A Little Walk With God

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

Saul became Paul after a miraculous conversion. Last week we talked about how that conversion came about. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad I read about how it happened instead of participating in that particular mode of inspiration first hand. I’m glad Jesus gives us enough examples and heroes of faith in our lives to let us believe in him without having to go through what those early believers went through. But some of their experiences do raise some questions for us today.

We know that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His word tells us that and we know he is truth. He does not lie, so we know he doesn’t change. Jesus also told those that followed him that they would do more than they saw him do when he walked this earth. He healed the sick. He made the lame to walk and the blind to see. He healed lepers and all kinds of illnesses. He even raised the dead to life. Then we see some glimpses of what he told his disciples.

Peter and John headed toward the temple and saw a beggar who had been lame since birth. The man asked for alms, but instead they gave him new legs. He stood on his two feet and followed them into the temple praising God for his healing. And today’s lesson from the scripture gets even better. Luke in his letter to Theopolis writes these words found in Acts chapter 9.

9:36 Now in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. She was devoted to good works and acts of charity. At that time she became ill and died. When they had washed her, they laid her in a room upstairs. Since Lydda was near Joppa, the disciples, who heard that Peter was there, sent two men to him with the request, "Please come to us without delay."

So Peter got up and went with them; and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.  Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed. He turned to the body and said, "Tabitha, get up." Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up.

He gave her his hand and helped her up. Then calling the saints and widows, he showed her to be alive. This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.

Jesus told his disciples they would do more than he would. Now here is Peter raising Tabitha (Dorcas) from the dead, just as Jesus raised the Centurion’s daughter from the dead or Peter’s mother-in-law, or the widow’s son in Cana, or Lazarus. Can you imagine what that must have been like to be in that house when Peter ushered everyone out of the room, prayed for her life to be restored and then walked out of the room with her?

Can you imagine the uproar in the city when the news spread that one of those followers of that rebel, Jesus was doing the same things he did? Can you imagine what the religious leaders were thinking in those back rooms of the temple when they heard the news? They thought it was over. They figured with Jesus dead and gone, the miracles would stop. They figured that even if the claims they heard about the man were true, at least it was over now. He was gone and only his followers were left. The miracles were over and only words were left behind. These guys knew how to debate. They could win the arguments.

But then… The lame started walking. The blind started seeing. The deaf started hearing. The lepers came to these followers. Now Tabitha who every claimed was dead, was walking around saying Peter claimed the Holy Spirit raised her in the name of Jesus, the man they crucified. What were they to do now? It wasn’t over after all. It looked like this might just be the beginning.

We know the rest of the story. The church grew from the eleven gathered in the upper room the night of the resurrection to the 120 gathered in a room together on Pentecost to 3,000 the next morning after the Holy Spirit settled on the people in that room and set their hearts on fire. Then within less than a decade, the church had grown to more than 100,000 across an empire that was out to destroy them because they were “atheists” believing in only one God, not the pantheon of Roman or Greek gods the major religions of the world believed.

The small band of disciples were God’s plan to spread the message. It’s unbelievable that God would use such a crazy plan to get his message across to the rest of the world. But 2000 years later, it appears he had no backup plan. This was it. Come to earth in human flesh. Gather a dozen uneducated men from various backgrounds around him. Teach them for about three years. Leave it in their hands after giving them a spirit of power if they accepted him as their only means of salvation.

What a weird, ridiculous, sure to fail from a human perspective plan. But it worked. The men and women God touches change the world. They are never the same. The men and women God uses to carry his message are transformed and empowered by the same resurrection power that brought life back to the dead cells in that broken body that lay in the tomb Joseph lent to Jesus for three days. That power that enables men and women to do the impossible not because of their ability, but because of God using them as an instrument of his will.

When we allow God to do whatever he wants to do through us, God-things happen. The unexplainable takes place. Things that impossible when viewed from the perspective of human knowledge and human ingenuity happen when God powers the task instead of us. Jesus’ declaration that we will do more than he did comes true when an army of believers allow themselves to be catapulted into the community empowered by his spirit breathing his love into the world.

So where do we see these miracles taking place, you ask. My answer is everywhere. We too often go the doctors and give all the credit to science when someone is healed. But take a look at some of the statistics for the healing processes. Why are some healed and some not? Why do medications work for some and not for others? Why do some come back from the brink of death and some slip away without recovery? Are miracles happening? Yes.

But does that mean God is answering prayers for some and not for others? Not necessarily. First, remember that God answers the prayers of believers. Always. He answers the request for forgiveness of the truly repentant. Always. But does that mean he answers our requests the way we want? Not always. Sometimes. I expect Peter had prayers answered in ways he didn’t really want at times. I expect he didn’t want to go to Cornelius’ house and eat pork. But he did. I expect he didn’t really want to associate with many of the people he learned to love later as he prayed alongside Jesus.

Many of his prayers were not answered the way he wanted as he saw his fellow disciples tortured and crucified. Peter was changed at Pentecost and in his writings we know he learned to accept and understand suffering and the way of the cross in this world, but that doesn’t mean he enjoyed it. It doesn’t mean he, like us, didn’t pray for release from some of the pain the way of the cross brought he and his fellow believers. Even Jesus asked for another way. But the Father didn’t answer Jesus’ request the way he wanted either.

We don’t understand why God answers prayer the way he does. Does that mean prayer isn’t effective? No. It means we don’t see the way God sees. It means we don’t have infinite wisdom. It means we can’t see beyond the bend in the road. Last week, another school shooting in Colorado took the life of one and injured eight more. Did God do that? No. Did God not answer prayers to keep our children safe? He answered them, but perhaps not in the way we expect. I think we sometimes use prayer as a wish list and think we can demand God to do what we want because we are his children.

I seldom did what my kids “demanded.” I hope you didn’t either. We need to learn at an early age we don’t control most of what happens in this world. Demanding what we want usually only causes trouble. Good parents know that and don’t give in to their kids demands. I sometimes did what my kids asked of me, but as a parent, I most often did what I thought was best for them. If what they asked didn’t fit that category, I often said no. They didn’t understand then, but as parents themselves, I see them doing the same with their children. Why? Because we want what is best for our children.

So why does God think some good thing like keeping shooters out of school is bad? I’m sure he does. I’m sure he would love to have Adam and Eve back in the garden having never touched the tree in the middle he told them not to touch. But Adam and Eve were given the ability to choose for themselves the path they would take. And they chose to disobey. They could not choose the consequences, though. Their act disrupted the cosmos. Not just their lives, but the entire universe. God’s highest creation disobeyed and that act rippled through the heavens.

Now we live in a world in which God does not isolate us from evil. He doesn’t put us in a bubble and protect us from everything bad that could happen to us. Instead, when we choose to follow him, he puts his spirit in us and asks us to let his power in us help us live like he did when he was living in the flesh. Still bruised, broken, misunderstood, hated, even crucified. But empowered to love the unlovable. Empowered to share hope to the hopeless. Empowered to forgive when the world thinks there should be no forgiveness.

Does God answer prayer? Yes. Does it change circumstances? Sometimes. But more often it changes me and you. Keep praying that God will use you and make you more like him. That’s the right prayer and he always answers.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

Last week we talked about Doubting Thomas. He wanted to see the scars in Jesus’ hands and feet before he would believe Jesus had risen from the tomb. This week we look at another of those New Testament figures that God needed to hit with a board across the head to make him believe. The man’s name is Saul, a staunch enemy of those who spread the story of Jesus’ resurrection and tried to disrupt the order of the synagogue and its teachings.

