ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE CHRISTMAS STORY FROM THE GOSPEL OF JOHN?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 

The Word

In the beginning, from before the beginning

There was God—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

In perfect union, eternal love communing.

He spoke His grace before there were ears to hear it.

He sent His Son, the Word from all eternity,

The fullness of the God-head in maternity.

God spoke the light. He spoke the truth. He spoke Himself.

He spoke the whirling spheres and vast expanse to be.

He spoke the skies and seas and earth with all its wealth.

He formed the world and all in it that lives and breathes.

Every molecule knows the wisdom of His heart,

The plants and living creatures bear His mark.

He spoke His Son. He spoke to men. He spoke to me.

For in His time the Holy One to earth has come.

And in His great love He spoke the cross eternally.

From the beginning was His plan, His grace, His Son.

The wonder of His love the world has seen and heard,

As God declared, “In the beginning was the Word.”

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SLEEPING WITH OUR FATHERS

This is an appropriate week to come to the conclusion of Jacob’s blessing to his children in Genesis 49.

“I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field at Machpelah. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah. When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.”

I was particularly stirred Sunday morning as we sang, 

“O come O come Emmanuel, 

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here, 

Until the Son of God appear.”

Like Israel, we are all subject to death. In Acts 13 we are assured that David died. And like Isaac, he was laid with his fathers.

“For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, 

fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption,”

Acts 13:36

All of us will sleep with those who went before us. This week we celebrate the coming of Jesus who also came to die. But He died in our place. His death brought the promise of resurrection. Another verse of the hymn cries.

“O come, Thou Dayspring from on high,

And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.”

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HANDWRITING IN THE DIRT

 

John 8:3 & 4

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, 

and placing her in the midst they said to him, 

“Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery.” 

 WRITING IN THE DIRT

“This woman,” they proclaimed, “was caught in adultery!”

We know she is guilty; caught in the act!”

Dumped in a heap of her ignominy,

The measure of her sin a proven fact.

Jesus knelt in their presence and began to write,

Flagrantly ignoring their demands and rights.

They had burst forth displaying their arrogance.

By religiosity they were in control.

They staged this challenge as a public performance,

Grinning behind their hands to watch the play unfold.

His ignoring response they could hardly abide.

He scratched his finger in the dirt of their pride.

They’d planned this event gathering rocks in their hands.

Such a sinful woman would be the perfect tool.

They would trick Him into taking a stand,  

Catch Him in compassion and prove Him a fool.

But kneeling to the ground He scribbled at their feet.

Writing something down in the dirt of their deceit.

They waited on one foot and then on the other.

What was He doing? What was He writing?

Puzzled, they glanced back and forth at one another,

Rolling their eyes, their frustrations biting.

He was stretching every nerve of their irritations,

Writing in the dirt of their impatience.

But they turned away from eldest to the youngest

When He said, “Let him without sin cast first.”

 The oldest in their shame may be wisest among us.

Men who are seasoned can know themselves worst.

 Kneeling down to write, He had them from the start.

Writing in the dirt of their own convicting hearts.

He stood with the woman whose devotion He’d drawn.

“Where are those casting stones in condemnation?”

“None of them is left, Lord. All of them are gone.”

“Then, sin no more in the dirt of temptation.”

He brings forgiveness for those who know His love’s worth.

Have you seen His handwriting in the dirt?

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SHALL THE RAVENOUS INHERIT THE EARTH?

 

“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey 

and at evening dividing the spoil.”

Genesis 49:27

I have been struggling with the meaning and application of this prophecy about Jacob's final son Benjamin. What does it mean? What is God saying to us?

In her research, a writer friend of mine ran across the suggestion that the prophecy about Benjamin being a ravenous wolf had to do with the whole fiasco in the final chapters of Judges, beginning with the Levite and his concubine and the wicked deeds done in a city of Benjamin. When the tribe of Benjamin was asked to turn over the criminals, they went to war, instead of allowing perverse criminals to pay for their horrid deeds. This  resulted in thousands of deaths and the almost complete destruction of their own tribe. 

Their dividing of the spoils of war was not in voluntary repentance. They received the spoils from the other tribes who had realized that it would be a terrible thing for an entire tribe to be lost from The Children of Israel.

The theme of those final chapters of Judges is declared in chapter 17 and repeated in chapter 21.

"In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

Judges 17:6

As we run our businesses, conduct our politics, and live our lives in a grant no quarter and take no prisoners mindset, we set ourselves up for ultimate destruction. 

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I AM!

 But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

(The words, “It is I.” translate the Greek words ἐγώ εἰμι, which literally read, 

“I am.” Jesus said, “I am. Do not be afraid.”)

 DON’T BE AFRAID. I AM!

Fears eclipsed as darkness fell upon the sea.

Winds whipped and tossed the ship upon the rollers.

The screaming gale brought the chattering of teeth,

With clinging dread and water rising to their molars. 

They had good cause to be swallowed up in fear,

With the loss of life looming ever nearer.

 

Then on roiling seas they spied an apparition.

It strolled across the waves in human form,

Looming anonymously in imposition,

Stalking ominously through the violent storm.

“A ghost!” 

