Are there some things in your life that you constantly are reminded and will be forever of either an event that occurred or a truth about something? Let me clear that up with an example. Most people, when they want to rebel or make a statement, will get a tattoo. I decided not to do the tattoo thing, but go a step further and get branded. I got a cross branded over my heart on my chest. Hurt? Yes. Worth it? I think so. Reversible? No. That brand will be on my chest forever and every time I look at it, I'll be reminded of why I got it. To make a statement of my salvation and not rebellion.
I want to jump back into the story of Noah to point to a "forever reminder" that the Lord made with Noah. This reminder is something that we now take for granted and even defile in our world today: The rainbow. Why is the rainbow the symbol for homosexuality? Why would something, which we will see as a sign of God's covenant, defiled in such a way? Why is the rainbow associated with leprechauns? The rainbow, seen in a simple, harmless, majestic, and somewhat weak connotation is anything but that.
In Genesis 9, the rainbow was God's forever reminder, otherwise known as a covenant, that He would never destroy all mankind again with a flood. The rainbow is a sign of peace really. It is not just a scientific wonder, but a faithful reminder of God's love and patience with mankind forever!
9:12-17 "And God said, "this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it an remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.""
If you are ever in a place where you're wondering how God is present and faithful even in an evil and awful world, look up after the storm and see the rainbow. We are so blessed by the seeing of a rainbow because God is keeping his covenant. There are other covenants that the Lord made with different kings and people in the Bible, but this one, alongside of the Abrahamic covenant (descendants being like the sand of the seashore), is the most evident even today! Let us hold fast to our devotion to a faithful God!
~Moellerd
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Noah: Obedience=Faith
I'm amazed sometimes at how impatient our world can be. They make coffee machines now, one of which I have, that take these pre-packaged pods and make a cup in under a minute! Is it really to much to way the 10 min or so that it takes to make a whole pot which, in its entirety, costs a fraction of what one of those pods costs? Anyways, our earth is so impatient, and our reflection today is how patience and obedience go hand in hand. And both of those together go hand in hand with our faith.
There are many different passages that we could go here on this subject, including Galatians 5 and the fruits of the Spirit, James 2 and the working out of faith, or even the whole book of Romans centered around the idea of "obedience of faith" (Roman 1:5, 16:26). But the passage I want to focus on today is the story of Noah and the flood. Carrying right along with our journey through Genesis, as it seems, we backtrack from my prior post on Babel and return to the story of Noah's amazing faith evident in his patience and obedience.
In Genesis 6:13-21 God approaches Noah with His plan of destroying mankind on the earth because of Evil and for Noah, the one person who found favor in God's eyes, to build this massive structure we call and ark. The key verse in this passage is in verse 22, "Noah did this; he did all that God had commanded him..."
I feel like I would be a little more hesitant, like, "Now God, can't we talk about this? You want to destroy the whole earth? Really? Can't we work something out?" Or perhaps... "That's a little big God, that's going to take me a long time to build, what about something maybe a little more family friendly, and perhaps, less zoo?" I'd like to say I'd do what Noah did, but I live in a culture that is so impatient and in a mindset of "if it's an inconvenience to me, I don't want to do it..." However, I believe, even in my fallen nature and humbled state while reading this passage, I can say I'm glad God picked Noah and not me for that task.
We need to learn from Noah in this simple thing of his agreeing to do this. The fact that he didn't respond like the above points out two things: 1.) he agrees with the Lord on the state of the world and is completely on board with the plan. Noah did not question the Lord. That's something we should really take to heart in this passage. 2.) he did exactly what the Lord said, the first time. His obedience here show's his fear of the Lord which surpassed the fear of what the world thought of him building this structure, as well as the fear of what was to come. Obedience comes from a fear of God, something we all need more of.
Where does patience come in? And how does patience and obedience go hand in hand? Turn ahead to 8: 13-18. Noah sent out the dove and it did not return back. So what did he do? He opened up the covering of the ark and checked for himself, sure enough, the waters subsided and the earth was dry! Perfect!! Let's get off this naturally assumed to be extremely potent smelling ark! Nope, he stayed on for another month and a half! Why? The earth was dry? Why stay on the ark? Because the Lord didn't tell him to get off yet! Talk about patience AND obedience. Noah knew that God knew what he was doing, so he didn't want to do anything to hinder God's timing. He waited for another month and half while knowing the ground was dry, so that he would be obedient to the Lord. And that's what happened. The Lord in the 2nd month told him that he was now allowed to get off the ark with all the animals and thus the story continues from there.
Patience, Obedience and Faith. Noah's faith was so evident in this story. Why? Because he was patient: 100 years building an ark with no rain, much less flood waters, as well as the torment those around him were probably giving him about building it. Obedience in the fact that he did it. They all point to the fact that he Feared the Lord and did exactly what God said! Why? FAITH.
