Day 70: Good Twin, Bad Twin

Matthew 21:28-31 

New Living Translation (NLT)

Image by Flyinfrogg @ Deviant Art

Parable of the Two Sons

²⁸ “But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, ‘Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.’ ²⁹ The son answered, ‘No, I won’t go,’ but later he changed his mind and went anyway. ³⁰ Then the father told the other son, ‘You go,’ and he said, ‘Yes, sir, I will.’ But he didn’t go.

^{31 (a)} “Which of the two obeyed his father?”

***

So who do you think was the more obedient son? If you guessed  the first, you aren't alone. Jesus asked this question when He went into the temple to teach, and even the priests and elders answered correctly. Sadly, though, I don't think they got the point.

A lot of people today don't get the point either. There are those who wear their Christianity like a badge, as though they were the thought police of the world. They stand on street corners holding signs that say "You'll Burn In Hell". They have no compassion for the hurting in their midst, but have plenty of condemnation dripping from their lips. They have a ready defense for their own actions, but spare nobody their self-righteous diatribe. 

But I'm not really even talking about them. That kind of hypocrisy is so obvious that it doesn't need someone like me to point it out. When Jesus had given sufficient time for his audience to answer the question, He elaborated. He said John the Baptist had come and shown them the right way to live, and they had dismissed him as irrelevant. He was talking to the Sadducees and the Pharisees, those who held positions as priests and teachers, those who were supposed to be the religious leaders of the day. And he was telling them that if they didn't repent of their sins, they'd be standing outside the Gate watching the the prostitutes and tax collectors enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The point He was making was that some of us think our farts smell like roses because we claim to have Jesus. Some of us go around thinking we're safe from the fires of hell because we're saved and sanctified. And yet, we continue living a life that makes God's stomach turn. We don't repent; We think God has given us a wink and a nod, because we repeated the words of a sinner's prayer that some preacher recited for us 20 years ago, or last week.

Let me tell ya something. When we accept Christ as our Savior, it had better be coming from our heart! It had better be because we recognize how nasty and filthy and undeserving we are! I don't mean to offend those who use the 'Sinner's Prayer' as a tool in witnessing, but I honestly believe that if a person feels the need to get right with God, he should come up with his own words, no matter how few they are! It doesn't have to be an eloquent speech. 

The trouble is, the whole "repeat after me" version of salvation doesn't make the experience personal enough. When my daughters were young and would do something to make the other cry, I'd make the offender tell her sister "I'm sorry". Did she mean it? Probably not. Even if she really was sorry and sincerely meant the words she uttered, it wasn't believable, because she'd been told what to say. Sure, God can tell if a person is sincerely repentant, but I wonder; Does the person repenting believe the words he repeated?

There are a lot of people in the world who think they're exempt from the coming judgement. They accepted Christ with their mouths, but not in their hearts. They give lip service to God, but don't reflect Him in their lives. They unashamedly live immoral and decadent lives, doing whatever makes them feel good. They shack up with a lover, or indulge in gay relationships, they beat their children or spit on homeless people. They steal from their employer or they tell lies about their neighbor. 

But they show up on church every Sunday morning and call it all good.

Meanwhile, that hooker down at 5th and Main? She's hating herself. She is filled with self-loathing. She keeps selling herself because nobody has loved her enough to show her a better way. She spends what she makes on booze or drugs to make her numb, so she can keep on existing the only way she knows how. She feels worthless because she knows her life is worthless without Christ. 

She's the one who, when she reaches rock bottom and cries out to Jesus, it's a gut-wrenching, soul searching, heart-aching guttural cry that may not even formulate into words. But you can bet He understands every painful inflection in her voice. And when she gives herself to Him, she knows it must be completely. She doesn't want to look back on the life of sin she's been living. It didn't bring her any joy, and she won't miss it when its gone. She's going to have a long road ahead of her, and she might stumble along the way, but she's going to keep falling forward into the arms of grace.

So who are you? Are you the hooker, ready to give up everything in your comfort zone to serve God? Or are you the Pharisee sitting in your easy chair, surrounded by all the pleasures you think God doesn't really expect you to give up?

You call Him "lord". But is He really LORD over your life?

Day 69: Pass The Salt!

By Jorge Royan [CC-BY-SA-3.0]

Matthew 5:13

New Living Translation (NLT)

Teaching about Salt and Light

¹³ “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

***

Salt of the Earth. Have you ever wondered what that meant? Why does God want us to be whatever it is? 

