Brown's Daily Word 9-23-10

Good morning,
Praise the Lord for this beautiful day. Praise the Lord, for He is our eternal companion and He is our eternal contemporary. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the Christ in every culture and He the Lord of every culture. Without Christ every culture in deep crisis. Without Christ every culture becomes decadent and rotten; it decomposes and finally disappears for good, into oblivion.
The story of Josiah, King of Judah, is one of the most unusual in the Old Testament in many ways. He was only eight years old when he took the throne. He is one of the last kings to reign before the nation was overrun by the Babylonians. Josiah’s father and grandfather were evil kings, but in the eighteenth year of Josiah’s reign, he decided to repair and restore the Temple of the Lord. The Temple was in a disastrous state, and it symbolized the calamitous spiritual condition of the people. As recorded in 2 Kings 23, Josiah had to do many things in order to clean out the Temple area and repair the Temple itself. He had to have the priests remove all the articles and altars dedicated to pagan gods, including Baal and Asherah, (which means there was child sacrifice taking place there in the Temple area). Josiah had to remove all the pagan priests that now served in the Temple. Homosexual male prostitutes had actually set up their quarters in the Temple. Other rooms in the Temple were occupied by women making religious objects for the goddess Asherah. Josiah had to remove the chariots and images of horses that past kings had dedicated to the sun. He had to rid Jerusalem of the mediums and spiritists. He told the people to get rid of their personal household gods. He tore down the high places all over the land of Judah and Israel where people worshiped pagan gods and offered human sacrifices.
Is it any wonder that God was bringing the nation to an end? Then another shocking thing happened as the priests were cleaning out the Temple. A scroll was found, and it was not just any scroll, but the Torah, the book of the Law, the Scriptures of the Jewish people. In following the practices of the world and worshiping pagan gods, the people had first ignored and then lost the Word of God. It had been buried under a pile of debris somewhere in the Temple. Hilkiah the priest gave the scroll to the king’s secretary. The king had the scroll read to him, and when it was read, he tore his robes, because he knew the people had broken every command in the book of the law, and judgment was sure to follow. So Josiah extended his reforms from just removing the pagan altars and repulsive religious practices from the Temple. He also restored the worship of the true God, and had the people return to the religious feasts and rituals which were a part of their history. The Scriptures tell us that Passover was observed in Israel for the first time since the days of the judges. None of the other kings of Israel or Judah had celebrated the Passover. Great reforms were beginning to take place.
Jesus talked about a type of reform where someone turns over a new leaf, but there is no real repentance or change of heart. He said, “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation” (Matthew 12:43-45).
The New Yorker magazine had a cartoon in which a young boy in math class stood at the chalk board with other students. The teacher had written the problem on the board for each student: 7 x 5 = __ . All the other students have the answer right: 35. But this boy has written 7 x 5 = 75. The teacher obviously had told him it was wrong, and the boy said to her, “It may be wrong, but it’s how I feel.” That is a perfect metaphor of our culture. Responding to the cartoon’s message, Stephen Carter, a professor of law at Yale University said, “Faith is dead, reason is dying, but ‘how I feel’ is going strong.”
Many in the world today are not interested in the Word of God because they are not interested in the truth. They are not interested in God’s will, because it is too easy to be wrapped up in our own will and doing what we want to do. We want to go by our feelings which are much more to our liking. We must turn to Jesus, the real life giver. It is He who has the authority to transform our lives and make them new .
Adrian Dieleman told the story of one man’s transformation: “Oscar Cervantes is a dramatic example of the Spirit’s power to transform lives. As a child, Oscar began to get into trouble. Then as he got older, he was jailed 17 times for brutal crimes. Prison psychiatrists said he was beyond help. But they were wrong! During a brief interval of freedom, Oscar met an elderly man who told him about Jesus. He placed his trust in the Lord and was changed into a kind, caring man. Shortly afterward he started a prison ministry. Chaplain H. C. Warwick described it this way: ‘The third Saturday night of each month is “Oscar Night” at Soledad. Inmates come to hear Oscar and they sing gospel songs with fervor; they sit intently for over 2 hours; they come freely to the chapel altar. . . . What professionals had failed to do for Oscar in years of counseling, Christ’s Spirit did in a moment of conversion.’”
Praise be to Jesus our Lord.
Brown


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPlwPUYWaw
Weekly: Saturday Evening Worship Service
To be held at: First United Methodist Church
53 McKinney Avenue
Endicott, New York

The Worship service is sponsored by: Union Center United Methodist Church
128 Maple Drive
Endicott, NY



An evening worship services will be held on Saturday September 25, 2010 at 6:30 PM. Rev. Brown Naik will preaching. "A Touch of Christ" will lead in praise and worship. Ministry for the youth and children will be provided. We will gather for coffee and fellowship at 6 PM. The public is invited to join us. For information call: (607)-748-6329 or (607)-427-9098.