Monthly Archives: April 2016

April 26, 2016 · 7:57 am

Things that God Hates

Here’s an incomplete list of things that God hates:

Reviling.

Drunkenness

Taking his name in vain.

Idolatry

Brawling

Oppression

Hatred

Oppression

Abuse.

Being delivered from that? God loves that. In fact, he sent his Son to die that we might be delivered from the kingdom of the devil, both the bondage in our own hearts as well as the bondage inflicted upon us from others.

Again, “God hates divorce” is nowhere in the Bible.

Another thought on that:

Capital punishment and other criminal penalties are also not part of God’s perfect plan of creation. But to say then that they are forbidden by God and hated by God is a stretch of rather sketchy exegesis. They are necessary because we live in a world of treachery and oppression.

So also divorce. Sure, God didn’t create the world with divorce as a part of his perfect plan of creation. But that isn’t the world we live in now.

“Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses wrote that.”

As long as men’s hearts are still full of evil – reviling, drunkenness, brawling, idolatry – divorce is still necessary, just like capital punishment will still be necessary as long as there are murderers.

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April 25, 2016 · 7:00 am

An Introduction

I would like to introduce you to my wife. Isn’t she lovely? The reason I want to introduce you to her is that today is her birthday. I would tell you how old she is, but I have listened to her over the years. She has kept me from much foolishness – such as asking or telling how old a woman is.

She is very beautiful. I fell for her around a campfire. We were with a church group and the conversation turned to Oscar Wilde and that was when we knew. 

Actually, I think I need to go back a bit. I was interested in her earlier that day. Beautiful, charming, witty young lady. So I went up to her and talked to her. I don’t know why, but my idea of wooing a young lady was not well thought out. I believe that I started with Kant’s eyes being opened to reality by David Hume – or some such.

And she listened to me. For two and half hours. I listened to her. We didn’t talk about puppies and music and movies – that would come later. We talked about irrationalism and empiricism and the decline of the Age of Reason.

For two and a half hours.

Sorry, guys. She’s mine. Always will be. Beautiful, charming, funny, and will listen to this old guy talk for hours.

After twenty years, she still makes my heart leap. Her eyes still grasp my soul.

She also spends every day, every moment, in excruciating pain – pain that most of us have never had. She has it every day.  CRPS and EDS are cruel, relentless, vicious.

I see in her eyes how much she hurts and I hurt with her. And in immense pain, she still counsels those young women who are broken and hurting. She still listens to the horrors that evil men do. She still walks with others who are hurting and broken – even when she can’t get out of bed.

The days she can’t get out of bed far outnumber the days she can.

I have never known a woman as strong as she is. She clings to her Father in heaven, even in tremendous suffering. She asks “Why?” and then resolves to follow Him, even in the valley of the shadow of death. She can’t do another thing that day, but still has a smile and a prayer for me and for her friends and for her children.

Her daughters rise up early and call her blessed. In fact, they are coming over in a moment with breakfast.

She has also walked with them through very dark places. When you are in a very dark place, sometimes you need someone to walk with you and lead you over to the other side.

My wife has always been that person. Spend a moment talking to her, and you will smile a little brighter, lift your head up a little more, and change a little bit.

I don’t know why she has this debilitating illness. To me, it seems that she could do so much more good if she wasn’t in so much pain. But my ways are not God’s ways. His ways are good, and wise – even when we don’t see it. It is my wife that suffers, but she’s the one that would have said that first.

So happy birthday, my love. I’m walking with you every step of the way. I am so thankful to God that he saw fit to add a little more color to this world on the day that you were born. And I am also thankful that he led me to you and you to me.

Let’s do this!

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April 21, 2016 · 7:30 am

The Failure of Complementarian Manhood

Food for thought….Some very valid points here. I think we have historically failed miserably in the area we should be the strongest.

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April 16, 2016 · 7:30 am

God Hates Divorce, part 2

From a year ago. There are those still struggling with the bad translation of Malachi 2:16. Since that time last year, I have heard the desperate attempts to make this say “I hate divorce”, some even saying that the first part of the conjunction (‘ki) has been lost somewhere, and the original was “anoki” (I). It shows the desperation that translators have in twisting the words to make them fit their preconceived notions.

