proclamations and parades

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 32:1-47



Stand in the Rain devotes itself, day after day, to the eternal Word of God.

So, compared to our subject, the primaries and the polls and the proclamations of our prime ministers and presidents seem insignificant (and downright tedious) at best.

But when our readers voice contemporary concerns that warrant a public response, we do not shirk.

Yesterday, two letters reached us via email. The first referred to the President’s proclamation in support of gay marriage. The second referred to the North Carolina referendum, just one day before, on the same issue.

Most of us are already aware of the President’s pronouncement, so we will lead into our response with the letter we received from North Carolina:

Here in NC I have been thinking about the whole gay marriage issue after the voters approved an amendment to the state constitution banning it. Back in the day, I would have agreed with them, thinking that "being gay" was some sort of chosen lifestyle. I have come to believe that people who are gay were just born that way, the same way I was born to be straight. From that point of view I can't see how God would want to exclude them from the Christian community. I know that the Old Testament had specific prohibitions against same sex relationships, but the New Testament doesn't address it all that much, and Jesus not at all as far as I know. What do you think about the issue? (Thomas B., Chapel Hill)

***

It's a sin, Thomas, no different than any other sin -- and there's the rub. The gay community has made it into a lifestyle. They march with the mayor down 5th Avenue.

It's a sin that is no different from my pride, my two decades of drunkenness, my divorce, my you name it.

But the prideful don't hold parades. Nor do the drunks, or the divorced.

God excludes no one from the Christian community. The excluded exclude themselves. God went to great lengths, to the ultimate measure at the cross of Jesus Christ, to bring every sinner back home.

But only sinners qualify for salvation. Sin, in fact, is the only prerequisite for salvation (Luke 5:32). The gay community has determined that homosexual sex is not a sin. The Bible says, very clearly, that it is.

The Bible does not try to list every sin. Jesus used catch-all words like "fornication" to imply sexual immorality of all sorts, which (his listeners knew) included adultery, incest, homosexuality, pedophilia, etc. (Jesus was not condoning child molestation just because he did not specifically say the word!)

He did say (Matthew 5:18) that not one jot or tittle of the O.T. law (which specifically mentioned these sins) would be relaxed. Moreover, in the Sermon on the Mount he repeatedly ratcheted up the Old Testament law to include even the thoughts we harbor in our hearts. (Matthew 5:21-32). Jesus made the Old Testament laws look lenient.

Jesus spoke specifically and unmistakably of homosexuality when he said that Sodom would have repented if they had heard and seen what Capernaum had heard and seen from him. (Matthew 11:21-23)

This is a clear reference to Sodom's need for repentance from their signature sin--homosexuality. To his audience, "Sodom" was as unmistakably a reference to homosexuality as "Vegas" is to gambling.

The Christian community is the gay person's best and truest friend in this culture. They are the only ones who love the gay person enough to tell him the truth. They are willing to be despised themselves in order to bring the gay person back into a relationship with God. But in return for their compassion they are called homophobes and haters. In return for their concern they are despised.

Ironically, to me they are more Christ-like in this--for which they are so roundly reviled--than in other spheres. Anyone who reads these articles knows that I am not a cheerleader for the church. But I can testify to their earnest and constant prayer on behalf of the homosexual community. So I applaud the church in this regard. It would be so much easier to just let the cookie crumble.

Which the cookie will, unless the course we’re on is altered. Throughout history, where homosexuality has proliferated, it has accelerated demise. God just seems to let decadence run its course (Romans 1:26). He doesn't lift a hand; he just withdraws it – which is the most terrifying prospect of all.

***

That's the biblical perspective, Thomas, which is the only perspective I trust. I hope that begins to answer your questions. You have a big, big heart. Please feel free to bring any further question to our attention.

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the secret things

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 31

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)


I don’t receive many text messages, so the other day I almost jumped when, out of the blue, my cell phone started buzzing and flashing and chirping and all the other things it does when it has a message for me.