I expect most churches today would love to have Saul as one of their board members. He played by the rules. He lived up to the character people thought of when they thought of a religious person. He went to the synagogue regularly, not just on special holidays. He prayed often. He gave generously. He knew scripture. In fact, if history is correct, to be a student of Gamaliel, Saul would have recited whole books of the Old Testament just to be considered for his tutelage. Saul would have been a great churchman.

But Saul did not believe in the resurrection, and he was out to quell the rebellion in the Jewish community that did. He took with him a section of the Temple guard with papers from the chief priest and arrested as many of the members of this wayward sect as he could find. First in Jerusalem, then, when he started running short of prospective rebels there, he headed to Damascus where he heard one of the “Way’s” ringleaders had gone.

The troop moved fast and furious across the dusty hills toward the old Samaritan capital. Saul would root out this evil and kill it wherever it tried to hide. But something happened. Acts Chapter 9.  Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."

Saul, the fire-breathing, perfect church board member of today figure of a man found himself face down in the dirt, blind, listening to the voice of Jesus, the one these rebels followed. The one who rose from the dead. Here he was talking to Saul, telling him to stop. Telling him he had a job for him to do.

Ouch! Talk about sudden guilt. All these months, Saul had gone around arresting followers of Jesus. They had been locked away and many killed. Saul knew their fate, but didn’t care. He was doing the right thing... he thought. He was stopping this rebel outbreak before they could cause harm against the Jewish community. Rome was looking for reasons to destroy the Jews, he had to stop this group or at least lay blame at their feet for all the ills going on in Israel so his people could be saved from the wrath of Rome.

But then he met Jesus. “Get up, go to Damascus, you will be told what to do.”

I’m not sure Saul was used to being told what to do. I think he was pretty headstrong and was used to telling other people what to do, not the other way around. But not this time. For three days, Saul saw only the darkness of his blinded eyes behind the scales God put in place. For three days he was entombed in his thoughts because he could see nothing else. For three days he prayed for God to help him see and understand what happened and why.

Then Ananias comes into the room with a little fear edging into his voice. “Saul, Jesus, the one you have been persecuting told me to come and lay hands on you so you can gain your sight again.” If I were Ananias, I’d have been a little fearful. What if Saul just gets angry at being blind for three days? What if he decides he wants to take out his blindness on me when he can finally see again? What if he really isn’t so blind after all? What if the dream wasn’t so accurate and I’m walking into a trap? No doubt Ananias had a lot of “what if’s” in his head, but his faith overcame them all and he when to the right street and the right house and asked for Saul. Then laid his hands on him and told him what was about to happen.

Great story isn’t it? Sometimes I think I could have more faith if I had an experience like Saul on the road to Damascus. But then again, I’m not sure I would. Have you ever thought about what it would be like? I’m not sure I’d want to be there. The bright light that blinds you and not knowing if you’ll ever see again. The person whose followers you’ve been killing shows up with that kind of power and knocks you to the ground. The person you think you are controlling suddenly takes absolute control over your life and turns you into one of those poor beggars you pass on the street everyday, not able to do anything without someone’s help to lead you along by the hand.

Then, in Damascus you hear a knock at the door and recognize the name at the introduction. “I’m Ananias…” and you miss the next few words because his name is at the top of the list of those you’ve come to take back to Jerusalem. He’s here. You’re blind. He knows why you came to Damascus. You are completely at his mercy. Then he lays his hands on your eyes.

No, I don’t think I would like going through what Saul went through in coming face to face with Jesus. I’m not sure my heart would stand the strain. I’m not sure I could trust the people or the circumstances the way Saul did, even then. Maybe he didn’t have much choice. Or maybe he thought death at the hands of one of these rebels would be better than being blind. Or maybe he began to see just a glimmer of truth in what Jesus told him. Who else but God could do the things he just witnessed.

Nope. I’m glad I can learn from Saul. I’m glad he changed his name to Paul and wrote so many letters to the churches of the first century. I’m glad he gave all that advice to Timothy and Titus and the members of those congregations to which he wrote. I’m glad he wrote about his suffering, his hope, his joy, his peace. But I’m glad I didn’t fill his shoes as he walked those roads across the empire.

His experience, though, causes me to pause and ask a question each of us must answer for ourselves. I have not been blinded on the road to Damascus, but do I believe in the risen Jesus? Do I know in my heart that the resurrection happened, just has Paul and John and the other gospel writers describe? Do I know that Jesus is not just some prophet who did some really good things and told some really good stories, but he is, in fact, God incarnate. God who put on human flesh, live among us, died for my sins, and rose from that borrowed tomb to prove he is who he says he is. Do I believe it, or is it just a lot of words?

I can tell you there’s a shrinking percentage of us who believe the story is true today. More and more are convinced it is just a story. What you believe makes a difference in how you approach life, death, and eternity. Here’s the problem many face. If Jesus’ words are not true, it doesn’t matter. How you live, what you believe, it doesn’t make any difference in the end, if Jesus’ words and his life is just a fairy tale. But if what he says is true. If the story is real. If when he says he is the only means of salvation, then what you believe makes all the difference in how you live and die and face eternity.

So there’s the question. What do you believe about him? Is he just a man or not? Is he God or not? Did he sacrifice himself for your forgiveness or not? Does he demand believe in him for salvation or not? What you believe matters. It did to Saul and it does to you and me. So what is it, true or false?

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

Missouri is sometimes known as the “Show Me” state. I’m not sure when that began or who caused the first citizens of the state to be so disbelieving, but whatever and whenever it happened, folks from outside the state who told Missourans something are often met with the famous words, “Show me.”

Those words don’t apply to just Missourans, though. We have become some of the most skeptical, yet some of the most gullible people on the planet. Polls of high school students show that more believe in the truth of Star Wars than in the truth of a landing on the moon. Somehow we manage to believe the stories of Hollywood writers with all of their technological film effects, but we don’t believe the live feed from the surface of the moon when that grainy black and white signal came from 250,000 miles above us.

It’s really incredible what people will believe and what they will not believe even when faced with the facts. I’m often amazed at the number of people who really act like the figures in that old Gieco commercial which depicts a rather homely man coming to date see a rather pretty young lady. They get into a discourse at the bottom of the stairs to her porch and she comes out with some incredibly stupid statements. He asks where she learned these startling things and the answer is the Internet so they must be true. Then Gieco shares its savings commercial which is probably truer than the Internet statement the girl just blurted out.

But we have a tendency to believe some crazy things because of the source. It’s from the Internet, so it must be true, right? Well, there is a little formula about Internet research I learned well before the Internet invaded every household and classroom across the globe. It’s like this. If the site is a .com site, it is a commercial site and its owners are engaged in making money. Be wary. If it’s a .edu site, it’s written by some professor who wants to make his or her mark on the world and will sometimes tell you things just to make you think. Be wary. If it’s a .org site, that owner is a non profit with a cause and whatever that cause might be, right or wrong, that will be the flavor of the site. Be wary. And if it is a .gov site, well… you know politics. Don’t believe anything you see there without lots of other independent evidence.

When I heard that formula for researching the Internet, those were the only endings available on websites. Now, of course, you can find .me, .food, .church, .whatever you want to make up as an ending for a site if you’re willing to set up the server farm for it. The same rules apply. Usually, normally, most of the time a website and the information on it is there with someone’s purpose and their agenda in mind.

I’ll be honest, my website that carries the blog and podcast you listen to is no different. I have a purpose and an agenda for putting the information there. You are free to agree with or disagree with me and my agenda, but I continue to provide this podcast to share thoughts that I think God would have me share from my study of scripture and how it applies to our lives today. There it is. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t spend the time and energy and money I do in preparing, recording, editing, and all the steps involved in having this ready each week.