Let us go about our day today making our faith evident using Noah as our example. Let us be patient with others. Let us be obedient to authority and to the Word of God. Let us be known by the same phrase that Noah was known by: "and he did just as the Lord had commanded."
~Moellerd
There are many different passages that we could go here on this subject, including Galatians 5 and the fruits of the Spirit, James 2 and the working out of faith, or even the whole book of Romans centered around the idea of "obedience of faith" (Roman 1:5, 16:26). But the passage I want to focus on today is the story of Noah and the flood. Carrying right along with our journey through Genesis, as it seems, we backtrack from my prior post on Babel and return to the story of Noah's amazing faith evident in his patience and obedience.
In Genesis 6:13-21 God approaches Noah with His plan of destroying mankind on the earth because of Evil and for Noah, the one person who found favor in God's eyes, to build this massive structure we call and ark. The key verse in this passage is in verse 22, "Noah did this; he did all that God had commanded him..."
I feel like I would be a little more hesitant, like, "Now God, can't we talk about this? You want to destroy the whole earth? Really? Can't we work something out?" Or perhaps... "That's a little big God, that's going to take me a long time to build, what about something maybe a little more family friendly, and perhaps, less zoo?" I'd like to say I'd do what Noah did, but I live in a culture that is so impatient and in a mindset of "if it's an inconvenience to me, I don't want to do it..." However, I believe, even in my fallen nature and humbled state while reading this passage, I can say I'm glad God picked Noah and not me for that task.
We need to learn from Noah in this simple thing of his agreeing to do this. The fact that he didn't respond like the above points out two things: 1.) he agrees with the Lord on the state of the world and is completely on board with the plan. Noah did not question the Lord. That's something we should really take to heart in this passage. 2.) he did exactly what the Lord said, the first time. His obedience here show's his fear of the Lord which surpassed the fear of what the world thought of him building this structure, as well as the fear of what was to come. Obedience comes from a fear of God, something we all need more of.
Where does patience come in? And how does patience and obedience go hand in hand? Turn ahead to 8: 13-18. Noah sent out the dove and it did not return back. So what did he do? He opened up the covering of the ark and checked for himself, sure enough, the waters subsided and the earth was dry! Perfect!! Let's get off this naturally assumed to be extremely potent smelling ark! Nope, he stayed on for another month and a half! Why? The earth was dry? Why stay on the ark? Because the Lord didn't tell him to get off yet! Talk about patience AND obedience. Noah knew that God knew what he was doing, so he didn't want to do anything to hinder God's timing. He waited for another month and half while knowing the ground was dry, so that he would be obedient to the Lord. And that's what happened. The Lord in the 2nd month told him that he was now allowed to get off the ark with all the animals and thus the story continues from there.
Patience, Obedience and Faith. Noah's faith was so evident in this story. Why? Because he was patient: 100 years building an ark with no rain, much less flood waters, as well as the torment those around him were probably giving him about building it. Obedience in the fact that he did it. They all point to the fact that he Feared the Lord and did exactly what God said! Why? FAITH.
Let us go about our day today making our faith evident using Noah as our example. Let us be patient with others. Let us be obedient to authority and to the Word of God. Let us be known by the same phrase that Noah was known by: "and he did just as the Lord had commanded."
~Moellerd
Friday, July 17, 2009
Loving Prevention Part 2: Babel
One of the things I love about being in the Chicagoland area is the fact that many cultures and races of people live here. I used to be the music director at Harvest Bible Chapel in Niles, IL, a suburb very close to downtown. Something I'll never forget there was the fact that I, being Caucasian and an English speaker, was the minority. I loved that when I walked through the lobby, the first language I'd hear was Polish, or perhaps Spanish. Our service was translated into both of those languages as well. It makes me reflect on how our differing languages started.
Language barriers are just that, barriers. As cool as it was to have a very diverse church family in Niles, the fact of the matter is, having a language barrier makes things difficult sometimes. It's almost as if God wanted us to have a difficult time working internationally, or dealing with people who aren't American. But the truth is, even the creation of language differentiation was another one of God's intention to prevent out of LOVE! God always has a loving intention because God IS love (1Jn. 4:16). In the previous blog, I wrote on God's loving intention in the circumstance of man being banished from the Garden of Eden. Eight Chapters later, we now see another circumstance where God's love is the motivation behind what we could quickly call an inconvenience.
Genesis 11:5-7 "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
Have you ever looked at this passage, like I have before, and thought, "awe man! why did God have to do that!? Now I'm stuck having to take Spanish in school." I mean, why did God really feel the need to have to confuse the languages of the people, they were just building a tower weren't they?
