the last question above is freedom and healing. We find this story as Jesus is healing demoniacs and little children and calming the fears and anxieties of the disciples. Could God partner with us to actually deliver healing (physical, spiritual, emotional, etc.) to our friends or family members? In Isaiah 59, God makes it pretty clear that the reason restoration has not come to Israel is because the people are still in their sin. They are continuing to separate themselves from God through false worship, oppression of their neighbors, and desecrating the Sabbath. They need to be reunited to God, and when that happens, God will restore them. But, and this is a big “but”, do you think the restoration will take place while the Israelites are sitting on their couches playing video games? Will God send the angels to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem? Will God see the woman who has been bleeding for a dozen years and zap her from heaven with a healing gun? No, she has to reach out and touch Jesus. Jairus has to come to Jesus and beg him to come to heal his daughter. The friends have to lower the paralytic through the roof on a mat. We need to lay our friends and loved ones at the feet of Jesus and pray for their healing, and then we need to let God use us as a part of that. I remember one author saying that he didn’t care if Jesus physically healed anyone. The remarkable thing was that in a culture like that, Jesus spoke to the sickly and the poor. Jesus gave them his time and his touch. This author said that Jesus healed them socially and emotionally before he healed them physically. The physical was an afterthought.

It’s not always an afterthought; please don’t hear me saying that. But our presence, by the grace and power of God, is a critical cog in the healing machine. God has created us to be his partners in all of this. We are, quite literally the hands and feet of Jesus now, as the Holy Spirit lives in us and guides us.

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

Pastor Dave

The common story to these two texts is the story of the sower of the seed. Now, we have Jesus telling us what the parable is all about, so it shouldn’t really be that hard to work with. The seed that is sown is the “word” of God. In Greek, the word logos is translated “word” in English. That word carries with it so much more though than just the idea of a written or spoken word. In fact, that’s probably not the best way to think of it. Logos is the root of where we get words like logic, or the suffix -ology. It means the study of something, or the reality of how something works. I this case, it is the reality of all life. The farmer sows the seeds of true reality. True reality is that which is at the base after all the lies and sin of the world are stripped away. We might also think of this as the truth of the kingdom of God which is hidden from many (because they are unaware of the sin or unwilling to turn from it) but revealed to those with faith.

So this reality or truth is sown and as it is sown, some falls along the hard ground of the path. It never really gets worked down into the soil, so it has no chance to grow. Birds feed on it. This, on a side note, is what happened to all of my grass seed this year because I didn’t. Do a good enough job of loosening up m soil or rolling the seed in. We got to look at lots of robins though! Now this is a metaphor for those who have an experience of God, but it never sinks in. Perhaps they are unthoughtful or unreflective, but whatever it is, the devil easily drags them back and sinks his talons back in. On another side note, this was one of the temptations that C.S. Lewis suggests in “The Screwtape Letters”. Here, the young demon is counseled by the elder demon to try to get his human to not think about eternal things or things of faith. Distract him, and God will never get his own foot hold in there.

The second type of soil was rocky. There might have been a little loose dirt on top, so the seeds got in and started growing into plants, but there was no place to set down good roots. We recently had a powerful wind storm come through Holland and as I drove down some of the streets, there were huge trees that had fallen over onto driveways, streets, and in some cases houses. Now, these were huge trees. Like trees that would take three or four people to try and reach around touching hands. But compared to the height and weight of the tree, the roots were very shallow (this was revealed when the winds blew them over and exposed the roots). So here, the metaphor tells us that there are some who hear the truth and glimpse the realities of the Kingdom, but when trouble comes they bug out. When challenged intellectually, emotionally, socially, or physically, they decide to go back to what they have always known. If the first type of soil is illustrated in the OT by Adam and Eve, this soil is the Israelites as they leave Egypt, but when times get hard they want to go back to what they had always known.

Soil number three is the thorny soil. Good enough to let the seeds sink in and take root, but over a longer amount of time, the plants don’t get the nutrients they need because they are choked out by the thorny bushes. Here, it is not explicitly Satan or trials that prevent the plants from living, it is the worries, anxieties, and riches of this world that prevent flourishing. This is the “long con” as some would call it. The temptation is sneaky and most of us don’t even see it coming. It starts small, maybe neglecting a week or two of church. We’ve heard the sermons, we can miss one week. But then it turns into more and ultimately you find there are very few things that wouldn’t keep you away from church. But that’s no big deal, right? Jesus lives in my heart. Or, I know I should be in a small group, but I’m just to busy right now. The kids have all sorts of activities, and if I don’t take them or enroll them, they will miss out on something significant and probably resent me forever (studies show that this is not the case by the way; better to have them involved in fewer things that they can do very well). Anyway, I’ll get to it. But we never do. I should read my bible sometime today, but work was so stressful and I have these projects to do. I’ll get to it tomorrow. Then we find ourselves getting angry with our neighbor on a regular basis. We start blaming other people for why we feel so “blah” inside. And before we know it, the truth of the kingdom that had been planted in our hearts, is all but gone.