I want to share the Gospel. This is a way I have found to do that effectively as it is heard in countries around the world. Thanks to all of you who listen and share “A Little Walk with God,” a couple of thousand people a month including people in Russia, China, Vietnam, Australia, and several other countries download the podcast and listen to it each week. That’s pretty cool. That’s why I continue to do it. I get to share God’s word. I have an agenda. You can believe what I say or not. You’re choice. I hope, though, you research what I say and find it true and meaningful to you.

So, Missourans. Show me. I won’t believe it unless I see it. Sound familiar? I guy who got the nickname Doubting Thomas said those words. John recorded them in the 20th chapter of the Gospel by his name. For those who might not remember the details of the story, it goes like this.

The two Mary’s had found Jesus’ tomb empty. They ran and told Peter and John. Peter and John raced to the tomb and found the tomb empty. The four were told by angels that Jesus had risen from the dead as he said he would. His disciples were still hiding because of their fear of the Romans and religious leaders. They had just killed Jesus and the disciples were his closest companions and shared in proclaiming the message Jesus shared across the country.

This news caused the fearful disciples to get together to talk about this news, though. They locked themselves behind closed doors and that same night, Jesus just appeared to them. He broke bread with them and talked to them. Then he just disappeared. A ghost? Ghosts don’t have flesh and blood. Jesus did. A physical person? Yes, but very different because he just appeared and disappeared. Unbelievable, right? Thomas wasn’t there. And that’s just what he said.

You guys were drunk. You guys are crazy. You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. You guys are just stressed out and wanting to believe what Peter and John told you this morning, but it didn’t happen. Jesus might be gone from the tomb, but to see him in flesh and blood when the doors are locked and then have him just disappear? No way. Show me.

Verse 26. A week later Jesus’ disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

So, here we are. Jesus gives a special blessing after this to those who believe without seeing him in the flesh the way those disciples did that night. But do you believe? Do you really believe in the resurrection? The truth is most of the world does not. Most of the people in the United States, which not that many years ago was known as a Christian nation, do not believe in the resurrection. In fact, I’m finding there are a lot of Doubting Thomases sitting in Christian churches.

It’s easy to be like the Missourans and cry out, “Show me!” It’s easy to be like Thomas and say, “I won’t believe in the resurrection unless I can see for myself.” But that’s not how faith works. Faith is believing in what you cannot see. Faith is accepting as truth what you may not understand. It’s like flipping the lightswitch expecting the lights to come on even though you don’t know how the electricity is generated from hundreds of miles away, stored, passed safely through the lines to your house, and causes the bulbs to glow when that switch is flipped. We don’t need to understand all there is to know about electricity to believe the lights will come on, we just flipped the switch believing they will. That’s faith.

I don’t need to understand how the medicines I take work, either. But I believe the doctor who gives them to me and because I take them, it makes a difference in my quality of life. But the resurrection? It’s the same. We don’t need to understand how. We don’t need to be like Thomas and see the scars in Jesus’ hands and side. We just need to believe in the testimony of the thousands who have trusted in him through the centuries and place that same trust in the truth of the gospels. Will I ever understand how the resurrection happened from a scientific perspective? Never. Do I need to understand it? Never. I just need to believe it. And talk about the change in my quality of life? The legacy of peace that Jesus promises comes pouring through.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

Easter is just behind us. We’ve gone through a season of Lent to ask ourselves the questions early Christians asked: who is Jesus?; what does it really mean to be lost and then to have his forgiveness?; and what is the cost of committing my life to Jesus? This self-examination of our faith is important as we live in a world increasingly hostile to the thought of living a life of faith. A recent Gallop poll shows within the US population, affiliation with any church has dropped 20% in the last decade. Now less than half of us in this country even think of ourselves as belonging to a Christian church, much less faithful in attending one.

Perhaps it’s time to look at why the cross is so important. Why do we need to believe in such a horrendous act as that which hung a man we believe is the son of God, God incarnate, on a cross to die in our place? What is so special about this execution of an innocent man that millions have followed him through the centuries and sometimes willingly sacrificed their own lives rather than deny his deity? Why would God choose such a method to want us to follow him and win our confidence and worship and faith?

The Apostle Paul writes to the early congregation gathering in Corinth with these words: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

It is true. Unbelievers find the message preposterous. Why would we believe the events we just celebrated really happened in the first place? What causes us to think the crucifixion and resurrection story is nothing more than a religious fairy tale? Why would so many people give themselves as martyrs to such a ridiculous tale?

I think the answer is, so many would not give themselves as martyrs to such a ridiculous tale if it were only a tale. Historically, from the writings of some non-Christians we know there was a man named Jesus who lived and died in the manner described in the Gospels. We know from the writings of the early church leaders in the first century the teachings of this man and the impact he had on the entire world.

Every time archeology tries to disprove something in scripture, it seems to only find evidence that it is true. Today, we continue to uncover evidence of the things recorded in scripture just as it was portrayed. Believers’ stand on the authenticity of God’s word finds justification from the scientific world despite efforts to thwart it.

But why would God choose death? Why such a brutal end to his own son? And as we understand the trinity, one Godhead, one God manifested as three, Father, Son and Spirit, physical death to a part of himself. Does it make any sense? Well, we have to go back to Paul’s writing. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

It might not make sense to us, but it is how God chose to reveal his love to us in a profound way. He goes back to the very beginning of his relationship with man. He goes back to those early conversations with Adam and the understanding Adam had of life. The blood that coursed its way through the veins of the animals around him and through his own body held the secret to life. Without that blood providing the necessary nutrients to the cells in the body and carrying away the toxins those cells produced as byproducts of their activities, the body dies. Adam didn’t understand the science behind the biological processes as we do today. But he knew blood was essential to life because God told him so.

When Cain killed his brother Abel, God’s call to Cain included the observation that Abel’s blood spilled into the ground. His life left him because of the spilled blood. God declared life is precious and condemned Cain’s murderous act placing a mark upon Cain that signified his guilt for all to see. We don’t know what that mark was, but we know Cain carried it and all who saw him recognized his guilt and shame because of it.

God required blood sacrifice to cleanse away the guilt of disobedience. Adam and Eve lost their prolonged life in the Garden of Eden and their animal sacrifices from that time on reminded them of the life they lost and sin they brought into the cosmos. Their actions disrupted the harmony of the universe. The symbol of life through the spilling of the blood of a sacrificial animal as a substitute for their own life gave recognition to God that he alone is worthy of worship and praise and glory.

God established rules for sacrifices. He wanted an intimate relationship with his most favored and highest creation. But we, his highest creation, continued to think we were able to live without his rules, without the restrictions he imposed for our good, without him. We wanted our selfish ways to live life however we might choose. We expected God to bend to us instead of bowing to him. We forgot he is God and we are not. And mankind paid the price. God sent a flood to destroy us. Only Noah and his family survived.

But even from this most righteous family, sin, passed through the seed of Adam sprang up as Noah and his son Canaan fell prey to wickedness. We know Noah became drunk on wine and Canaan found him naked in his tent. I have a feeling there is a lot more to the story than those few verses we read in Genesis. I have a feeling both Noah and especially Canaan deserved much more than the punishment we read about in the narrative. God wanted to start over with a new family devoted only to him. And Noah’s family failed the test, too. Just as Adam and Eve and their family did.

What is it about us that we do the things we do even though we know the consequences can be so dramatic? Why do we know what is right but continue to live in ways that push against the will of a loving God? It’s all there in the Book of Genesis for those who believe. Adam sinned. We inherited his nature through his ‘seed.’ Every human offspring born by the joining of a sperm and egg to form an embryo in a mother’s womb carries within that sperm the genetic material that Adam shares with us, the bent toward evil.

