And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. (Luke 2.36-37)

In the year of our Lord 2022, the River Ridge congregation is made up primarily of young families with small children.  This being the case, it should be no surprise that this period on the calendar—late spring and early summer—each year is subject to the same sort of competition for a slot on the schedule as has been common to parents broadly for a very long time. As the school year ends, and the short summer break ensues, schedules and routines are upended in favor of more unusual and, perhaps, more frivolous uses of time.  Vacations, play dates, alterations to work schedules, and other impositions are suddenly the focus of attention for many parents. In all the hustle and bustle, in all the concerted attempts to make the best possible use of the relatively short stint of relaxed expectations and demands from the more structured institutions of school, where does God fit on your calendar?

We find an excellent example to follow in the Old Testament prophet, Daniel.  When his fellow officials of the kingdom of Babylon colluded in order to deliberately discredit Daniel in the king’s eyes, they agreed:

“We shall not find any ground for complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God.” (Daniel 6.5)

Thereupon, they decided to convince King Darius to outlaw prayer, except for prayers directed toward the king himself, for a period of thirty days.  Clearly, this goes far beyond the sorts of scheduling conflicts we encounter—in our case, it’s the desire to spend our time on things that may distract us from serving God; Daniel had the prospect of being torn limb from limb and eaten alive in a den of lions, to discourage him from spending his time on prayer to God.  What was his response?

When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. (Daniel 6.10)

Daniel remembered what was really important, regardless of the distractions that were presented to him.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low—they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets—before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12.1-7)

It’s good to recognize that these are wise words, but consider, for a moment—why should we remember our Creator in the days of our youth?  In all this long, plodding, poetic, image-rich sentence, has Solomon clearly stated the reason we should do this?  No, not really; instead, he went on at length about the evils of age, using some of the most vivid metaphors found in the whole Bible to make his point.  But the answer isn’t so far out of sight.  The point is that all of these imminent weaknesses, struggles, and pains will make it harder to serve God in old age, than it was during youth.

It’s easy to tell ourselves, “I just don’t have time!  When things settle down, then I’ll start devoting more of my time and effort to the Lord and his church.”  This is a farce.  In the first place, that period of time that we always expect to see, just around corner, seems at each new turn to be just as far away as it was at the last.  As children grow older and move out, and as parents become what our culture terms “empty-nesters,” up pops some new and apparently pressing need, and suddenly your schedule is full again—perhaps this time with slightly less noble pursuits than the task of raising up children.  And the same refrain is heard again: “I just don’t have time!  When things settle down…”

Even ignoring that—even, let’s say, in the cases of those who really do fill their newly open schedules with the pursuit of serving God and working in the Lord’s vineyard, like the old, widowed prophetess Anna in the  first passage quoted above—if we haven’t focused on God when we were busier, then what habit have our children learned, through all those many years when Dad and Mom “didn’t have time” for spiritual endeavors?  Making the effort matters more when it’s inconvenient.  What do you have to do at any given moment, that’s more important than worshiping God, keeping his commandments, and teaching the next generation to do the same?  The point of life on earth is to come to know God, serve him, and pursue the continuation of a relationship with him after death.  Don’t plan to serve him later—give yourself to his service, today!

Jeremy

Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. (Revelation 13.16-17)

There have been many attempts to interpret this passage, usually linking the mark to a specific phenomenon of today—whenever “today” happens to be.  These are almost always misguided, but not because current events fail to fulfill the prophecies.  Rather, focusing on one particular fulfillment often keeps us from recognizing that there have been countless other fulfillments.  One instance, pertaining to the Roman Empire and its persecution of the early church, was uniquely important to the original audience.  But human nature has not changed, nor has the relationship of the church to the world.

As we consider the passage above, and especially the beast’s technique of economically ostracizing those who won’t worship him, it’s tough not to see some reflections of this in the events of the past couple years.  Many felt ostracized over their choice whether to wear a mask, or get a vaccine, and on the social level it went both ways, depending on the prevailing opinion of the locale.  When governments got involved, all over the world people faced a dilemma: fall in line and obey intrusive rules, or be cut off from most of the economy.  Neither the mask nor the vaccine was the mark of the beast, but the way it was imposed, especially on people who opposed it on moral grounds, has a lot in common with what we read in Revelation 13.  Those who object to the current thing due to conscience face an uphill climb, trying to determine how to respond in a way that reflects the image of Christ.

