The Sovereign God - Psalm 135

The Background

I wrote on Psalm 129 that God’s sovereignty means He controls and dictates when both good and evil occur. I find this view to be consistent with scripture in both the Old and New Testaments. I think many will try to unrightly skew this fact of God’s character and power into a debate of Calvinism and Arminianism. I don’t think there’s a debate.

If you are Calvinist and find this to somehow stray too far towards the Arminian view for your liking, know that this is purely scripture. If you are Arminian and find this to be too close to Calvinism for your liking, know that this is purely scripture. You may argue with what I say about the scripture, but the idea of God’s sovereign control, of His vengeance that kills kings, and His love and compassion that slaughters civilizations, is evident throughout His Word. There is no mistaking that.

Paul writes in Romans 9:21-22, “Or has the potter no right over the clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor? And what if God, desiring to display His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience objects of wrath ready for destruction?”

Through this chapter of Romans, Paul frequently calls back to an OT God (who, I might add, did not change from then to the NT times to now) has mercy on whoever He wants and who raises up people for a display of His power. Elsewhere, we find Jesus claiming the same thing: a man who cannot walk is kept lame, not for his sin, but for God’s glory, to be healed by Christ in His mission to save His people and reveal the glory of the Father.

God is Great

Psalm 135:3-4 “Praise Yahweh, for Yahweh is good; sing praise to His name, for it is delightful. For Yahweh has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel as His treasured possession.

Psalm 135:3-4 “Praise Yahweh, for Yahweh is good; sing praise to His name, for it is delightful. For Yahweh has chosen Jacob for Himself, Israel as His treasured possession.” Encapsulated here is a non-exhaustive list containing why God is great. He is great because He is good; He is great because His name is delightful; He is great because He has chosen for Himself His own people. This is the easy part to understand. All believers know God is good because of who He is and the good He does.

The hard part is recognizing that God is good when the act does not quite compute in our brains to being good. Or perhaps delightful is the better word here. In light of my post on Psalm 129, we know that good sometimes involves evil. That doesn’t mean that good turned from evil appears delightful to us, and it is at these things we cringe back saying, “Who is this God?”

But the psalmist says, “For I know that Yahweh is great; our Lord is greater than all gods. Yahweh does whatever He pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the depths” (Psalm 135:5-6).

But the psalmist says, “For I know that Yahweh is great; our Lord is greater than all gods. Yahweh does whatever He pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the depths” (Psalm 135:5-6). What follows is a description of the plagues, of the slaughtering of kings and the destruction of many nations (verses 8-12).

So Who is God?

Let’s be plain. There is no hiding the fact that our God is one who slaughters kings and destroys nations. He wipes out bloodlines and ends entire cultures. We cannot look at the scriptures and claim He does not do these things. There is no dodging or ducking conversations about this. God is the Author of salvation, the Creator of all things good. But He is also the God who told the Ninevites “repent or be destroyed.” He is the One who looked on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed them. And even Lot’s wife, who looked back on those cities, went with them.

Paul writes, “But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (Romans 9:20).

So let’s not hide from it. Let’s take it head on. Undoubtedly, our God is a good God, and undoubtedly, He commits acts that humanity would claim as devastating atrocity. But why do we get to make the claim of what is and isn’t atrocity? Paul writes, “But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” (Romans 9:20). Half of Job includes Job questioning why things are as they are. It ends with God asking Job, “Who are you to ask me these things? Were you there when I set the world in place, when I defined all of reality as you know it and even the things you could not even comprehend?”

I just finished reading Paul Washer’s Narrow Gate Narrow Way. It’s a brilliant little sermon book. In it, he says this idea that pervades Christianity, and even the world at large, today: God is love, so He cannot be hate. But Paul and I both tell you, God is indeed both. God loves, and because God loves, He hates. God loves righteousness, so He hates unrighteousness. God loves children, so He hates those who kill and assault them. God loves His people, so He hates what harms them. To love intensely, you must hate the opposite of what you love with the same intensity. This is God.

The Matter of Compassion

Psalm 135:14 says, “For Yahweh will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants.”

Psalm 135:14 says, “For Yahweh will vindicate His people and have compassion on His servants.” In line with what I said moments ago, we see there is no strange dichotomy between compassion and vengeance. If you love strongly, you hate just as strongly. God loves His people strongly; His compassion on them is beyond our understanding, even though it is written numerous times. Because His compassion is on His people, and He vindicates them, or justifies them, He commits acts of what we would call atrocity on those who harm them.

The demons, those following Satan, who attempt to inflict themselves on God’s creation in a manner of ways for evil and chaos seek nothing but to harm. They will influence the world and attack God’s chosen ones, whether we speak of Israelites or professing believers. God strikes down the nations of these people. He tears kings from their thrones. He annihilates entire generations because He hates them for their evil against His people. He hates their attacks on His chosen ones as the enemy seeks to pull them from His grasp.

The demons are bound for the lake of fire already. The people who reject God will go there as well. This is a matter of compassion just as much as it is vindication just as much as it is hate. They all go hand in hand. God loves His people and holds them close to justify their place as His creation; He has compassion on them in His hatred against the demons and those who take the broad way, and in this compassion towards His people and hatred of those who hate Him and seek to harm His people, He will slaughter and annihilate and turn them toward the lake of fire.

They go hand in hand. They are inseparable. For God to love us as greatly as He does, there is a necessity of hate against those who oppose Him, and, by proxy, us. For God to have compassion at all, He must have a hate that makes that compassion required. You can’t rightfully claim God does not hate evil, but you also can’t rightfully claim that God does not love, and have compassion on, those who come to Him.

Protection of the Oppressed - Psalm 129

The Background

Tuesday nights are one of three Bible study nights for me. I like to keep busy, and moreover, I love to study the Word with like-minded believers my age. We want to not just know the Word but also how others are seeing the Word and what we can do to teach those around us.

So Tuesday, May 9, we talked about demon possession and oppression. The world moves in cycles, and one on repeat recently has been this heavy focus on the work of the demonic. Ephesians 6 tells us that our war is not against flesh and blood but powers and principalities and commands us to put on spiritual armor, the armor of God, to combat it. It’s fairly clear Paul speaks of the demonic and not in a sense that the works of demons will cease until the judgment day.

The Theology of Evil Activity

We began with the foregone conclusion that those born of the Spirit of God, who indwells all who profess belief in Christ through repentance, are forever marked safe from the act of demonic possession. God is light, and there is no darkness in Him (1 John 1:5). The forces of darkness cannot overpower the Holy Spirit of God, and, thus, they are incapable of forcing Him to move from the temple He has chosen to indwell in order to occupy it for themselves.

But we reached many conclusions within this conversation about the works of evil, first and foremost of which is the sovereignty of God. In Job, whether we see this as mere metaphor or true story, God is the author of Job’s blessings and the allowance for his suffering. It is He who says to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8).

Blameless, God calls him. There aren’t many in scripture who receive this distinction. Satan states Job’s righteousness is because of his blessings and seeks permission to take them away. God grants it, and so we have the book of Job. But there’s an important act to focus on. In order to touch Job or his blessings, Satan had to ask permission, and then God had to allow it. Sovereignty. Not even evil occurs without God’s okay. There are many tough theological nuts in here to crack, but I don’t have space for that here.

The understanding reached from this comes from many places. First, Paul’s declaration about the messenger of Satan he attempts to pray away thrice, and thrice, God refuses him. Second, Paul also writes in Romans 8:28 that all things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose (capitalization of “His” added by me). Third is Paul writing the reason this messenger of Satan is allowed to continue tormenting him: “to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Cor. 12:7). So we see that God allows the works of evil to afflict His beloved in order that He might sanctify them fully because it is for their good.

A friend of mine often says, “God will always trade the finite for the infinite.” I find this to be accurate to a Tee. Both Peter, James, and Paul write multiple times of present suffering for eternal glorification and reward. God works in this just as much as He does in blessing, and we can’t discount this from the OT either: Israel is constantly being left to experience evil temporarily in order that they might come closer to God for permanent rescue. The story of God’s work is using the evil and pain and hurt of the world in order to affect His people to come closer, and as they do, they find blessing.

The Endless Battle

So we finally come to Psalm 129 — in the HCSB, this psalm is entitled “Protection of the Oppressed.” Verses 1-2 say, “Since my youth they have often attacked me—let Israel say—Since my youth they have often attacked me, but they have not prevailed against me.”

I’ll bring Paul back for just a moment: daily, he was attacked by this messenger of Satan. Whatever this thorn was, it was constant, consistent, and debilitating enough that it could keep him from inflating in pride. If the attacks ceased, might Paul have become prideful? We don’t know, but the discussion was had that in all things, there is good to be had for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

I say all this to bring it back to what this psalm is titled and the information it carries: it is not “Deliverance of the Oppressed,” nor “Freedom for the Oppressed,” but “Protection of the Oppressed.” Now I’m aware that this psalm isn’t titled this way originally. But the scripture tells the same point. Nowhere in this psalm does it indicate that Israel permanently pacifies their enemy. Instead, it states they continued to attack, but they never prevailed.

The messenger of Satan against Paul never prevailed or we’d have a much smaller NT. Satan never prevailed against Job, for Job never once cursed God. He questioned, he struggled, and he cursed the day he was born, but Satan did not win Job’s curse. David was attacked by Saul over and over and over as he was inflicted by evil, yet David became the man after God’s own heart. In each case, a man was oppressed, and in each case, he was protected from turning away. His life was not stolen, and especially Job is very clear about that: Satan was allowed to touch Job, to inflict him with illness, but his life was not on the table.

Everything in a believer’s life works for ultimate good. You may be oppressed, whether by the work of the demonic or your own fleshly desires, but have these things stolen you from God? If not, you are protected. If you still seek God; if you still praise Him for His goodness; if you are still His (for who can pluck you from His hand?) then you are protected. You may be attacked ceaselessly, but driving back the attack and continuing to serve the Lord is a victory in and of itself.

Living vs. Surviving

A while back, I was listening to “Born to Live” by About A Mile, and my mind got stuck on the lyrics that open the song, and then part of the chorus:

“My heart’s beating inside my chest
My lungs breathe in the oxygen
But I need something more than this
To keep me alive…

There’s a higher calling on all our lives
Let’s live to love not just survive

Wake up! What are we waiting for?
We know that we were made for more
We’re not living just ‘cause we were born
There’s no doubt about it
We were born to live.”

The Difference Between Living and Surviving

Nowadays, we treat the words “living” and “surviving” as synonyms—using them interchangeably—even though they most certainly are not. There’s a completely different experience between someone who is living life and someone who is merely surviving it.

And actually, there is no better example of this than two people who started out living life and were relegated to barely surviving: Adam and Eve. These two were truly born, created, to live. They had no worries in the Garden of Eden. Their days were spent walking with God, enjoying the fruits of the garden, and overall, having a wonderfully joyous time. They were truly alive.

But then, the Fall happened, and no longer could they just live so easily in the presence of God. After they were removed from the garden, every decision was paramount. One wrong move, and the land that was once bountiful with everything they needed would turn against them. One faulty decision and they might not make it to the next day. They had to work with all they had to ensure they, and eventually their children, would survive.

The Existence of a Survivor

What’s important is that believers are called to do more than just survive. To the nonbeliever, all choices are made with one goal in mind: to preserve some sort of legacy so they can live on past their death. Take a look at some quotes that nonbelievers have about death, and you can see it’s a fairly universal idea amongst those who do not profess a belief in God. I’ll throw a few in just as an example:

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” – George Eliot

“They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” – Banksy

“To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.” – Thomas Campbell

There’s a key theme located in all of these things: worry. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, there was no reason to worry. They literally didn’t even know what worry was in the perfection of life prior to the Fall, whereas afterwards, worry was introduced as part of sin. No longer were their lives carefree. The people around who do not know our God worry ceaselessly about their survival, and that’s where we differ.