But then comes Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah. He was born of a virgin. No earthly father. No inherited genetic material from Adam. No bent toward evil. No inherited self-centeredness. Jesus, the God/Man, perfect in spirit because he did not come from Adam’s ‘seed,’ but from the Father’s. One set of chromosomes, not two. One strand of DNA, not two. How? I don’t understand it. Impossible? Not with God. Isaiah says he was not so handsome. Nothing to look at. In fact, Isaiah infers his looks might even be a little on the grotesque side. Like Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Certainly, not the face of the brown haired Roman figure we see in most of the paintings of Jesus adorning the walls of many churches and homes around the country. Yet this gentle, homely, peculiar man attracted thousands because of his words and actions.

This peculiar man. One of a kind. Perfect in spirit. Born of a virgin. Son of God. Allowed himself to be hung on a cross. His life’s blood spilled to the ground as a substitute for my life and yours. The penalty for disrupting the perfect harmony of the universe. My disobedience brings chaos to the cosmos. So does yours. When we create that chaos that ripples through the galaxies, what should the penalty be? When all the stars and planets and galaxies and all things within and around them feel the effects of our disobedience to their creator, how should we make it right? The only way to stop the carnage we create is to snuff us out. Take our life. Stop our further chaos.

But God is full of mercy and grace. He gave himself so we can still live. If we accept his gift of life and follow him we can have life eternally with him. Why the cross? I don’t understand it all. I accept that I will not understand it because I am not God. I am only one of his created beings. But I am loved by him and accept his mercy and grace. The cross was for me, but he took my place. I am forever in his debt.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

As I got to know my wife when we were first dating a hundred years ago. (It’s not really been that long, but after 42 ½ years of marriage, it’s hard to remember life without her.) I digress. When we were dating, I learned her favorite perfume was Chanel No. 5. For a college kid, it was horribly expensive. But you know what present I would get her from time to time? If you didn’t guess it right the first time, you haven’t been hopelessly in love. I saved up enough to buy her Chanel No. 5 every time the bottle was getting low.

One thing I really love about Chanel No. 5, and I think the reason she likes it so well, is that it has such a light scent. It’s fragrance doesn’t overwhelm you when someone walks into the room wearing it. You recognize its presence, but barely until you are close to the person who has used just enough of the elixir to make it known there is something different about their scent. Great stuff.

A lot of other perfumes, colognes, toilet waters I just can’t handle. Someone will walk into a building and it suddenly smells like a 5,000 gallon fuel tanker filled with the stuff just dumped their load in the room. You probably know what I’m talking about. That odor, whether pleasant or not, just overpowers everything until it just destroys your sense of smell and no matter what the smell, you detest it. My eyes begin to water, my throat begins to close, I begin to sneeze uncontrollably. All my doctors tell me I’m not allergic to anything, but what that overwhelming scent gets into a room, my body just goes beserk.

Today’s passage reminds me of those overpowering fragrances since John describes the odor as permeating the whole house. Here is what he says in John 12 verses 1 through 11:

“Six days before the Passover feast, Jesus journeyed to the village of Bethany, to the home of Lazarus who had recently been raised from the dead, where they hosted Him for dinner. Martha was busy serving as the hostess, Lazarus reclined at the table with Him, and Mary took a pound of fine ointment, pure nard (which is both rare and expensive), and anointed Jesus’ feet with it; and then she wiped them with her hair. As the pleasant fragrance of this extravagant ointment filled the entire house, Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples (who was plotting to betray Jesus), began to speak.

Judas Iscariot: How could she pour out this vast amount of fine oil? Why didn’t she sell it? It is worth nearly a year’s wages; the money could have been given to the poor.

This had nothing to do with Judas’s desire to help the poor. The truth is he served as the treasurer, and he helped himself to the money from the common pot at every opportunity.

Jesus: Leave her alone. She has observed this custom in anticipation of the day of My burial. The poor are ever present, but I will be leaving.

Word spread of Jesus’ presence, and a large crowd was gathering to see Jesus and the formerly deceased Lazarus, whom He had brought back from the dead. The chief priests were secretly plotting Lazarus’s murder since, because of him, many Jews were leaving their teachings and believing in Jesus.”

This nard got my curiosity up. I didn’t think I’d ever smelled nard, sometimes called spikenard, so I started looking up some descriptions of the fragrance. I found that it was indeed a very expensive oil in Jesus’ day, and not so inexpensive today because of where the plant grows from which it is derived.

In my search, I found the plant grows in the Himalayas of Nepal, China, and India. So just getting the plant to Israel in Biblical times would be quite the journey. And those lengthy caravans were costly. We know how to build greenhouses in such a way that we can grow almost anything anywhere, now, because we can simulate the environment of almost anyplace on earth, but they couldn’t then, and even today, to simulate the environs of the Himalayas would be costly.

But what about the smell? In all my searches, I found only one person that said nard smelled a little like lavender. That one author must have a terrible sense of smell because every other author I read said the smell is best described as “nard smells like … feet. A few said “stinky cheese.” But the majority of the vote if you do this in a democratic way, nard smells musty, earthy, leathery, … like feet. Think about the smell of middle school boys’ rooms. Feet! Yuk!

So why use nard? Well, it was thought to have some medicinal uses. It calmed anxiety. I’m told some people actually like the musty, leathery parts of the smell. Feet! One of the comments I read said fish stink, too, but that doesn’t make the river any less beautiful. I guess I understand the comment. We put up with my son’s middle school stinky feet smell because he was our son. We didn’t care much for the stinky feet smell, but we weren’t going to throw him out the door because of it. We just held our nose and gagged a little when ever we tried to decontaminate his room every few hours. (Sorry to use you as an illustration, Matt, you were handy, but I could have used any boy your age.)

So why bring all this up about nard? First, just because of the curiosity. But more important, because of the reaction of two characters in the story. Mary poured out the perfume as an act of worship for Jesus. (Whether people liked the smell or not, it was present and if it had a calming effect all the better.) She acted extravagantly in the presence of the one who deserves our extravagance. She didn’t think about the cost, only the act of giving her most prized possession.

The other character in our story, Judas, saw only waste. He didn’t see the act of worship. He only saw a year’s wages dumped on the leader of their little band’s feet. The stinky feet smell filled the room and instead of calming Judas, the oil had the opposite effect. The waste enraged him and he stormed out of the house. Everyone in the house should have been celebrating. Here sitting in the room with them was a living, breathing, eating, talking brother who just a few days earlier classified as a no kidding corpse. Dead. Gone. Finished.

Then we see this third group of characters that are really hard to explain. Jesus just raised Lazarus from the dead. He stood outside the tomb from which he had the stone pushed back and called out his name. Then here comes this man wrapped in a burial shroud smelling like nard and myrrh and frankincense. Everyone there just stands with their mouths open like fish until Jesus tells them to get the burial shroud off of him and feed him. He hasn’t eaten in four days! He’ll be hungry!

So if this guy, Jesus, can raise the dead and talk about scripture like he was there when it was written, why not listen to him? If Jesus can make two fish and five little rolls feed 5,000 men and their families, why would the religious leaders want to turn people away from him? If Jesus can change the lives of the individuals he touches and give them the internal peace they seek by telling them their sins are forgiven, why would the priests be wanting to break their own commandments and kill him?

It just doesn’t make much sense, does it? But you know what? We are often guilty of doing the same thing today. We act like Jesus is not the God we say he is. We act like he doesn’t matter. We act like the Bible and his teachings are not true. We act like there will be no judgment day or not final reckoning for the lives we live. We act like we are the center of the universe and the most important thing around. We act like those Pharisees and Sadducees. We act like we are ready to kill him because he makes life uncomfortable for us and wants to change our ways.