All the sound and fury was startling enough, but even more startling was what the message said. It was from Shelley, of course (no one else knows my cell phone number) and it was a love note of the type you might have received in the 8th grade on a slip of paper while the teacher’s back was turned.

I do not receive many love notes these days (nor did I in the 8th grade, to tell the truth) so it was a very special moment. I even saved it on my phone so I’ll always have proof that someone besides God loves me.

Anyway, after my special moment came and went, I started thinking about the mechanics of such a sweet sentiment. (I know, it takes a real winner to reduce a love note to its mechanics.) I started thinking about how it got from Shelley at work (across town) all the way to me (across town from her).

I was thinking mechanically, but not technically, so I don’t really know the precise vocabulary for whatever it was that carried that message across town. Maybe it was a radio wave, or an electromagnetic impulse, or a light beam for all I know.

What I do know is that neither you nor I nor Copernicus nor Kepler nor Newton nor Einstein nor Marconi nor Alexander Graham Bell nor Steve Jobs nor all the nerds at NASA and MIT had anything to do with creating (or even inventing) whatever it was that carried that message across town.

We may have discovered radio waves, or infrared, or particle beams, but we had nothing to do with thinking them up or making them. God made the goldmine, so to speak, and we more or less fell into the shaft.

***

That led me to thinking about how miraculous all these things would seem to a person born 100 years ago. Which in turn led to thinking about what gold mines (so to speak) God has made that we haven’t discovered yet.

Which led me to thinking that maybe someday you and I will be able to zip all the way across town in the time it took Shelley’s little love message to zip its way to me. You might laugh, but 100 years ago it probably seemed less likely that a message would ever fly through the air on nothing than it seems (to us today) that we will ever get from here to there in the time it takes to think of where we’re going.

***

Such thoughts do not emanate from science fiction but from biblical fact:

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

Q. What secret things?
A. We don’t know; if we did they wouldn’t be secret!)

Q. How many of these secret things are there?
A. My guess is that an infinite God has thought up an infinite amount of things not yet revealed. My further hypothesis is that infinity isn’t long enough to unveil all of God’s secrets. It’s not that God is secretive; it’s just that forever is too short a time.

But let’s not strain our brains over such questions, because here’s another Bible fact:

Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

We don’t even have imaginations that can enter into the things God has prepared, so rest your weary heads my little buckaroos.

We see through a glass darkly, with eyes and ears and imaginations that aren’t capable of perceiving things right in front of our faces—let alone the things God has made that are even farther out.

So for now, let’s just send him a message the way we know how. Let’s tell him we love him and let our words ride his sound waves all the way to wherever they will find him.

The message won’t take long to get there. According to the Bible (1), if we send it today, it will get there yesterday.

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(1) Isaiah 46:10

harps in the midst -- part 2

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 29, 30

In his attempts to get through to us, God will stop at nothing.

First, he uses words. What we call the Ten Commandments, Israel knew as the Ten Words.

When they broke his Words, God resorted to prophetic pictures. They could view these prophecies as a painting is viewed, from a distance. From a detached perspective they were shown what their continued disregard for his Ten Words would bring them:

From Deuteronomy 28:15-68:

(15) But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.
(36) The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone.
(37) And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away.
(41) You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity.
(64) And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
(65) And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul.

Despite these pictures, they continued to break his laws. So God placed them inside the pictures; they themselves became the fulfillment of his prophecies. Suddenly they found themselves transported into the very midst of the scene. There, from Babylon, they looked back upon the land they had lost:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land? (Psalms 137:1-4)

***

The same progression –from word to graphic warning to fulfillment—had already occurred in the Garden of Eden. First, God gave Adam just one Word, not Ten:

"Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. (Genesis 2:16-17a)

Then he showed them what disobedience would bring upon them:

For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:17b)

Then they found themselves banished for their disobedience, in fulfillment of his word and warning. As they departed, they looked back upon the Paradise thy had lost:

So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:24)

For their disobedience, Adam and Eve found themselves outside the garden’s east entrance.