 The Life of a Believer

Matthew 6:25-34 tells us we are called to be above worry, to be above survival, to live, specifically in verses 33-34, which say, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

For believers, our worries in life are not meant to be over whether we will have enough to eat and drink or clothes to wear or a place to live. Those things will be provided for us as long as God has us on the Earth to do the work we’re called to do. Our worries are on other things including, but not necessarily limited to, our relationship with God, our community with the Church, and our outreach and discipleship work in the world around us. Those are the only reasons you’re still here and not done with this life, as I’ve written about before here.

The Hollow Reality of a Survivor in a Forest of Life

To borrow a metaphor, let’s say that humanity is a forest, and gathered in this forest are trees representing each person’s life. There are so many of these trees that look beyond perfect. The bark is thick, the roots look strong and appear to burrow deep underground, and the leaves appear a brilliant, deep green.

But in reality, many of these trees are empty, hollow. Attached to their trunks, right at the ground, is a plastic cover that seeks to project the picturesque image of abundant life but is only hiding the tiny seedling whose roots are so shallow they absorb almost no nutrients, and whose single leaf can barely gather enough sunlight to survive in the hollow cylinder that blocks the sun.

Now, all around these tiny seedlings in hollow, plastic trees are majestic oaks, towering over the forest floor, with roots that have dug deep and wide, branches that touch the sky, and leaves that pattern dappled shade on the seedlings around it, protecting them from the wilting heat of the day and allowing them to be nurtured towards a fruitful life. With reckless abandon, these trees bask in the sunlight knowing that their roots can gather all the nutrients necessary to protect themselves from any danger and repair any hurts.

So many people are like those tiny seedlings, projecting life when they are only barely clinging on to their survival, believing, fruitlessly, that the only thing keeping them alive is the belief that they are big and strong, when in reality, it’s the thing that’s killing them. If they were only to remove that plastic cover, they would be able to reach the sun and actually grow so they can live.

There’s a Practical Answer to Helping Survivors Learn to Live

This is the power a relationship with Christ grants us. Only He is able to pull away the plastic cover of sin that robs us of what we genuinely need in life, and oftentimes, He uses His people to do so. When it comes down to ministry, a lot of believers absolutely love being God’s hand to reach out and pull off that cover, but few are willing to help nurture that seedling into life.

There’s a hard line between living and surviving, so when we go out to show people how to actually live, we have a lot of work to do to get them to cross over that line. It’s paramount, then, to take care of the needs for survivors before showing them how to live, to guide and guard that seedling until it grows into a sapling, capable of standing, of reaching for the light of God, of diffing deeper into the Word and gathering the nutrients it needs to truly live.

No survivor is going to change what they think already works for something that can’t be proven effective. As believers, we know we were remade in Christ to live; it’s just a matter of convincing nonbelievers that they, too, were made for more than just surviving, and then showing them how to live as God calls us to.

Confronting Community Sin

As a believer, your sin is your responsibility to confront and remove from your life as you follow God. As a believer, the sin of others in your community is also your responsibility.

One of the hallmarks of a true follower of Christ is that they actively attempt to rid themselves of their sinful practices as they are sanctified by their relationship with Jesus, the evidence of which is seen as sinful behaviors fade from a person’s character and are replaced with the Fruits of the Spirit.

And in concert fashion, the distinction between a true community of believers and a community of “church-goers” involves the removal of selfish and sinful behaviors, reactions, and outlooks in the local community and the addition of selflessness, outreach, and good will towards the local community.

But contrary to what many might believe, the responsibility to push away sinful behavior and bring in righteous behavior in the church does not belong to merely the pastoral staff or those whose sin is more easily visible, but to all members of the church.

The Sin of the Few is the Responsibility of All

Deuteronomy 13 tells the Israelites what to do if someone tries to entice them away from God and promote sinful behavior, starting with family members and expanding to entire cities.

Verses 6-11 say, “If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’—which neither you nor your fathers have known, any of the gods of the peoples around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other—you must not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity, and do not spare him or shield him. Instead, you must kill him. Your hand is to be the first against him to put him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death for trying to turn you away from the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. All Israel will hear and be afraid, and they will no longer do anything evil like this among you.”

This starts the idea that God wanted to provoke among the Israelites: when one person falls to sin, it is the responsibility of those closest to the idolater, then the entire community surrounding the idolater, to end the idolatry and purge the sin. In the OT times, before Jesus’s reconciliatory death, the only true purge was death—complete and total annihilation of the sinner to keep the community from being infected. This is especially true with the post-Exodus Israelites, whom you’ll notice are an incredibly fickle people, ready to jump back and forth between God and idols at the drop of a hat.

The Consequences for the Few have Far-Reaching Effects

And, in true biblical fashion, there are consequences if the community fails to do what it is supposed to do. Verses 12-15 say, “If you hear it said about one of your cities the Lord your God is giving you to live in, that wicked men have sprung up among you, led the inhabitants of their city astray, and said, ‘Let us go and worship other gods,’ which you have not known, you are to inquire, investigate, and interrogate thoroughly. If the report turns out to be true that this detestable thing has happened among you, you must strike down the inhabitants of that city with the sword. Completely destroy everyone in it as well as its livestock with the sword.”

If the idolator manages to spread his/her view enough that word of the heresy is heard elsewhere, it becomes the responsibility of the entire nation of Israel to wipe the idolatry out. The consequences of such action means that not only do the idolaters in the city die, but the innocent, too.

But were the innocent actually innocent? Not really. By virtue of verses 6-11, we know that if the idolatry has spread beyond one person, the people sinned by going against God’s orders to stop that idolatry. So, they must face the consequences of their own inaction.

Current Day Sin-Banishing Responsibility

It’s entirely likely that some people reading this are thinking “But this is about the Israelites, and obviously, we can’t go around stoning idolaters.” And, well, you’re right. Please don’t go around trying to kill people who are not believers.

But, despite the fact that this passage is directly intended for the Israelites and the Israelites alone, there is a modern-day equivalent given to us by the New Testament.

Matthew 18:15-17 says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Let’s run the parallels: In the OT, family members were to take care of sin in their family on their own, only calling in the community to help after they had done their part. In the NT, one person is to confront the sin of another, only bringing in more members of the church if that fails. The Israelites were meant to treat cities that failed to stop idolatry as enemy nations, wiping every last bit of life in them out for good. We are to treat those who fail to confront their sin as if they are not believers, but outcasts to the Christian community.

Confronting Sin is not Judgment

This subject is something the church fails at so often. We’re afraid to confront sin in others because we don’t want to lose friends, we don’t want our own sin to be called out, or we feel like it’s not our place. But it is our place.

“Do not judge lest you be judged” doesn’t apply here. Confronting sin is not judging someone. Our cultural definition of the word “judge” has changed from its original meaning, which involved sentencing someone for their actions, to mean mentioning someone’s wrongful actions to them in any way. Confronting the sin of a brother or sister in Christ is not judging them or a statement of condemnation; instead, it is a show of concern for their spiritual welfare.

Don’t let people point out your log as a way to avoid confrontation of their sin, either. You don’t have to be perfect to point out sin when you see it. (I’ve written more in-depth on these verses here, if you want to have a read, as I don’t have time to explain it more thoroughly in this post.) We’re all sinful—each of us has a log worth pointing out, and it’s time we started drawing attention to them so we can remove them.

A Call for Christian Qualification

As a, hopefully, quick last word, I think it’s time we start living out Matthew 18:17 a little more. Folks calling themselves Christians, but who are actually idolaters, are hindering the Christian community in a huge way. When people who aren’t actually believers start calling themselves believers while perpetuating a false gospel, we need to say something against it. We need to step up and qualify Christians as separate from “Christians” or we risk the Church falling apart as idolatry and sin topple it from within and without.

It’s time for us to call out prosperity gospels and pew-sitters who throw dirt on the name of God and His people and make sure the world knows they are not part of us because they’re hampering the mission, the Great Commission. We have “churches” like Westboro Baptist tarnishing the name of Christ under the guise of Christianity because we have become too lax in our qualifications, letting nearly anyone call themselves a Christian, and that needs to stop. The quitting begins by confronting sin.

Completely Destroy Sin

I champion the Israelites as our (current Christians) people because we are, in so many ways, exactly like them. Put simply, we are mirror images of each other in every way that matters, which is why it’s so brilliant to read through the struggles of the Israelite people and identify with them as I do so. It also makes for great teaching material because we can see exactly what helped them succeed and what caused them to fail. If our God is a God of metaphors, which I say He is, then the Israelites are our big metaphor, our great comparison.

And in Deuteronomy, they have quite a lot to teach us on how to best sin.

Doing What We Don’t Want

For me, it’s a fact of the matter that I sometimes feel too weak to stand up to the sin I perpetuate in my life. When I’m in a cycle of, as Paul says, doing things I don’t want to do, that I know are wrong, I frequently feel incapable of driving out the feelings, temptations, and behaviors I know are incorrect.

But what is truly factual is that I, and we, have the strength to destroy sin at its source in the flesh, just as the Israelites did, thanks to the power of God going before us and fighting the battle.

The Big Metaphor

If you pay close attention as you read the Old Testament, you’ll find an incredibly stark contrast between the Israelites and everyone else, and if you break that contrast down to its simplest pieces, you get two different adjectives to describe them. For the Israelites, we have righteous; for everyone else, we have sinful.

It’s fairly easy to work out: God’s people are righteous, just as we are made righteous when we become His today, and everything that is not with God is against God. Every person and thing that does not belong to God is sin.

It’s simple, then, to carry on this idea of the Israelites driving other peoples out of the Promised Land as driving out sin. (It’s even easier to carry on the idea when you read Deut. 7 because the Bible just tells you, but I had to explain the big comparison between the Israelites and us for teaching’s sake.)

The Strength to Thoroughly Destroy Sin

Jumping back up to the idea from the introduction in this post, the Israelites, then, felt too weak to destroy the sin they faced in the Promised Land. If you’ll remember, they were exiled from the land for 40 years because they were too afraid to fight for it, thinking they would be destroyed by the nations in it.

But, what the Israelites, and we, often forgot in fear, is that they had the strength from God to drive out that which does not belong, that which is not good.

Deuteronomy 7:15b, 17-19 says, “He will not put on you all the terrible diseases of Egypt that you know about, but He will inflict them on all who hate you. (17) If you say to yourself, ‘These nations are greater than I; how can I drive them out?’ do not be afraid of them. Be sure to remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and all Egypt: the great trials that you saw, the signs and wonders, the strong hand and outstretched arm, by which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you fear.”

Fear of being incapable, fear of the sin we face, even fear of facing God in our failures can hold us back from defeating sin. But God has given us the strength to destroy it, just like He gave the Israelites strength to destroy the nations inhabiting the Promised Land if they would stop being afraid of the people because of what they looked like.

But if we remember the strength of God to defeat our sinful natures and pull us to Him for salvation, if we remember the miracles He worked to draw us away from death in the first place, we’ll remember He easily has the power to inflict destruction on our sin now that we are His.

Why We Fail to Defeat Sin

Sometimes, even though we have the strength of God on our side, we still fail to defeat sin, though, right? Paul most certainly had the Lord with him whenever he was tempted, and still he sinned and did things he didn’t want to do. That’s because, so often, we fail to completely drive out and annihilate sin in the place we live.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2 says, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess, and He drives out many nations before you—the Hittities, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”

And just like the Israelites, when we fail to completely destroy sin and route any chances it has at coming back to us, it slithers its way back into our lives. That’s why Matthew 5:29-30 urges us to gouge out our eye or cut off our hand if it causes us to sin because that’s the kind of extremism we need to go to in order to completely eliminate sin. (Please don’t actually go cutting your hands off and pulling your eyes out at the behest of this blog post.) It’s a metaphorical expression of extremism: whatever it takes for you, do it to stop yourself from sinning.