So here we are just a few days from celebrating Easter, for many, just another day on the calendar. For many, just a day which they can lift up as a way of making more sales for candy and clothes and special gifts for those that just want to pretend they are followers of Christ. It is still the season of Lent. In the early church, a time of preparation for those who chose to signify their entrance into the church by means of baptism on Easter Sunday. A time of study, self-reflection, ensuring they really know Jesus, they know his saving grace, and they know the cost of their commitment to him.

Lent, a time of preparation. We can do the same if we choose. We can prepare for Easter. We can do that self-examination and know we true followers of Jesus. We can know his awesome grace in our lives. We can commit to him knowing the cost may be everything we are and everything we have. Our riches, our families, our very lives. We can follow him if we choose. Most will not because in this world, the cost is high. But how about you. I can tell you it is worth it when you walk the narrow path with him.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

Here we are in the middle of Lent. In just a couple of weeks we will gather together to celebrate Easter. The day we set aside on the Christian calendar marking the day Jesus burst out of his grave to show us his power over death. During this season, I’ve been drawing my devotions from a book titled “For God So Loved”. The scripture I read today happens to come from Hebrews chapter 10. The author of that book writes to the Hebrew people of his day to explain in scholarly terms the proofs that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah and in the last several chapters, including chapter 10, how we should live in community with each other as his followers.

Now in this tenth chapter, beginning in verse 19 we find this admonition:

19 So, my friends, Jesus by His blood gives us courage to enter the most holy place. 20 He has created for us a new and living way through the curtain, that is, through His flesh. 21 Since we have a great High Priest who presides over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with true hearts full of faith, with hearts rinsed clean of any evil conscience, and with bodies cleansed with pure water. 23 Let us hold strong to the confession of our hope, never wavering, since the One who promised it to us is faithful. 24 Let us consider how to inspire each other to greater love and to righteous deeds, 25 not forgetting to gather as a community, as some have forgotten, but encouraging each other, especially as the day of His return approaches.

The author of the devotional I read today, Tara Beth Leach, gives some thoughts about the verses that could be summed up with an opening statement, “Don’t attend church, if…” She then fills in the blanks with several reasons why we should not go to church using a bit of sarcasm in her writing, such as, don’t attend church if you expect everyone to be just like you. Or don’t attend church if you expect easy answers. Or don’t attend church if you don’t want to be stretched and pushed.

So why should we go to church? Isn’t it supposed to be a safe haven for us so we can feel good about ourselves and find joy and peace and happiness? Isn’t church the place to find friendship and a common bond with those around you? Isn’t church the place to find that legacy of peace Jesus leaves us?

Church is all of that and more, but joy and peace and happiness and friendship and togetherness doesn’t mean it is easy or that everyone is or should be just like me. It doesn’t mean everything should be all soft and cushy and rosey. It doesn’t even mean I really want to be there sometimes. But I know I need to be there. Hebrews tells us we need to meet together. We need to support and learn from each other. We know that God doesn’t change, but I have to be honest, there is much about the Bible I just do not understand.

I believe the Bible is true and I believe is spans generations and gives light and life to us as we follow its teachings. I also believe there are some things written in it that apply to the particular culture in which it was written. For instance, Paul speaks out about women speaking in the church, yet he praises Lydia an obvious leader in the church. Jesus had no problem breaking the cultural rules as he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. Yet his actions were strictly forbidden and he never told anyone those forbidden rules were wrong. He just reached out to people.

So, I believe there are some things in the Bible that must be interpreted in the light of the culture of Biblical times. Often the principle of what was spoken can be picked out of the words and apply equally to us, but some things are just different in our culture. My wife only walks behind me when my pace gets faster than hers, not because I mean for her to be anywhere other than beside me. But not in some other culture even today and certainly not in Jesus’ day when cattle were more valuable than women.

So how best do we learn what scripture means? How can we interpret the words? We get together and we discuss what we read and how God’s spirit speaks to us individually and collectively and we begin to discern what God is trying to tell us. We should not depend on the pastor to do all of our study or all of our thinking for us. We should be an active part in that gathering to learn.

We should go to church to worship together. There is something about worship in community with other believers that elevates our spirit as we do so. God created us to be in community with him and with others. Yes, we can and should worship alone, but we should also worship with other believers. We can learn from them as they also learn from us in our prayers, our singing, our devotion, our approach to a holy God.

We should go to church to share each others burdens. I know you’ve seen those boxes that recommend a two man lift. Often one person can pick them up, but the movement of the load is so much easier and safer when two people work together to lift it. It’s the same with many of the difficulties we face in life. When we share each others burdens and support each other in times of trial, it just makes life easier. Not necessarily easy, but easier. That 100 pound box still weighs 100 pounds, but when two people lift it, you are less likely to break your back in the process.

We should go to church to share with other believers what we have learned through our own life experiences. I can seldom pass by someone who comments “I just wasn’t fed by the service today.” I can’t help remark, “It’s because you didn’t bring a spoon!” We don’t gather to be fed. We come to share. We come to worship. We come to experience God’s spirit in community. If you want to be fed every time you walk through the door, there are a lot of restaurants in the world that will be happy to feed you. And they supply the utensils. When we come expecting God to touch us because we have reached out to him all week long and worshipped all week long, that gathering in the church is just another opportunity to share that same worship with others who are doing the same.

So when you think about gathering together for worship, don’t think about what you get, but what you give. Do you want your spirit touched? Then reach out and touch someone’s heart with your love. Do you want peace? Then exude peace to those who enter the door and need it. Do you want fellowship? Then be a friend to those who look lonely. Do you need to feel joy? Then surround yourself with those with smiles on their faces, wear a smile yourself and feel it move from your face to your heart.

If church were like the social clubs in the community, it would fail as a place to serve God. Those social clubs provide just what the world asks for. Sameness. Emptiness. Hopelessness. You can pay a healthy price to belong to one of those social clubs, but they won’t provide the eternal answers you long to find. I don’t want to go to a church like that.

I want to go to a church that steps on my toes. I want to hear sermons that challenge me and forces me to become more Christlike. I want to surround myself with people who are like me in that they want to follow in Jesus, but I also want the church to be filled with those who are not very Christlike. I want to see people there who are hungry to find something the world can’t offer. And I want to see them there because they have seen something in me and others in my church that they just can’t explain. I want them to question why we are like we are and want the same kind of peace and joy and contentment in life that we enjoy because of our fellowship with God and one another.

Does every church look like that? I’m afraid not. Does my church look like that? Not all the time. But sometimes. And why is it that churches today aren’t as inviting and create as much curiosity for outsiders as we would like? Well, to be honest, it’s my fault...and your fault. Unless we live that life that cause others to see Christ in us every day outside the church, we can’t expect them to want to see what is going on inside the church. Think about it. It wasn’t Jesus’ actions in the temple or the synagog that caused people to follow him. It was his life outside those institutions. People flocked to him because of his everyday actions that showed his love for others. So during this season of Lent, think about your life. Do your actions cause those around you to want to follow you? Do you generate curiosity among those that know you as they watch you live your life for God? Do you have to tell them you are a Christian for them to know it? Lent is the time for preparation. It’s time to examine ourselves and know we are right with him. Take some time this week and do just that.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

We are in the middle of Lent. Not the kind of tiny little balls of cotton that stick to your clothes, but the kind that has all but been forgotten in the Christian in terms of its original purpose. When Lent began almost two millennia ago, the church used it as a time to introduce new converts to a period of study to ensure they understood what the faith really entailed.