Their screams were louder than the howling winds.

The boast of dread beyond the storm did now portend.

 

Every eye fixed upon it. Every heart raced.

Their cries ceased with the abandon of the damned.

Such a specter even seasoned sailors could not face.

Then He spoke with reason, “Do not be afraid; I AM!” 

He then caused the wind to cease, and their dreadful tears.

They now paused to tremble in a different kind of fear.

 

“What sort of man is this, 

To whom the wind and seas submit?”

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Continuation Of MY FINAL BLESSING

THE SOURCE OF BLESSING 

As we come to the celebration of Thanksgiving, we need to remind ourselves of the source of all blessings. James 1:17 tells us that every good gift and every perfect gift comes from above.

We see this vividly in Jacob’s blessing to Joseph in Genesis 49.

Genesis 49:22-26 gives us two pictures of our Lord’s blessings that I thought we did not see until much later in Scripture.

The blessing begins with Joseph’s fruitfulness.

“Joseph is a fruitful bough,

    a fruitful bough by a spring;

    his branches run over the wall.”

It then recounts Joseph’s steady response to bitter attack. 

“The archers bitterly attacked him,

    shot at him, and harassed him severely,

yet his bow remained unmoved;

    his arms were made agile

by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob”

Joseph’s strength comes from the Mighty One of Jacob. And look what else Jacob calls the Lord. He first says the Lord is his Shepherd. I would have said our Lord was not called our Shepherd until the 23rd Psalm. From the beginning of Scripture we see God who leads us gently in love and provision.

Next these verses call Him "The Stone of Israel. In 1 Corinthians 10:4 Paul refers to the water that God brought out of the rock in the wilderness.

“And all drank the same spiritual drink. 

For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, 

and the Rock was Christ.”

In 1 Samuel 2:2 we are reminded,

“There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God.”

He is the foundation of all stability in our lives.

As we gather this week to give thanks to our Lord this week we can give thanks for our Heavenly Father’s loving direction, His abundante provision, and His faithful stability in our lives and upon the earth.

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WHAT WE SEE OUR FATHER DOING

 

“So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, 

but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”

John 5:19

I used to help my father with our daily chores.

I would hold the light or share a minor load,

But I couldn’t do much without him in or out of doors. 

I was only able to do what he showed.

They called me my father’s little helper, true,

But I could only manage what he helped me do.

So God the Father was with the Incarnate Son.

Jesus only did what He saw His Father do,

Following through with what the Father had begun.

Always alert to the heavenly cue,

He pointed out, when God’s power was brewing,

“I only do what I see my Father doing.”

So, in these last days God extends this option

For those who seek the Father and His arms run to.

Upon His own He gives this sign of adoption.

God loves His children and shows them what He’s up to.

He reduplicates in us this age-old story.

Thus to Himself alone God reserves His glory.

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WHAT DOES YOUR LIFE PRODUCE

 

Out of Asher his bread shall be fat, and he shall yield royal dainties.

Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words.

Genesis 49:20-21 KJV

 

America has produced many wonderful things that have blessed the entire world. The blessings bequeathed to Asher and Naphtali are productivity.

As The celebration of Thanksgiving approaches we ought especially to appreciate the wonderful foods produced by our own tribe. Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving delight? Most of us have several. Aren’t you glad that God provides such wonderful means of obtaining the nutrition our bodies need? I am also thrilled that He put me in a family with so many marvelous cooks.

I also love those with the blessing of Naphtali who lavish us with delicious and nourishing words. I have never been able to write beautifully. But I thank God that I live in a world with men whose words sing like Wordsworth’s and nourish like those of C.S. Lewis. I also thank God for so many kinds of art and creativity. How many clever and beautiful creations are produced by people created in the image of the God who designed Dragonflies and painted Tiger Swallowtails.

I used the King James version of these verses because it is one of the few versions that translate verse 21 literally. This gives us a wonderful beginning of the meaning of this verse. However, Hebrew is a metaphoric language. And the metaphor of the lovely words spoken by a doe are her beautiful fawns. And the most beautiful and effective words we speak are those whose lives we influence. Paul wrote to his spiritual children in his second letter to the church in Corinth.  

“And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

2 Corinthians 3:3

I thank God for the legacy God has allowed me to leave in my children, physical and spiritual. They are the greatest potential for the future as we anticipate the return of Christ.

I preached for the first time in a while. This will probably be my final time to preach. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9PMSqxv7Ss

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PREACH THE WORD

In what was almost certainly Paul’s final letter, he gave this challenge to Timothy.

“Preach the Word; be instant in season and out of season; 

reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”

2 Timothy 4:2

I remember struggling for months with God’s call on my life. Finally, on the first Sunday in June, 1968, I publicly surrendered to God’s call to preach. God arranged for me to preach twice that week. From that day this has been my life. It has often been a wild ride. And it has been a continual blessing.

I will preach again this Sunday, November 6th, 2022. Most of you know that I have terminal cancer. And this will most likely be my final opportunity to preach. What a blessing it will be to open God’s word and share the gospel to people who are hungry for the truth.

If you would like to join me, the service will be streamed. The YouTube link will be, 

Connected Naz.

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