Two Good Reads

I will not be blogging for the next few weeks, but I wanted to share two links that I felt were worth reading.

1. A post by Randy Alcorn on hope, its power, and our hope as Christians.

2. An article on Global Warming that confirms much of what I've felt and even blogged on in the past (I recommend you read that post if you didn't when I made it). "Science" says "jump" and we jump—until they change their mind. Unfortunately, in regards to Genesis, that jump has undermined so many people's faith in God and His Word that by the time they change their mind it will have been devastating to so many people.

As a side note on the whole Global Warming issue—I am not even saying that the earth isn't warming up, but I am questioning man's role in that. If it is man that alters the earth's climate then what caused the earth to warm up and end the ice age in a day when man was not producing emissions? We know that the earth was much colder at an earlier time (for a season), and it was a time man couldn't have impacted that, so if the earth goes through temperature cycles on its own then why are we all of a sudden saying it is man's fault?

May God bless all of you richly with a deep sense of His love for you in the weeks ahead.   —Erick

Easter Teaching

Many people said that they were blessed and encouraged by the teaching I gave yesterday (Easter) at our fellowship. I offer it to you in case you feel led to listen. (Below is a link to the 35 minute mp3 file. You can click on it to listen if your browser is set up for that, or right click on it and select the option "Save Link As" to save it to your hard drive). I used very few notes when giving the teaching as I felt the Lord directing me to simply share an overflow of the last two posts about the Saturday between the cross and the resurrection, and how the work was already done but not yet realized. God bless you all, and thanks so much for reading, listening, and most of all for sharing my life with me.

Easter Teaching

The Heart of Stone Rolled Away . . .

Luke 24:1-12   But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,  that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise." And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

Q: When did Jesus say, “It is finished?”
A: On the cross.

Q: When did the disciples “get it”?
A: The verse above, as well as some other verses (try John 12:16 and John 2:22), plus what the Bible records about the disciples hiding in fear of the Jews, would seem to indicate that it wasn’t until after the resurrection and glorification of Jesus.

The work was done on the cross, but it wasn’t received by them and made their own until after they met the risen Christ—until after the Spirit rolled away the stone of their heart, and the veil that masked their understanding was torn. It was then, it seems, that they realized what was done, and who He really was. The work was done on the cross, and made their own on Easter Sunday, but that Saturday in between those days (“The Darkest Day” which I speculated about in yesterday’s post), seems to me like such a picture of the lost world (and of each believer before they realized who He was and gave their life to Him)—the work is already done for us, but we live in the darkness not realizing it.

Sometimes this is, I fear, a picture of the Christian’s life as well. There are too many things I am anxious about, or afraid about, or in doubt about, when, in fact, the work is already done by Him, and the promise is already given by Him, and it is just mine to make my own through faith. Too often, it seems, I live in “Saturday.” Like Sarah and Abraham, I don’t have the faith to trust God at His promises and take Him at His word. But, I am so encouraged by Sarah and Abraham’s story as well, because Hebrews 11 assures us that even if we begin without faith in one of His promises or aspects of His character, we can turn to Him and consider Him faithful who has promised. Like Sarah, then, that faith will become the power to bring forth the life that is dormant in the seed of His promise, just waiting for the water and light of our faith to bring it forth.

This morning I plan to teach at our fellowship on many of the different emotions and fears and “confusions” that might have been swirling in the disciples on Saturday, that were swept away or answered on Sunday. The cry, “He’s Alive!” truly makes all the difference in the world, and I hope that each and every one of you have a joyous and wonderful day today celebrating that victory, and the hope and purpose it brings! And, remember—even when our faith falters, and our step stumbles, and the cry of “He’s Alive!” maybe doesn’t seem to carry the power it should to us, we have the cross of Friday towering over us, covering us in the shadow of its mercy and grace, and testifying of His amazing love. Wow! Words truly do fall short of describing what this whole period of time in our Lord’s life means for us . . .