For his fratricide, Cain found himself in the land of Nod, further east of Eden (Genesis 4:16).

Old Testament Israel found herself banished to Babylon, even further east of Eden.

Subsequent to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, New Testament Israel found herself dispersed throughout the earth, just as Jesus had foretold:

"But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation is near.
For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.
For there will be great distress in the land and wrath upon this people.
And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (from Luke 21:20-24)

One of them, a rich man who lived sumptuously, found himself in hell, looking back upon what he had lost:

And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.' Then he said, 'I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.' Abraham said to him, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' But he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.' " (Luke 16:23-31)

***

God has given us his word and his warning; we’ve been shown what lies ahead.

We can either test his word with our faith, or we can test his word with our disregard. Either way, his word will pass the test and we shall find ourselves relocated into a picture already painted.

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harps in the midst -- part 1

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 28:15-68

By the rivers dark,
In a wounded dawn,
I live my life
In Babylon.

Though I take my song
From a withered limb,
Both song and tree,
They sing for him.

Be the truth unsaid
And the blessing gone,
If I forget
My Babylon.

I did not know
And I could not see
Who was waiting there,
Who was hunting me.

By the rivers dark,
Where it all goes on;
By the rivers dark
In Babylon.
                      --Leonard Cohen, 2001

In his attempts to get through to us, God will stop at nothing.

First, he uses words. What we call the Ten Commandments, Israel knew as the Ten Words.

When they broke his Words, God resorted to pictures, called prophecies. They could view these prophecies as a painting is viewed, from a distance. From a detached perspective they were shown what their continued disregard for his Ten Words would bring them:

From Deuteronomy 28:15-68:

(15) But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.
(16) Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field.
(20) The LORD will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me.
(21) The LORD will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
(28) The LORD will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind,
(30) You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit.
(32) Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless.
(36) The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone.
(37) And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the LORD will lead you away.
(41) You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity.

(49) The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand,
(50) a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.
(52) They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the LORD your God has given you.
(53) And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.
(64) And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.
(65) And among these nations you shall find no respite, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot, but the LORD will give you there a trembling heart and failing eyes and a languishing soul.

***

Despite these pictures, they continued to break his laws. So God placed them inside the pictures; they themselves became the fulfillment of his prophecies. Suddenly they found themselves transported into the very midst of the scene. There, from Babylon, they looked back upon the land they had lost:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
     yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land? (Psalms 137:1-4)

***

Tomorrow, you and I will enter the picture.

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in Jerusalem, in Gerazim, in spirit, and in truth

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 27:1-28:14


God told Israel to destroy "the high paces" (mountaintop shrines) of the pagan religion in the new land (Deuteronomy 12:2).

He then informed them that he would lead them to the "the place the LORD your God will choose to put his Name there for his dwelling." (Deuteronomy 12:5)

Eventually, the designated place was Jerusalem. But even before that, Israel was to worship in one place only.

The Israelites first set up the Tabernacle at Shiloh. Later, when David captured Jerusalem, he made that city his capital and brought the Ark of the Covenant there in preparation for the construction of a temple for God.

The single temple in Jerusalem unified their worship until the Samaritans challenged the idea of a "proper" place to honor God and, in 400 B.C., built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim (the "mount of blessing" in today's reading.)

This point of contention became a subject for discussion when Jesus spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:19-24). Jesus' response to her denominationalism was that God seeks those who worship him "in spirit and in truth."

Many of us still think of worship in the way the woman at the well thought about it. Some of us are still tied to a place of worship, even when that place starts to depart from the Person of Jesus Christ.

Believers no longer meet in one place but around one Person. We can worship in Shiloh, in Jerusalem, in Gerizim, in Luckenbach, Texas, or in Outwater Park, as long as we worship in spirit and in truth.

