January 6, 2024

Genesis 15.11 (NIV)

Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you – majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?

To moderns, idolatry is as weird as cannibalism; we’re not tempted to try it.*

When humans create pretend gods, we never make them perfect. A perfect god might have expectations that are too high so we make them like ourselves and expect little from them. In Isaiah, chapter 44, we read an ironic observation about how the same piece of wood from which an idol is fashioned is also used for fuel. How can we worship, or rely on, things made by human hands?

You think you don’t know any idol-worshippers? Do you know someone who believes in a man-made religion? I’m sure you are acquainted with churches that have altered the Word of God to suit their own beliefs. Have you ever heard someone say something like this: “The God I believe in wouldn’t_______,” (fill in the blank with something like “send anyone to hell” or “allow people to suffer”)? Those people have created a false god. You can’t choose some attributes of God to keep and others to discard.

We know that there is no other God but people worship lots of other things. They may not bow down and pray to them, but they treat them as gods. If we allow something else to take his place, we are guilty of idolatry.  

He is either the only God, or he is not God at all.*

*Quote sources available upon request.

January 5, 2024

Genesis 15.6 (NIV)

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Faith is not believing in spite of evidence; faith is obeying in spite of consequence.*

Abraham didn’t just believe in God, he believed what God said. How do we know he believed? By his acts of obedience. What if Abraham had said, “I believe you God,” and then did nothing to show it? It would probably mean he was lying. It certainly wouldn’t prove his faith. Saying you believe doesn’t count as righteousness – you have to mean it. And if you mean it, you will show it.

The most dramatic demonstration of Abraham’s faith is found in Genesis 22 when God tells him to sacrifice the son he had been promised. Abraham could have gone through the motions – even going so far as to actually slay his son – without a shred of faith in God. If that had been the case, I don’t believe he would have been commended by God down through the ages, for his obedience would have been hollow. God knew what Abraham was thinking and feeling and believing as he raised his arm, knife in hand, doing what he had been told to do.

While we will probably never be called upon to perform so dramatic and drastic a gesture, we often have to step out in faith and obedience. We must take the knife in our hands, raise it in the air, and begin the downward motion, not knowing whether or not there is a ram waiting in the bushes.

God accepted Abraham not because he led a perfect life, but because of his responsiveness to God’s promises. . . . God looked for faith, not moral perfection.*

EXTRA SPLASH: Abraham didn’t reach this state of righteousness overnight. Yes, this verse says that he believed the Lord, but the next few chapters in Genesis tell the story of his progress.

EXTRA SPLASH: Abraham didn’t reach this state of righteousness overnight. Yes, this verse says that he believed the Lord, but the next few chapters in Genesis tell the story of his progress.

*Quote sources available upon request.

January 4, 2024

Genesis 12.1, 4  (NIV)

The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” . . . So Abram left, as the Lord told him.

I’m weary of attempting to override the fathomless mind of God with our feeble intellectual protests and insights.*

Abram/Abraham’s amazing story begins with very little background information. The record of his family tree is followed by a brief account of his family’s settling in Haran. The next thing we know, God is telling him to pack up his and his father’s households and go – and that’s all. God says that he will show them where to go but he doesn’t say where.

We are not told how Abram came to know of God,* leaving me with a few unanswered questions. 

• What was it in Abram’s past that taught him that God was to be trusted? (I trust God because of his track record.  He has never let me down.) 
• Was this his first test – Abram testing God’s faithfulness; God testing Abram’s faith? (My testing began on a smaller scale than this example from Abram’s life, but as my faith grows, so does my testing. Do you remember your first test?) 
• How did God speak to him? (He speaks to me through his Word, through his creation, through other Christians, and sometimes he is a voice inside my head.) 
• Everyone around him was heathen; did he worship God and/or idols? (We also live in a pagan world. While we may not bow down to idols, we have gods that come between us and God.)

God may not be arranging for us to pack up and move to an unspecified foreign country but each of us is called to leave our old life with its temptations and distractions. Jesus said we can’t be his disciples unless we are willing to leave everything behind – including family (Luke 14.26). Would you still be willing to follow him if that is what he required of you?