Extremist Application Methods

God’s goal with the Israelites was to create a land without even the barest hint of potential temptation for idolatry because He knew that was the only way the Israelites could resist putting the gods of Earth above Himself. That’s why Deuteronomy 7 is almost completely full of God telling them to destroy literally every last bit of the culture, practices, and evidences of the people who once lived there.

For us, it’s much of the same. When you allow yourself to even briefly consider sin, you’ve opened yourself up to temptation that is difficult to resist (Matthew 5:27-28). That’s why you must go to incredible extremes to avoid the hints of sin all around us. If that means you have to give up social media, TV, music, reading, sports, games, whatever, you should do it until you are capable of standing up to the temptation with God-given strength.

You have to destroy the world around you (metaphorically) to keep it from infecting you with sin until you glow brightly enough with the power of God to walk through the darkness without stumbling.

Living is Christ

What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose? Why are we here?

These questions plague the minds of nearly every person, if not individually, then collectively. It’s been the struggle of secular humanity since the beginning of time due to the belief that life was created by mere accident.

As believers, we know we have a purpose; we know we’re here for a reason, but I honestly find myself thinking that even we sometimes don’t grasp the “why” fully, even though it’s written out for us plain as day in the Bible.

The Problem with our Purpose Vocabulary

As is often the case, I find that our vocabulary starts the problem. I hear this around the church fairly often: God’s got a purpose for you; you may not know what it is yet, but you’re still here to do something. The problem with this phrase is that you do know what your purpose is already. What you might not know is the method by which you fulfill that purpose.

Here’s the thing. Once you become a believer, your purpose is the exact same as every other believer’s purpose: to make disciples. Your only goal, your only reason for still being alive is to point nonbelievers to Christ. That’s it. It really is that simple. If you don’t believe me, allow me to point you to Philippians 1:21, which says, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

More on the second part later, but for now, let’s break down the first part. To live is Christ means that while you are alive, you are to be Christ. Disregarding all the things about Christ that we can’t achieve, such as perfection and sacrificing ourselves for the sins of all, what was Jesus’s purpose while He was here? His purpose was to make disciples so that people could be saved!

So, if we follow the Bible, which we should be doing, every believer’s goal is to be like Christ while they live. This means the purpose for each Christian life is the exact same; the only difference is the method. Just like Jesus fulfilled His purpose in a variety of ways: teaching, preaching, healing, etc. so are we to fulfill our purpose in varying ways. Believe it or not, this is also biblically sound.

Spiritual Gifts Give us the Means to Fulfill our Shared Purpose

Whether you get your list of spiritual gifts from 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12, they’re both a list of ways for believers to show the power and glory of God to the world. What they are not is a list of purposes for you to fulfill. If your spiritual gift is wisdom, you are not in this world to be wise. You are in this world to use the wisdom God has granted you to point people to Him. Likewise, if your gift is healing or prophecy, your purpose is not to heal or prophesy. Your purpose is to point people to Christ by providing mental, physical, or emotional healing or by speaking the Word of God to those who need to hear the message.

I’ve already written on this, too, but it needs repeating for context here, so I’ll cover it briefly. Paul provides us yet more proof that our purposes are one and the same following his list of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12. (You can check out the original post here: https://nathanielgevans.net/blog/unique-positioning.)

Every last part of your body serves the same purpose: keeping you alive. Your liver does it by purging toxins. Your heart does it by pumping blood. Your lungs do it by giving you oxygen. Your intestines do it by gathering nutrients from the food you eat. If the body of Christ is a body, each part is unified in fulfilling the purpose of the body while diversified in how they go about the process.

By this point, I’m hopefully beating a dead horse about our purpose being the same, so I’ll move on.

Lack of Purpose Fulfillment

Earlier, I quoted Philippians 1:21 and mentioned I’d get back to the second part later. Later is now. Something that disturbs me about Christians nowadays is the penchant for ignoring 1:21a and skipping straight to the second half of the verse: to die is gain.

For whatever reason, a number of Christians are so focused on the end times, on Jesus coming back, that they aren’t bothering to fulfill their purpose. They just want to die so they can get to Heaven; they just want the second coming so they can end their existence on this planet and be completed with God.

And to be fair, the desire to be complete and in Heaven is a good one. I can’t begrudge that because I believe that growing closer to God implants an intense desire to be with Him in our glorified bodies. There’s not even anything wrong with being prepared for Jesus’s second coming. The Bible says we must be ready for it to occur at any time (Matthew 24:42-44). What I can begrudge is those who neglect their purpose while on the path to true sanctification.

End Times Preparation

So, if just waiting in anticipation isn’t what you should be doing, what should you be doing? Why, fulfilling your purpose, of course; it’s selfish to do otherwise and in complete contradiction to God’s character. You can even see a clear example right at the crucifixion.

Even unto the moment of His death, Jesus was saving people. Luke 23:42-43 depicts Jesus saving one of the men being crucified with Him right before they were both to die on crosses. There’s even a chance that a Roman centurion who was there was saved as Jesus died. Three of the gospels include text indicating that at least one man knew Jesus to be the Son of God at the moment of His death.

What believers should be focusing on in Philippians 1:21 is the first half of the verse: living as Christ. We should settle for nothing less than doing as He did, preaching, teaching, healing, loving as He did. Whatever the method we were granted by God to fulfill our purpose, every action we take should be tailored toward making Heaven more crowded, right up until our dying breath. We should even hope for our actions to be so purpose-driven that they inspire people to turn to Christ after our death. If your every action isn’t directing people to Jesus, you’re doing it wrong.

Eating the Manna

Long time; no write! I could make plenty of excuses, but the fact of the matter is that I just haven’t written and created teaching lessons like I should have been doing. Though, sometimes, one of the best ways to learn from me might be learning how not to do things.

So, I have a short lesson before my actual lesson for this blog post: don’t fall into the trap of requiring motivation or a burst of God-given energy to do things you know are proper in your walk with God. Following Christ is not about motivation or feelings. It’s about self-denial and doing what is right in God’s sight. For more on that, check out this blog post: https://nathanielgevans.net/blog/when-motivations-gone

Our Humanity Desires Comfort Over Goodness

In our imperfection, we don’t always desire what is genuinely best for ourselves. We have issues with following Christ to what is actually good because the path to righteousness is difficult and sometimes painful. We are incredibly shortsighted, especially compared to the vision of God’s plans for our lives, and our ability to see goodness is determined not by what is actually good, but by the circumstances that surround us at the moment.

Our definition of “good” is circumstantial, subjective, even, whereas God’s definition of “good” is objective, and His is actually correct.

As a child growing up, I often hated going to bed. Not because I was energetic and hated sleep, although I did, but because the growing pains that afflicted me at night terrified me because they hurt so much. I thought they were the epitome of evil; at times, I thought I would’ve preferred to remain in a child’s body forever if it meant not going through those pains.

But in my shortsightedness, I wasn’t ready to consider that what I needed was growth. All I could see was the pain that accompanied it. Had I remained in my body as a child, I would be completely unable to do any of the things I do today. It would not be good for me now, and it wouldn’t even be as comfortable as it was when I was a kid. Now, being in the body I have is both more comfortable and better for me.

Growing Pains in The Christian Life

Things work the same way in our second lives as born-again believers. What was comfortable for us as nonbelievers is neither genuinely comfortable nor good for us. What was comfortable for our understanding as children in the faith is not comfortable as adults in the faith. There were things we couldn’t comprehend on our biblical milk diet that become difficult and possibly painful as we transition to bread and meat.

There are thousands upon thousands of metaphorical situations I could present to supplement this lesson, but the best one comes straight from our most accurate representation in the Bible: the Israelites.

The Israelites’ Desire for “Comfortable” Slavery

In Numbers 11, only a short time before the Israelites arrived outside the Promised Land, a number of people began to complain about their metaphorical growing pains.

Verses 1, 4-9 say, “Now the people began complaining openly before the Lord about hardship. When the Lord heard, His anger burned, and fire from the Lord blazed among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp. (4) Contemptible people among them had a strong craving for other food. The Israelites cried again and said, ‘Who will feed us meat? We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there’s nothing to look at but this manna!’ The manna resembled coriander seed, and its appearance was like that of bdellium. The people walked around and gathered it. They ground it on a pair of grinding stones or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot and shaped it into cakes. It tasted like a pastry cooked with the finest oil. When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.”

Let’s put these verses in context. The Israelites had recently been rescued from slavery in Egypt where Pharaoh had issued a decree to kill all their male children right after birth. In Exodus 1, we’re told the Egyptians cruelly and ruthlessly worked the Israelites to the bone, hoping to make their lives as bitter as possible so they would become weak. Exodus 3:9 says their spirits were broken by the nature of the slavery forced upon them.

When the Israelites were brought out of their slavery, their trek to the Promised Land was through some of the harshest terrain found on Earth: the desert (The map below shows their path, but if you want to know how it really looks, check the satellite view on Google Maps. That should give you some real perspective). Numbers 1:46 says that the number of Israelites present in the wilderness just over a year after they left Egypt was over 600,000 (and that’s just those over 20 years old). If you know anything about the desert, you know that there is no way it could’ve supported that many people as they traveled through. Not without the divine intervention of God, anyway.

This map shows the area the Israelites traveled through from Egypt.

And divinely intervene, He did. God provided for every need the Israelites could’ve had as they wandered through the desert, even after they continuously rebelled against Him worshiping idols and intermarrying with other people groups. Even when they didn’t trust Him enough to take the Promised Land they were given, He provided for them in the wilderness for 40 years until they finally grew enough in their faith to enter a place overflowing with natural resources and the ability to easily sustain their numbers with excess.

The Difficulty of Current Trials Blinds Us

The Israelites had no right or reason to complain about their circumstances, but in their shortsightedness, they let the repetitive food cloud their understanding of what was good for them. Despite the fact that the food they had would’ve been some of the most delicious tasting stuff you could eat, they longed for what they thought was better in their past: the cuisine of Egypt. Their subjective understanding of “good” caused them to forget about or minimize the struggles they faced during their slavery in Egypt in favor of scratching an itch they had at that moment: the desire for different food.

In that moment of human imperfection and weakness, the desire for something as simple as different food clouded the vision of these people until they couldn’t see the goodness God had promised for their future and the atrocities He rescued them from in their past. Thankfully, God had a plan for that. Unfortunately, it hurt far more than just eating the manna and thanking God for their blessings would have.

God’s Answer to Our Misled Desires

Numbers 11:31-33 says, “A wind sent by the Lord came up and blew quail in from the sea; it dropped them at the camp all around, three feet off the ground, about a day’s journey in every direction. The people were up all that day and night and all the next day gathering the quail—the one who took the least gathered 50 bushels—and they spread them out all around the camp. While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the Lord’s anger burned against the people, and the Lord struck them with a very severe plague.

Regardless of the Israelites’ personal feelings on their diet, the fact of the matter is that they were incredibly ungrateful. They fought against God in their craving of what was not good, what was lesser, and were corrected in their beliefs.

Regardless of what the plague was that they were afflicted with, it was certainly deadly to a number of them, and it was meant to be, undoubtedly. But it served its purpose in teaching the Israelites a lesson: the things of the past, the things they enjoyed in Egypt might have seemed good at first, but they came with a painful consequence. That consequence far outweighed the good that they enjoyed. After all, is a good-tasting quail really worth death? No.

And a lesson the Israelites should have learned upon their arrival to the Promised Land, that we can learn from now, was that God’s goodness for us is undoubtedly worth the minuscule pain we perceive when we are being delivered to it; the goodness of the Promised Land and its bountiful abundance was most certainly worth the time spent eating manna.

A Life of Joy is Worth a Little Manna

So, apply this to your life. When things seem a little annoying or painful in your walk with God, when the path God is guiding you down leads you through a desert and provides you manna to sustain you, remember the lesson the Israelites should’ve learned: a life of bountiful joy is undoubtedly worth eating a little bit of manna.