Today, there’s a concerted effort made by government, media, and corporate actors to undermine the morals passed down to us and  informed by the Bible.  These include heterosexual monogamy, law and order, the value of hard work and knowledge, and retributive justice—that is, penalties imposed on those who harm others and disrupt the order.  The latest has been the effort to indoctrinate children into sexual disorder, and browbeat adults into going along.  When a tech company introduces a new emoji in the form of a pregnant man; when a cookie company airs commercials that don’t advertise its product but instead celebrate sexual perversion; when a mainstream TV channel begins a new series celebrating young boys whose parents encourage them to dress up like girls and dance in sexually provocative fashion before cheering adults; when a children’s media behemoth speaks out in favor of teaching sexual perversion in public schools; when a government names a man the highest-ranking woman in history; and when media outlets cry crocodile tears over the evils of “doxxing”—publishing private information about private citizens to target them for retribution—and then openly doxxes its enemies…well, it’s difficult to miss that there’s a major push to cudgel the public into line, and bar them from society until they accept something like the mark of the beast.

Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1.32)

All of this raises questions for the Christian, who must not only refrain from participating in such sinful behavior, but also from giving approval to those who do.  But when it’s all around, and often coming from businesses, every financial transaction could be seen as a vote in favor of this garbage; how can we remain pure?  It’s not the case that God disapproves of all transactions undertaken with those who reject his commandments—we’re not supposed to leave the world (1Co 5.9-10).  And yet, we’re not supposed to participate in the world’s sins; could doing business with someone constitute support?

There are no specific instructions in the New Testament about this, but Paul told the Christians at Corinth how to deal with a similar problem.  After instructing them to bear with each other’s conscience and avoid causing offense, he gave a clear and practical application of the principle:

If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience. But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—I do not mean your conscience, but his. (1 Corinthians 10.27-29)

The Christian must shun sin, but participation in a sinful society is acceptable, because all societies are sinful.  Yet an unbeliever may point out the sin to you, as if to deliberately make you choose between approving the sin, and being shunned from society.  God doesn’t care about the meat—or the cookie, or the entertainment platform—but he does care that his people be seen as holy.  The pattern today is the same: don’t worry about whether an individual or company is engaged in sin before doing business with them.  None of us lives up to that standard.  But this changes, when they start deliberately telling you about it.  Openly flaunting their sin is often a tactic people use to dare you to speak up—to tempt you into compromising your principles.  Other times it’s because a company has caved to threats from activists who want the same thing—for you to compromise your principles.  Don’t give in.  It’s not just about your conscience, but his.  Love is not going along to get along.  Love is not giving implicit approval to destructive sin.  Love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1Co 13.6).

Jeremy Nettles

“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering…for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.” (Deuteronomy 18.9-12)

Sometimes the news cycle is suspiciously coincidental.  A week or two ago, a story circulated about roughly 150 human skulls found in a cave in Mexico.  They’d actually been found in 2012, so this wasn’t exactly breaking news, but a summary of a decade’s worth of investigation.  When the skulls were found, authorities assumed the drug cartels were responsible.  But analysis proved them innocent, at least of these particular murders.

The investigation pointed in a different direction because of the age of the skulls— about 1,000 years old.  That led to a different explanation: Aztec human sacrifice.  It’s morbidly humorous to note that they would have come to this conclusion much sooner, but unlike these specimens, usually the skulls of such victims have a hole in each temple, enabling their display lined up on a pole.  Let that sink in.  Usually, when one happens upon a giant pile of skulls from human sacrifice in Mexico, they look a little different. 

This shocks us, but it really shouldn’t.  The barbarism of these civilizations has been known for more than 500 years—Hernán Cortés and others reported these atrocities among the natives of these lands.  Entire societies were structured around human sacrifice.  Wars were fought over territory and trade as always, but also for the sake of capturing victims to be sacrificed to their gods later.  When insufficient quantities of enemy captives were available, did they just skip the scheduled offerings?  Of course they didn’t.  Instead they selected some of their neighbors to be the next victims, usually from among the poor and weak, including children.

When Cortés and the other conquistadors saw this behavior, they were horrified, and conquered the natives in large part to put a stop to it.  Of course, these conquerors from Europe were hardly blameless themselves, but even in that regard they resemble the ancient Israelites, who committed many sins and even adopted the very same practices that led to the judgment and expulsion of other nations from their promised land.

They did not destroy the peoples,

        as the Lord commanded them,

but they mixed with the nations

        and learned to do as they did.

They served their idols,

        which became a snare to them.

