Bringing the Profane into the Pure

     In Exodus 3, God appears to Moses in a burning bush that is not consumed. When Moses approaches, Jehovah tells him to, ". . . take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." Why did God command Moses to be barefoot? Could it be a symbol of leaving the profane (the regular dirt of the sinful world) which was on his sandals behind, so that he did not bring it into the presence of Jehovah?

     We need to be reminded today to take off our sandals on occasion. We have gotten very good at bringing the profane into the pure. We would be horrified if someone brought a muddy dirty hog into our Sunday service and drove it down front and kept it there, squealing and stinking and disrupting the worship, wouldn't we?

      We know that this would be wrong. This would be mixing the profane with the pure. Yet, this is what happens when we bring musical instruments not commanded by God into our worship. When we show "video clips from today's hottest movies and T.V. shows" in the lesson as a local denomination advertised recently. When we mix eating and drinking with our worship. When we spend time thinking more about what's on T.V. or for lunch after services than we do about the message being presented.

     Here's the bottom line. We are no different than that pig I mentioned when we are not pure ourselves, but come to worship our Almighty Father, Lord and Master anyway. We are mixing the profane and the pure. When we have not kept ourselves "unspotted from the world," we are bringing the profane into the pure. When no one can tell the difference between a "Christian" and the rest of the world, we have mixed the pure and the profane. We have become guilty of dragging the profane into the pure on so many levels. It. Is. Shameful.

    Moses needed a burning bush to wake him up and get him on the right road. His objections were many. What will it take for us to purify ourselves? What objections do we need to overcome? What changes do we need to make in ourselves, our lives, our conduct, our speech, our behavior, our attitudes, our entertainment, our friends, our relationships, etc., so that we may purify ourselves? So that when we do approach the Pure God of Heaven and Earth, we are in essence barefoot, no longer bringing the profane into the pure?

May God Bless you today as you examine yourself, and separate the profane from the pure.  -- Robert

The time has come to speak up, and yet you remain silent . . . Why?

Our preacher challenged us Sunday to answer the following question: The reason(s) I am not more personally evangelistic is/are . . .


The following are some of my thoughts.

1. Good old fashioned fear. While my mind can readily call up verses such as 2 Tim 1:7-8 and 1 Sam 8:7, fear often strikes right along with evangelistic opportunities.
2. Inferiority complex or fear of failure - I'm reminded of the parable of one talent in Mt 25:19-30. I often feel that I can’t do as good a job as the situation requires.
3. Not knowledgeable enough or lack of preparation - 2 Tim 2:15, Php 4:13. There really isn’t an acceptable reason for this unless you are a new Christian. We, and I mean I, need to realize that God expects all of us to perform to the level we are able, and to recognize a need for growth and improvement to do better the next time.
4. Lack of ability to properly value the soul/Indifference - Mt 16:26, Jas 5:19-20. I can think logically about this, but have difficulty always seeing the value of someone’s soul over their physical attributes or attitude or words or how they dress, etc.
5. Don’t always know how to respond until the moment has passed. This could also fit under lack of preparation - 2 Tim 4:2.
6. Don't want to lose my friends. Are my friends really that valuable that I'm not willing to risk losing their friendship to share something so valuable with them? Again Mt 16:26 fits here.

I realize that not everyone is religious, but I think that many of these reasons could fit when we don't speak up about whatever it is that we feel strongly about. It could be a political point, social mores, crime and punishment, current events . . . the list could go on and on. What do you think? What keeps you from speaking up or speaking out when the moment comes?

It's a Love Thing . . . part deux!

     In the last post I laid out an argument that fellowship is all about love. Tonight I will posit a corollary concept, that disfellowship is also all about love. Consider this question, "Why do we disfellowship someone?" There are 4 reasons that I am aware of, each of them motivated by love.
     1) We disfellowship an erring brother or sister because we love them and want them to see how seriously we take their choice to step off the path God has chosen for them.
     2) We practice disfellowship because we love the church, and want to keep her the pure bride of Christ. Just as one bad apple spoils the bunch, one sinner left in the fold can bring many to their destruction.
     3) We disfellowship because we love all the sinners in the world, and want them to see that we take such concepts as the sanctity of God's message (which tells us it is sometimes necessary to disfellowship an individual) very seriously.
     4) We practice disfellowship because we love ourselves enough to recognize that at some point we may be in error, and therefore we need to examine ourselves. Also, we love each other enough that we are conscientious to correct a brother or sister when we first see a potential problem, and pray that they will do the same for us.
     Disfellowship is an often uncomfortable topic, but if we truly understand the love that motivates it, it becomes less so. When talking about fellowship I mentioned the concept of family. If we love our children, we discipline them. If we love our parents, we correct them when they overstep their boundaries and start meddling in our lives. If we love our brother or sister, we let them know when we are concerned for them and the decisions they are making. If we love our Christian family the same way, we should have no trouble expressing our love in the same way.
     Disfellowship - It's a Love Thing!