The Darkest Day . . .

You wake up and, for a moment, feel like you’ve had the worst dream of your life . . . and then you realize it wasn’t a dream. You lie there and hope, and go over the day before, but then you realize, that hope as you might, yesterday really happened. Yesterday you watched them beat and mutilate and mock and kill the One you had thought was God’s Son, the One you had left everything to follow, the One you had endured hostility and persecution to walk behind, the One who had maybe cast seven demons out of you, or had healed you of a crippling disease . . . the One who had offered you love and hope and peace with God when others condemned you and judged you and looked at you with contempt and cast you out.

Yesterday, after the earthquake and the darkened sky and the rumors of dead people walking around Jerusalem, you had hoped, waited, for something to change. You’d seen Him die, there was no doubt about it, but didn’t the signs in the sky mean something? Weren’t the Heavens displaying their anger—and He was going to awaken on the cross, or right after Joseph took Him down, and display your justification, and destroy your enemies, and prove He was God?

You’d waited, and waited, and hope had begun to die, and slowly fear, and numbness, and uncertainty, and hopelessness had crept in. You had watched evil win, and goodness die . . . but was He even good if He had lied and deceived so many of you? Yesterday, every secret knock on the door as you hid from the Jews, every rushing person past the window, awakened a hope. You sat up, crying in your heart for someone to tell you it had changed. But, eventually, somehow, exhausted and drained and broken and racked with sorrow, you’d fallen asleep and awoken this Saturday morning, hoping it had all been a bad dream, but the dirt on your clothes from last night where you’d fallen to the ground sobbing shatters even that hope and testifies that yesterday really happened. Jesus is dead—and He didn’t even defend Himself! He didn’t even DO anything to stop them! Anger at Him mixes with your sadness in a horrible soup in your soul. Two days ago you life had purpose and meaning and direction—you were a follower of Jesus! Today He is dead, and you have . . . nothing! Even worse, you have nowhere to go back to—you are alienated from all that you left, and there is no place for you any longer. Two days ago you had dared to believe that even your life might be redeemable before God . . . but today, you realize you are without hope of redemption at all.

Today is the darkest of days. The Jews continue their celebrations and feasts, and the One who offered you freedom from the law and religion and guilt and fear of God continues to lie in the grave. All of the ones who warned you about Him, and who threw you out for following Him, were right and you were wrong. Now what? You’ve left everything, for what? For a lie? Now, each footstep outside the window brings fear. Are you the next one to be arrested and crucified? Are all the promises and hope and love and acceptance He offered you now a mocking memory that laughs in your face? Clearly the Jews and your family and neighbors were right—and it only rips open the wounds His love and acceptance had begun to heal, and pours salt into them.

What about the power He displayed, the authority He spoke with, the way your religious leaders had backed down before Him, the healings He performed? What about them? Were they a show? No! You don’t want to believe that! You know what you were before He touched you, and how different you are now! But . . . what about the miracles? Was He a necromancer or sorcerer? He clearly had power, but your religious leaders had condemned Him. You’d thought He was good. You’d thought He was from God—but maybe they were right. Maybe you laughed with, and believed in, and ate with, and helped, a man working miracles by the power of Beelzebub as the religious teachers claimed. While He was beside you as they accused Him there was no way you could believe it—He was so good! You felt such pure love, for the first time ever! But now, He’s dead, and they’re still alive and in charge. Could you have been wrong? How could something so good have been so deceiving . . . and what now? What was next?