The Israelites had this problem too. After moving into the promised land, there were threats from other nations. They knew they should rely on God for their safety, after all, they had experienced the power of God. But they made treaties with other nations to solidify their safety. No big deal, right? Then they married some of their sons and daughters off to other people (this was a big deal in that day. It is a totally different cultural situation today). No problem. We are supposed to love our neighbors, right? But over time, they came to worship the gods of their neighbors and trust in their own strength rather than on God. They came to be constantly worried, anxious, and consumed with material goods. I know, it’s tough to relate to that world, but let’s try for a moment.

Now, the fourth type. Keep in mind, now, we are talking about ourselves as types of soil, not the seeds. Jesus says there is a fourth type of soil. It is rich in potential, but must be generous with it’s nutrients. It must be vulnerable enough to let a seed be planted and go through the pain of being cultivated and turned over. It will lie fallow for a season from time to time for rejuvenation. But the soil in all of this is a recipient of grace. It is open to possibility. This is the nature of a heart in which God can plant the truth and cultivate it.

So now I would covet your feedback. Israel demonstrated all the types of soil, but they were still saved and restored. So can soil change? Is that our responsibility or the responsibility of the farmer? How does it happen? What do you think?

Still with questions,

Pastor Dave

I assume most of you do, but the basic moral of the story (as we teach it to children) is that be careful what tricks you pull, because otherwise when you really need help someone might think you are playing a trick on them.

Do you ever feel that way as you read through some of these prophesies? God declares destruction and violence against these nations, including Israel and Judah, but then says at the end, “but I will redeem you.”. Like here with Moab, all sorts of violence and destruction, “because she defiled the Lord” (48:42), but then 5 verses later, “‘Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab in days to come,’ declares the Lord.”

Do you ever get the feeling like God prophesies all this destruction, but then it turns out God rescues them anyway? Does it ever make you feel like God will never really bring humanity to utter annihilation, no matter how bad we get?

I mean, that could be good news (or very bad news) but doesn’t it leave us wondering in the meantime? Is God just crying wolf but really playing a trick on us?

Here are a couple thoughts, but I would love to hear yours…

I know that God makes it pretty clear that he is the one bringing the destruction upon these nations, but it always comes at the hands of another nation (God using Babylon against Judah, for example). Could this destruction just be the reality of how we open ourselves and leave ourselves vulnerable when we don’t walk in the path of the Lord? Therefore, the judgment is really an act of grace because God is showing us how our sin has led to our vulnerability and eventual demise. But God will bring us back. When we learn our lesson, God will restore the fortunes and hen us in on every side again. Just a thought.

Here’s one more: in chapter 46, God says that the punishment about to be brought forth is upon/against the gods of the Egypt. So that would indicate that the real enemy God is destroying is not the human beings that make up the nations, but rather the gods of those nations who deceive the people and lead them into sin. Is it then possible that God punishes the nation but then continually restores it because what is really being destroyed is the obedience to the foreign gods and idols? Once the idols have proven inept to protect the people much less make them thrive, God will be restored to the rightful place of king, and God will restore the fortunes of the nation. So in this scenario, the nations are continually destroyed as idolatry rises up, but then once the faith of the people in the idols is crushed, the nation will return to glory.

What do you think? There is so far we could go with this!

Grace and peace,

Pastor Dave

The Queen of Heaven was obviously a god different from the God of Israel. Have you ever had the experience or seen the reality that these folks describe? Have you seen someone essentially thumbing their nose at the true God, and God seems to do nothing? Have you ever sinned, gotten away with it, and really felt like, “Huh, that must not be so serious after all”?

Why do you suppose God does this? Why does God not level justice right when the bad thing happens? Maybe that would be bad for the sinner, but wouldn’t it deter all sorts of other people from following in their footsteps?

I believe God does not hand out justice immediately because God always gives the people time to repent. Now, God does this much to his own weakness. God will be mocked like when it says in the Psalms 14:1, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’”. They practice evil and see no repercussions. Yes, God could smite them, but if all were immediately punished for their sins, none would be able to stand. So God is patient. And just as familiarity breeds contempt, we take advantage of this. The people of Israel took advantage and said that Jeremiah was trying to deceive them by keeping them in Judah. So they just did what they saw fit. After all, what would God really do about it?