Showing your Thankfulness

It’s very nearly Thanksgiving, so everyone, as usual, is talking about being thankful—why you should be thankful, what you should be thankful for, how to express thanks, etc. And, of course, I have something to say on the subject, too, but I want to approach this not from a why or what perspective, but from a how perspective, because we sometimes forget that certain things carry more weight than others.

When my dad and I would get upset at each other as I was growing up, sometimes conversation turned to me being an ungrateful child, and in many ways, I was. Not because I, myself, felt ungrateful for the things that were done for me, but because I often acted like I felt that way. It was always easy to be thankful with my words rather than thankful with my actions, and that created a disconnect between what I thought and felt and what I showed/proved to be true to my dad.

It’s rather easy to be thankful with your words—the phrase “thank you” is an incredibly easy one to say, even when you don’t mean it, which somewhat takes away its power. That’s why some people might even consider a “thank you” to be meaningless until the sentiment behind it is proved in some other way.

And I say all this to get to my final point: in terms of gratefulness, actions truly do speak louder than words. You can’t just talk the talk of gratefulness, you must walk the walk, lest you risk demeaning the gift given to you, and in a way, the person who gave you that gift as well.

Don’t you think, then, that you should be grateful to God in the same way? Don’t you think you should show your appreciation for His gift of eternal life by obeying Him, by doing as He asks? I do.  I truly think that you demean the gift of salvation if you don’t go out of your way to show how grateful you are to have received it. In that case, you should be giving thanks to God by going out and pointing others to Him so that they might receive the gift as well.

I like the Sidewalk Prophets’ song “Live Like That” for this reason. I think it captures quite well what we should all be doing to thank God for the gift of eternal life, to express the feelings of a grateful heart.

Was I love
When no one else would show up
Was I Jesus to the least of us
Was my worship more than just a song

We likely all know that worship and praise are part of us being grateful to God. We praise Him because of who He is and what He did and does. But the last line of this second verse points to what I said earlier—your praise and worship have to be more than going through the words of a song in church or whispering a practiced prayer. There must be feeling involved, a heartfelt expression of gratitude.

One of the best ways to express gratitude is to be who we are meant to be, who God wants us to be, by becoming more like Jesus and loving like He did and does because it requires more from us than to express thanks verbally, it requires a real change of who we are and how we act.

Am I proof
That You are who you say You are
That grace can really change a heart
Do I live like Your love is true

People pass
And even if they don't know my name
Is there evidence that I've been changed
When they see me, do they see You 

When my dad said I was being ungrateful, it was because I didn’t show proof of my being grateful through my actions. When he did good things for me, I didn’t treat him better—his gifts and hard work didn’t change my heart or attitude—or a better explanation is that I didn’t allow what he did to impact me. He was looking for evidence of me changing and finding none, despite the fact that there should have been some.

And when you accept God’s gift and choose Him as your Lord and Savior, there should be evidence of change, proof of a changed heart out of your gratefulness towards Him. You should treat God better, treat others better, and treat yourself better. You should have a different attitude—evidence that you were impacted by the gift you received.

I want to live like that
And give it all I have
So that everything I say and do
Points to You 

If love is who I am
Then this is where I'll stand
Recklessly abandoned
Never holding back

 In the end, the theme behind everything I write always turns back to love—to true, selfless, sacrificial love. And for good reason—sacrificial love is who God is, and it is who we should be also.

When you’re truly grateful for something, you find yourself trying to pay back the one to whom you’re grateful in equal measure to the gift you received. If someone buys you a $25 Christmas gift, it’s only fair and right to give them a gift of the same price in return. If someone gives an hour of their time to help you with something, it’s only just to give them an hour of your own time to help them when they’re in need.

Now, you can’t work your way to being even with God; you can’t pay the debt that would incur if you were to buy the gift He freely gave. That’s not what this is about. But you can show you’re grateful to Him by sacrificing yourself for Him the same way He sacrificed Himself, Jesus, for you. Jesus gave His life for yours; I think it’s only fair to give your life to Him. Isn’t it? That’s the same kind of love He showed when He did it. He held nothing back. Why should you?

Express your thanks in more than just a few words from a worship song or a nightly prayer—truly show your gratefulness by handing yourself over to God for Him to lead.

Listen to Live Like That on Spotify. Sidewalk Prophets · Song · 2017.

Disciple like Jesus

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19 is the Great Commission, and I would wager a guess that pretty much every Christian at least knows the verse, if not the book or the chapter and verse number. It’s likely mentioned frequently when talking about missions work, especially in other nations. It’s a command that all Christians should know and strive to follow each day, but do you know how to make disciples?

I reckon that almost everyone knows the Great Commission from Matthew 28:19, but do you know that’s not the entire command?

Here’s the whole thing from Matthew 28:19-20: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

A lot of times, Christians translate this verse to, “Go, therefore, and make believers of all nations.” But that’s not what it says. It says to make disciples. And a disciple is so much more than someone who just believes in something. A disciple is a student, a deep studier of someone’s teachings. They are experts in the knowledge of their master or teacher. Everything the master has ever taught, the disciple knows.

There’s a footnote for my Bible from the word “disciple,” that adds a few words, making Matthew 28:19 say this: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of, and disciple, all nations.” Disciple is as much a verb in English as it is a noun. When you disciple someone, you teach them everything you know with the goal that they will be able to teach someone else all that you know.

We, as Christians, as the Church, are incredibly good at making extras out of nonbeliever converts. Extras as in movie extras. Here’s what I mean: In a church, the pastor, deacons, and a few members tend to be main characters—they’re always involved in some way—and the rest of the congregation are just unnamed characters who fill out the void space in the movie so it doesn’t look like it was filmed in a vacuum. If you ever read the credits, they don’t even have names: they’re listed as “extra 1, extra 2,” etc.

And there are so many “extras” in the Church. They don’t speak, they don’t participate, they don’t really contribute, they just fill up the empty space in the pews. And when they die and they go to the credits, the Lamb’s Book of Life, their name won’t be there. And it’s not because they didn’t have a chance to be there; it’s because no one bothered to give them what they needed to become a main character.

Extras and background characters don’t know much about the plot of the story. One may be there to show a character along, to be a stepping stone, but they generally know nothing and serve little purpose to the theme. Main characters, on the other hand, have a deep knowledge of the workings of the story and are contenders and participants in the plot.

As Christians, as evangelists, as teachers and leaders and disciples of God, it’s our job to teach new believers how to step away from the role as an extra and become main characters. Because that’s what a disciple is: a main character. They have to know the plot that God’s writing, know how He works, understand what He teaches so that they can be active participants.

So many new believers are convinced to leave the Church, to not follow God, because they are confronted with the world and are unable to combat that with the teachings of Jesus. They don’t know enough about Him to deny the accusations and grasp of sin. They don’t know enough to resist temptation; some don’t even know they should resist temptation. They’re left hanging high and dry with scavengers picking at them, the sun burning them, and they can’t help themselves off the hook because they don’t know how.

And why is that? Because they weren’t taught how. It’s going to hurt, but I truly believe we, as believers, have a real habit of just believing that getting someone into church is enough, getting them to show up is the end goal. But it’s just not. We’re way too lazy about the work we’re here to do.

The end goal is more than getting someone into a pew or a Sunday School classroom. It’s teaching, instructing, loving, caring for, and preparing them to leave the safety of the church with the knowledge they need to protect themselves, and go out fishing for a person of their own to bring back and disciple in the same way.

We’ve frankly forgotten how to spread the Word of God like Jesus, Peter, and Paul did. God doesn’t care about the number of people sitting in your pews. He cares about the number of souls destined for Heaven. And it’s time we stop being lazy and start caring for souls the same way He does.

All Scripture's Value

“All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Every Christian should agree about a few things when it comes to the Bible: that it is inerrant, that it was written down by men who were chosen, inspired, and guided by God, and that it is just as useful and needed for believers today as it was for the Israelites and Jews in the times it was written originally.

There are some, however, who seek to twist the word of God into something it’s not, and even more who read the word but are unable to understand it and how it should apply to them.

Indeed, there is, as always, an attack against God and His word found in the so-called “Progressive Christianity” movement. They seek to change the Bible’s tenets and morph the true and inerrant word of God into a book meant to satisfy the world’s desires. They read the Word of God, not as a manual for our behavior or a way to understand the world, but as an influence to be twisted into whatever they feel fits current culture the best. It’s dangerous to them and to anyone who gets caught up in it.

But even true believers sometimes fail to understand God’s truth as they should. The Bible is a difficult book to read and apply to yourself. None of us can do it perfectly. However, God, as always, provides us with a method to help us grow closer to Him.

If you’ve ever struggled reading the Bible and wondering how to apply passages of scripture, you need look no farther than the verse at the beginning of this blog: 2 Timothy 3:16. It gives us four ways that every last verse in the Bible can be used: to teach, to rebuke, to correct, and to train in righteousness.

“Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

— Matthew 24:35

I want to be clear here, too. Passages of scripture are not to be used as an either/or application in this manner. While I can’t speak to Greek sentence structure, I know that God’s word and meaning will be maintained for us to understand how He intended it, and the English meaning here is crystal clear.

In English, we have two forms of series or lists. One of them is an either/or list (it has no name, but for the sake of reducing word waste, I’ll call it a separative list), and the other is an additive list.

Separative lists include the conjunction “or” to separate items from one another, indicating that the items in the list are exclusive from one another. Each item in a list following this word becomes its own one word list. To put it simply, a separative list, such as, “you may have steak or chicken or pork for dinner,” means that whichever you choose, you may not pick the other options. Instead of one list with three items, you end up with three lists with one item.

The additive list includes the conjunction “and.” Each item that comes after this word in a list is added to the list. To put it simply, an additive list, such as, “you may have steak and chicken and pork for dinner,” means that all options can be chosen at the same time. You have one list with three items.

You might be thinking, “Hold on a second, there. Neither of those words appear in the list in 2 Timothy 3:16.” And you are, of course, correct. But what does appear is a comma. In English, commas are always additive, taking the place of the word, “and.” To have a separative list, you must have the word “or” included somewhere, else it defaults to being an additive list. And that’s what I’m getting at here.

If you’re struggling to learn from scripture, it is perhaps because you are being too narrow in your application of it. Instead of simply trying to find how scripture is rebuking your sins or correcting your behavior, think about how it can teach you about God, rebuke your sins, correct your behavior, and train you in how to do better.

The stories in Genesis are more than just stories. Each one of them serves to teach you a lesson about God’s character, rebuke sinful behavior, correct that behavior, and train you in how to behave in the future, it just depends on you to look for each of those things.

Take the story of Joseph, for example. The story teaches us about God’s commitment to His people, His loyalty, and His compassion for those who are mistreated. It rebukes the behavior of Joseph for being too proud in his place in his father’s heart and bragging to his brothers, which you can see in his punishment carried out by his brothers who sold him into slavery. That serves to correct proud behavior. But his brothers are rebuked as well for the revenge and anger they gave into. Their struggles and their shame served to teach both them and us a lesson, correcting that behavior. And, just as Joseph’s life as a slave trained him to be righteous and serve God, it does the same to us, training us to rely on God and do what we know is right even when circumstances don’t look like they’re going our way.

So, if you’re struggling to find meaning in God’s word, if you’re failing to find a way to apply it to your life, read it with 2 Timothy 3:16 in mind, keeping in mind that all four of these lessons are found in each and every passage of scripture. You’ll start to see the old stories and laws still hold quite a bit of knowledge and wisdom where you used to see only dusty words of boredom.

A Peacemaker's Peace

Do you have peace? Do you truly know what peace even is? I thought I did, and then I started doing a little digging into the Hebrew word for peace, into the Biblical definition of peace, and I found that my understanding was far too humanistic, much like my understanding of love was until I truly found the meaning of the Gospel.

There’s no better time to be thinking about this than now, when peace in the world is threatened. I’m glad my pastor taught about it this past Sunday because it’s relevant, and it led me to my own ideas I want to portray.

The King James Version of the Bible has the word “peace” written more than 400 times. Even the NIV, which substitutes more contextual English words in place of peace fairly often, has it written 263 times. Clearly, the word, and more importantly, the idea behind it, is integral for believers to understand and apply.