They sacrificed their sons

        and their daughters to the demons;

they poured out innocent blood,

        the blood of their sons and daughters,

whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,

        and the land was polluted with blood. (Psalm 106.34-38)

Enter the coincidence.  Within days of this old story’s revival and its attendant reminder of the ancient mesoamericans’ barbarity, news broke that the Supreme Court of the United States is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.  This 50-year-old ruling legalized nationwide the killing of babies in the womb, and since then around 60 million such procedures have been performed.  The ruling—if it transpires as expected—will not outlaw abortion, only remit to the states the authority to regulate it.  Nevertheless, barricades soon had to be erected around the Supreme Court building.  Home addresses of several justices were published, and explicit suggestions that they be assassinated have been widely viewed but seldom condemned by opponents of the expected ruling.  One Lieutenant Governor’s reaction is particularly telling.  In his tweet we find confirmation of what we should have already known.  “The right to an abortion is sacred,” he said.  He might as well come right out and say that they sacrifice their sons and daughters to the demons.

Is our society so very different from the barbaric Aztecs of old?  Is it so different from the ancient Israelites who knew better, yet ended up devaluing their children enough to kill them and call it virtue?  Is it so different from the Canaanites who taught this evil to Israel?  “There is nothing new under the sun,” Solomon tells us (Ec 1.9).  We like to think we’re more advanced, civilized, and moral than all who came before us.  We like to condemn our forbears’ sins—bigotry, chattel slavery, misogyny, oppression, hypocrisy, and especially the use of religion to justify heinous crimes.   “You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself?” (Ro 2.21).  Today, we’re still grappling with the same old sins, the same old barbarity.

We don’t have the power to change society.  But there are some things we can and should do.  First and foremost, we can learn from God’s word about the immense evil of killing one’s own children, and refuse to take part.  We can also do our best to teach others and participate in the political process to the extent we’re capable, in an effort to provide alternatives to frightened and despairing mothers, and rescue these precious lives.  We can pray for God’s intervention.  Ultimately we ought to learn this lesson: our culture claims to be secular and and basically atheistic.  It’s a lie.  Satan is never happier than when men declare he doesn’t exist.  He doesn’t need men to believe in him, in order to revel in their worship.  And if they don’t worship God Almighty, their innate religious devotion will invariably direct them to worship someone or something else, whether self, state, Science, or Molech.  Satan is pleased to accept all of the above.

Jeremy Nettles

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1.1-4)

One of the most persistent analogies in the Bible is the comparison of God to light.  This topic is vast, including far too much to cover in every detail within a short article such as this one, but let’s examine several of the meanings and effects behind this metaphor. 

“The darkness has not overcome”

Even without a detailed knowledge of the physics of light—and frankly, the deeper you investigate that topic, the more difficult and confusing it becomes—we all know, from experience, intuition, and logic that darkness is a passive phenomenon.  It’s not a force or a substance.  It has no will of its own; it never truly does anything, because it’s merely the absence of light.  It’s not that John fails to understand this in describing the struggle between light and darkness; rather, he’s relating something spiritual.  As fire exhausts its fuel and its light diminishes over the course of a night, it’s easy to imagine two abstract entities, light and darkness, at war with one another.  As the light burns lower, the sphere of visibility around it continually shrinks, until at last the flame winks out and ceases to hold back the darkness.  It’s as if the great mass of unknown terror suddenly envelops what just a few moments before was a visible and navigable situation. 

In the spiritual realm also, darkness itself has no will of its own, but simply constitutes the absence of the light of God.  But it does refer, by analogy, to entities with power, will, and malice—Satan and his forces, whose goal it is to extinguish the light.  Christ is able to stand up to it, and even to banish the darkness and its friends, as his Father did at the beginning:

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1.2-4a)

“Let there be light”

Regardless of who opposes him, or how inhospitable the environment, it is no challenge for God to illuminate the world; nor is it out of his reach to enlighten both the minds and the lives of those he wishes.  By simply speaking the words, he reoriented the physical universe he’d created, causing it to conform to his will, and exposing its true form, even in that primordial world with no human eye to see and understand it.  But God also provides this light richly for mankind:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. (Isaiah 9.2)

“The people who walked in darkness”

The idea of walking in darkness has a spiritual connotation of sinful deeds; that’s obviously what is meant, but it’s a mistake to jump past the immediate physical meaning so quickly.  What happens when the lights go out suddenly and you’re plunged into total darkness, but you need to walk somewhere, perhaps to flip a circuit breaker and bring  back the light?  Nowadays, most people immediately reach into a pocket for a smartphone, to use it as a flashlight.  Failing that, perhaps you’d simply wait a few seconds, reasoning that there’s enough light filtering in from other sources to at least enable you to get where you need to go, once your eyes have done their best to adjust.  But if neither of those is an option, you’ll discover quickly just how much you rely on your eyes to guide you around the world.  You may think your mental map of your immediate surroundings is detailed enough for you to avoid obstacles and find what you need without trouble, but it’s virtually certain you’d put one hand in front of you and take each step with care, because you don’t entirely trust yourself to find your way in the dark—nor should you.  In spiritual terms, without God’s light to make sense of our surroundings, we’re liable to suffer far worse than bruised shins and stubbed toes.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3.19-20)

