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Old Aquarians
It’s not a prominent story in the Old Testament but it came to mind this week as I was reading about the demonstrations by young protestors in Nashville over the expulsion of two black representatives and the horrific shooting deaths at the Covenant School there. In the story, two sworn enemies, Abner and Joab, meet at opposite sides of a pool. One says to the other, “Let’s have some of the young men get up and fight hand to hand in front of us.” They agree and twelve young men from each side line up for what becomes a senseless slaughter. “Then each man grabbed his opponent by the head…
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Numbers: Pack It Up
As a young man, I considered joining the circus. When it came to town, I loved watching the setup and teardown more than the acts inside the tent. The process was a massive exercise in precise logistics, and while the workers weren’t the colorful entertainers, they were artists in their own right. Sometimes, we imagine the Tent of Meeting during the Wilderness years as a simple tent, like the ones we use today. But it was more than that. It symbolized the nation, much like the White House or Buckingham Palace. Thousands of men worked full-time to maintain it and its contents, with one tribe—the Levites—tasked with serving as the…
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Leviticus: What’s Yours Is Mine
There are sins in the list of commandments that may be spontaneous – lying, murder and adultery – but the sin of covetousness develops at the end of an insidious process. There is something about covetousness that reflects intentionality and meditation. It is what Micah calls planned iniquity and intentional plots to do evil. “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. They covet fields and seize them, and houses and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellowman of his inheritance.” But first let’s…
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Genesis: Wait For It
Scripture is full of waiting stories. It may be days or decades. How we wait oftentimes says as much about us and how we go through the wilderness, floods and catastrophes of our lives. Even Noah had to wait for God to remember. “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth and the waters receded.” We are troubled by the possibility that God forgets or needs loud noises to startle him awake. Sometimes he remembers on his own (like the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt) or other times he needs…
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Exodus: Stopped Clocks
When we encounter the Levites in the New Testament they are dry, colorless and lifeless lawyers interested only in picking apart Jesus. That was not how they began but is what they had reduced themselves to over time. Originally, they were the special forces for Moses who turned to them for punishing those in their own families who had worshiped the golden calf. For their loyalty they were given an odd inheritance. “The Levites do not get a portion among you because the Lord is their inheritance.” That might sound more like a disinheritance when you hear it at the reading of the will. “All this I give to your…
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The Final Lesson
I have been reading the last words of various people this week. Some are eloquent like General MacArthur’s farewell address at West Point: ”The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished — tone and tint. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were…In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.” Some are brief and leave us with questions like Steve Jobs whose mysterious last…
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Paul Under Arrest
Paul’s Trials You remember where we left Paul last week? He was standing on the steps of the Roman barracks and had received permission from the commander to speak to the angry mob. He raised his hand and there was, as Luke says, “a great silence” as they wait for Paul to speak. What does he say? “I am a Jew” and then he tells his story. Nothing happens until he says, “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” That ignited them and they began to scream, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live.” Eric Hoffer wrote in…
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On To Jerusalem: Acts 21
Two of the most powerful rivers in the world – the Thompson and the Fraser – meet and join in British Columbia. The train from Vancouver to Banff runs along the ridge high above the exact spot where they merge and you can look down and watch them join. The actual term is “confluence” when two bodies of water meet – like the tip of South America or Africa. What’s unique about these two rivers is one is salt and the other fresh water. One is clear and the other filled with brown sediment it has carried along its course – which makes their meeting a place of invisible but…
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The Seven Sons of Sceva: Acts 19:11-20
We’ve looked at new believers in Ephesus and the difference between the baptism of John and being baptized in the name of Jesus. The results of that baptism in the name of Jesus must have spread around the city of Ephesus – not just the Christian community but the Jewish community as well. “God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them. Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would…
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A Hard Liberty
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” I have read that passage for years but only recently did I wonder how someone so beyond imagination as God could be compared to something as concrete and tangible as money. Is Matthew saying money is powerful enough to be the opposite of God? Maybe we have limited what he is saying by translating Mammon merely as money. Perhaps there is something larger at stake and actually compelling enough to be compared to God. We…