My Only Comfort

In my previous post, I showed how the Hebrew of Malachi 2:16 has only one possible translation that takes into account the grammar and pronunciation of the Hebrew words:

“Because he hates, send away,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “and violence covers his garment.”

The question now is how that translation fits with the immediate context of Malachi.  The pericope is 2:10-16:

 10 Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?

 11 Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of the LORD which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.

 12 The LORD will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of…

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April 13, 2016 · 8:45 am

The Samaritan Woman

17 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband:
18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.
19 The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet.
20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
(Joh 4:17-20 KJV)

 

Jesus and this Samaritan woman were having a conversation about water. Jesus invited the woman to ask for living water – that is, water that gives life, that quenches thirst permanently – and the woman asks for it.

Then Jesus tells her to call her husband. The standard interpretation is that Jesus is confronting her fornication, and the woman gets uncomfortable with that and changes the subject. That was how I always viewed it, until I started asking questions of the text.

If this is what Jesus was doing, why did he allow her to change the subject? Shouldn’t he have pressed on until she repented?

Then I understood something. Jesus knows the heart, but we have to ask questions. Jesus knows perfectly what is going on, but we need to explore.

The assumption that Jesus is confronting her sinful fornication is the assumption made by men from the perspective of men. If this was a man that Jesus was talking to, then the assumption is that the man has kicked out his wife five times looking for a younger or prettier model. We get that. But in that day, a wife didn’t have many options. Where would she go? How would she feed herself? What will she do?

Further, a wife didn’t divorce her husband; a husband divorced his wife. And this happened to her five times. She continued to marry the same kind of man, a man who didn’t know how to love, and continued to reap the same results – just as she kept coming to the well to drink the water. Eventually, she thirsted again.

Her quest for acceptance, security, intimacy and love led her to seek out the same kind of man over and over again. Eventually she gave up, decided that she wasn’t worthy of the dignity of marriage and simply let the sixth man use her as he saw fit. That was all she was worth. Her deepest longing would never be filled. But Jesus would change all of that.

Jesus, seeing the heart, knew that her problem was a problem of worship. She sought her healing and worth in the arms of men – one marriage after another; and she was discarded, one after another, by the same type of man. She thought that the next time her thirst would be filled. But that dream was as futile as thinking that water from the well would quench her thirst forever and she would never have to draw again.  The reason we have to keep drawing water from the well is that the water of the earth can’t ever fill what we thirst for. The problem with the woman wasn’t lust and fornication. It was a problem of worship. The god she worshiped had her in hard bondage, a never ending cycle of abuse, degradation, and despair, until finally she required nothing, demanded nothing, and allowed herself to be used and discarded as a useless thing.

But Jesus saw a prodigal daughter, a woman in God’s image, and restored her in the area she needed the most: the area of worship. Jesus didn’t allow her to change the subject. We just need to see what the subject WAS. The subject they were talking about was thirst, and Jesus pinpointed her true thirst with one simple question: “Go call your husband, and come here.”

When true worship is restored, the bondage and cycle of degradation and abuse cease. He came to proclaim deliverance to the prisoners, not to harp on women like a Pharisee. He came to bind up the brokenhearted, and he saw in the women one who was brokenhearted. He didn’t stop at the outside of the cup; he went to the heart.

Did Jesus confront her sin? Yes, of course he did. But her sin wasn’t that she was a fornicating tramp who didn’t know how to keep a husband. That’s reading into the text what isn’t there. Her sin was deeper than that. It was a problem of worship.

Jesus didn’t let her off the hook on that one. He pointed his finger right at it, then when she confessed that he was right (“I perceive that you are a prophet”), he continued to do what he told her he would do, and gave her living water. But instead of falsely accusing her of something that she didn’t do, he went right to the heart of the issue, because it wasn’t his intention to further degrade her and humiliate her, it was his intention to restore fellowship with God, and this fellowship must be in spirit and in truth.

If we wish to evangelize as Jesus did, we have to learn to know people. Jesus saw the heart, but we have to ask questions and learn how to listen. Then we need to point them to the only one that can give living water. Too often I fear we settle for telling everyone what is wrong with them – but we usually get that part wrong. The heart of the matter is worship. We need to get to the heart, and that can only come with time and patience.