So, what do we understand about peace? In most English dictionaries, you’ll find the definition of peace to include things such as tranquility, freedom from disturbance, a period of no war, etc. Typical synonyms include harmony, safety, silence, tranquility, calmness, amity, etc.

And yet, these definitions haven’t even begun to scrape the surface of peace as the Hebrew word, shalom, describes it. To take from the definition provided in another’s blog post, which I have linked down below, shalom means “to be safe, sound, healthy, perfect, complete.” It “signifies a sense of well-being and harmony both within and without.” It also “includes the idea of vigour (that’s vigor, for us Americans) and vitality in all dimensions in life … shalom speaks of holistic (‘holy’) health for our souls and spirits.”

I want you to pay close attention to this next description of shalom, though, because this is how it’s best described in totality biblically: “shalom is the gift of precious well-being … it is the establishment of a lasting, righteous, good.”

A couple things to break down here: the first is that peace is something that starts within you. You cannot effectively have a peaceful life if your inner turmoil is not settled. Your life is not performed within a vacuum; anything that causes troubles in your heart and mind will cause trouble in visible character. As I wrote two weeks ago (nathanielgevans.net/blog-1/controlling-your-character) the things that create your character are not what you take in but what you give out.

In the worldly vision of identity, we become what our surroundings make us. Metaphorically, the world believes us to be like a sculpture that is carved out and chipped away at by forces around us until we assume the shape we were forced to become by those forces. But God tells us differently. He says that we are more like extremely intricate balloons. We shape ourselves from within using the breath of God to provide form and pressure, and as we grow, we exert ourselves on the world around us, carving out our own unique space to influence our surroundings.

That’s why peace must start within you. You cannot apply peace to the situations and people around you if you have no inner force of peace to exert upon them. We see this consistently described in the Bible as those with wisdom, joy, peace, knowledge, etc. influence and inspire those around them to have the same qualities. You can even see this in the world at large now. Leaders with confidence inspire confidence. Happiness is infectious.

Peace, like joy, is not something that comes from circumstances. It’s something that comes directly from your relationship with God. I think that’s why one of the things Jesus says to the disciples at Passover before He goes to the cross is about the peace He was leaving them with.

John 14:27 says, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

The disciples are about to go through quite the rough time as Jesus is crucified; clearly it was going to impact them considerably. Jesus doesn’t say, “have faith,” or “be strong.” He says, “you will have My peace.” And that peace is something that they had to have to get through the ordeal of losing their teacher. It’s something Paul had to have to survive his imprisonment as long as he did.

Speaking of Paul, the influence of inner peace from Jesus has no better example than when he calmed the Roman guard who was planning to kill himself when the doors to the prison shook open in Acts 16:25-34. In fact, the peace that he inspired was so strong, the man immediately rushed to him asking how to be saved, how to have the peace that Paul did. And Paul went on to introduce the man’s whole household to Christ. Just from a little peaceful influence.

Okay, now I get to my real point, and one that my pastor stressed in his sermon briefly. Peace is mentioned often in the Bible, but the ability to make peace is, though highly praised, minuscule in its comparative presence. Peacemakers are mentioned but one time—in the Sermon on the Mount. And that’s intentional in a couple of ways.

The first is that there is a lot of peace to be made but few peacemakers to actually make it. As I said before, peacemakers can only be those who have true peace from God; therefore, only believers can be peacemakers, and we’ve got a lot of peace we need to inspire. The whole world relies on us to be the ones to confront that which causes anger, pain, injustice, and fear, and make things right; we’re the only ones who can.

The second is that few peacemakers are able to inspire a lot of peace. Just like Paul’s peace was enough to inspire a whole family to Christ, so, too can the peace of one person make a difference in the lives of many. You may have even noticed this if you’ve paid attention. It’s likely that, when people close to you struggle, they come to you for help because they know they’re going to find some form of solace in your advice and companionship.

The affect of even one peacemaker can be incredibly significant, as expressed with an image I’ve provided below. If hostility is like fire and people are like matches, there is a massive chain reaction that occurs when one person steps away from inspiring conflict. The actions of that one person can save hundreds, thousands, even hundreds of thousands from being burned uncontrollably.

You’ll find that the peace of this world is brittle, taut, and actually nearly as peaceless as full out war. The tension in the air in times of worldly peace is so thick it can be cut with a knife, but the true peace of God is malleable, flexible, and able to be applied at all times without breaking. It can lift any weight, stop every flood, calm every fight, drown every fire.

As believers, we are the only ones capable of being peacemakers; it’s important that we step up to the task and provide what so many are seeking but cannot find. We must be the voice of completeness to the incomplete, the level-headed tranquility to explosive hostility. It’s just one more way we are meant to live out the Great Commission.

https://www.preceptaustin.org/shalom_-_definition

The power of just one peacemaker can show true peace to many, saving them from so much pain.

Full Sprint Commitment

How committed are you to following Christ? Don’t just read through that question without genuinely putting your mind to task in figuring out your answer. Don’t read any further until you’ve come up with an answer that is genuine. Don’t cheat yourself to pretend you’re more committed than you are, and don’t sell yourself short. But truly analyze exactly how much of yourself you commit to following Christ.

I’m somewhat breaking from my typical Monday lyric breakdown blog post to discuss this topic because we went over it in Sunday School yesterday, and I wanted to approach it from a different way than the book we’re using did.

We started discussing with Mark 10:13-16, which says, “Some people were bringing little children to Him so He might touch them, but His disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to Me. Don’t stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I assure you: Whoever does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ After taking them in His arms, He laid His hands on them and blessed them.”

Often, we approach these verses from the faith perspective: You should approach God with the unquestioning, confident faith of a child. And that’s a perfectly fine way of interpreting these verses. But I also challenge you to view this through the lens of commitment.

When kids choose to do something, they rarely, if ever, do it halfway. If a kid finds a perfectly breakable vase in the house, he’ll smash it into minuscule pieces. If she scatters 10 Lego bricks, she’ll scatter 1,000. If a kid wants to be obstinate… well, there’s nothing you can do to break through the stubbornness. It’s a neat thing about children, but they don’t truly understand the concept of limiting how they apply themselves and their energy to tasks. Whereas adults tend to jog through multiple things a day, kids sprint full out through one thing until they’re exhausted.

Y’all know it’s true; I know it’s true, and I don’t even have kids. I know this idea seems out of context with those verses, but keep that idea of childish commitment in mind until the end. I promise I’m going somewhere, starting with verses 17-20.

“As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before Him, and asked Him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ ‘Why do you call Me good?’ Jesus asked him. ‘No one is good but One—God. You know the commandments: Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; do not defraud; honor your father and mother.’ He said to Him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these from my youth.’”

Scripture lends itself here to a few ideas. Firstly, that the man was looking for affirmation of his own beliefs. He likely wasn’t looking for a real answer to apply to himself. There’s no guarantee this is the case, but Jesus telling Him the textbook Jewish answer to his question, reciting the Ten Commandments, is pretty good context.

The second, though, comes first, and it points to the fact that this rich young ruler wasn’t paying attention at all. When Jesus says, “No one is good but God,” and the man follows the Ten Commandments with, “I have kept all these,” it’s clear that he missed the point. Jesus is telling him that the affirmation he’s looking for won’t be found because the man was convinced the way to Heaven was keeping himself in the lines of the law.

Here’s where the important bit comes, and where I differ from the textbook interpretation of scripture. Verses 21-22 say, “Then, looking at him, Jesus loved him and said to him, ‘You lack one thing: Go, sell all you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.’ But he was stunned at this demand, and he went away grieving, because he had many possessions.”

Rightfully so, many people attribute this to greed. And I won’t deny that greed is contextually what is being referred to, as confirmed by the following verses, which you can read on your own. But even more than greed, I think Jesus is referring to selfishness, which breeds a lack of commitment. Why? Because, up until this moment, everything the man obeyed was easy for him to do because it was selfish in nature.

I think it’s important that Jesus doesn’t mention all 10 of the Ten Commandments in verse 19. He only lists six. The interesting thing about those six commandments is that they’re all designed to protect the person who abides by them. Committing any of the actions these six commandments advise against could lead to genuine real-world, legal/cultural punishment.

These are the selfish six of the Ten Commandments because living them out can only benefit the one who adheres to them. This rich young ruler followed them not because he wanted to do as God commanded but because he knew that doing so would benefit him, keep him out of trouble. He was following these laws out of pure selfishness.

We know this because he didn’t follow the commandments that were hard. He didn’t follow the first two commandments, and we know this from his reaction to Jesus’s command in verse 22. It was clear to Jesus that this man was greedy and his idol was money, so He commanded the ruler to give up his idol. He had the idol of money because he was selfish and benefited from it; it was easier to make money his first god and God his second. He wasn’t truly upset at losing the money; he was upset at having to be selfless when, his whole life, he had been selfish. He was upset that he couldn’t continue trying to serve himself and God simultaneously and make it to Heaven.

Now bring back the idea about a child’s commitment and that metaphor about jogging and full sprinting. Commitment is something that can’t be parsed out to multiple things simultaneously. You can’t commit yourself to a round of golf and a church service at the same time. Likewise, you can’t commit yourself to yourself and God at the same time.

When we talk about commitment to God, we must commit everything in a full out sprint to God, like little children, else we risk selfishly holding back parts of ourselves from Him, and that’s no way to enter the kingdom of God. He wants all of you, and He’ll settle for nothing less.

Today's a Gift

Are you enjoying your life? Or is it something you just muddle through because you have responsibilities you feel you must attend to? Do you live in the moment, or are you constantly attacked by the problems that may arise in the future?

I rather like this quote (it’s been attributed to various people in various forms, but I like this version best), and I think it fits perfectly with the ideas conveyed in Ecclesiastes 9:1-10: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift from God, which is why we call it the present.”

Solomon begins to tackle the ideas presented in this quote from verse 1. “Indeed, I took all this to heart and explained it all: the righteous, the wise, and their works are in God’s hands. People don’t know whether to expect love or hate. Everything lies ahead of them.”

He skips the history because it’s not relevant to his point, but he tackles the mystery of tomorrow with “People don’t know whether to expect love or hate. Everything lies ahead of them.” This is fairly clear. We don’t know what’s coming next, so we have no way to determine the outcome of our actions until we live through them. And then Solomon qualifies this further while relating back to chapter eight’s themes.

Verses 2-3 say, “Everything is the same for everyone: there is one fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not sacrifice. As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as for the one who takes an oath, so for the one who fears an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: there is one fate for everyone. In addition, the hearts of people are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live—after that they go to the dead.”

See, while you can’t know a lot of what’s coming, there is one thing that comes for us all: death on this Earth. As we discussed last week, the consequences of sin affect everyone, even if you feel like you’re a good person, even if you follow closely the commands of God. The product of being in a sinful world is sinful consequence. So, the one thing about your future that is not mystery is death. You won’t know the time or hour, but you know it’s coming.

So, for many, it’s difficult to not live for the future, to plan and prepare in hopes that they can determine what’s coming. In doing so, they often forget to live for today. But God gives us three gifts if we choose to live in the present. The first is the ability to hope.

Verses 4-6 say, “But there is hope for whoever is joined with all the living, since a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything. There is no longer a reward for them because the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate, and their envy have already disappeared, and there is no longer a portion for them in all that is done under the sun.”

I think this points directly to salvation and the ability of people to pursue God and find His salvation while they are still alive. We know, for a fact, that once you’re dead, your chance is gone for good, so it only makes sense that this is what Solomon’s referring to.

