Bible talk

Matt. 1:19, " then Joseph being a just man". the meaning here being that he wanted to do what was right, his heart was already attuned to grace and mercy, " was minded to put her away privily." Some people are programed to expose and embarrass others before taking thought, before taking into consideration what the long term repercussions might be. Thank the Lord Joseph was patient and kind. Think what might have happened if he had rushed to judgement.

" And God saw everything that He had ever made,and,behold it was very good."Gen.1:31 For the past several weeks I have been reading Alaska the 825 page book written by James Michener. He starts with that territory some 350 years ago and brings us up to the modern era. Reading that I thought of Gen.1:31 and wondered how God thought of Alaska as good very good?
Over time it has been so harsh and death dealing to so many people. In the garden Adam and Eve could go without clothes and still be comfortable and yet in Alaska humans had to cover themselves with animal skins from head to foot to stay alive in the winter. In the summer mosquitos are so thick that they can run both humans and beasts mad. Alaska for the most part produces no food that we have come to depend on for survival other than of course fish and certain animal meat. It's 24 hour days and then 24 hour nights seem to be just the opposite of the Garden of Eden. Even now Alaska has far more miles of dogsled trails than there are roads for automobiles. How do you explain that Alaska is good very good?

" And God saw everything that He had made,and,behold it was very good." Gen. 1:31 For several weeks now I have been reading Alaska [ off and on ] a huge 825 page book by James Michener. He traces human life in that part of the world back 350 years and makes you wonder how humans could learn to endure in that harsh and unyielding climate.
The Garden of Eve story is set in much more hospitable surroundings so that Adam and Eve could go about without any clothes with no mention of being uncomfortable. Whereas in Alaska men, women and children had to put on animal skins from head to foot to keep from perishing.
Even in the late 1800'ds thousands of white people perished from the extreme conditions, cold, 24 hour darkness and the 24 hour light, lack of vegetables and other food needed by humans to stay healthy. Even now the sparsh population up in Alaska can only exist because of food that is brought in. Of course a great deal of fish is brought out as part of our diet.
So when I read that everything was very good I think of the hot dry deserts, the steaming jungles, the rocky mountain peaks as well as those places so cold that a human will freeze to death in less than an hour. Then I ponder over that passage, " behold it was very good."

I listened to several sermons by CoG preachers this week [ as is my custom ] for some relevant comments on our world as it has seemed to change so much in recent months. Unfortunately I didn't hear any that got into the year of 2015 yet.
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Numbers Chapter 1

Something else that I was reading raised some questions about Numbers. Now I haven't spent any time in numbers in many years so I thought that I would just go back with an open, if old mind, and let it speak to me.


We see that Moses summoned the whole community. v-2
As the years have gone by I have come to realize how hard it is to communicate with people, especially large numbers of people. It turns out that there was 603,550 numbered as fit for military service so if we figure in the old, the young and the women as well as the non Jews living with them we might well be thinking of 1.8 million people or so. This would include as many as live in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville combined. Each family may well have had several sheep, goats and cattle and these would have been making a lot of animal noise that would have surpassed the noise of the Chicago stockyard.

So how did Moses get their attention, their understanding and their cooperation?
The Israelites did exactly as the Lord told Moses to do. v-54
To me this is no less a miracle than the other miracles mentioned in the wilderness experience.

Since you are not likely to be up at 4am on black Friday, I'll send this along to keep your mind active even after eating Turkey.
The last few days I have been reading different O T scholars to get their view on Ex. 4: 24,25 & 26 [ Why would the Lord want to kill Moses?]
In all these years I had not stopped to really consider this passage. Now after several hours of study and reading comments from the " experts" I still don't have a clue.

Here are some of their thought's :

1. In this case it was really satan disguised as the Lord to cut Moses off from his mission.
2. Harold Bloom a Jew and a scholar believes that some crucial information must have been left out in the copying process.
3. This is a unique situation where Zipporah, the wife of Moses, stands up against God to rescue her husband, something he could not have done for himself.
4. The mystery seems to have been in not explaining the complex history of circumcision.
5. This is just one mystery of many in the Moses story.

" Treading upon the poor" Amos 5:11, here in our area of about 300,000 people the newspaper said that local banks take in over 250,000 per day in bounced check charges. In V 15 we see that we are to," establish judgement in the gate." Millions of Americans are not good with math, they are not good with details and the business community takes advantage of them every single day. I wish that every church had a ministry to help people with their finances, to help those without financial skills and with enough influence to reach out to the banks and the loan companies to shame them into being more just with their customers.

A new man joined us for coffee at B K and someone remarked that the world was in a complicated situation right now, he was referring to the large refugee crisis and the tiny terrorist cells that are causing so much havoc. There’s an answer for that the new man said and it’s II Chronicles 7;14; oh you mean, “ If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray…” I injected. He nodded and looked surprised that I knew the verse. Thinking back over the rest of that conversation, I thought of how quickly we reach for a tool in our religious tool box and how strong our assumptions are.
He seemed to assume that christians had not and were not praying for a peaceful and a reasonable resolution to this terrible problem. Surely millions have prayed and in the New Testament we are told that if as many as two agree as touching any one thing it shall be done.
But I think that he was assuming that the praying effort would have to be greatly increased if we were to get God’s attention. To get Him to do what the N T has already told us; “I am not willing that any should perish.”
How quickly we want to reach for a simple answer with the expectation that it will solve a complicated problem, a problem so large in this case that the smartest men and women in many nations have only come up with a partial solution.

When thinking about veterans we often include them in the the same mind set, lumping them all together when in fact the millions who serve in the military have very different experiences. Some have easy and safe duty and get to live in nice climates and get to live a life that they will always remember as good. While others must live in constant danger and are asked to break one or more of the ten commandants on a regular basis.
When you fellowship with a veteran, try to listen deeply and understand as accurately as possible what their actual experience has been.

Sun., Nov. 8th several CoG's had special recognition for veterans. And that's good! But all the tributes that I have heard come up short in recognizing the unlying problems that veterans and their families so often suffer. Post traumatic stress is just one of those many problems. Yet no one is better positioned to help relieve that stress, guilt, shame and confusion than those who preach the redeeming work of the gospel. Sometimes we try to make hero's out of our veterans when inside they feel that they have broken every one of the principles that Christians are supposed to live by and so to honor them in public just makes their confusion all the harder to deal with.