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April 6, 2016 · 9:36 am

The Secret Things of God

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deu 29:29 KJV)

Making decisions is a daunting process. There is much that goes into a decision, especially one that will change a life.

Take, for example, a decision to separate or divorce a spouse. This decision is terrifying enough, but it is often muddled by poor counsel. As Christian counselors and pastors, we must ensure that our counsel is based firmly upon scripture, and not the opinions or biases of men.

Whole books have been written on appropriate grounds for divorce, but the purpose of this post is to address just one area where we often go wrong.

We must remember that we cannot make decisions based upon what we hope God will do in the future. This belongs to the secret things of God. God has revealed to us what he wants us to know so that we can make right decisions that are honoring to him, but he has reserved the future for his hand alone.

To put this practically, suppose a wife reports – again –  to the elders that her husband refuses to keep his marriage vows. Perhaps he is violent, abusive or engaged in fornication. Perhaps he is a drunkard or a reviler. Let’s assume that these facts are not in dispute. Everyone knows that this is what the wife has been enduring  for years.

When she reports that she is filing for divorce, the answer of her elders is often something like this: “God can change hearts. Stay in the marriage. What will you do if he repents? What if he changes?”

It seems to me that this puts an unendurable burden on the heart of the wife (or husband, as the case may be). The church is asking her to make a life-altering decision based upon what God may or may not do in the future. But how can we ask our sheep to sin in this regard?

The devil took Jesus to the temple and told him to throw himself down, for God promised that he would not allow his foot to be moved. In other words, the devil told Jesus to make a decision based upon requiring God to act in a certain way. But Jesus called this testing God, which is forbidden in the law.

Let’s apply this to our example. The way that things stand now, she has grounds for divorce. Assume, again, that this is not disputed. But she is still counseled to remain in the marriage “in case he repents”. But repentence is a gift of God. Only God can change a heart. So now we are asking this woman to make a life-altering decision, or even put her life in danger, based upon what we hope God will do in the future.

But our text in Deuteronomy forbids doing just that. We cannot make our decision based upon the “secret things of God”. We are required only to make wise decisions based upon what we know today.

As of right now, is your husband a reviler, drunkard, abuser, fornicator? As of right now, is the marriage broken? As of right now, has he pulled asunder what God has joined together?

We can only make these decisions based upon what is revealed to us. To pry into the future is forbidden by God and is only a short step away from soothsaying and fortune-telling.

It is cruel and ungodly to force a spouse to stay in perpetual limbo because God may or may not act in the future, especially when Jesus himself said that God gave us divorce because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Because men’s hearts are still hard, divorce is still sometimes an option.

To ask what the offended spouse would do if there was repentance is neither helpful nor biblical. I could ask what I would do if I won the lottery or became rich and famous, but to base your life and obedience upon a fantasy is not honoring to God. Let’s not fall into the heresy of Creflo Dollar’s prosperity gospel in our counsel to hurting men and women.

CAN God bring repentance? Of course he can. That isn’t the question. Can God fill your bank account with gold? Of course he can.

Why is one fantasy wrong while the another is right? Would it be foolish to buy a new car or a new house based upon hoping that God can fill our bank account with gold? Of course it is. Then why would we counsel a spouse to stay in a broken marriage based upon hoping that God will grant repentance?  All we can do is make the best decisions that we can based upon what we know NOW. Is the man a fool addicted to his folly? Of COURSE God can change his heart, but that isn’t the point.

Wisdom would dictate that throwing yourself off of the temple would be suicide. It would have been a denial of God. Wisdom also dictates that fools return to their folly. This is the norm, just as falling from the temple results in death.

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. (Pro 26:11 KJV)

This is what fools do and will continue to do apart from God’s free and unmerited grace. God can, of course, intervene. He often does, or we would all be lost. We call upon men and women to repent and believe and pray for God’s intervention in their headlong rush to hell. We urge, we exhort, we confront. But when it comes to decisions – whether we are judges deciding on a sentence, church courts deciding on discipline, or spouses deciding on divorce –  we must act in wisdom, not in fantasy.

Only God can soften a heart, and we pray that he will. But we have to make our decisions based upon what God has revealed to us, not through crystal-ball gazing or empty hopes.

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