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“Righteousness and peace have kissed.”

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 26


Does the Bible contradict itself? Consider:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them,
then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives,
and they shall say to the elders of his city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.'
Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear. (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)

There was a man who had two sons.
And the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.” And he divided his property between them.
Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.
But when he came to himself, he said,
“I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you…’”
And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. (Luke 15:11-20)

Why isn’t the son in the book of Luke punished, as the book of Deuteronomy demands?

This apparent contradiction is no contradiction at all to the student of the entire word of God. The passage from Deuteronomy comes from the Law. The law demands that we get what we deserve. The passage from Luke is an example of God’s grace. Grace is when we get good things that we don’t deserve.

The purpose of the law is to lead us to God’s grace. The law is a tutor, showing us that we have fallen short of God’s standard, taking us by the hand to ask for God’s forgiveness:

Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Gal 3:24/NKJV)

You can see the law at work in the life of the Prodigal Son. The son tells the Father that he does not deserve to be called his son. The boy is right. So we see that the law is right. And it is for our good.

But the law cannot restore us to the inheritance we have forfeited through sin. Only God’s grace makes it possible for Him to shower His blessing upon us. The Father restored all that the boy had squandered, and more.

Is the Law still in effect? Absolutely. The wages of sin is still death (Romans 6:23).

The Good News is that God has a Way back home! Jesus took upon Himself the demands of the law for all those who look to Him for their salvation. That's what Jesus meant when He said, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” (Matthew 5:17)

Jesus paid it all, so God’s law in Deuteronomy is fulfilled to the last letter. And His love is showered upon us, just as the story of the Prodigal Son describes. There is no contradiction in the Bible, or in the character of God.

The seeming contradictions--between the Old and New Testaments, between God's law and his grace, between the prodigal boy in Deuteronomy and the prodigal boy in Luke--are reconciled at the cross of Jesus Christ, where God combined uncompromising wrath against sin with unconditional forgiveness. There at the cross, in a display of the entire spectrum of His character,

Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed. (Psalms 85:10)

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Aaron is us

The Word for today:
Deuteronomy 24, 25


Aaron is often overlooked by Christians. We know him, vaguely, as Moses’ brother, but other than that he gets lost in the background.

So if Aaron is lost to you, find him! We have a whole lot to learn from Aaron, because Aaron is us.

Moses foreshadows Jesus Christ as the lawgiver and the Deliverer:

Moses pronounced the law at Mt. Sinai; Jesus pronounced the enhanced version of the law in the Sermon on the Mount.

Moses led the people of Israel out of their captivity in Egypt; Jesus led captivity itself captive:
When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men. (Ephesians 4:8)

1. Aaron, as Moses’ prophet (1), foreshadows the church, who proclaim the grace and truth of Jesus Christ.

The church-era prophet is a forth-teller, proclaiming the Word of the LORD which was already spoken through Moses, Samuel, David, Matthew, Paul, Peter, etc. The church-era prophet, then, is very much in the position of Aaron the prophet.

2. Aaron as priest foreshadows the church, who are a kingdom of priests (2).

How can we be both prophet and priest?

When I write this blog, or when you tuck your kids in bed with a Bible story, or when you stand for God’s Word in a discussion at work, then we are functioning as prophets like Aaron.
When we pray for someone, we are functioning as priests like Aaron.

3. The tribes were given an allotment in the Promised Land. But as a Levite (the tribe assigned to religious duties) Aaron received no inheritance in the Promised Land. Instead, God was his inheritance. That is the position of the believer today.

God has promised us spiritual blessings; He Himself is our inheritance. The church is never promised temporal blessings. Be sure that he will feed and clothe us, like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. But we should not direct our prayers or expectations toward material blessings. Our prayers and expectations should be focused on an ever-closer relationship with God. He is our portion and our cup.

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(1) Exodus 4:15-16; 7:1; (2) 1Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6; 5:10; 20:6