• Read Ecclesiastes 2 here.
• If you missed Sunday’s sermon (November 22) you can listen to it here.

My Thanksgiving sermon this year was heavily influenced by a presentation I heard by Dr Dave Bland at the Great Lakes Lectureship in late October.  As he taught on the book of Ecclesiastes a couple of things caught my attention.  First, the Jews today read Ecclesiastes during the Feast of Tabernacles (sukkot), which has a lot in common with American Thanksgiving.  Second, he highlighted Ecclesiastes’ emphasis on joy, which was news to me.

There are seven joy passages within Ecclesiastes.  (2:24-26; 3:9-14; 3:22; 5:17-20; 8:15; 9:7-10; 11:7-10)  Scholars disagree regarding their significance, but the viewpoint Dr Bland presented establishes these passages as the core message of the book.  My message focused on the first of the joy passages found in 2:24-26.

In the first eleven verses of chapter 2, Qoheleth (the Hebrew name used by the author, a word thought to mean ‘Teacher”) searches for meaning by pursuing pleasure.  His quest is summed up in v10, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.“  And yet in v11 the pursuit only resulted in emptiness, “a chasing after the wind.“

Instead in v24 he concludes that the best thing we can do is to “eat, drink and find satisfaction in our toil.“  Over in 9:7-9 the eating and drinking is placed in a context of enjoying life with family, specifically, one’s wife.  The enjoyment is not found in the food itself, but in the context of loving relationships.

This sounds to me a lot like Thanksgiving, or Christmas, dinner.  A meal with family and friends, contentedly resting from work, and celebrating God’s goodness.  Anyone who experiences conflict within their family may regard this picture as unrealistically idyllic.  And for many people it is.  Perhaps that’s why Qoheleth describes this scene as a gift “from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?”

We don’t obtain meaning for our lives through pursuing pleasure, but through placing God at the centre of our lives.  When we do this He allows us to enjoy life.  While we might often see God in the big areas of our life: family, job, and health, God also makes possible the enjoyment of many small moments.

I hope that each reader will at some point pause their festivities and notice God around their dinner table.

• Do you have a favorite “small part” of Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner that reminds you of God’s presence & provision?
• Is this an interesting way of approaching Ecclesiastes?  Should I write some more on this topic?
• At first glance Ecclesiastes is a strange book to read at Thanksgiving.  What would you suggest as an appropriate Scripture passage?

If you’re trying to understand how these “joy passages” serve as a theme for the book a couple of extra points might prove helpful.

1. Each ‘joy passage” addresses the “meaningless” passages before and sometimes after, so you need to read them in context.
2. The phrase “People can do nothing better” needs to be read not as an exasperated sigh that “the only thing left to do is…”, but as a declaration that “The best thing that people can possible do is…”

So I’m reading a book which wants to tell me why people don’t come back to church after the first visit, and how churches can make it more likely that people return.  And I come across this little snippet,

Seven minutes is all you get to make a positive first impression.  In the first seven minutes of contact with your church, your first-time guests will know whether or not they are coming back.  That’s before a single worship song is sung and before a single word of the message is uttered.

Obviously your guests aren’t making a logical decision based on the integrity of the preaching, the character of the church staff or the clarity of your doctrine.  They are not weighing pros and cons of worship styles and theological viewpoints…. Instead, they are taking clues about your church’s atmosphere and the peopl’es friendliness on a much more rudimentary level.  Their subconscious minds are working overtime to evaluate their compatibility with this new environment.

Fusion by Nelson Searcy (2007), p49-50

As the quote says, this isn’t a biblical observation, it’s a lesson drawn from studies of human behaviour and decision making.  So what’s your experience?

• When you visit a church how long does it take you to form an opinion?
  
• How does the experience of getting from the street to your seat colour your expectations of the worship experience and teaching?
  
• Have you ever decided within 7 minutes not to return to a church?
• Have you experienced a church make a strong first impression on you within 7 minutes?
  