Maybe you haven't wondered. Maybe I'm just the big dummy that always struggled with the concept of making myself like table salt. Even after I started making my own jewelry and branding it "Earth Psalts", I had a hard time figuring out how to explain it. And then one day, I watched a documentary called Salt: Tears Of The Earth, and I started understanding why salt is so important. 

So here we go; Let's talk about salt.

The Bible talks about it a great deal, more than I ever realized. In three of the Gospels, we are told to be the salt of the earth. Matthew says that once salt has lost its flavor, it's worthless. Luke goes even further and says that without flavor, salt isn't good enough to be thrown on the soil or the dung heap. Mark says to have salt within yourself and be at peace with others. All three of them ask how flavorless salt can get its saltiness back.

Colossians says to season your words with salt so that you know how to answer people. Leviticus says to season your offerings and sacrifices with salt. Elijah performed a miracle with it. Babies were rubbed with it, borders were defined by it, cities and seas were named after it. Even the Lord's covenants were compared to it.

Historically, salt was always a precious commodity, and was one of the earliest forms of currency. Civilizations could not have developed without salt, and the more highly developed civilizations arose around areas where salt deposits were plentiful. Physically, salt is necessary to sustain life, but it's not typically found in sufficient amounts in a vegetarian diet. Even animals need salt to survive. Hunters and ranchers alike put out salt licks for domestic and wild plant-eating animals to be able to get what they need. Wild moose are often seen licking salt from the sides of roads. I read that somewhere today, although I don't know why salt would accumulate near roads, except in densely populated areas where the roads might get de-iced in winter. 

But to understand how we could possibly be all that salt can be, we have to understand the properties of salt. So consider this a crash course, and salute yourself if you ever have the occasion to win a game of trivial pursuit with your new found knowledge.

Trivia 1: Salt is essential to life, but must be in balance. Both too much and too little salt can be fatal. 

I think everybody knows that drinking seawater is really dangerous, and most of us know that you can literally drown yourself internally by drinking too much regular water. In both cases, your body is depleted of necessary nutrients. Either your brain and organs become dehydrated from consuming too much salt, or you've consumed so much water that you've diluted your body's salt content. Either way, you die. Knowing this makes me think of the time that I accidentally salted the Kool-Aid at my daughter's house. In my defense, she had filled her sugar canister with salt, and I assumed I was sweetening the drink. We discovered the error when my son-in-law came in and gulped down a glass full so quickly that his stomach revolved before his taste buds could even register. I recall how we laughed about it at the time (after he'd vomited it back up), not realizing just how tragic it could have been.

By the time we finish this chapter, it will probably be pretty clear, from a Biblical perspective, what happens to the spiritual health of a nation that is lacking in saltiness. The closest I can come to providing a Biblical analogy of too much salt is when Lot's wife defied the instructions not to look back on the city that God was destroying. I would like to think that it was her heart, rather than her head, that prompted God to turn her into a life-sized salt-lick. Yes, she turned around and looked, and that was an act of disobedience. But was it just an act of curiosity, like that morbid instinct we humans have to rubberneck the scene of an accident as we drive past? Or did she look back in regret and sorrow for having to leave the wicked city? Oh well, that's a question for another day. Or never.

Trivia 2: Salt is formed by a chemical reaction between sodium and chlorine gas.

Sodium is an unstable metal by itself, but when it is paired with chlorine gas, it stabilizes and becomes this amazing compound that is beneficial on so many levels! The same can be said of humans. Apart from God, we are unstable, disaster prone, wicked wretches. But when we pair up with God, there's this transformation that begins taking place. We become stronger, and more grounded, because the Holy Spirit lives within us. We are purified through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. 

Trivia 3: Salt is a preservative.

Have you ever canned or pickled vegetables? One of the primary ingredients is salt. It is the substance that preserves your veggies so they can  have a long shelf life in your pantry. Meat is also sometimes preserved by salt, in a process known as curing. The salt draws the water content out, and inhibits bacterial growth.

Likewise, we are preserved by God. His word is eternal, and our lives are eternal. Not our bodies, those perish, but once we've accepted His gift of salvation, our souls will live forever.

Trivia 4: Salt is durable and transportable.

Although salt is required to sustain life, it doesn't take much. It is found naturally in abundance, and can be harvested in a variety of way. It is naturally renewable, so we'll never run out of it. Combine those little facts with the chemical stability of salt, and you have an ingredient that can make itself at home on any table, anywhere in the world.

