A dog returns to its vomit

Today's scripture reading concludes with this verse:
Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,” and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”
2 Peter 2:22
(notice all the 2's...J)

2 Peter 2 has the title "False Teachers and Their Destruction". Peter was writing to "those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours" (2 Peter 1:1). He reminded them that "God's divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." (2 Peter 1:3) and that our knowledge of this God came from reliable eyewitnesses: "For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." (2 Peter 1:16). But there were false teachers. They taught destructive heresies and exploited believers with fabricated stories to satisfy their greed and follow their depraved conduct (2 Pet 2:1-3, see also vv 10-19). God will surely punish them in due time and He will rescue the godly people just as he had rescued Noah (from the great flood) and Lot (from the destroyed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah).

Peter was at the end of his life (2 Pet 1:14). Seeing how some people who claimed to be believers had turned their backs on God had caused him to speak passionately to us who are holding on to our faith. He warned us: "If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them."(2 Pet 2:20-21), and concluded by quoting two proverbs “A dog returns to its vomit,” (from Proverbs 26:11) and “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.” (I cannot find the reference for this proverb).

Proverbs are meant to help us understand truths by observing ordinary events that cause us to react emotionally, like seeing a dog returning to its vomit or a female pig (sow) returning to the mud after she has been washed clean. How foolish is that?!

This confession I found on the Internet is quite helpful:
"Peter talks about those who may have gotten an emotional lift from following the Savior, but then turned back when the going got rough, or it wasn't the latest fad to be doing. At the end of John 6, we see where the Lord's following went from 70 to 12 quickly, when he told them what it would require to take the commitment to the next level. Matthew 6 also tells, in the famous Sermon on the Mount, about seed that falls on different soil, with rocky soil representing how somebody "enjoyed the party" of following the Savior when it was fun and popular, but then drifted away when they discovered it would not always be this great emotional high moment that they could live on for the rest of their lives. 

I am 48, and have seen this many times in my day (I say this as one who, sadly, is not his most faithful follower at the moment). People love the emotional experience, the commaradity of being with others who share the same joy, and the fun of the new experience. But, as time goes on, they find out it requires more commitment and personal sacrifice, and see the old life as more inviting and thrilling. This is the picture Peter paints in the passage."

So the take home message:

• God's message of salvation is true: Jesus Christ died on the cross to save me from my sin. Any other messages that take me away from that are false, no matter how good they sound.
• God will protect me from wandering away. I stay with the basics - love him by obeying him and listen to him regularly.
• Don't be a fool! I have a new life, live in it! 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Cor 5:17)

This inductive bible study may be a good resource for this passage of scripture for further study:
http://calvary-bible.org/wp-content/uploads/small_group_study/2-peter/2_Peter_2_13-22.pdf

My two very special crowns

I am almost half way through reading the book of Ezekiel. It has not been an easy read. There are lots of visions and allegories all seemingly saying the same thing. God seemed relentless in punishing the people he had chosen to carry his name. Chuck Swindoll wrote an overview that was quite helpful. Hopefully I can get more out of the rest of the book and draw application from it. Chuck Swindoll concluded in his overview: "The book of Ezekiel reminds us to seek out the Lord in those dark times when we feel lost, to examine our own lives, and to align ourselves with the one true God. Will you consider doing so today?"

As I was thinking what else to write about this week, it occurred to me that the two psalms in scripture that had meant a lot to me have one special word in common:

In Psalm 8: "You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor." (verse 5), it speaks of God's special creation - human, whom he made in his image, and whom he crowned with glory and honour. I call this the Crown of Creation.

In Psalm 103: "who (the Lord) redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion," (verse 4), it speaks of God's redemptive plan which not only rescues us from the pit, but also crowns us with love and compassion. I call this the Crown of Redemption.

The NIV translation of the bible mentions the word "crown" 71 times. The majority of the time it is used in the Old Testament to mean an ornamental head gear to represent kingship, or royalty, to identify the person as the supreme ruler, or a symbol of being honoured (interestingly it appears 4 times in the book of Ezekiel!). In the New Testament, we remember immediately the crown of thorns that was put on Jesus as a ridicule to his kingship (mentioned in all four gospels). The apostle Paul used it multiple times to mean some kind of reward or prize which awaits us if we run the course God has prepared for us. James reminded us in times of trouble that "Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him." (James 1:12). Likewise, Peter encouraged us to look to the glorious future "And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away." (1 Peter 5:4).

But I like my two special crowns in Psalms 8 and 103 the best! God has created me something wonderful. Although sin has entrapped me, through Jesus I am redeemed and the external beauty of glory and honour is replaced by a loving relationship where I experience his compassion new every day.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
(Lamentations 3:22-23)

Without faith it is impossible to please God

In today's scripture reading I came across this famous verse from Hebrews 11:6: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.". This rather bold saying about "faith" seems to echo a lot of what I read the last couple of days.

In Lamentation 3:22-33 the prophet Jeremiah wrote these famous verses "Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.". He wrote this while he was under severe physical and mental trial and he was witnessing the complete destruction of both his country and the religious establishment with which the Jews had come to identify themselves. How much faith did Jeremiah have to have to experience life so positively given the hopeless circumstance he found himself in?  This reminded me of a book I read years ago when I was still a young Christian.  The book "J. Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret" is a marvellous recounting of the missionary's work in China. While he was under severe trial (his missionaries were literally being slaughtered by Chinese war lords during the turbulent years in China), he received a letter from another missionary John McCarthy who wrote: "How then to have our faith increased? Only by thinking of all that Jesus is and all He is for us: His life, His death, His work, He Himself as revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constant thoughts. Not a striving to have faith... but a looking off to the Faithful One seems all we need; a resting in the Loved One entirely, for time and eternity. " (from "The Exchanged Life"). This letter so changed his perspective that he wrote later: "God made me a new man! God has made me a new man!" Wonderful was the experience that had come in answer to prayer, yet so simple as almost to baffle description.