I certainly relate to this “7 Minute Principle”.  I enjoy visiting other churches, but when I do I’m on pins and needles constantly scanning my environment trying to make intelligent judgments.  What publications do they have in their foyer?  Do they have a powerpoint projector?  What songbook do they use?  What Bible version do they have in their pews?  Do they have pews or chairs?  How are the worship leaders dressed?  How many members carry Bibles?  Does anyone talk to me or notice I’m a visitor?  What are the demographics of the congregation?  Does it look like it’s involved in the community, or is it still living in the 50’s?

• Read Genesis 18:1-15 here.
• If you missed Sunday’s sermon (November 15) you can listen to it here.

In Genesis 18:14 God has just informed a 90 year old woman, Sarah, that in a year’s time she’ll give birth to a son.  Naturally, she thinks He’s crazy, so He poses the question, “Is anything impossible for the Lord?” (HCSB)  This is a question that we’ll periodically consider over the coming year.

I find it fascinating that God answers this question, thousands of years later, when talking to another woman He’s just made pregnant.  In Luke 1:37 the angel Gabriel has just told the incredulous Mary that she will bear God’s Messiah, and that her elderly relative, Elizabeth, is miraculously pregnant also.  Then Gabriel concludes, “For nothing is impossible with God.” (NIV)

Q. “Sarah, is anything impossible for the Lord?”  ……………………………………. A. “Mary, nothing is impossible with God.”

Whenever I teach on passages like these I experience an urge to provide fine print for God.  I feel that I need to explain that the examples of Sarah, Mary, & Elizabeth do not mean that God will provide a child to every Christian who seeks to be a parent.  They don’t mean that every Christian will find a spouse, or that we’ll never suffer from significant illness or disease.  So why have they been preserved for us?

I am convinced that these passages exist to demonstrate what God CAN do, not to promise what He WILL do.  We could spend a whole lot of words trying to explain the WHY’s of infertility, singleness, illness, pain and suffering.  But the chances are that when we got to the end of those words the struggle would still be there.

We will discuss these struggles at some point, but God doesn’t intend these passages to rub salt in our wounds, rather, He wants to inspire faith.  In my experience it’s easy to lose sight of God’s possibilities while caught up in experiences and questions we don’t have answers for.  As we seek answers to our WHY’s, God wants us to keep believing that He CAN.  Nothing is impossible with God.

• What thoughts come to your mind when you hear God ask, “Is anything to hard for the Lord?”
• Have you ever found yourself in a situation where passages of Scripture that are intended to inspire simply made you feel worse?  Have you been able to resolve that conflict?
• Do the examples of these women make you think of something else?  Please share it.
  

• Read Exodus 14 here.
• If you missed Sunday’s sermon (November 8 ) you can listen to it here.

This post finally catches me up and gets the blog back in sync with my sermons.

Over the years I’ve often heard people observe that there’s a correlation between a Christian’s prayer life and the trouble they’re in.  The more trouble, the more prayer.  Perversely, many Christians struggle to have  an active relationship with God while experience peace and blessing in their lives.  This criticism is valid, but it’s more understandable than when Christians experience turmoil in their lives and try to get through it on their own, rather than laying their situation before God.

In Exodus 14:11-12 the Israelites have seen the Egyptian army approaching and start complaining about their situation.  At first glance it’s easy to criticise them since their complaints are pretty strong.  But context provides an important insight to this passage.  Verse 10 tells us that “They were terrified and cried out to the LORD.“  Thus the complaints of v11-12 occur in a context of crying out to God.

Moses affirms this action.  Even with their doubts and questions they turned to God.  This demonstrates enormous faith development on their part, since earlier in Exodus they knew so little about God they didn’t even know His name.  Now they know Him well enough to take their concerns to Him.  In vs13-14 Moses challenges the nation to turn their complaints into trust.  “Don’t be afraid.  Stand firm … The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

I find this advice pretty difficult to put into practice.  I want to be busy.  I want to solve problems.  I want to use my gifts.  I want to distract myself from problems or personal shortcomings.  Standing still and trusting God to do something can be difficult.  “Can God really use someone other than me to solve this problem?”

Almost everyone reading this blog knows what happens next.  God parted the waters, creating a way of escape where none previously existed.  The enormity of God’s intervention here demonstrates the ridiculousness of human efforts to solve our crises without God.  No matter how ingenious Moses and the Israelites may have been, they were completely incapable of engineering a parting of the waters to escape the Egyptians.  Much more effecting to “stand still“.