The context of the passage is that the whole earth prior to God's confusion of the language was completely uniform in words and speech. The people were realizing that they were starting to become fairly populated and great in number. Naturally, since humans are pride driven more often than not, they wanted to make sure that before they got too big that they made sure the rest of the world after them would recognize the amazing feat of which they were to accomplish of a "capital" with a huge tower. The tower was meant to be so large that it reached the heavens giving them divine status. The Lord saw this and out of Love came down and prevented them from doing this.
A loving intention became a grand prevention of rebellion. See, the omniscient Lord knew what a sinful humanity was capable of unified: "and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them."(vs6) By confusing and scattering humanity in this famous historical event, the Lord prevented humanity from uniting in sinful desires. A whole world of humans united against the Lord is a rebellion that the Lord prevented with his act of Love.
This sets up perfectly for what was to come in His Son Jesus, who would, in His truth and promise, reverse the effect of the Tower of Babel by opening the door to all nations to receive the membership to the eternal life club. The Gospel going out to all nations is God's love in action by saying, "remember how I had to split you up so that you wouldn't combine and rebel against me, now you can join together in my family and reap the benefits and enjoy my free gift to you: Life everlasting!"
Back to my experience in Niles, IL, I rejoice now seeing God's reversal of the Tower of Babel for His glory by the many cultures, tongues and peoples coming together to do nothing but lift high the name of Jesus Christ and proclaim His truth throughout the world! Till one day the ultimate reversal of Babel will occur when we all together will join in and praise, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!" (Rev 7:9-12)
Let's stay eternally focused, and not stress or worry about the small things today that seem inconvenient but may be a way that God lovingly intended for Good, and ultimately to give glory to Him and Him alone!
~Moellerd
Language barriers are just that, barriers. As cool as it was to have a very diverse church family in Niles, the fact of the matter is, having a language barrier makes things difficult sometimes. It's almost as if God wanted us to have a difficult time working internationally, or dealing with people who aren't American. But the truth is, even the creation of language differentiation was another one of God's intention to prevent out of LOVE! God always has a loving intention because God IS love (1Jn. 4:16). In the previous blog, I wrote on God's loving intention in the circumstance of man being banished from the Garden of Eden. Eight Chapters later, we now see another circumstance where God's love is the motivation behind what we could quickly call an inconvenience.
Genesis 11:5-7 "And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
Have you ever looked at this passage, like I have before, and thought, "awe man! why did God have to do that!? Now I'm stuck having to take Spanish in school." I mean, why did God really feel the need to have to confuse the languages of the people, they were just building a tower weren't they?
The context of the passage is that the whole earth prior to God's confusion of the language was completely uniform in words and speech. The people were realizing that they were starting to become fairly populated and great in number. Naturally, since humans are pride driven more often than not, they wanted to make sure that before they got too big that they made sure the rest of the world after them would recognize the amazing feat of which they were to accomplish of a "capital" with a huge tower. The tower was meant to be so large that it reached the heavens giving them divine status. The Lord saw this and out of Love came down and prevented them from doing this.
A loving intention became a grand prevention of rebellion. See, the omniscient Lord knew what a sinful humanity was capable of unified: "and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them."(vs6) By confusing and scattering humanity in this famous historical event, the Lord prevented humanity from uniting in sinful desires. A whole world of humans united against the Lord is a rebellion that the Lord prevented with his act of Love.
This sets up perfectly for what was to come in His Son Jesus, who would, in His truth and promise, reverse the effect of the Tower of Babel by opening the door to all nations to receive the membership to the eternal life club. The Gospel going out to all nations is God's love in action by saying, "remember how I had to split you up so that you wouldn't combine and rebel against me, now you can join together in my family and reap the benefits and enjoy my free gift to you: Life everlasting!"
Back to my experience in Niles, IL, I rejoice now seeing God's reversal of the Tower of Babel for His glory by the many cultures, tongues and peoples coming together to do nothing but lift high the name of Jesus Christ and proclaim His truth throughout the world! Till one day the ultimate reversal of Babel will occur when we all together will join in and praise, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!" (Rev 7:9-12)
Let's stay eternally focused, and not stress or worry about the small things today that seem inconvenient but may be a way that God lovingly intended for Good, and ultimately to give glory to Him and Him alone!
~Moellerd
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Banished from Eden= God's Love
I remember growing up and thinking after I heard the story of Adam and Eve that God must have been super angry and in His anger punished Adam and Eve by not letting them stay in the Garden of Eden. In my eyes, as a child, I thought that banishing them from the garden was no different than getting your gameboy taken away because you slapped your sister. The interesting thing is that was not understood in my part was the fact that God's love in the punishment of Adam and Eve was the most evident of any of His attributes.
Genesis 3:22-24 is the passage at hand here. It says, "Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--" therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life..."