You thought yesterday, watching Jesus be beaten, mocked, “tried,” and crucified, was the worst day of your life . . . but today promises to be even worse—the darkest day of your life—because at least yesterday, up to the end, you’d clung to hope . . . but today there is no more, and without hope we perish. Yesterday you kept hoping that He’d finally say, “Enough!” and defend Himself. Yesterday you’d hoped that maybe He’d just fainted . . . but, seeing His mutilated body, and the blood and water pour from the spear hole, you knew deep down inside that He was really dead. Yesterday you’d hoped the Heavens would open and He would open His eyes and wrong would be made right. But today . . . He really is dead. It’s not a dream. And He is now wrapped in burial clothes and in a tomb with a massive stone in front of it, guarded by soldiers. If anything was going to happen it would have been yesterday, or last night, but today it is too late. Any hope that you had clung to is gone, and your life lies around you—shattered, impossible to fix. Yesterday you saw evil win, you saw evil have its greatest victory . . . but now you don’t even know what is evil and what is good anymore. Today is going to be a very long and dark day—if you even live through it . . .

Little do you know that tomorrow morning the knock will come, and the words will fly to your ears, “He’s Alive!” Little do you know that within a few days all the Scriptures you’ve known for years, and all the mysterious things He said, will suddenly make sense, and that you will realize that while you thought evil was working its greatest victory, and the wicked were going to prosper, God was in fact turning evil against itself and He was working His greatest victory! Little do you know that, within a few weeks, you will have touched the risen Jesus, been taught by the risen Jesus, watched the risen Jesus ascend into Heaven, and been filled with a fire, and the Spirit of God, and a sense of purpose and destiny that will carry you around the region declaring His truth, demonstrating His power, and proclaiming His name until you, too, joyously go to join Him!

“Today,” may look like the darkest of days, upwelling with hopelessness, doubt, fear, or frustration; seeming to scream out that darkness reigns, and that God must be either dead or uncaring or not real—but “tomorrow’s” cry of, “He’s Alive!” reminds us that, even when we don’t see it or understand how, God is always at work and on our side—and hope, peace, joy, eternal life are ours today, because He lives!

I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day . . .

One of my favorite Christmas carols, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, did not begin as a Christmas carol, but rather as a song or poem born out of the hurting heart of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882, seen in this 1878 picture). According to the Maine Historical Society web site (who graciously has allowed me to use this picture), in 1861 Longfellow's wife, Fanny, was melting sealing wax when she set her clothes on fire and was enveloped in flames. Longfellow tried to put the fire out, but failed and she died the next day. While trying to put the fire out he burned his face and hands, and he grew the famous beard he is well known for to hide his facial scars.

I quote their web site here: A month after Fanny's death, on August 18th, 1861, Longfellow gave voice to his despair in a letter to his late wife's sister, Mary Appleton Mackintosh. He wrote, "How I am alive after what my eyes have seen, I know not. I am at least patient, if not resigned; and thank God hourly—as I have from the beginning—for the beautiful life we led together, and that I loved her more and more to the end."

The same year that Fanny died the Civil War began and in 1863 Longfellow's son, Charley, ran off to join it against his father's wishes. The United States was plunged in to a bloody war on its own soil, one that pitted brother against brother and family against family. In July of 1863, in the battle of Gettysburg alone, close to 50,000 American's died in three days. In the war Charley was also severely wounded (he would survive), and Longfellow's pain of heart for both personal and national loss must have been close to overwhelming.

Depending on which source you read, it was on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, of 1863 that Longfellow penned the now famous words which would, some years later, be put to music by others and become the Christmas carol we now know so well. The stark honesty and questions, the doubt and fear, and the overcoming faith of this song cause something deep to rise in me. As you read it, follow its progression, and lay within the words whatever it is around you that causes you to doubt or fear or feel lost or overwhelmed. Then, remember, that we walk by faith and not by sight, and rise up in the soaring conviction of the fourth stanza—that though around us it seems hope may be lost, God is not dead, nor does He sleep, the wrong shall fail and right prevail! God is good. All the time. And He loves us so much He sent His Son to die for us, that we might live again in relationship with Him. We walk by faith, and not by sight, and we stand convinced of that which is not yet seen, but promised. Christian, He will not leave you or forsake you, and greater is He who is in you than he who paces about this world.

1. I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

2. I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

3. And in despair I bowed my head
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,
'For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.'

4. Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
'God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.'

5. Till ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.