My wife and I have been blessed with three children and fourteen grandchildren. So we have some experience with babies. All babies are the same in at least one respect—they very easily become mono-focused. If you give a baby a rattle, it becomes the entire world for that baby. They become consumed with it, losing any awareness of anything else.
Over the past 20 years, most Christian folks who know me as “David Servant” suspect that is not my actual name. (Although some have remarked, “Wow, what a great name to have and be called to ministry!”) When I selected “David Servant” as my pseudonym, I hoped that most Christians would realize it was an obvious pseudonym, and that they would also assume there is some good reason for it. And there is, of course.
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16; Deut. 5:20).
I once read an otherwise intelligent unbeliever state that the reason he didn’t believe in the God of the Bible is because, according to the 9th Commandment, God only condemned misrepresenting the truth when one is under oath as a “witness” in a court case. So, the God of the Bible, he oddly concluded, is OK when people lie outside of court, and that was a standard that was inferior to his own!
Most every true Christian understands that Christianity has its roots in Judaism. Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and He kept the Mosaic Law all of His life. All of His apostles witnessed Him perfectly keep the Mosaic Law. He obviously, for example, kept the annual Feast of Passover (which, incidentally, foreshadowed His saving work in numerous ways.)
The early church was 100% Jewish. All of those early Jewish Christians, who lived among non-believing Jews, followed the Mosaic Law that they had been keeping all of their lives. It is clear that Peter, for example, kept the Mosaic dietary laws at least until Acts 10, which would have been seven to ten years after the Day of Pentecost.
I suspect you’ve heard the oft-repeated and solemn warning: “We better not think that we must add our works to what Jesus did on the cross.” Doing so is portrayed as the most tragic error anyone could make, a sure indication that one is not a true Christian. In reality, however, that warning is a sloppy and confusing caution that can either be true or heretical, depending on what it is actually meant to convey.
If what is meant is, “We better not think that our works atone for our sins, as that would demean the sufficiency of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross,” it is true.
A man was walking down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.
And by chance, a Christian was driving down that road while listening to worship music. When he noticed the unconscious and bloody man lying on the roadside, he bound the evil spirits in Jesus’ name that were responsible for the brutal assault, and then he “decreed and declared” that the man would live and not die. Finally, he prayed that God would send someone to help the unfortunate man. It felt so good to be a Christian who understands spiritual authority and is full of compassion.
As I am sitting here on a March morning looking out the picture window of my office, I’m watching the snow slowly fall and settle on the branches of budding trees. Winter is saying farewell reluctantly.
Most everyone knows that snow forms from freezing water vapor in the atmosphere, but who can explain why water freezes at a certain temperature? Or why it first contracts, then expands during the freezing process, which is the reason ice floats on the top of lakes rather than sinks to the bottom (which would eventually end all life on earth via a terminal ice age)?
A man had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.” So he divided his wealth between them. And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living. Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were eating, and no one was giving anything to him.
Although what we most often refer to as “the Lord’s Prayer” is certainly appropriate to pray any time, it seems Jesus intended that it be prayed in the morning. The evidence for that is the line, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 5:11). That would seem more appropriate to pray at the beginning of the day rather than at the end. That line also leads us to think that “the Lord’s Prayer” was meant to be a daily prayer.
The reason I’m also claiming it is a perfect prayer is because it was given to us by a perfect Person, and it contains seven requests. You probably know that, in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection.
It is impossible to go through life ignoring God’s creatures. Who can say they haven’t noticed birds, spiders, squirrels, ants, and an occasional raccoon? Those creatures are part of our divinely-planned existence, and they, like all the rest of creation, serve to arrest our attention, provoke us to ponder, and draw us into a relationship with God. They not only reveal God’s incredible power and amazing creativity, but they serve to teach us about ourselves (“Like sheep, we’ve all gone astray.”) And they even affirm moral truths that reside in every conscience. It is amazing—and tragic—that most people are not amazed by the divine display that is paraded before them all their lives.
Let’s think about this a little more…