The first thing that we understand from this passage is that man had sinned and it was for this reason that they were banished. "Knowing good and evil" means directly disobeying God's command not to eat of the fruit. Man was now stained with sin and it turns from there into a downward spiral for the rest of mankind. The "curse" of sin, as it is called, affects every aspect of the human life both physical and emotional. You see this in the form of "pain of childbirth" and "in pain you shall eat" in 3:16,17. Sin is painful. Physical pain and hardship are thus a result of the fall of man. Think of what this means in regards to man being banished from the Garden. We'll come back to that.
Another thing that we know as a result of the fall of man is physical death. 3:19 says "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Think of what this means in regards to man being banished from the Garden!
How is it a loving thing that God banished man from the Garden, having trees and provision for food, and making them live outside of it and work the ground for food and deal with the pain of sin and eventually die? First thought, do we deserve anything better than that? No. Disobedience doesn't merit entitlement. Second thought, what does the passage say why God did this? God did not banish man from the garden for those reasons, he banished them from the garden so that they wouldn't do something stupid by eating from the tree of life! "Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever..." The key phrase in there is the "live forever" phrase. What's so bad about that? Here it is: Living forever in their current state, would be AWFUL. Why? because they are sinful. Forever sinful means no possibility for deliverance from sin.
No one can look at the book of Genesis, much less this passage specifically and say that God didn't have a plan for salvation from the beginning! Genesis 3:15 is a direct reference to Christ's defeating Satan, but this passage 3:22-24 is the first move by an omnipotent God in the chess game of life that points towards Christ. It was as if God said... "you're not going to like this, but I love you so much that I can't bear to allow you to ruin your chance to meet my son and live forever indeed, but WITHOUT sin!"
What I thought long ago was God's way of punishment out of anger was actually God's love in prevention. The Grace of God that prevents us from Death is seen here in this passage and revealed throughout the rest of scripture leading to the most magnificent act of grace: Jesus Christ's sacrifice.
How much better would life be if we understand God's LOVING intentions on all of His works, and forget of our ill-conceived ideas of the "big guy who punishes people." Let us live our lives today knowing that every circumstance that we go through, be it trial or vacation that we would see God's loving plan of salvation through it all and constantly be reminding ourselves of what he did on the Cross. Always come back to the Cross of Christ where our sins as scarlet were washed away making us white as snow.
Glory to God
~Moellerd
Genesis 3:22-24 is the passage at hand here. It says, "Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever--" therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way of the tree of life..."
The first thing that we understand from this passage is that man had sinned and it was for this reason that they were banished. "Knowing good and evil" means directly disobeying God's command not to eat of the fruit. Man was now stained with sin and it turns from there into a downward spiral for the rest of mankind. The "curse" of sin, as it is called, affects every aspect of the human life both physical and emotional. You see this in the form of "pain of childbirth" and "in pain you shall eat" in 3:16,17. Sin is painful. Physical pain and hardship are thus a result of the fall of man. Think of what this means in regards to man being banished from the Garden. We'll come back to that.
Another thing that we know as a result of the fall of man is physical death. 3:19 says "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Think of what this means in regards to man being banished from the Garden!
How is it a loving thing that God banished man from the Garden, having trees and provision for food, and making them live outside of it and work the ground for food and deal with the pain of sin and eventually die? First thought, do we deserve anything better than that? No. Disobedience doesn't merit entitlement. Second thought, what does the passage say why God did this? God did not banish man from the garden for those reasons, he banished them from the garden so that they wouldn't do something stupid by eating from the tree of life! "Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever..." The key phrase in there is the "live forever" phrase. What's so bad about that? Here it is: Living forever in their current state, would be AWFUL. Why? because they are sinful. Forever sinful means no possibility for deliverance from sin.
No one can look at the book of Genesis, much less this passage specifically and say that God didn't have a plan for salvation from the beginning! Genesis 3:15 is a direct reference to Christ's defeating Satan, but this passage 3:22-24 is the first move by an omnipotent God in the chess game of life that points towards Christ. It was as if God said... "you're not going to like this, but I love you so much that I can't bear to allow you to ruin your chance to meet my son and live forever indeed, but WITHOUT sin!"
What I thought long ago was God's way of punishment out of anger was actually God's love in prevention. The Grace of God that prevents us from Death is seen here in this passage and revealed throughout the rest of scripture leading to the most magnificent act of grace: Jesus Christ's sacrifice.
How much better would life be if we understand God's LOVING intentions on all of His works, and forget of our ill-conceived ideas of the "big guy who punishes people." Let us live our lives today knowing that every circumstance that we go through, be it trial or vacation that we would see God's loving plan of salvation through it all and constantly be reminding ourselves of what he did on the Cross. Always come back to the Cross of Christ where our sins as scarlet were washed away making us white as snow.
Glory to God
~Moellerd
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