Brown's Daily Word 9-19-07

Good Morning,
It is going to be one of the ten best days of September. Praise the Lord for His bountiful care and abundant grace. There is a powerful and very contextual verse found in Jeremiah 8.
"The summer is ended, the harvest is passed, and we are not saved" ( Jeremiah 8:20). Where we live we often have a beautiful Indian Summer in September - the fine weather goes on and on, then suddenly in the first week in October it’s all over. The gales and the rain come with a vengeance, and any crops that haven’t been harvested are ruined. Jeremiah was talking about one of those moments in time. Israel had been called to be God’s own special people. Jehovah was their real king, the people were his kingdom but something had gone terribly wrong.
The Bible constantly declares God’s Kingship. The Psalms are especially rich in this imagery: He "is King for ever and ever" (10:6); He "has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all" (103:19). The Kingdom of God was a central theme in the teaching of Jesus. In fact, one could say that the whole of Scripture is the account of God’s kingdom - it’s the story of the Kingdom Lost and the Kingdom Gained. It’s true at the national level but also with the individual people.
On a national level the people of God had plumbed the depths and entered into a state of hopelessness. The situation was well summed up in the words of Jeremiah, "The summer is ended, the harvest is passed, and we are not saved" (8:20). The nation had been deceived by the evil one into believing that prosperity came from following the surrounding nations in worshipping the fertility gods and engaging in their corrupt practices. That all took place 2,500 years ago. It’s ancient history - but what about today? The world has moved on; knowledge has increased by leaps and bounds in harnessing the resources of creation. But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed - and that’s the heart of man. C S Lewis put it rather well in an ironic parody of the hymn "Lead us Heavenly Father." His version reads, "Lead us evolution, lead us up the future’s endless stair; / Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us, for stagnation is despair; / Groping, guessing, yet possessing, lead us nobody knows where." That’s a good summary of the Kingdom Lost.
Mankind is still in a state of rebellion against God’s law, as Scripture tells us, "As for you" the apostle Paul wrote to the believers at Ephesus, "you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world" (2:1). Thank God, says the apostle, that your position of the Kingdom Lost is now in the past, but he also says, you are still living in an alien environment with many spiritual dangers ahead. He said of himself that he had to take great care that, at the end of the day, he wasn’t "disqualified for the prize" (1 Corinthians 9:27) of the Kingdom of God.
An admiral was sailing on his flagship on the North Sea. He was on the bridge on a dark night looking through his binoculars. To his alarm he saw a light coming directly towards them - they were on a collision course! He gave an order: "Send a signal; change two degrees south!" Back came the reply: "You change two degrees north!" He reacted rather indignantly, as he wasn’t used to having his orders countermanded. He sent another signal: "I am an admiral - change two degrees south!" The reply came: "I am an Able Seaman - you change two degrees north!" This was too much for the admiral - his professional pride and position was at stake. "I am a battleship," he signaled, "I order you to change course two degrees south!" Back came the irresistible demand: "I am a lighthouse - you can change two degrees north. You change! I can’t!"
The moral of the story is easy to see: the standards set by the word of God do not, and cannot change. It is we who must take care to avoid the hidden rocks that would shipwreck us on our voyage to the Kingdom of God. It would be a tragedy if, at the end of our lives, the sad words spoken by Jeremiah were to be true of us, "The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved." The nation of Israel was grievously damaged by sheer Disobedience to the Lord. Warning is there for all to see.
Jesus illustrated another potential disaster in his Parable of the Ten Virgins. The parable pictures an Eastern wedding, celebrated at night. The bridegroom would fetch the bride from her home and bring her in procession to his own, accompanied by the bridesmaids, each holding a lamp. Perhaps on this occasion there was some delay, and five of the girls kept their lamps burning unnecessarily while they had a sleep. The other five had taken the precaution of conserving their oil or bringing an extra supply. At midnight, the cry came, "The bridegroom is here!" The girls woke up and got their lamps ready for the procession, but half of them found that their oil was running out. So they said to the others, "Quick, quick, lend us some oil!"
The lesson that Jesus was teaching was that each of us has to be ready for our moment of destiny. The five girls left without oil wanted to borrow from the others, but that proved impossible. The truth is that in the matter of personal commitment to Christ, we cannot borrow a friend’s faith in an emergency. Character cannot be transferred from one person to another. Our salvation, our service for Christ, is a very personal matter and delay is dangerous.
