I am starting a new post-series today. The fellowship that my wife and I gather with meets on Wednesday nights, and there were some great topics of conversation, which I wanted to share here. We usually have good discussion, so I imagine there will be things to share each week. I also want to take the opportunity to give my “best of” recommendations.
First to the “best of”. I read the following posts in the past week, and thought they were excellent.
Douglas at The Lord’s Plowman had two posts that I thought were excellent.
Keith Giles at Subversive1 had a post “10 Things I’ll Do Different…”
Arthur Sido at The Voice of One Crying Out in Suburbia… had a post “The church on the margins”
Anthony Verderame at The Normal Christian wrote a post “We are alive!!! And Free???”
Dan Allen at The Ekklesia in Southern Maine wrote “Step by Step”
Here’s my song recommendation for the week, again from Hillsong United, this time from their newest album “The I Heart Revolution”. The song is entitled “Take All of Me”
OK, so last night we started out reading Romans 8:1-4, and then went to Exodus 20, to actually read the 10 commandments. The question posed was “why did God give the law?
Here are the answers I gave:
1. Primarily to show man his true depravity, and his need for God’s grace. Romans 7:13 supports this view.
2. Secondarily to provide some sort of external framework to help show mankind in general what is right and wrong, so as to provide some aspect of behavior control for those that have yet to find God’s grace.
This discussion lead to a conversation on whether God INTENDED man to fail to meet his requirements (or knew beforehand that he would fail). The belief expressed was that God foreknew, from the foundation of the world, that things would transpire just as they did, i.e., that God would create man, man would fall, God would give the law, man would fail to keep the law, and Christ would come as the Messiah to provide redemption for mankind.
3. We discussed the Sabbath, and what it means for us today. We all agreed that the concept of physical rest is important, that we need not work ourselves interminably, and not allow time for adequate rest. I feel that the Sabbath goes deeper than this, however, to more of a spiritual rest. My wife Tayleene shared how the Lord has helped her find rest in running her business. In the past she would always be coming up with different things to do to increase business, drive in new customers, provide greater customer satisfaction, etc. She would work herself to the bone, always with something new she could do to make things better. The Lord taught her how to find her rest and trust in Him, with the knowledge that, even if she doesn’t do all those things, He will still prosper her business.
Hebrews 3 and 4 is pertinent here.
Hebrews 3:7-11 discusses the failure of the children of Israel to trust in God, to provide them victory over their enemies in Canaan, and thus their failure to find His rest. Joshua, 40 years later, finally did lead the Israelites into Canaan, and thus into a type of “rest”. Hebrews 4:1-11 then discusses this rest further, stating that a rest remains for the people of God, and that disobedience, same as before, will keep us out of that rest. Lack of faith in God is the root of disobedience. We disobey because we fail to trust. That, to me, is what the Sabbath encompasses, us finding our rest, “ceasing from our labors”, in Christ.
Well, I better stop now. I don’t want to get too verbose.
