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Victims...

Moses returned to the Lord and said, "Why, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people?  is this why you sent me?  Ever since I sent to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all."  (Exodus 5:22-23)

God's people are not victims but overcomers.  In this passage in Exodus, the Lord is about to do a tremendous act (delivering his people from a tyrant) through tremendous means (the plagues) but the people are so visionless and helpless that they cannot get beyond seeing themselves as victims.  Worse yet, they consider themselves victims of the Lord!  It was not the Lord who enslaved them or made them manufacture bricks without straw.  But, when the oppressive systems we grow accustomed to get disrupted by God's acts we whine to him.

There can be no more disheartening thing for a leader than to hear the people they are leading fight back against a promise of God.  It is so troubling to Moses that even he goes back and questions God in the above verses.  We may be tempted to label him a whiner - but I believe we react similarly under far less drastic circumstances. 

How often has God tried to move in your life but it made you so uncomfortable that you refused to see the promise he was trying to fulfill.  Sometimes we may endure beatings from a slave driver to allow for God to work - Jesus promised us no less...

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because  of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12)

We must not shy away from the Lord's vision because of our immediate circumstances.  I wonder what would have happened if the Hebrew people would have recognized God's working through Moses earlier and immediately supported the vision Moses delivered.  Would the plagues have been necessary?  Would they have walked out of Egypt sooner? 

The people of God are a victorious people.  We can walk with our heads high and minds filled with the things to come knowing that God wins in the end.

MLK

Men's Rule...

I’m going to make a few connections here – not necessarily accurate and I know not completely “pc.”

Last night I was watching “Law & Order: SVU.” The episode was about a homeless man who created his own codes and laws for the homeless in his ‘family’ and other homeless around him. It eventually got carried away to a point where he would kill anyone who would disrespect him or his ‘family.’

Currently there is a book on marriage written by Christian authors titled Love and Respect. I have read portions of it (and am registered to attend the conference in April) and find it to be pretty good. It’s premise is that women need love and men need respect. When both the man and the woman receive the love and respect they need – it becomes easier for them to give the love and respect needed by the other partner. Again, men require respect.

This morning I was thinking about that show last night and then the portions of scripture I read yesterday, and then that book. In the first three chapters of Genesis I was surprised at how much the theme of “ruling” was involved (1:26, 1:28, 3:16, 2:19, 2:15, 9:2). 

When men are adequately and correctly ruling they receive respect.  Disrespect is a sign of not "ruling." In other terms, disrespect is a sign of failing at the very first obligation given to men by God. 

From the beginning God made man as a sort of conqueror of the things around him. This is obviously tempered by the phrase “to work it and take care of it” (2:15) and God’s command for man and woman to “submit to one another” (Eph. 5:21).  Of course, the respect (or submission) men receive is then contingent upon the love they have for their wives (is it as Christ loves the church?). 

This is all to say that obviously there is a desire in men to have rule or dominion over the world around him. That’s probably why land ownership is so important to a man’s self-esteem. Myself, I’m a control FREAK! I resist being controlled and it sometimes hurts relationships. But there is a type of rule that God desires men to have – the kind of ruling that Adam must have understood prior to the fall in chapter 3 (or maybe he didn’t – and therefore the fall occurred).  

Anyhow, ruling is a part of us men. A dangerously vital and necessary part of how we’ve been hardwired. As we learn to be more like Christ, let’s take the reigns of this responsibility and do it well.

MLK

Devastation...

To understand the first three chapters of Genesis is to put an entirely new spin on the world as we know it.  We first need to start with a clean slate - as God had to work with.  We have to forget the things as we know them; refrigerators, common colds, speeding tickets, bad grades and all.  Then just imagine life with only what existed after creation at the end of chapter 2.  Man, Woman, God and Earth. 

Now read chapter 3. 

I typically read Genesis 3 through the lens of what I already know and then chapter three becomes a shallow "how did we get here" in my mind and I overlook "where we were."  But to understand God we must  understand how he intended things to be.  That period of time between chapters 2 and 3 was the world as God desired and as we are meant to live.  Somewhere deep in our DNA we still have an innate longing for that home (Eden) and it allows us to see the injustice and cruelty of the world.  We know how things ought to be. 

The Gospel message is God returning us to that world.  All the rest of scripture and history to this point is redeeming Genesis 3 and returning humanity to Genesis 1 & 2. 

MLK