When we accept Christ and start studying God's word, learning how to live a life that is pleasing to Him, we become spiritually strong enough to withstand anything the world might throw at us. We can go into any country, no matter how war-torn or under how much persecution, and share the salt with those who are needing it.

Trivia 5: Salt provides a reflective surface that is used to calibrate equipment.

The world's largest salt flat covers more than 4,000 square miles. It is often covered with a thin layer of melt-water, which becomes like one gigantic mirror. This natural phenomenon is used for calibrating scientific equipment in space.

When we are 'salty', we're reflecting God's holiness in our lives. Although we're not going to be able to produce a perfect mirror image, we do reflect enough of His nature to shine light in a spiritually darkened world.

Trivia 6: The presence of salt indicates the presence of oil.

Back in the early 1900s, there was a guy named Anthony Lucas. He was the first to put two and two together and determine that the presence of salt indicated the presence of oil. His theory was proven with Spindle Top, aka the Lucas Gusher, an oil well near Beaumont, TX that shot a steady stream of oil 197 feet into the air for nine days straight. This was the beginning of the "black gold rush".

Just like what kick-started the petroleum industry more than a century ago, the presence of salt in us indicates something much deeper, much richer, and much more important even than salt. Salt may be necessary for sustaining life on earth, but God, through His son Jesus Christ, is the only way we are able to have an eternal life. 

Whew. That's a lot of salt to digest. I wish I had time to go through and rearrange the order of my trivia facts, but I've spent a long day running errands, and I'm on my way even now to pick up my mom. Later, perhaps, I'll get around to ordering it so that it flows better, but for now, at least all the points I wanted to make are in there.

Day 66: Man Overboard!

Jonah 4:1-3

New Living Translation (NLT)

Whale Shark by Jon Hanson, cc-by-sa-2.0

Jonah’s Anger at the Lord’s Mercy

This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. ² So he complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. ³ Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.”

***

We've all heard of Jonah, right? The guy that gets swallowed by a whale and lives to tell about it? Yeah, well a lot of people don't believe such a thing could have happened, so let's get the elephant out of the room first, or the whale, if you will, and then we'll talk about the important stuff.

Whether you believe the Bible to be literal, figurative, or a mix of both, you've probably wondered just how a person could have survived a whale's stomach. I should point out that the Bible doesn't specifically call it a whale. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Maybe whatever it was no longer exists all these thousands of years later. That's irrelevant. Could it have happened?

Yeah, it could have. There are whales that still exist who are capable of swallowing a human being (and even larger creatures). Some of these whales are even toothless. And they're huge animals! The whale shark, for example, can reach 30,000 lbs (that's 15 thousand tons!) and 45 feet in length. So here's how it happens. They open their mouths and take in whatever floats their way. Then somehow or other they spew the water back out. I'm not real knowledgeable about whale anatomy, but I did glance over some material about their digestive system.

Some of these toothless whales, maybe all of them, have multiple chambers in their stomach, some as large as a decent sized bedroom. In at least one of these whales there is even a 'storage chamber' of sorts located in the sinus cavity, where there are no digestive enzymes, so there isn't any decomposition going on. If the contents in the storage chamber cause distress, they can be emptied. Put another way, the whale can sneeze out anything that tickles its nose.

The big issue seems to be whether or not a human would fit down the esophagus. I don't know much about the anatomy of a 450 lb giant squid, either, but those are a favorite meal for some whales. There have been rumors of humans and animals being found alive in the carcasses of whales, but I haven't found anything to substantiate those claims. Still, it does seem as though it could be remotely possible, even if unlikely. In any event, nothing is too big for God, even a whale. He can make anything happen.

So now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's forget the whale for a minute. This event takes place somewhere around 750 years before Christ came along. Nineveh was the thriving capital city of Assyria. It was such a big city that it would take three days to see it all. They didn't have cars back then, so I'm thinking it would probably take three days to walk around a city the size of, say, Las Vegas. That's if you didn't stop to have fun along the tour. So it's a pretty big city, with an impressive population. God didn't like what was going on in the city, and told Jonah to go do something about it. Jonah didn't want to do as he was told though, and instead bought a ticket and boarded a ship headed in the opposite direction.

That night, Jonah was sleeping soundly in his room on the ship, when a terrible storm came up totally out of nowhere. The captain and crew had never experienced anything quite so severe, and were more than a little scared. They started pointing fingers at each other, accusing each other of doing something to anger the gods. They all swore to their own innocence though, and finally they cast lots to see who was to blame. Casting lots is kind of like rolling the dice, or drawing straws. What a thing to leave to chance. Seems about as reliable as shaking a Crazy 8 ball. But however they played this game of chance that they took so seriously, they were all convinced it pointed to Jonah as the culprit.

