Coffee With The Lord

If you’re following the “Necessary Food Bible Reading Plan” that I developed several years ago, one of the passages that you read today is one of the most difficult and disturbing in all of Scripture – Judges 19! It tells the revolting story of a culture without a moral compass. It seems like almost every ethical principle and moral norm imaginable is violated in the account! (I could describe it and tell the story but it is too graphic and disgusting for this venue. Read it for yourself and keep in mind this is a historical account, not fiction – it actually happened!). I’m convinced that this account is included in the Bible for the very purpose of producing a revulsion – a moral nausea – in the hearts of spiritually sensitive people. It’s there to drive us to our knees in prayer and out into our culture with the message of the gospel and the “salt and light” of “Kingdom” values!

The story begins to end with this incredible… no, more than that, this absolutely irrational scene:  “And the people came to Bethel and sat there till evening before God, and they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.  And they said, ‘O Lord, the God of Israel, why has this happened in Israel!?”

Why has this happened?! How absolutely stupid and silly! The last verse of these chapters gives the answer… “In those days there was no king in Israel. EVERYONE DID WHAT WAS RIGHT IN HIS OWN EYES.” THIS CHAPTER RECORDS WHAT CAN HAPPEN IN A CULTURE THAT ABANDONS THE MORAL NORMS OF SCRIPTURE! It’s where we’re headed as a culture as we more and more reject the moral guidance of Scripture and embrace “situational ethics” – what “seems right in their own eyes”. The inconceivable today becomes actual tomorrow. I’m Concerned… and praying… Praying fervently!! “Oh Lord, send a moral and Spiritual revival to America… to our world!!!

Don’t know about you, but I have a deep concern for the situation today in the Middle East (as it relates to Israel and her Arab neighbors, and others).  The situation there at the present time is a “powder keg” waiting to explode!

Today, I was challenged as I read these words from Psalm 122 as a part of my Bible reading during “coffee with the Lord…

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ … to give thanks to the name of the Lord… Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!  May they be secure who love you!  Peace within your walls and security within your towers! … For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good.” (from Psalm 122)

Gotta tell you, I grieve that a Moslem holy site, the Dome of the Rock, is situated on the traditional site of the Jewish temple!  I look forward to the day when Ezekiel’s prophecy of a restored eschatological temple will be fulfilled! (Ezekiel 39:25 – 48:35)  I am praying for “the peace of Jerusalem!”  I am praying that Jewish people will turn to Christ as their Messiah!  I am praying for Scripture to be fulfilled in the coming of the Lord!

In the meantime, I rejoice that there is a real “temple” in Jerusalem (and elsewhere in the world) of the kind that is spoken of in Ephesians 2:11-22 and 1 Peter 2:4-10 where the Living God makes His presence known among both believing Jews and Gentiles who embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah…

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, GROWS INTO A HOLY TEMPLE IN THE LORD.” (Ephesians 2:19–21 ESV)

“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, YOU YOURSELVES LIKE LIVING STONES ARE BEING BUILT UP AS A SPIRITUAL HOUSE, TO BE A HOLY PRIESTHOOD, TO OFFER SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES ACCEPTABLE TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST… You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (from 1 Peter 2:4-10 ESV)

Symbolism and imagery matter!  They can make things vivid and real to us!  …And that’s especially true of water baptism.

I think if I were pastoring a church today, I’d do water baptism services like this…

I’d encourage those being baptized to wear old, worn out clothes to the place where they were going to be baptized in water as a testimony to the fact that they were abandoning their old way of life to follow Christ.  The more old, tattered, worn out the clothes were, the better.  Those would be the clothes they would be baptized in.

Then after they were baptized (buried, so to speak, in the waters of baptism – symbolizing the fact that they were abandoning their old way of life, dying to sin and self-pursuit to follow Jesus) I’d have them change into new, fresh, “Sunday, go-to-meeting, best” clothes, celebrating the new life they had been given through faith in Christ.

All of that came to mind as I read the following passage this morning in the Bible (a passage that I’m convinced Apostle Paul wrote with water baptism as the imagery behind it)…

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.  On account of these the wrath of God is coming.  In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.  But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator… Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (from Colossians 3:1–17 ESV)

You see, baptism really is a burial service!  When we do it in faith and commitment we fully identify with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.  We bring our old, tattered lives of sin and we die to them through the one who died for our sins on the cross.  That old life is buried, so to speak, in the waters of baptism.  Then we are raised from the waters of baptism, identifying with the resurrection of Jesus, to live a new life… That’s where we celebrate our new life in Christ by putting on our “Sunday go-to-meeting best!”

As I say, imagery and symbolism matters!  And may there be, behind every water baptism, a spiritual reality!