But God’s words in v15 remind us that we don’t completely escape responsibility.  “Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.“  The parting of the sea would have accomplished nothing if no one had walked through it.  God works with His people, not always for them.

This pattern of “Stand still. Move on.” recurs throughout Scripture.  God initiates, we respond.  Think about it, you’ll find numerous examples!

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

• How do you practice “Standing Still” in your life?
• Can you share a moment when God has created a way of escape for you when none existed?
• Let’s start a list of biblical examples where God acted and waited for people to respond.
  

• Read Genesis 15:12-21 here.
• If you missed Sunday’s sermon (November 1) you can listen to it here.

I’m running a week behind with my posts, which is why I’m talking about Halloween toward the middle of November.

This sermon was not actually about Halloween.  We used our Trunk-or Treat the night before to advertise Sunday’s sermon.  I titled the sermon “What if God Scares Me?”.  Christians, understandably, have a way of only seeing God’s endearing character traits, eg. Jn 3:16 “God loves the world.”  But for many people in our society, the God that Christians present is scary, vindictive, and unattractive.

The Exodus presents a couple of events that cause many people to question God’s goodness.  First, we should not quickly pass over the deaths of Egypt’s firstborn.  Tens of thousands of families lost sons, fathers and brothers.  These families had apparently done nothing wrong beyond having the misfortune to live in Egypt at the time.

Second, It’s all well and good to get excited about the Hebrews leaving for a Promised Land, but that land already belonged to someone else.  In order for God to honour this promise thousands of men, women and children would die as God’s people destroyed cities and plundered the countryside.

That sure sounds like a scary God! I’m sympathetic with those who read Scripture this way, but would encourage them to continue their study to see the bigger picture.

In defense of God, I’d like to make a couple of points.  Obviously, this could be a lengthy, complicated discussion, but I hope the simple suggestions I make here provide a context that at least prompts readers to think further and not run with their first impression.

First, there is no denying the tragedy of the Egyptian deaths that motivated Pharaoh to allow the Exodus.  However, I believe that God gave Pharaoh fair opportunity to hear his demands and release the Hebrews.  The visit from the angel of death came after 9 other plagues: 9 other opportunities to obey God.  (Read more on Pharaoh’s hard heart here.) I understand that even this demand for obedience can make God seem self-centred, authoritarian, and heavy-handed, but we also need to remember that He’s God, so it’s not unreasonable to expect humans to obey Him.

Also, God’s demand for obedience had a context.  The book of Genesis records how God had used a Hebrew, Joseph, to save the lives of the Egyptians during a 7 year famine.  Then, even though hundreds of years later, the Egyptians repay that kindness by enslaving the Hebrews.  Was God’s demand really that unreasonable?

Second, we need to understand the context of time.  If we just read the Bible straight through it’s very difficult to get a clear picture of the time frame.  God first promised the land of Canaan to Abram in Genesis 12:7.  Later in Gen. 15:12-21 God provides more details.  Abraham would not personally take possession of the land himself.  Rather, 500 or so years would pass before his descendants would claim ownership.

If God wanted to bless His people, why would he wait 500 years?  We find the answer in 15:16 “for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.“  As much as God loved Abraham and his descendants, he also loved the Amorites.  Although they worshiped other gods, their sins were not grievous enough to warrant the destruction that would occur when the Israelites conquered the land.  So God gave the Amorites 500 years to repent, to worship Him, to make things right, and they didn’t.  Only after 500 years was God prepared to punish them.

In both these examples I believe that we can see God’s patience, and in that His love, toward ungodly people and nations.  I admit that I do not understand the extremity of the punishment meted out, but through this and other examples I trust that God is just and fair.  These punishments were not snap decisions or immediate angry reactions to an insult, they only came after many lifetimes of insult and disregard.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:

• Do you generally think of God’s commitment to justice as an endearing, or frightening, attribute?
• Do you struggle to reconcile some of God’s actions with the God of love, grace, and mercy most churches routinely present?
• Would it make a difference if  Christians emphasised the patience of God more?