By the middle of the fourth century, Christianity had leaked into some of the ruling class and some tried to claim the faith without understanding what the faith really was or what it meant. Lent ensured new baptismal candidates really knew about Jesus, knew about lostness without him, and knew the real cost of the commitment of following him. So here we are looking at Lent, preparing for Easter, examining ourselves in light of who Jesus is, the salvation he brings us, and the price he paid and our commitment to him because of it.

This morning in my devotions, I ran across these words: “In the beginning, there was power.” I’d never used those words about the creation story myself, but of course they are true. We understand the incredible forces resident in our universe. We understand because of our scientific knowledge, how the sun continues to shine and give us the light and warmth we require to survive. The fusion explosions that continually fuel the sun and enable life in this very narrow band of our solar system in which we thrive provides enormous energy.

We sometimes discuss nuclear power and how little fuel it takes to power cities with the energy those plants produce. They are certainly dangerous when not properly controlled because of the radiation they can produce, but the raw energy that can come from those tiny amounts of material compared to every other form of energy production is phenomenal. Someday we will figure out how to harness that power more safely and use it worldwide as our best sources of power instead of fossil fuels and other lesser forms of energy production.

But back to creation. Can you imagine the power of the sun times billions of stars like it stretched across our galaxy that we call the Milky Way? Now can you imagine billions of those galaxies like ours stretched across the universe? Our God made those. The Bible tells us he just spoke them into place. Out of nothing. His imagination and his voice created those powerhouses. Just like that. He spoke and it was done. His power created all there is. Some would have you believe it all just happened. That given enough time, all the universe would shape itself into what we have today because of the laws of physics.

The problem with that theory is the thermodynamic property called entropy. Left alone, things tend to become more chaotic, not less. Enough monkeys on enough typewriters will not produce a novel. They will produce nothing but garbage. It’s like the parts of a watch put into a bag and shaken. You’ll never get a watch, only bits of metal that look more like sand than a watch over time. The universe and the power needed to keep it in place requires a designer, a creator. It didn’t just happen.

And where did the raw materials come from in the first place? Now there is a good argument with the “it just happened crowd.” Something had to generate all the atoms that made everything begin. All those hydrogen atoms in the sun that smash together into helium atoms that smash together into larger atoms that smash together into larger atoms that then smash together into molecules that smash together to make something you can see, like water and dirt, had to come from somewhere. So where did it come from unless someone or something created that first hydrogen atom in the first place. Something coming from nothing? Think designer. Think creator. Think God. Think power beyond our ability to think or imagine. He spoke it into place.

The trouble we have today is we are sometimes to smart for our own good. We have discovered all these neat scientific rules to explain how things work. God gave us a pretty nice brain sitting in that bony skull. We only use about 10-15% of its capacity other scientists tell us, but that’s beside the point. The part that we use often makes us rather inquisitive. We want to know about things. What they are. How they work. How we can use things better. What alternative uses can we make of them?

Our inquisitive minds helped us discover all those physics principles, but we didn’t create those principles, we just discovered them. That’s a very important point. We didn’t make the rules. God did. Scientists didn’t cause the world and the universe to operate the way it does, they just discovered some of the mechanics to explain how they work. And they keep modifying those rules because we learn more about them everyday because we still understand so little about how everything really works together in this vast universe. Scientists have a hard time agreeing on things a lot of times. It wasn’t until the late 1500s that we figure out everything in our solar system revolves around our nearest star, the sun, instead of revolving around us! That was a pretty self centered view of the world, but that’s just who we are.

So here we are in the middle of Lent. Three more weeks until Easter. And the thought of the day is “in the beginning there was power.” Power that puts the universe around us into place. Power that creates the laws of physics that keeps order in that universe rather than letting the law of entropy drive those celestial bodies. Power that put this tiny planet in just the right place to sustain life. Power to create that life on the blue planet of our solar system and sustain it. Power to create man and give us the capacity to think and reason. Power to love us and want a relationship with us.

Power to clothe himself in flesh and live among us as an example of how to live and love in community with others. Power to heal and feed thousands. Power to teach what God’s plan and purpose for us. Power to willingly die on a cross to show us the extent of God’s love. Power over death. Power to burst out of a sealed and guarded tomb. Power to appear to over 500 people after his death. Power to ascend to heaven in a cloud. Power to sit at the right hand of God and intervene on our behalf. Power to forgive our sins.

In the beginning there was power. Elohim, the Almighty God. The God of creation. God is the same as he was in the beginning. God will be the same when time stops and eternity stretches on forever. God’s power is beyond our capacity to understand. God was, is, and will be. The Great I Am never changes. His power is available to those who love and serve him. He created us for that purpose. He demands and desires our love. Our devotion. Our worship. He is God, after all. There is no other. He holds the power of creation in his hand.

In this season of Lent as we prepare to celebrate Easter in just a few weeks, think of God’s power. We will sing of his power on that day. Power to overcome death. We will hear sermons on that day. Power to burst forth from the tomb. We will gather to worship the one who demonstrated his power on that first Easter morning 2000 years ago in just a little while. But in these moments. In these few days leading up to our celebration of Easter, take some time to contemplate what God’s power really means. Imagine who he is as Elohim, the Almighty God of creation. Yet came to sacrifice his life that you and I might experience abundant life through him. He shares his incredible, unimaginable power with us, so that we might share his story to those we meet that need his powerful touch.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

As we approach Easter, I hope you observe the idea of the Lenten Season. The original purpose of Lent was not just having ashes put on your forehead or abstaining from eating red meat on Fridays. It wasn’t about sacrificing something you liked during those seven weeks leading up to the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Lent was then and should now be about personal examination of your relationship with the Messiah. At the turn of the first century, early converts to Christianity began wanting to celebrate their changed lives through baptism on Easter. But because of the growing popularity of the religion particularly toward the fourth century, church leaders began to question the sincerity of some of the baptismal candidates and required them to go through a period of study and examination about their faith, Lent. Daily commitment to a regimen of study, except for Sundays to ensure they knew about Jesus, knew about their lostness without him, and knew about the cost of their commitment to him.

Today, Lent has lost its meaning in many churches and has been watered down to just another season on the church calendar. It is marked with ash Wednesday as its beginning, when the “faithful” come to the church and a priest or pastor anoints them and signifies their commitment by placing ashes on their forehead in the sign of the cross. For many, that is the extent of their observance. Isaiah describes what has happened to us as we fail to count the cost and study the life of Christ to apply his principles to our own actions. In chapter 55, we read these words:

55:2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?

Isaiah’s questions imply the state of Israel’s behavior and lifestyle in his day. They, like us, are too interested in material things. The populace was concerned more about what they could eat and wear and use to impress, than they were about what God wanted for them and his plan for them. They forgot about the covenant God made with Abraham in which his desire planned for them to bless all nations. Instead they looked to take from anyone they could. They, like us became consumers instead of producers. Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! Was the outcry of the nation.

The people began to think about themselves more than they thought about the lostness of those around them. Abraham was supposed to bless the nations around him. His sons and their sons were to do the same. We don’t have to read far in the Old Testament to see the selfish streak in all of us raise its ugly head in the patriarchs of the Jews. They became like their neighbors and looked out for number one. And internal to the nation, the leaders did the same to their countrymen. Take care of me first and then maybe, but not necessarily think about those other kinsmen around me. God doesn’t work that way and doesn’t want us to work that way either. So he brought about some pretty severe judgments on the nations around Israel and ultimately on his chosen people as well.

Clearly, the next few verses in Isaiah 55 show us just how different God wants us to be in the world’s eyes. Listen to his words:

Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.