So the captain goes and wakes Jonah up from his sleep. It's a wonder he hadn't woken up already! The captain and crew weren't very happy with him, and started bombarding him with questions.

Who are you? What god do you serve? What could you have possibly done to make your god so angry? Most importantly, what can you do to fix it?

Jonah admitted he was guilty as charged. He was the one at whom God was directing His anger. What god? The God of heaven and earth, the one true, living God. Why? Because Jonah didn't want to go where God told him to go, didn't want to do what God told him to do, so he was headed for Tarshish instead. The only hope for everyone else was to throw Jonah overboard.

Yikes! The ship's crew had heard of the God of the Israelites, and knew He was a force to be reckoned with. They were afraid to throw Jonah overboard for fear that his God would turn His anger back on them. So they tried everything they could to get the boat to shore. The storm kept getting worse, though, and finally they agreed to throw Jonah into the raging waters; But not before they prayed to God!  They pleaded with God not to make them die for Jonah's sin, and with that, they threw him into the abyss.

Much to their amazement, the storm ceased immediately. They fell to their knees and thanked God for having spared them, and from that day on, they served and worshiped only the one true God.

Meanwhile, Jonah was sinking deeper and deeper into the sea. He described the water closing in over him, seaweed wrapping around his head and body, and sinking deep, deeper, and ever deeper. He may have been hallucinating when he said he sank to the roots of the mountains and was trapped in the earth. He remembered being aware that his life was slipping away from him. It was at that very moment as he was losing his grip on reality, that a some sort of great fish, probably a whale but maybe some other huge sea animal, swallowed him up. Barely able to form a single thought, from somewhere deep inside of him Jonah began praying. He didn't pray for himself, he prayed for those who worshiped false gods and turned their backs on the Lord's tender mercies. I can imagine he spent the next three days drifting in and out of consciousness. I'm sure he spent a lot of time praying even when he wasn't fully awake. I've done that, so it's easy to picture him doing it too. At some point he said his prayers became earnest and he promised to answer the call, and fulfill his vow to God.

Achooooooo!

Out came Jonah, sneezed out onto the beach. He must have dipped himself into the sea to bathe off the slime and whale-snot before he set off towards the great city of Nineveh. As soon as he arrived, he began shouting as loud as he could. 

In forty days, God is going to destroy this city!

In a world where nobody much cared what real prophets had to say, people stopped and took notice of Jonah. God had already prepared their hearts to be receptive, I guess, because instead of running him out of town or trying to kill him, they began to fast and pray, truly repentant. Even the king got off his thrown, changed from royal robes to a burlap sackcloth garment, and put ashes on his head in sorrow. He sent out a decree that nobody was allowed to eat or drink, and both human and animals had to be draped in burlap. No more violence or bloodshed was going to be tolerated. He demanded everybody repent and stop their wicked ways.

God was pleased with their response to His warning, and relented. Because they were sorry, He wasn't going to destroy them after all. That should have been cause for rejoicing, right? You'd think Jonah would have been happy that they'd just diverted tragedy.

But instead he got angry and threw a tantrum worthy of a two year old. 

See, God, this is why I didn't want to come here! From the minute you said to come warn the Nenevites,I knew you'd change your mind! You always do! You forgive too easily! That's why I got on the ship and set sail for Tarshish, I knew you'd make a fool of me! God, I'm going to have to live with the embarrassment of having a failed prophecy on my head! Just kill me now, it would be better than living with this shame!

Pretty selfish, huh? Yeah, God thought so too. Thousands of people had just been spared their lives because they repented, and all Jonah could think about was how it affected him. He could have, should have praised the Lord for the opportunity to have been a part of reconciling the people to God. Either way, he would never be forgotten for his role in the situation. But instead of going down in history as the whiny, selfish coward who would rather see a whole city of people perish than to be perceived as a false prophet, he could have been remembered as the man whom God used to bring salvation (of sorts) to a nation.

So what is the point here? I suppose it is this; No matter how weak, scared, cowardly, or stupid we are, God can use us to accomplish His will. Sometimes, just to prove a point, He will even use our rebellion to do double duty, as was the case with Jonah. Not only did the Ninevites live because they heard the message God sent through Jonah, but a whole boat load of people from different nations and religious backgrounds surrendered their faith to our heavenly Father.

Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.