Jeremiah had spent all his energies in warning his people to put their houses in order, but they were too busy enjoying the fleeting pleasures of the world and they were too stubborn to repent of their sinful ways. Now it was too late. The summer was over, with no time to sow a new crop; the harvest they were reaping was one of weeds. The only prospect before them was that of winter.
There’s a beautiful, well-known passage in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: "There’s a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." Don’t miss the tide! Delay to trust in Christ and delay to serve him faithfully, can mean the Kingdom Lost. We never know when the opportunity will be gone forever. The uncertainty of life interjects urgency into our dealings with God as with all else.
An old rabbi was asked by one of his disciples when he ought to make peace with God. The rabbi thought for a moment and then said, "One moment before you die." "But, Master," protested the disciple, "I don’t know when I shall die!" "Exactly," said the rabbi, "Do it now!"
God is Love and it is not His will that any should perish or fail to receive the rewards He has in store for faithful service, but there comes a time when He will appeal no longer. God respects the gift of free will that he has given to mankind. Martin Luther once described God’s grace as like a shower of rain. He wrote, "It came to the Greeks and passed over, then to the Romans and the Jews. You must not think that you have it for ever." How terrible if our Delay in Deciding to Follow Christ should result in missing the summer of opportunity, of seeing the harvest passed.
This need not happen. The Bible has a contrasting message of hope and assurance. The apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is over; the day is almost here" (13:11,12).
Jeremiah’s sad cry ended with the words, " ... and we are not saved", but Paul’s is one of hope, "because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed." It was their’s potentially, but there was danger that it might slip from their grasp if they didn’t "wake up from their slumber." The believers had made considerable progress in the Christian pilgrimage. It might be said that they were on the last lap of an arduous race, but they could not afford to slack off, to lower their guard against the enemy’s attacks. They were told "to wake up from your slumber." It may be that they had grown a little complacent. They had to get back to basics; to be reminded of the obligation laid upon all believers to obey the Lord’s commands.
When the apostle wrote to the church at Rome, he quoted several of the Ten Commandments, together with the command "to love your neighbor as yourself" (13:9), the command which Jesus also quoted in his teaching. There is a famous saying by Augustine, "Love God - and do what you like." If love is the governing force in our lives, we will automatically keep, or at least try, to keep all the Lord’s commands. Paul summarizes his argument; "Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law" (10).
For most of us the Christian life is more like a marathon than a race of a hundred yard sprint. Perseverance can be a problem. It’s easy to falter in the hard stretches of the Christian pilgrimage. The apostle Paul wrote to the believers in Galatia, "You were running the race nobly. Who had interfered (hindered or stopped) you...?" (5:7) They had taken their eyes off Jesus. It can happen with us hardly noticing it. We can be too preoccupied with earthly matters, in themselves quite legitimate. We can become downhearted by adverse circumstances. We can become weary in well-doing, disappointed if we don’t feel our service for Christ is sufficiently recognized.
We have a choice as to whether we persevere or not. The Christian life has stretches of unexciting life, even weariness, when it’s easy to give up. We have to trust when we cannot see. Our earthly life is a period of transition, of preparation for eternity. It’s essential we ask ourselves if we are in the position that Jeremiah described: "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved". This is negative, leading to the Kingdom Lost. Please God, that this will not be so, but rather, as the apostle Paul indicated, we will be moving steadily towards the Kingdom Gained: "Our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed."

In Christ,
Brown



"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."C.L.Lewis



Thoughts on Exercising. . .
I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5000 per month.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. Now she's 97 years old and we don't know where on earth she is.

The only reason I would take up exercising is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

I joined a health club last year, spent about 400 bucks. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there.

And last but not least: I don't exercise because it makes the ice jump right out of my glass.

You could run this over to your friends but why not just e-mail it to them!