It's a Love Thing

     I had the privilege of teaching the adult Bible class tonight. Our topic was 2 Corinthians 2. We spent very little time in that text, but it was still a good study. Well, I think so, at least. In 2 Corinthians Paul is dealing with the aftermath of his first letter to Corinth in regards to the sinful man mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5. The church there had done such a good job of correcting the sinful man, that they were in danger of pushing him out of the congregation even though he had repented.
     Having given you the background, can you guess what our discussion involved tonight?
     We spent the entire class discussing the concepts of fellowship and disfellowship. Disfellowship is talked about a lot, but practiced infrequently, and often very poorly if it is done at all. Why? It comes down to a couple reasons, but we will confine ourself to what must be in place first - fellowship!
     What is fellowship? In the New Testament we can look at Acts 2:44-47 to get an idea. There we find that the first Christians: were together, had all things in common, were eating their meals together, and had gladness & sincerity of heart. How many so-called congregations or "churches" have that kind of fellowship? How many congregations seek to spend time together, share with each other, eat their meals with each other, enjoy spending time with each other? If that were the case, then fellowship would exist and disfellowship would be so much more effective!
     When we look at the book of John 15 we see Jesus explaining the concept of abiding in Him. Over in 1st John 2 and 3 we see over and over the idea of family, through the use of terms such as children and Fathers, but tied back to the love and abiding in Christ.
     We have no problem understanding the concept of love when it comes to our physical family, and the actions that love motivates us to perform. We want what's best for our family, and will sacrifice to make sure they get it. When that kind of love exists in the church, and then someone is cut off from that, that is when disfellowship is effective. If there is no fellowship, there cannot be effective disfellowshipping.
     Fellowship - It's a Love Thing!
    

Labels, and the impossible writing that accompanies them!

     As I was making changes to the blog this evening, I happened to notice that there are 41 links listed, each of them occurring only once. That is about to change. What follows is the Freestyle writing including 19 of the links that I have previously listed. I'll try to get the other 22 into the next post.


     When Yakob was a little boy, he wanted to be in the Union Air Force. He wanted to fly airplanes and visit far-off places like California. The intervening years had instead immersed him in a world of automated phone calls and book reviews, baby news, frustration and e-mail. Too much of which was currently occupying his phone. He couldn't even load his Bible software without it crashing. 
     "What ever happened," he wondered, "to the good old days when family sent actual letters, and actual comic books like Boy Wonder sat on actual bookcases?" Instead, as a e-news blogger trying to make a living in the brutally competitive news media, Yakob experienced daily frustration as his technology became ever more rapidly obsolete. 
    Yakob's thoughts continued as he hurried across the street, dodging around one of the many barricades erected recently. "Beards were only for old men, gaming had gone from on-line to live. Christians were a persecuted people, and few of his readers could separate fantasy from fiction. God's word was often considered a relic from 3000 years ago."
     Even the food had gone down hill. "When I was young," he remembered, "and Mama went on her diet, she never ate this poorly." Neither had he, not till the war. It was the war that changed it all. The war . . .

Now to step on some toes!

     You were warned. Continue reading at your own risk!

     One of the very disturbing (to me at least) trends I  have seen lately is the number of my "Christian" friends on FB playing a game that mimics real life mafia activity. Is this really the message we want to send to the world, that we think it's okay to "pretend" to be involved in murder, theft, racketeering, prostitution, etc., as long as we don't do it in real life?

     That doesn't sit very well with what I read in the New Testament, or the Old for that matter.  Five times in the book of Leviticus alone, we read words "Be Holy, for I am Holy." "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you," 2 Cor 6:17.
    "And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." 2 Cor 6:11.
     How do we as Christians align the concepts of being separate and sanctified and being imitators of Christ (1 Cor 11:1) with pretending to murder, steal, extort, commit sexual impurity, etc? In my mind the two cannot and should not be brought together. "No man can serve two masters . . ."
     Am I right? Am I wrong? What do you think?