“People loved the darkness”

We all know firsthand how uncomfortable it is to find ourselves unexpectedly in the dark.  It leaves us temporarily paralyzed as we strive to reorient ourselves.  In the spiritual realm, it's clear that only God’s Word is able to illuminate our path and allow us to avoid pitfalls.  But sometimes, upon reflection, we’d rather stay in the darkness, so that no one else can see how we’re behaving.  Of course, we’re not going to fool God, but we’ll do our best to run away from him and his light, when we prefer instead to hide in the darkness.  This won’t work out for us in the end.  We may run from the light and its judgment, but we can’t outrun the dawn.

For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober… (1 Thessalonians 5.7-8a)

Jeremy Nettles

Now the people of Bethel had sent…men to entreat the favor of the Lord, saying to the priests of the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets, “Should I weep and abstain in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?”

Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me: “Say to all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?” (Zechariah 7.1-6)

If you searched the Law of Moses wondering when God commanded the Israelites to observe these fasts—in the fifth month or mid-summer, and in the seventh month or mid-autumn—you’d come up empty.  They were never commanded.  This is much like two of the feasts Jews today observe: Purim and Hanukkah.  These two also appear in the Bible, but they were instituted by man. That’s not necessarily bad; we even see Jesus himself going to Jerusalem for Hanukkah, despite threats against his life (Jn 10.22-23).  Yet the Israelites’ well-reasoned memorials and mourning failed to please God.  Why?

First, we should learn what these two annual fasts were intended to commemorate.  Zechariah doesn’t do much to inform us on this point, but the major theme of the first half of his book, the rebuilding of God’s temple in Jerusalem, serves as a major hint.  What had happened in the fifth month that was important to Israel and the temple?

In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month…Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord and the king's house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. (2 Kings 25.8-11)

This was when the temple was destroyed—the reason the returned exiles needed to rebuild it, and needed a prophet like Zechariah to encourage them.  For that matter, it also marked the day the Jews had ceased to be an independent nation—the day most of the Jews were exiled from their greatest city, which was itself left in ruins.  The seventh month had something similar:

And Gedaliah swore to them and their men, saying, “Do not be afraid because of the Chaldean officials. Live in the land and serve the king of Babylon, and it shall be well with you.” But in the seventh month, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, of the royal family, came with ten men and struck down Gedaliah and put him to death along with the Jews and the Chaldeans who were with him at Mizpah. Then all the people, both small and great, and the captains of the forces arose and went to Egypt, for they were afraid of the Chaldeans. (2 Kings 25.24-26)

Nebuchadnezzar had at least left some of the Jews in Jerusalem and installed Gedaliah as governor.  With his assassination, all semblance of order was destroyed, and those few who had remained in their ancestral homeland now fled, in the opposite direction from the other exiles.  The Israelites were now truly scattered abroad.  Zechariah’s prophecies concern the returned exiles, who are tasked with rebuilding the temple.  God is good, indeed!  The cause for mourning and lamentation has melted away!  Therefore, it’s understandable that the people would question whether they needed to continue these annual rites.  As so often happens, though, God doesn’t give them a simple yes or no.  Instead he tells them they were never really observing these memorials out of devotion to him, anyway.  They acted selfishly even in lamenting the loss of God’s temple.  It was supposed to be about his glory; they’d made it about their own, instead.

This is a huge problem today, as well.  Several billion people on this earth call themselves Christians, with widely varying levels of sincerity.  There’s also a wide variety of practices and rituals associated with Christianity, only a handful of which are firmly grounded in God’s commandments in the New Testament.  For whom do we observe these rituals?  Is it for God, or for ourselves?

Keeping his commandments is, indeed, good for us, and worshipping him ought to have a noticeable and uplifting effect on us—Paul says,

“I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.” (1 Corinthians 14.18-19)

Both ends establish the point: Paul is glad that he possesses a certain spiritual gift—he gets something out of it; he also recognizes that in the context of worship part of the goal is to edify each other—for others to get something out of it.  It’s not wrong for us to derive that kind of benefit.  But is that why we do it?  If so, what will happen when, one day, you become bored with worship?  That day will certainly come.  “Because I like it” is not a good reason!  On one hand, it leaves available the option to abandon the pattern, one way or another, as soon as it no longer stimulates your interest.  On the other hand, it means your focus is entirely misplaced.  We should be molding our will to match God’s more closely all the time, and for that reason we will eventually come to appreciate God’s commandments and derive enjoyment from following his pattern.  But it starts with obedience, whether we like it or not—obedience from the heart (Ro 6.17).

Jeremy Nettles