55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.

55:4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.

55:5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

55:6 Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;

55:7 let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the LORD, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

God wants to do incredible things to us and through us to show the rest of the world who he is and what he wants to do with all of his creation. He wants to restore us to our unfallen state. He wants to clean us up and get rid of the worry that plagues us. He wants us to be so different in the world that nations will call us and wonder how and why we do the things we do. He wants us to seek him and return to him. The best thing about all of the things Isaiah shares in these few verses, ...return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

God’s pardon is not like the pardons that our governors and presidents give. When those people leave prison with a full pardon, there is still this question that hangs over them in the eyes of those around them. The pardon is real. The crimes are expunged from their record. They are deemed not guilty of the crimes for which they were incarcerated. But that accusation in the public’s eye still lingers. But not when God pardons. He throws our sin as far as the east is from the west, he tells us.

I’m glad the psalmist put it that way. He didn’t know about the north and south poles. He was just a shepherd. But God inspired him to write those words in that way. Think about it. When you go north with a compass, you finally come to a point on the globe where the only direction you can go is south. There is no more north. The same is true if you start a journey to the south. Eventually you will hit a spot where the only direction you can go is north. In fact, my computer tells me if you start at one pole and fly straight to the other, you will travel 8595.35 miles.

But if you start traveling east with your compass, you can travel east for the rest of your life and never hit a west pole. Your compass will continue to let you point east until the earth quits spinning and the sun grows dim. How far is that? As far as God throws your sins. David didn’t understand the difference between those geological points, but we do now. David wrote those words for us as much or more than for the inhabitants of his day.

God forgives. That’s what the world needs to hear. That’s what people are hungry and thirsty for today. And those of us who have experienced the overwhelming grace of God have a duty to share that changed life with those around us. God doesn’t give us the option to sit on our best intentions. He commanded us to go into all the world and make disciples. All the world doesn’t just mean the other side of the globe, although he expects us to support that missional ministry. All the world includes my next door neighbor and yours. It includes the person in the office next to mine and yours. It includes the mother that watches her son practice soccer and sits next to me in the bleachers and that mother that sits next to you when you watch your son or daughter practice. The world is not exclusive. It is all inclusive in God’s eyes. He made everyone. No one is exempt from his love and mercy and grace. We just have to ask and he gives.

Are you hungry and thirsty for him? Here God’s words Isaiah again: “Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. … Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near…”

Live in a way that others will want what you have. Not the material things that go away, but the eternal things. A relationship with God that brings joy and peace and gentleness and patience and goodness and all those fruit that his spirit grows in us when we live in his light. In this Lenten Season, learn more about him as you prepare from Easter. Make this season the best you have ever experienced by listening to him and living a life that others will want to emulate.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

What is God really like? We read the Old Testament and see a God who punishes sin in extremely harsh ways. Take for example the incident recorded in Exodus 32 and 33. Moses goes up Mount Horeb and God writes on tables of stone ten commandments as the basis to live in community with him and each other. Because of Moses’ prolonged absence, the people convince his brother, Aaron, that Moses must be dead and will not return. Aaron crafts a gold statue of a cow and that statue becomes their god.

Exodus 33 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Leave this place, you and the people you brought up out of Egypt, and go up to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ 2 I will send an angel before you and drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 3 Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”

4 When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments. 5 For the Lord had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I were to go with you even for a moment, I might destroy you. Now take off your ornaments and I will decide what to do with you.’”6 So the Israelites stripped off their ornaments at Mount Horeb.God is ready to destroy all those people and start over with just Moses. But Moses prays and asks forgiveness for their sinfulness. He offers his life for theirs and asks God to remain with them on their journey to the land God promised Abraham so many years ago.

God changed his mind and saved his people from destruction, but instead of going straight to the land he had picked out for them as an inheritance, the Israelites remained in the rugged wilderness of the middle east for forty years. They lived as nomads with no home to call their own until every adult who left Egypt died except for Joshua and Caleb. That is harsh punishment.

In the desert, God provided food for them, but it was manna every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Manna. Once when I was in the Army, our rations got a little mixed up and we at chicken cacciatore for breakfast and lunch for longer than anyone should. We couldn’t exchange them. We were stuck with them. It took me almost a decade to enjoy chicken cacciatore again. It gave me a new appreciation for the Israelites’ complaint about manna. The Bible tells us it was sweet, like honey. But there are only so many ways you can fix something. Raw. Boiled. Baked. Add water and yeast to make bread. Fried. How many things can you do with it? But still it was manna. Every day. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. For forty years. If you do the math, that’s 14,560 days. If you ate three meals a day, that 43,680 meals. Of manna. Punishment!

God heard their complaint about manna, though. He solved their problem. They ate quail. Now, if you order quail in a restaurant, it’s usually in one of those high priced places. I’m not sure most of the restaurants I eat in have quail on the menu. Quite a luxury God gave them. But like the manna, when that’s all you have is quail, it gets old no matter how good it was in the beginning. God let them eat it until it came out their nose. They grew really sick of those birds. Literally. Punishment.

God sent hail and brimstone down on the wicked. Sodom and Gomorrah. He turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt when she couldn’t resist one more peak at the town she left behind. God let the waters fall back together to crush the Egyptian army after the Israelites walked across on dry land. God surrounded Elisha with an army of angels ready to strike when the Syrian army paid him a visit. God even struck Miriam with leprosy when she and Aaron got a little jealous of Moses’ position.

For those of you who might be fashion sensitive, they had shoes that didn’t wear out. No shoe shopping. The same pair of sandals. Every day. No matter what you might wear. Oh, yeah. The clothes didn’t wear out either. So for the fashionistas, they wore the same clothes. Every day. For 14, 560 days. Maybe they had one extra set so they could wear one set while the other was in the wash, but remember, they left in a hurry. They didn’t take a lot of luggage with them. Not much of a wardrobe. Punishment.

So we see the God of the Old Testament seems like he was always looking for ways to punish. But that’s not really true. Did he punish? Yes. Did he love? More than we can ever understand. I think sometimes those glimpses of God’s wrath in the Old Testament are kind of like our news media today. Bad news cells. We want the juicy failures so it makes us feel better about ourselves.

The truth is God has not changed. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is truth and life and light. He is the creator. He keeps all of this universe humming in perfect order. He is love. He created that emotion because he wants us to experience in our frail, imperfect way, the perfect love the triune Godhead experiences eternally.

The amazing thing about God is that he wants to have a personal relationship with each of us. He wants that relationship so desperately that he came to earth and lived with us wrapped in human flesh. Then sacrificed himself on a Roman cross as payment for the Old Testament covenant punishment we deserve. His mercy relieves us of that payment with our blood. But God hasn’t changed and there is more. Not only does he give us mercy and doesn’t make us pay the penalty for our sins, he pours out his grace on us.

God’s grace is so incredible it is impossible to describe. God’s grace so exceeds our limited capacity to imagine, we cannot put it into words. Many have tried, but we all fall short and just stand in awe of the creator who gives us life. Forgives our sins. Covers us with the blood he shed on the cross for us. Sits at the right hand of the Father intervening on our behalf. His grace is so marvelous we cannot begin to even adequately put it into our thoughts.

The God of grace and mercy and love is the New Testament God we like to hear about and he is all of that. He pours himself out for us. He is an awesome God as the song written by Rich Mullins and made popular by Michael W. Smith echos for us. Don’t get me wrong, I know God’s grace and mercy and love. I’ve experienced it personally. But I also know that God has not and will not change. The God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God. Just like as a good father, there are times that I must punish my kids to help them learn right from wrong, God as our greatest example of a good father disciplines us.