In Hebrews 10:23-25 "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching." we are reminded of the importance of meeting with fellow Christians regularly in order to grow in our faith and to live out this faith in loving actions towards others.

In the entire chapter of Hebrews 11, faith is defined simply as "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see." (Hebrews 11:1). We can learn from the "ancients" (people of faith in the Old Testament) what faith looks like although we may not like the results: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. " (Hebrews 11:13). So when we pray, we may not get the answers we are hoping for, even when we pray according to God's will. We learn to trust that the faithful God has a better sense of timing of when he will fulfil his promises. It's the looking forward to these promises with full confidence and assurance that can change our reaction to life's circumstance. We learn to put life in perspective - this life on earth is but a very small journey compared to eternity. We are but "foreigners and strangers" on this earth. We have our eternal home waiting for us.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14:1-4)

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6)

It seems that the secret to faith is to know Jesus. May I experience his presence in everything I do!

Grace and Truth

I am at the convention floor of a major meeting for Canadian family doctors in Vancouver. This will be a quick blog.

What I have been thinking, and discussing with others at home church and a breakfast bible study this week concerns the hot topic of homosexuality. The minister's sermon last Sunday (Being a Third Way Family) calls for "the third way". The first way is intolerance as in we must remove any sin from the church. The second way is the opposite - we must accept the brothers and sisters fully even though they practice their sexuality that I believe is against God's design and intention for men and women. The third way for the church provides a safe place and environment for those who believe the essential gospel and yet disagree with the church's interpretation of scripture on certain doctrines, such as the practice of homosexuality. To make this work we must agree on what are the essential gospel. We must also believe that God is the ultimate judge of all. So if a brother says he is a believer and wants to be part of the family of God, and yet practises homosexuality with another  believer, I should be honest to state my position lovingly and to accept the brother into our fellowship. The work of the Spirit will either convict my brother if he is wrong, or convict me for not interpreting the bible properly.

I have given the thought further. What I will do is to engage my gay brothers and sisters in a loving dialog. The intent is not to convince them that they are wrong, but to understand their position better, especially their interpretation of the few places in the bible where the homosexual behaviour is specifically condemned. And more importantly, our engagement should extent further to mutual benefit in growing in faith, as in Romans 1:11-12 "For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established— that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me."

Jesus is described in John 1:14 as "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.". Jesus came to dwell among us to demonstrate that He is from God and to show us to live a life full of both grace and truth. I often remind myself when I am dealing with those with whom I have differences  that I should deal with them with grace and truth, and in that order.

Jeremiah and his Temple Sermon

Today I read Jeremiah chapters 24 to 26. Chapter 26 is known as the Temple Sermon (although I have found later that Chapter 7 is probably the more famous Temple Sermon). So I decided to dig a little deeper into the life of Jeremiah and in particular, this sermon which incurred to him a very heavy personal cost.

The best summary resource I found is in Wikipedia! It contains a very nice summary of Jeremiah's life and his place in the Christian, Jewish, and Islam religions. Points worth noting:

• Jeremiah is known as the "Weeping prophet" because, as John Holbert puts it: "based on his wish to have a "fountain of tears" with which he might weep for the slain of his own people (Jeremiah 9:1). It is this trait of deep empathy for those he continually chastises that differentiates him from others... This profound connection that Jeremiah maintains with his people leads him to astonishing admissions of personal grief, anguish, and fury in his so-called "confessions," searing portraits of what it is like to do the work of God for forty years and to receive in return little more than condemnation and hatred from those to whom he has been sent to announce the demands of that God."
• His ministry spans 40 years (626 BC - 528 BC) and 5 kings of Judah (Josiah, Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah). It began with King Josiah's religious reforms and ended with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon's Temple.
• He was the son of Hilkiah (a Jewish priest) from the village of Anathoth and yet even his own people sought to kill him (Jeremiah 11). Doesn't he remind you of Jesus?  "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him." (1 John 1:10-12).
• In Jeremiah 26, Jeremiah was called to deliver a call to repentance in the courtyard of the temple (verses 4-6). The priests and prophets called for his death (verses 8-9). When the officials came to find out why there was a disturbance in the temple, Jeremiah repeated God's message of judgement (verses 12-13). The officials and people relented. The elders reminded the priests and prophets of how the prophet Micah has reversed God's judgement against King Hezekiah when he repented (verses 18-19). (Yet there is included in verses 20-23 an interesting story in quotation of how the prophet Uriah was put to death when he prophesied against King Jehoiakim!). Jeremiah was later taken into protective custody by Ahikam (verse 24).

Lessons from Jeremiah:

• He loved his own people. He couldn't bear to see his people rebelling against God. He shed tears when he foresaw the suffering that would come upon them. Doesn't it sound like the apostle Paul? "I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel."(Romans 9:1-5). How much do I love my Christian brothers and sisters? How much do I feel the pain when I see my brothers and sisters living in sin?
• He was obedient to God's calling. He remained faithful to his ministry despite huge personal cost. He never lived to see God's redemption of his people. Do I have that kind of faith? "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for... All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth." (Hebrews 11 is a great chapter on faith).