The comparison between a live dog and a dead lion is striking in this case for a number of reasons, but mainly the position of each animal in a food chain. A dog is one who relies on a master to feed and care for it, while a lion is a top predator in its habitat. Once a beloved dog is dead, its body is cared for and it lives on in the memory of its master. But once a mighty lion dies, its body is torn apart by scavengers and memory of it, its loves, hates, whatever, is gone. Similarly, a believer who is taken care of by God is taken care of and remembered after death by God, but a predator of sin who chooses no master but herself dies and is torn apart by other predators. That’s a pretty clear image of humanity’s treatment of the dead. If given the chance and the provocation, a dead man’s reputation will be torn down without hesitation just because he’s no longer around to defend himself. There’s no place for the dead among the living. In essence, the gift of hope God is providing is for safety, both in life and death.

The second gift God provides is a reward. It comes with having your name listed in the Lamb’s Book of Life—the Lord your God will remember you and care for you, just like a master would his dog. Your reward is undying loyalty, love, and care that only God can provide.

The third gift God promises for today is joy from peace, from verses 7-9, which say, “Go, eat your bread with pleasure, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already accepted your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and never let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun.”

This is also fairly cut and dry. God grants us the ability to enjoy the days we have in this life in the moment with the pleasures of good food, drink, and companionship. These are all things we are granted by God, knowing that He had already planned out the days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries ahead. He has already accepted us into Heaven when we become His children, so we are granted the peace to enjoy the gift of today.

But the real power of these verses becomes apparent when we reverse the gifts and apply the consequences to nonbelievers. While believers are granted the gift of hope, nonbelievers are not. Hope disappears with worry, and for many nonbelievers, all they can do is worry about tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. That’s not to say worry isn’t a problem with believers, but the stress that comes with the belief that you are fully in control and responsible for everything in your life reduces the chance of hope being alive and well.

Straight from verse 5, we know that they don’t receive a reward because they declare themselves to have no master. When they do well, they have no one to whom they can turn to be rewarded except themselves, and when they’re dead and gone, their only reward is to be devoured by scavengers.

Finally, they can have no joy, no pleasure, because they aren’t capable of living in the present. Their circumstances are always monitored, always important to them. In the same way worry blocks hope, worry blocks joy and pleasure because worry is a distraction to what is good.

This works with the quote, too. For believers, our yesterday is history, as God has removed our transgressions from us, freeing us from the past. Our tomorrow is a mystery, but not to the God who has it planned out. And we are truly able to enjoy the gift of the present because we have no need to despair over the past or future.

But for nonbelievers, their yesterday is no history because they must account, and face punishment, for their transgressions come judgment day. Tomorrow is a mystery, but one they believe they must work tirelessly to uncover and change. And because they are so obsessed with tomorrow, they are incapable of living in the gift of today. The worst part is that these beliefs set them up for a rude awakening come time for them to pass on from this life.

Verse 10 says, “Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength, because there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.”

Sheol refers to, basically, death. Its meaning is complicated and somewhat confusing biblically, but it’s pretty much just the land of the dead, a euphemism for the afterlife, if you will. The depth of the frustrations of nonbelievers in life will become apparent in death because nothing they’ve lived for will prepare them for what death is like and the things that come from it. Work, planning, knowledge, wisdom, none of the things that matter to a nonbeliever on Earth will matter in death.

And that takes us back to verse 4. There remains hope for any who are still alive to turn from being a proud, dead lion to become a living, loved dog. The life of a nonbeliever, the mindset of a nonbeliever, will not prepare anyone for death and eternity. Only God can do that, which I think is a key point of these verses. The other is a reminder to believers to have faith and take the gifts that God gives you.

The Fallen World

Anyone who’s been reading and keeping up with the series on Ecclesiastes should know by now that the world we live in is a wicked, fallen place full of sorrow, sadness, anger, pain, hatred, and more, and it is only by the good will of God that we have the good, kindness, peace, love, and joy that we have. But a fact that believers try to avoid thinking of sometimes is that the presence of the goodness of God does not mean that evil disappears while we are still living in imperfection.

We hear it all the time in questions like, “Why do good things happen to bad people?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?” We don’t like coming to terms with the fact that imperfect life on this Earth is a dichotomy of good and bad. We don’t get one in a vacuum. Having both is a futility of this world that we just have to live with, as Solomon details in Ecclesiastes 8: 11-15.

Verse 11 speaks directly to our fallen human morals. “Because the sentence against a criminal act is not carried out quickly, the heart of people is filled with the desire to commit crime.”

We’re a people who take a mile when given a foot. It’s a disturbing symptom of life after the fall that we do not adhere to the law of morals, but the moral of laws. In other words, we live within the letter of the law and not the spirit of it, such that if something is not expressly prohibited, we often act as though it is inherently allowable.

Think about it this way, if you will: Say a teenage boy’s parents expressly forbid him from having a party inside the house when they leave for a weekend anniversary celebration. The boy understands the rule, so the parents leave and come home expecting to not have the house destroyed from a party. When they return home, the front yard looks as though a tornado went through it, and the back yard is filled with trash from what was clearly a party. The parents find the boy to punish him for breaking the rule, but he proudly exclaims, “You said I couldn’t throw a party inside the house, so I threw one outside!”

Here’s the thing about that situation; even though the rule did not expressly forbid parties outside the house by letter, the spirit of the rule was that there should be no parties that would destroy the house. What’s saddening about it all is that punishment must still be meted out for the breaking of the rule, and this creates a separation because the punished does not feel as though he did anything wrong.

Okay, I’m getting really wordy about this, but the point I want to make is that we treat the rules God wrote for us the same way. We pretend as though His laws apply by the letter and not the spirit, and if that doesn’t work, we stretch the letter of the law to “allow” ourselves to sin. And then we pretend that we’ve done nothing wrong, that we’re good people, and we deserve Heaven and not punishment for our wrongdoings. And falsely believing we’re good is what got us into the mess of good things happening to bad people and bad things happening to good people.

Verses 12-13 say, “Although a sinner commits crime a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I also know that it will go well with God-fearing people, for they are reverent before Him. However, it will not go well with the wicked, and they will not lengthen their days like a shadow, for they are not reverent before God.”

If you’re not paying really close attention, these verses seem like they contradict each other, but they don’t. First, let’s settle the good versus bad debate here. It’s Paul in Romans who tells us that no one is good, but Solomon kindly settles what qualifies as the standard for character judgment: God-fearing. Notice that “good” doesn’t exist in these verses, but that we have the separation of being “reverent before God,” and “not reverent before God.” But there’s a third distinction: sinner. Note that one who is a sinner and one who is reverent before God are not mutually exclusive. They can exist in the same person (because we all sin).

So, the first thing Solomon says is that a sinner commits crimes and prolongs his life. How does that work? Well, he doesn’t say that sinners prolong their lives by committing crimes or because they commit crimes. It just says that both can exist: a sinner could live a long time or a short time. We know that objectively: people can die before they are born, sadly, or they can live to be over 100. So, in this way, there is little distinction between the Earthly length of life belonging to a sinner who is reverent before God and a sinner who is not reverent before God, affirmed by Solomon’s qualifying statement, “yet I also know that it will go well with God-fearing people.”

And now I’m about to get giddy because the imagery in verse 13’s metaphor is astounding. Take a moment to just think about how shadows work; as the day goes on, they grow longer and longer until, eventually, everything is covered in shadow, making it, for all intents and purposes, infinite. (You may have to finagle with your understanding of nighttime to reach this conclusion, but remember that the darkness of night is effectively the shadow of the Earth.) So, how does this really cool image of shadows apply?

Think of it like this: one who is not reverent before God counts down the time on his life. Each day he lives, his lifetime grows shorter by a day. But for the God-fearing, life is measured additively. For every day they live, their life is lengthened by a day, exactly like a shadow, which, for every moment it exists, grows longer. Eventually, the life of one who is reverent before God becomes like the shadow of night, all-encompassing. In other words, eternal!

Since I’ve gotten you all excited about cool imagery and eternal life like me, it’s time to come back down to Earth because, even though this ultimate truth of eternal life is the case, we still live in a fallen world that hurts sometimes, and Solomon knows this, too.

Verse 14-15 say, ‘There is a futility that is done on the earth: there are righteous people who get what the actions of the wicked deserve, and there are wicked people who get what the actions of the righteous deserve. I say that this too is futile. So I commended enjoyment because there is nothing better for man under the sun than to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, for this will accompany him in his labor during the days of his life that God gives him under the sun.”

It’s sobering to remember that bad things are going to happen to those who love God and good things will happen to people who choose to be evil. Sometimes, it may even seem like the world is attacking believers, and Satan will try his best to make it seem that way. He wants fearing God to look as unappealing as possible.

But I, along with Solomon, encourage you to avoid dwelling on the punishments and rewards other will receive. Instead, focus on what the Lord has given you to enjoy here and do what He has called you to do. Life is so much more enjoyable when you don’t constantly wonder about the effects of the fall and instead just strive to do all you can for the kingdom.

Controlling your Character

Last week, I wrote about character and the importance of maintaining a lifestyle that is focused on God to both protect yourself from persecution and show the light of Christ to the world. I wrote about what makes up that character, but this week, I want to talk about how that character is formed.

 I left you with a saying, “You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react.” What I mean by that is based on Matthew 15: 10-20, but I’ll start you off with a well-used analogy first.

There’s a story about two brothers, we’ll even say they’re twins for the sake of genetic similarity. These twins grew up under a drunkard of a father who drowned away every moment he should’ve spent teaching his boys how to be men. When they grew up, the first twin became a drunkard and never amounted to anything more than his father did. The second twin grew up and never touched alcohol once in his life. People talked about them frequently. About the first twin, they often said, “Who can blame him? Look at his father.” And about the second twin, they often said, “Who can blame him? Look at his father.”

Neither of those boys had control over how they grew up, but they could control what they did in response to their far from ideal childhood. They both had every chance to succeed at escaping the alcoholism of their father, and they both had every chance to fall into it just like their father. But the key is that the way their lives ended up didn’t come from the things that happened to them outside of their control, but from the things they chose to do because of what happened.

To give you a biblical example, let’s talk about Jonah. I’m sure everyone remembers how Jonah was called to preach in Nineveh but decided to run away because he didn’t want to. The calling was something out of his control; God said, “Go preach in Nineveh.” Jonah’s choice to run away, however, was very much in his control. He had two options: do as God said or run away. The characteristic that we know Jonah by was not determined by his calling but by his answer to that calling. We can determine that he was either incredibly selfish or full of cowardice. Take your pick.

In a similar way, he had another choice when storms appeared to assault the boat he was running away on. He could continue to build a character of selfishness/cowardice by refusing to speak up when they drew lots, or he could speak truth and be cast overboard selflessly to save the crew and the others on the ship. He couldn’t control the storm, but his character was built by the choice that he made when confronted with an event out of his control.

This is what Jesus is speaking about in Matthew 15. My Bible subtitles verses 10-20 as, “Defilement is from Within.” I quite like that because it stands true to what I’ve been saying: your character is defiled by the things within you, what you control.

In this moment, Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees, who had again confronted Him because of His teachings in yet another time of Pharasaical big-headedness. The context provided in the first 9 verses of chapter 15 set up the explanation of defilement Jesus serves to them in 10-20 as he confronts the Pharisees’ hypocritical nature as ones who say they worship God but do not live out their lives in obedience to the Law.

Verses 10-11 say, “Summoning the crowd, He told them, ‘Listen and understand: It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.’”

When you understand the Pharisees and how they get to be Pharisees, you come to understand this a little more. Pharisees were pretty much the top of the intelligence line in the Jewish community. Like Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates were to the classical Greek community, so were the Pharisees to the Jewish. They knew a lot, were incredible thinkers, and were rather intelligent. There’s a decent chance they had all of the Old Testament memorized and studied it deeply and consistently. When it came to religious practices, there was no one’s advice you’d want more than a Pharisee.

But therein lies the problem that Jesus is speaking to. This group of people knew so much about the Old Testament and the practices, morals, and lifestyles taught within it. If there was any group that should be expected to be model believers, it would’ve been those guys. But even though they were fed the Bible constantly, what came out was hardly of God’s Word at all.