Should we be surprised at the seeming change in personality between the two sides represented in the Old and New? No, but if you look closely at God before and after that dividing line in which God came to earth to live in flesh, you’ll see his love in the Old Testament with scenes like Pharaoh’s daughter rescuing Moses from the river. God giving Sarah a child in her old age. David’s psalms. And the list goes on and on.

The God of the New Testament is also a God of wrath. Just take a look at Acts 5 and see what happened to Ananias and Sapphira or the judgments that will be meted out described in the book of Revelation. God has not and will not change. He is the one constant in everything we do or see or feel. He is the anchor we can depend on because regardless of the political bent of any particular nation, regardless the state of the economy, regardless the health of loved ones or yourself, God is the same and God cares.

What does that mean for us? It means in a hopeless, loveless, wicked world, we have hope. We have love. We have righteousness. Because we can have God, not just with us, but in us. He can forgive us and then if we let him, he can guide us through this life and into the next safe from the destroyer of souls.

In this Lenten Season, remember who God is. Remember he came to show us we have hope because he came and died for us. But he didn’t just die as a sacrifice. If he stayed in the grave as a sacrifice, we would not be worshiping him. We would not have churches around the globe. We would not die as martyrs for Jesus, the Messiah. No, if Jesus had only died on the cross, he would have been another good man doing marvelous things for people.

But Easter came. Jesus arose. He conquered death, our enemy. He lives today. Remember who God is. Remember why we have hope. Spend time listening to him and learning about him as Easter approaches.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Join us as we explore God's ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

My pastor is going through a series of sermons entitled “For God So Loved” through the Lenten Season. There is a devotional book that goes along with it that has devotionals written by several different authors. And for the next few weeks, I will be using the same scriptures and themes that come from that devotional to align with the sermon series my church is going through. So today I’ll be looking at a passage from Psalms 17 in which David writes these words:

Keep me as the apple of your eye;

   hide me in the shadow of your wings

9 from the wicked who are out to destroy me,

   from my mortal enemies who surround me.

10 They close up their callous hearts,

   and their mouths speak with arrogance.

11 They have tracked me down, they now surround me,

   with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground.

12 They are like a lion hungry for prey,

   like a fierce lion crouching in cover.

13 Rise up, Lord, confront them, bring them down;

   with your sword rescue me from the wicked.

14 By your hand save me from such people, Lord,

   from those of this world whose reward is in this life.

We feel like David sometimes, don’t we? Try as hard as we may to live like we are supposed to, the bad guys seem to win and we want them to get what’s coming to them. We know there is a judgment day they will face. We know Jesus will sort the sheep and the goats. We know we will ultimately be avenged for what wicked men have done to us in this life. But we would like to see a little of that justice now, wouldn’t we?

I’d like us to go back and look at the setting in which David wrote this psalm for a minute. Samuel, the great and last judge of the nation of Israel, warned them about the trouble a king would bring on them. But the people insisted on having a king like the nations around them. God chose Saul for that position. Interestingly enough, of all the troubles a king would bring, like taxes, standing armies, forced labor, and so forth, all the things Samuel mentioned, Saul was the only king that did not impose any of those things on the people. David did, but not Saul. But Saul disobeyed a command God gave him through Samuel and made a sacrificial offering he was not authorized to make. Only a priest could perform that duty, but Saul took it upon himself to do it when Samuel was delayed. It cost Saul the kingdom and brought about the enmity between Saul and David. Samuel anoint David as the next king, but he had not yet been crowned.

Saul’s jealousy raged. He tried to kill David on many occasions and David fled for his life. As one of Israel’s greatest warriors, defeating the Philistines on the battlefield many times, the nations around Israel wanted the young warrior dead. Now the king of Israel wanted him dead, too. David had enemies surrounding him from every corner. He felt like he had nowhere to turn even though he was doing what he thought God wanted him to do in fighting for his nation and his king.

Remember, that on at least two occasions, David had the opportunity and the means to take Saul’s life, but refused because he would not harm the man God anointed as king. Instead, David ran for his life. It wasn’t fair. God laid out some spectacular things for him to do. God made some incredible promises to him and gave him talents that brought fear to his enemies. (When you can defeat a nine foot giant wearing battle armor with a sling and a stone, that can cause people to be afraid of you.) Yet David displayed a gentle spirit with many who came in contact with him.

Now on the run, David pours out his heart to the God he learned to trust as a shepherd out on the hillside protecting his father’s sheep against the wild animals in the wilderness. Was it fair? No. Did God ever tell us life would be fair? No. Was David’s life on the run an easy one? No. Did God ever tell us life would be easy? No. In fact, Jesus told his disciples to expect trouble. Following after God is bound to put you in opposition to the world. The average person will not like what you do if you follow his teaching. He puts boundaries on your actions. You can’t do anything you want to do. Your rights stop where they collide with responsibilities.

I would love life to be like that a couple of those line we read. “... hide me in the shadow of your wings,  from the wicked who are out to destroy me... Rise up, Lord, confront them, bring them down;  with your sword rescue me from the wicked. By your hand save me from such people…”

Doesn’t that sound good? But God doesn’t always do that. In fact, like with his son, Jesus, we often face the worst. God sometimes puts us in the very front of the battle lines of this world and we must stand against some of the most wicked and atrocious acts Satan has in his bag of tricks. Does that mean God doesn’t love us? No. Does it mean he has abandoned us? No. Does it mean he doesn’t care about the struggles we face in this world? No. God still loves and cares for us.

But as with David as he ran for his life, we sometimes draw closest to God in the times of our greatest struggles. Sometimes God allows these things to happen because it is in those times when we find we have nowhere to go for relief that we throw ourselves into God’s great arms because we know he is our last and only hope. It’s at times like those that we learn the greatest lessons about how little of life we control and how much we rely on him for every heartbeat and every breath of life.

God loves us so much he lets us endure some of the hardships of this world so we might draw closer to him and find solace in his embrace when life seems to overwhelm us in every direction we turn. Then when the lions roar, when the vipers strike, the hurricane winds and floods push to engulf us, we can rest in the assurance that God’s hand will reach down and cover us. He will not let us suffer more than we can endure. He will rescue us. But he does so will his purpose in mind.

God still wants his message to ring through our lives so others will see the peace in our hearts that come from knowing him. He wants others to know the legacy his son left us. Peace that when the chaos of life crushes in upon us, we can know that with our last breath, we awake in a new heaven and a new earth surrounded by the brilliance of God glory forever. A place where pain and death and evil can never touch us again.

Will I stop praying David’s seventeenth psalm just because I know my future in heaven? No, I would still like relief from the wickedness that plagues this world. I would still like God to intervene to stop the suffering that comes from the evil that lurks in the dark places that seem to encroach more and more on the innocent. I still cry out like David for God to rise up and confront those who find their reward in this world instead of in his kingdom.

But I also read the last chapter of the book. I know how it all ends. I have confidence and hope that someday soon Jesus will come as the avenger for all his children. And I cry for those who do not know him. Their eternity will not be as short or pleasant as they imagine. Eternity is something our human mind cannot grasp. Eternal punishment and banishment from the God of creation is something we cannot fully understand or imagine. I pity the lost whose souls will forever experience that awful place.

During this Lenten Season, take time to understand what Jesus has done for you in making a way to avoid that place of eternal lostness. Take time to think about the avenger who will come again and make right a world that has gone very wrong because of our refusal to accept God as God. Stop and remember that he will one day soon call an end to time and he will do exactly what the psalmist asked. He will rise up, confront, bring down, and destroy those of this world whose reward is in this life.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.