Has this ever been our response to God’s grace? You see, God desires for people to love God, not be coerced by the threat of punishment. That is why God is patient. The problem is often we are not. We want things to happen immediately. This is why we struggle with faith. We struggle when a bad thing happens to a supposedly good person. We won’t wait for the silver lining or the good that may be coming. We react immediately.

But God shows God’s self to be patient, not wanting any to perish. But God also gives the peope the right to choose. God does not send angels with flaming swords to block the route to Egypt, God lets us choose.

The truth is, we will often choose wrong. This isn’t just their story, it is ours. But the incredible thing? God does love us anyway. In an incredible moment of weakness, God eventually offers God’s very self as the sacrifice for all of our wrong choices. God is the one who pays the debt while we were still his enemies. God demonstrates seeming weakness again, but it proves to be the strongest strength. Then Jesus went to preach to the dead before ascending to heaven. Jesus might have brought that remnant back. He could probably bring you back too.

Let us embrace our own weakness and let God be our strength. Let us shed our arrogance, pride, and impatience. Instead, in light of what Christ has done for us, let us put on faith, trust, hope, and love.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Dave

But God gives a strange command to Jeremiah. Invite the Rekabites over for a glass of wine. Huh. How strange. Jeremiah does it, and the Rekabites tell him nope, can’t drink wine, our ancestors told us we couldn’t do those things.

It seems that was the point God was trying to make. These Rekabites obey the rules passed on from generations past, but the Israelites can’t obey the rules God has set out for them. Didn’t God send prophet after prophet, warning after warning to his people? These Rekabites can carry out the commands their ancestors gave them, but Israel cant get it together to follow God’s commands. And to make matters worse, the Rekabites weren’t even Jewish. They were outsiders, not God’s chosen people, foreigners. Remember back to 2 Kings 10:15. Jehu is on a revolution, getting rid of all the Ba’al worship and idols in Israel. He slaughters all those who are of the house of Ahab. Then he comes across Jehonadab son of Rekab (aka a Rekabite), and to Jehu’s surprise, Jehonadab (not a Jew) helps Jehu on his revolution. Now Jehonadab’s great great great grandsons and daughters are still following the commands set before them, following commands better than Israel. So God rewards them by saying, “you will never cease to have a descendent to serve me” (35:19)

How ironic. God sends so many warnings to Israel, repent, follow me, obey me or disaster will come. He sent to warning to the Rekabites, yet they are the ones who are singled out as obedient. How often do we have this in our lives? We think people inside the church (God’s chosen people) are the ones doing a good job obeying God, and the ones who don’t go to church are the people we need to evangelize to. We attend church every Sunday, toss $20 in the offering plate (not our 10% tithe mind you), and think we are doing a good job. Yet there are other who do not say they are Christians who give over 10% of their income to bring clean drinking water to people around the world, care for the widow and the orphan, and feed the hungry. Often times it is the foreigner, the ones who do not proclaim to be followers of Christ who are better at obeying the commands of God than those of us who claim to follow God. Perhaps instead of looking outward and finding things wrong with those who do not know Jesus, we need to look inward at our own hearts and actions. We should not let those who do not know Christ obey our God better than we do!

Maybe you feel like God has been allowing a period of testing and trial in your life. And you know that verse about God not giving you more than you can handle? Well, you and God have a different opinion about how much you can handle.

I”m sure Israel got to that point. Exile, capture, taken away from their land. They weren’t at the happiest place of all time. God had allowed testing and trial in their lives. Not undeserved in Israel’s situation, but not fun none-the-less.

Hear the promise of God:

“I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will go well for them and for their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul…as I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them.” ~Jeremiah 32:37-41

God punished Israel for not obeying him by letting them be carried off into exile. God says here that it was his anger and wrath that allowed it to happen. God doesn’t deny he brought the calamity on the people. There was reason for it, but God allowed it none-the-less. But God also makes great promises here. He will bring his people back to the land they were promised, God will never stop doing good to them, God will rejoice in doing them good, God will bring them all the prosperity he has promised.

Maybe you’re at a time in your life that’s a struggle. Perhaps it’s not because of disobedience like Israel, but a time of trial and testing none-the-less. Allow these promises of God to wash over you and bring you comfort. God will delight in doing good in your life, give you all the prosperity God promised to you, God will inspire you to love him more