We should remember this about the life of Abram/Abraham: it wasn’t his obedience that earned him his place in God’s hall of fame; it was the faith behind his actions.

We do not obey only as far as we have no questions left unanswered. That would be a pitiably small degree of obedience.*

*Quote sources available upon request.

January 3, 2024

Genesis 11.1, 6 (NIV)

Now the world had one language and a common speech. . . . The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.”

When we leave God out of our lives we become our own gods.*

The people of Babel said, “Let’s build a tower that reaches to the heavens.” It is not clear whether they thought they could by-pass God and actually climb to heaven, but it is obvious that “it was a monument to themselves rather than to God.”*

If the citizens of Babel thought that their technology could eliminate the need for God, what would they think if they got a peek at today’s advances? What does God see when he looks at us? If it was true of Babel, it must be true of the modern world that “a united, technologically sophisticated human race . . . [is] nearly unlimited in their capacity for evil."*  The people of Babel were united in their purpose and their industry – and in their disobedience. Look at how our world is united now by the internet and cell phones and airplanes. Are we building monuments to ourselves? “People working together” may have the ring of harmony but we can use our unity for evil as well as for good.

God punished Babel by destroying their ability to communicate with each other. How will he punish us for our arrogance? What will he do to us for thinking that we have accomplished so much and do not need him?

Technology continues to progress at breakneck speed, but, far from reaching the heavens, it sometimes diminishes our lives.*

*Quote sources available upon request.

January 2, 2024

Genesis 1.27 (NIV)

So God created man in his own image. 

Creation of mankind is . . . the ultimate purpose of God’s creative week.*

What does it mean to be created in God’s image? An image is a likeness. Does that mean we look like God? Does it mean “God’s imagination”? Questions remain but there is no doubt that man was created according to the image in God’s mind.

Because of sin, the image has become warped. The masterpiece that God was so proud of has deteriorated and has been abused - all through the fault of his final creation – the one that seemed to be his finest and favorite.

In the movie Multiplicity, a busy man secretly has himself cloned so that he can have some fun while the clone takes care of business. The clone, devoting himself to work, loses the sense of fun that the original man has. When the man’s wife starts to feel overwhelmed by her career and housework and the kids, the man has a second clone made to help around the house. This one taps into the man’s “feminine side” and becomes – well, less manly than the other two. None of the three is a well-balanced version of the original because none of them works on developing the whole person.  The copies (clones) started out exactly like the original but as they “fed” certain aspects of their character, those aspects began to grow. 

As God’s copy (image), we start out like the original but as we feed our sinful desires we grow into someone far removed from the original version of ourselves. When we make the choice to feed our spiritual selves, we begin to look more like the image in which we were created. The image of God.

Christ only is the express image of God’s person.*

*Quote sources available upon request.

January 1, 2024

Genesis 1.1 (NIV)

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 

The world has been in existence always, or, it was made out of nothing; one or the other; yet we can conceive of neither.*

The first verse in the Bible makes no attempt to explain anything that existed or occurred before “the beginning.” Scientists have developed elaborate theories about the origin of the universe. Some even go so far as to try to include God by suggesting that evolution was the process he used. If he could create the universe over the course of a few million years, why couldn’t he do it in seven days? 

Where did God come from? Can we comprehend eternity? Is the world’s theory of the origin of the universe any less incomprehensible than, “I AM THAT I AM”? How easy is it to believe that the universe came about by accident; that given enough time, something can come from nothing and then become orderly and intelligent? How much faith is required for a person to believe that everything spontaneously generated from nothing? I would much rather put my faith in an eternal, powerful, loving God. I may not know where he came from but I know where everything else came from! 

If the computer on which I am processing these thoughts needed a brain like Bill Gates to design it, then the computer that is my brain needed someone far more intelligent than that.*

 

EXTRA SPLASH: The Hebrew word translated as “created” in this verse is found 44 times in the Old Testament and is used only for “God’s activity in initiating a thing or project.”* The writer of Genesis gives God full credit for his work.

*Quote sources available upon request.

test

test test test test test test