Verses 17-20 say, “’Don’t you realize that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and this defiles a man. For form the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies. There are the things that defile a man, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile a man.’”

Okay, so if you’re catching on, you’re likely thinking that Jesus was actually talking about literal food, and He was. Make no mistake that Jesus was directly confronting the Pharisees on their beliefs about unclean foods and ritualistic handwashing practices. But in verse 15, Peter indicates that he believes this is a parable, and it’s important to note that Jesus does not say it isn’t.

Verse 19 would seem incredibly out of place if Jesus was only talking about pears and chicken, but He’s not. He’s also talking about character, as He often did when the Pharisees reared their heads. If you’ll refer back to what I said about the Pharisees earlier, you’ll remember that I mentioned their incredible education in the Old Testament—that’s the food they ate in this parable.

Now, let’s do some rewording of verse 11 to show you how this really becomes a parable: It’s not the things you learn that determine your character, it’s the things that come from what you learn that determine your character. Like I said before, ideally, the Pharisees should’ve been the ideal believer, but they weren’t. They were full of hypocrisy, anger, pride, and entitlement. What they learned from the Bible was not that they were people in need of God, but that, by following enough laws, they could effectively become like God as rulers of people. They were wrong, of course, but that’s what they learned, and it was that which became their character.

In other words, what made the Pharisees the Pharisees wasn’t the spiritual nourishment they received, but what they did with the knowledge they held. And that goes for everyone. You can’t control what happens to you in this life, but who you are is determined by what you do because of, or in spite of, the things that occur. People can’t see everything you’ve eaten, but they can see the effects the food has on your body. In the same way, people can’t see everything that has happened to you, but they can see how you’ve let it affect you.

Where's Your Allegiance?

To whom do you owe allegiance? Where do your loyalties lie? For a lot of Christians, I genuinely wonder about this question because I can’t tell whether they are loyal to Jesus or something else entirely. And I’m not necessarily referring to sin here, though sin can be something you choose to be your master over Christ.

Every day we face decisions that indicate to whom we give glory as our master, and far too often, we try to split our loyalties to give a little glory to Jesus, a little glory to ourselves, a little to our state, our country, our sin.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot recently, and the idea for this little lesson was brought to mind again thanks to two things. The first is an image with a quote that’s going around the Internet right now relating to politics that says, “Some of y’all are too busy being Republican or Democrat to notice you stopped being decent a long time ago.” The second is the song “20:17 (Raise the Banner),” by Audio Adrenaline.

The saddest part about that quote is that it is disturbingly and apparently true, especially of Christians. There are so many Christians I’ve heard from who are trying to corrupt the Word of God to make it match their politics—on every side of every issue. There are “Christians” who put more of their identity in being Republican or Democrat than they do being a follower of Christ. And they’ve stopped being decent human beings and they’ve stopped being Christian. Their master is no longer Christ; it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Mike Pence or George Bush or whoever else they happen to like in the political spectrum.

Now, I’m not going any farther into politics than this: stop that. Stop following any of those people like they’re your master. Did any of them save you? Do any of them rule your life because they created it? No. So you’d better stop serving them as if they did what Christ did. I’m saying that so clear cut because it is crystal clear in the Bible.

Matthew 6:24 says, “No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and money.” And you can replace money with literally anything else: sex, career, politics, games, books, sports, your country. It’s that simple: if you choose to serve God, you cannot serve anything else lest you tell God you despise Him.

Now, before I go farther, I need to clarify so no one will jump on my case thinking I’ve said something I didn’t. What I’m saying here does not mean you are exempt from following the rules of the government you live under, or that you can’t like a politician or the country you live in, or that you can’t/shouldn’t serve in the military. All I’m saying is that you cannot make them an idol. You cannot make them so important in your life that you end up following and serving them with fervor. That position belongs solely to God. That glory belongs solely to God. See, your master is the one to whom you give glory

The Church is a nation without borders temporarily encapsulated by Earth. Instead of picturing ourselves as Americans, Europeans, Australians, Germans, Canadians, etc. it’s time we remember that we are Christians living in America, Europe, Australia, Germany, Canada, etc. with a Visa. Our home here is temporary; as soon as we are done with our work, we will return to be with our Lord, Jesus, in our own place in His house.

While you’re here, your job is to give Him glory so that the inhabitants of the nations you temporarily live in say, “I like this Lord you serve; can I move to where you live?” And that’s where the Audio Adrenaline song comes in.

In 2 Chronicles 20, Jehoshaphat was set to lead the inhabitants of Jerusalem out to battle an opposing force much stronger than their own army. He prayed about what he should do, and the Lord told him to face them even though they were weaker. When it came time to do battle, Jehoshaphat had his warriors lined up and ready to fight, but God ordered singers to be sent in front of the warriors to shout praises as they marched.

Jehoshaphat had two choices: he could choose to ignore God and march out with his warriors in front to gain glory for himself, his people, and Jerusalem, or he could listen to God and give Him the glory for routing the opposing army and securing the victory.

Let’s think of it like some of the song lyrics:

Raise the banner high march with I and I
Lift your voices up loud and high
Strength and unity, faith and victory
Let the battle rage on we cry

In medieval times, major lords had minor lords who swore allegiance to them, called vassals, but for the sake of my metaphor, we’ll call them “bannermen.” I’m stealing a fantasy term here, but rest assured the concept existed in medieval reality. One of the ways to tell who served who in battle was to see the banners each army marched under. Each lord had someone in his troops carry a banner that depicted his house in some way that was easily identifiable to friend and foe alike. Those troops would sometimes rally together under a central banner, the lord to whom their individual lords owed allegiance. Then, each house was seen as inconsequential because all the armies would be directed by the major lord. Instead of multiple separate armies, they would become one massive army under a single banner.

See, like those troops, we march around with a banner held over our heads. The key is to make sure we’re holding up the right one or else our allegiance comes into question. If we walk around with our own house banner over our heads, we take the glory that belongs to our Lord for ourselves. If we walk around with our country’s banner over our heads, we take the glory that belongs to our Lord for His enemy. And rest assured that the things that do not explicitly state they are with God are against Him (Matthew 12:30). But if we accomplish all that we do with God’s banner over our heads held high, He receives the glory due to Him.

So, don’t forget that you owe your ultimate allegiance to God, not your county, not your high school or college, not your state, not your country, and not your political leaders. But to God and God alone.

Flirting with Sin

Last time in Ecclesiastes, I discussed the importance of realizing that you cannot escape sin, so instead of beating yourself up when you do, you should seek forgiveness and repentance, and continue to chase after God. This time, I’m covering the other end of the spectrum: don’t flirt with sin and temptation or you’ll end up in over your head.

I hear things like this a disturbing amount these days: “it’s okay to sin because God will just forgive me.” Or “I’m just going to try it once, just to see what it’s like, then I’ll never do it again.” Or even, “This is the last time I’ll let myself do this sin, then it’s on the straight and narrow for me.”

And y’all, that’s an incredibly dangerous line of thinking, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 7:23, “I have tested all this by wisdom. I resolved, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was beyond me.”

We are incapable of just dipping a toe into sin. You may think it’s possible, but if the wisest man to ever exist failed at it, you will, too. Over and over Solomon says that he was testing all the things he could on this Earth to find satisfaction. Just testing. It’s very likely that he had no intention of having as many wives and concubines as he ended up with or falling into as many other traps and temptations as afflicted him. His goal was to learn, to experience. It was a mindset that is perpetuated in those examples I gave earlier.

In for a penny, in for a pound. This saying references a penalty for owing money in Great Britain. At the time of its first use, the penalty for owing someone a single penny was the same as owing someone a whole pound. So, if you were prepared to be in debt by one penny, you should be prepared to be in debt a pound. Sin is the same way. Not only is the penalty for sinning once the same as sinning multiple times, but if you’re prepared to dip one toe in, you should be prepared to jump in.

So, don’t even try it. Better yet, don’t even entertain the thought of trying sin.

Verses 24-25 say, “What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it? I turned my thoughts to know, explore, and seek wisdom and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness.”

The thing you’re looking for in sin when you just give it a try is not there. To go back to the pool analogy, if trying sin once is dipping your toe in, what you’re trying to find in doing it is at the very bottom of the pool. And it’s not just any pool. It’s dark, murky, and incredibly deep. So deep that, even if you dove in, you’d never find the bottom. It’s unknown, out of reach, and dangerous. It would be madness, stupidity, to jump in and swim for the bottom, not knowing if you’ll even come close to making it.

You can even devote all your skills, everything at your disposal, and you’ll never find a way to get to the bottom. But, if you’re thinking to yourself, “I won’t know until I try,” stop it. Solomon is about to show us exactly what happens when you dive into the pool.

Verses 26-28 say, “And I find more bitter than death the woman who is a trap, her heart a net, and her hands chains. The one who pleases God will escape her, but the sinner will be captured by her. ‘Look,’ says the Teacher, ‘I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation, which my soul continually searches for but does not find: among a thousand people I have found one true man, but among all these I have not found a true woman.”

Now, first, before people start hopping on Solomon for saying women are horrible, this is part of what happened because of his sexual sin and having one thousand wives and concubines. Solomon became incredibly jaded against women because he dove into the pool labeled “women over God” and was trapped in it.

When sin traps us, it changes how we see everything around us. That murky water from the pool gets in your eyes and makes it hard to see things as God intended them. And a result is that you start blaming the wrong things for the consequences you face for your decisions.

An alcoholic in the middle of alcoholism rarely blames the drink for his problems. A poor woman in debt and out of a house because of one too many shopping sprees rarely blames her greed for her lack of money.

Solomon used women as his example because it was likely easy for him to do so, and because he was writing for other men at the time, but let’s change this back to our pool comparison to bring the ladies into this, too. More bitter than death is the pool that is a trap, its murky depths in actuality a mire of quicksand waiting to suck you in and hold you down.

The one who pleases God, the one who ignores the call of the pool and runs away from it, will escape danger. But the one who sins, the one who desires to dive in and does so will be caught. When your goal is to please God, you’ll find it far easier to ignore whatever it is about the pool that calls to you and tells you to dive in.

If you think of it as two voices calling out to you, it’s much harder to hear a second voice if you spend all of your energy focusing on making out the first and listening to its directions. It’s like when you’re on the phone and you tune out all the noise around you. If you focus on God’s voice, you’re far less likely to hear, and thus entertain, the voice of sin that calls out to you.

Verse 29 says, “Only see this: I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes.”

Remember earlier how I said getting in the pool of sin makes it hard to see things as God intended them? This is kind of what I mean, and in a way, it’s Solomon acknowledging that his statement on women is because of his sin, the sin of women, and not because of God, how He made the world, or how He made women.

God made people “upright.” He made us to be righteous in His image, yet we pursued many sins. You know, a lot of people like to blame God for the things that are wrong in this world. Many people even reject Him because of this, but that’s because they are blind. If you see and know that God made everything good, you’d see and know that what’s messing things up, what’s wrong with this world, is the way we act.

When we sin, we see the world as Satan intends and all the good things God made we either cannot see, or we see differently. But make it your goal to see this: that God made this Earth, and it was good. When you see that, you can see what you should do, what is right, and avoid what you shouldn’t do, what is bad.

Life-altering Power

Words are powerful in the mouth of anyone who speaks, as I wrote on Monday. But words are even more powerful in the mouths of those who teach and lead because they have a responsibility to guide correctly with the things they say. The wrong word can ruin your life or someone else’s. And that’s why, as Christians, how we teach the Gospel is incredibly important.

James 3:1-2 says, “Not many should become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment, for we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a mature man who is also able to control his whole body.”

I know that James 3 is talking specifically about teachers, but we can spread this verse out to apply to all who teach. That means it applies to every believer who teachers others about the Gospel (which we should all be doing, by the way). But let’s apply it to teachers first.

I think it’s fair to say that teachers are judged more strictly by society. And I feel confident that every elementary, middle, high school, and college teacher will agree with me there. That’s because judgment typically goes hand in hand with responsibility: the more you are responsible for, the more people look up to you to always do the right thing, the harsher you are judged.

A teacher in a school will have their every action monitored and critiqued by other teachers, administrators, and parents of the children in their classes. Some children likely do some critiquing of their own, as well.

It’s the same for teachers in the church, too, especially pastors. Every word they say is critiqued by the congregation, other pastors, and anyone else who happens to hear their message. And actually, that is as it should be. Never hear a message preached without checking what is said by what the Bible says. That’s why James says that not everyone is fit to be a teacher.

Being a teacher requires constant monitoring of your heart and actions to make sure they are good and showing the fruit of the Spirit. It means constantly analyzing your lessons to make sure they are God-inspired and spoken so that you do not say anything careless, nor anything that is not backed up by scripture.

I say all this to say that you will be judged by what you say just as much as by what you do. Matthew 12:36 says, “I tell you that one the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak.”

Why is this the case? Because, as I’ve said, words are important. The tongue has the power to direct the body and soul. One of the reasons why teachers are judged more harshly is because they must give an account for every soul they directed through the lessons they’ve taught. I take this idea from Hebrews 13:17, which says, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.”

But, indeed, as Matthew 12:36 says, we all must give an account for what we say. This rings true for those of us who go out to act on the Great Commission and speak the Gospel of life to those who need to hear. If we say the wrong thing, we must give an account for it. If we speak unbiblically, we must give an account for that.

James 3:6 says, “And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is placed among the parts of our bodies. It pollutes the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is set on fire by hell.”

I want to focus on “sets the course of life on fire.” With what you say, you have the ability to guide someone to Heaven or send them on a crash course to Hell. And this is my whole point. If God tells you to show someone the Gospel and you don’t know it well enough to speak the truth of life into them, you have to give an account of that. If you say the wrong thing and they turn away from God because of that, you have to give an account. You have to tell God when you approach the judgment seat what happened there.

1 Peter 3:15-16 says, “But honor the Messiah as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. However, do this with gentleness and respect, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are accused, those who denounce your Christian life will be put to shame.”

Look, you can’t control other people’s actions, but you sure can influence them. If someone is going to turn away from God and Heaven, you can’t control them. But you can make sure you are not the reason they do so. When it comes to teaching the Gospel, make sure you’re ready to speak life into the person the Spirit directs you to share with.

Don’t let what you say be a stumbling block for someone else. I write all this because we talk about not letting what we do be a stumbling block for others, but it’s equally as important to watch what you say with the same fervor. True, sometimes actions speak louder than words, but often, a misplaced word is enough to make your actions meaningless.

Guard your tongue, guard your mouth, speak the Gospel backed by scripture. Speak carefully and exercise caution when provoked to answer, and don’t let what you say be the reason for someone turning away from the way, the truth, and the life. You have the power to change someone’s life; use it wisely.

Earth's Flavor Enhancer

Let’s talk about salt. Salt is a peculiar substance created by combining a volatile alkali metal that explodes when it touches water and a poisonous gas that can also serve as a purifier. And yet, we eat the stuff—often way too much of it. Because when we combine these two extremely dangerous substances with the right ratio, we get something that is incredibly useful for a variety of purposes, not just flavoring your food or making it easier to float in the ocean.

I want to talk about salt, not because I like adding it to my fries, but because it’s been heavy on my heart that it appears to have become tasteless. Okay, you got me. I’m not talking about table salt here. I’m talking about the genuine, bona fide salt of the earth, the shining light of the world, the city on the hill. Us. We’ve lost our taste. And it’s about time we start fixing that.

Matthew 5:13 says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled on by men.”

First of all, why are we, believers, salt? Well, that’s a fantastic question, and it breaks down so nicely into a wonderful metaphor.

To begin with, nonbelievers are not salt, they are one half of salt: Sodium. Much like the element, the unsaved are unstable because they do not have a firm foundation. Sodium, when isolated, is a highly unstable and reactive material; if it touches water, it explodes rather violently. I think it’s fair to say that, without Christ, people are very much the same. With the slightest disturbance, they can be thrown off balance and explode as the world crashes in around them.

The other half of the salt equation is Chlorine. You probably know this one from your local pool. It purifies the water and kills germs that can cause infection and death. Interesting that those two verbs can be used to describe God, right? He purifies our souls and kills sin, which leads to death.

Now, I’m not that great at math, but even I can do this simple equation. If nonbelievers are Sodium and God is Chlorine, when you put the two together, you get a believer: AKA salt! The chemistry, as I understand it, lends to the idea that the Chlorine atom serves to stabilize the Sodium atom, and in the reaction as the two mix, salt is formed.

It’s incredible how easily that lines up with our understanding of how God works with us when we choose to follow Jesus. He purifies our souls, kills sin, and stabilizes us as we interact with Him. Even more interesting to me is that when Chlorine combines with Sodium, it changes form to Chloride as it mixes with the Sodium. Chloride, then, fits the bill as the Holy Spirit, the person of God who lives within all believers.

Now that we know why we are salt, let’s discuss why it’s important. Why must we be the salt of the earth? Why salt, specifically? What is our job?

I can break this down a million ways, but the simplest answer is this: we are here to enhance what has already been made. Salt doesn’t really produce flavor of its own, it merely enhances the good things that are already there. It suppresses bitterness and adds punch to sweet, sour, and umami (meaning savory, it’s a flavor often found in broths, gravies, soups, and more. I liken it to that heartwarming feeling that comes with the thick, rich flavor of a good potato soup.) flavor types. At even higher concentrations, it suppresses everything but the umami type.

So, in relatively low concentrations, we, as believers, are meant to enhance and suppress. We are meant to be an additive that helps remove and eliminate bitterness—and I’ll spread out the metaphor here to include all evil—and bring out things that are sweet, sour, and savory. Our job is to stop evil and enhance the good things that life brings to the table for all of us.

But in a low concentration, there is still something not so great—sourness. And most people don’t like sourness. In this metaphor, sourness is not necessarily evil, but sadness, horrible things that happen, not because of someone with ill intent, but because the world is fallen, and consequences come from that.

But in high concentrations, we are meant to lessen the impact of even sadness, of even the consequences that beleaguer a fallen world. We are meant to reduce the reliance on a sickeningly sweet happiness that does not satisfy and enhance the satisfactory savory taste of a world that feels the love of the one true God.

We are here to show that this life experience we have been granted does not have to be one that is filled with pain and sadness and sorrow and hatred and evil. We are here to show that there is satisfaction in life, that there is love, that there is good. We are meant to enhance all the things that God said were good while simultaneously showing that the impact of evil can be lessened. We are meant to make things different.

But what if we’re not doing that? What if our food tastes just the same as a meal without salt? If we lose our taste because we are not relying on God as we are supposed to, how can we make the world salty? How can we improve it? What good are we? To nonbelievers, especially, we have this goal to be different because being different is how we show them who God is and what He does. If our food tastes the same as theirs—if our lives look the same as theirs—why would they need what we have? Why would they need God?

They wouldn’t. If we, as salt, are not making our lives salty, are not making our lives different, then we appear to be no good. What we stand for appears to be no good. Who we stand for appears to be no good. Who we stand for appears to be useless because it looks like it is the same as that without salt. And what happens then? We are thrown out and trampled on. Our God is thrown out and trampled on. And nonbelievers won’t recognize who God as and what He does.

That’s why we must continue to produce flavor. We must continue to rely on God. We must continue to be different, to make the world different. Because if we don’t, how can we show others that they need the God who saves?

Feeding the Wolves

What do you feed yourself? Weird question to start off a Christian blog if you’re not checking this out with the right mindset, but I’m not talking about the food that goes in your stomach to provide sustenance for your body. I’m talking about a spiritual sustenance, a metaphysical food plan. Because you’re feeding your heart, mind, and soul something, even if you don’t realize it, so let’s talk about what you should and shouldn’t be feeding it.

There are a ton of ways to go about this subject, but I’ll start you off with a story of unknown origin, though it is sometimes attributed to the Cherokee or Lenape Native Americans. It’s been adapted and worked into a number of popular movies and shows, and it goes something like this: “There are two wolves inside you who are always fighting. Which one wins? The one you feed.”

This applies pretty well to spiritual battle for us. There are two sides: Good and evil, God and Satan, and they’re fighting for control over your very being. They are literally warring inside you just like those two wolves. But because of free will, it’s not up to them who wins this battle, it’s entirely up to you. And it all depends on which one you feed.

But this can be a problem because the evil wolf is an incredible scavenger. He can feed off the dregs of pretty much anything. In fact, he gets sustenance merely by you being alive in this world thanks to the evil that occurs in it every day. This world itself creates food for the evil wolf and shoves it down your throat. Sometimes, this food is foul language, sometimes it’s lust, sometimes it’s greed, jealousy, murder, bullying, anger, pain, sadness, loss. Seriously, think of anything bad that happens in this world, anything that hurts you or someone else, anything that causes you to think something bad: it all feeds the evil wolf.

You don’t even have to try to give him food; he’ll just take it. You have to try and stop him from getting food. You have to lock him outside, away from the table, so he can’t get the scraps off the floor.

The good wolf, however, is picky. He only drinks pure milk and eats pure meat. The milk has to be at the perfect temperature, the meat cooked flawlessly, otherwise, he won’t eat it. Things that feed the good wolf include generosity, gentleness, peacefulness, kindness, joy, love. Basically, the Fruits of the Spirit. He’s pretty picky. But that’s because eating anything else makes him sick and keeps him from fighting. It’s detestable to him.

But there is a way to stop the evil wolf from getting any food. And it takes time, hard work, and dedication to the task, but it will work. And it involves you blocking out all the things that tempt you to sin.

Matthew 5:30 says, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” These are the kind of measures you should go to: If watching a TV show causes you to lust or be jealous or curse, cut that off. Stop watching it. If your phone or computer tempts you to watch porn just by being near it, throw them away. If playing and losing sports or games causes anger, stop playing sports and games. The only way to effectively weaken the good wolf is to completely cut him off from any chance of food, kind of like a siege.

The verses that brought this whole thing on actually come from 2 Chronicles 32 with Sennacherib’s invasion of Jerusalem. Verses 2-5 say, “Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come and that he planned war on Jerusalem, so he consulted with his officials and his warriors about stopping up the waters of the springs that were outside the city, and they helped him. Many people gathered and stopped up all the springs and the stream that flowed through the land; they said, ‘why should the kings of Assyria come and find plenty of water?’ Then Hezekiah strengthened his position by rebuilding the entire broken-down wall and heightening the towers and the other outside wall. He repaired the supporting terraces of the city of David, and made an abundance of weapons and shields.”

Most important are the verses about cutting off the water access to Assyria. Typically, a siege works the other way around. By surrounding a city, an attacking army can cut off their supply of food and water so the city will have to survive from only what is stored inside its walls. But Hezekiah turned this around on Assyria by removing access to any water for the Assyrian army but granting his city access through means of a reservoir that channeled water from outside the city directly into its walls.

Instead of his people starving and thirsty, the Assyrian army was cut off from any sustenance and likely would have been forced to abandon its siege had God not stepped in and removed them Himself as indicated in verse 21.

It is to this extreme we must go to stop the evil wolf. We have to wall ourselves in with the good wolf, with God, and lock the evil wolf out, cutting off his access to our problems, fortifying ourselves until the good wolf is strong enough to go beyond the walls and defeat the evil wolf in battle.

The evil wolf brings despair and death with his victory. After he’s grown strong enough to defeat the good wolf, he will devour you and slink off to scrounge up his next meal somewhere else.

The good wolf, however, brings joy and satisfaction with his victory. After he’s grown strong enough to defeat the evil wolf, he follows you everywhere and hunts at your side. He helps you track down his food and food for yourself. And because you have help in the hunt, you both grow stronger and stronger the longer you work together. And one day, he will grow strong enough that he will hunt down the evil wolf and he will tear it limb from limb so it cannot hurt anyone anymore.