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.

As Christians, we often ask the question, ‘why can’t the world understand how wrong their behavior when pitted against God’s word?’

It’s a valid question. People’s actions everywhere seem to get worse instead of better with the turning of every calendar page. We thought the ’70s topped the list for frivolity, disorder, and social discord, but then came the last several years. Wow! Serial killers, kidnapped children worked as sex slaves, increased control by drug lords, violent crime, division among political parties turning into riots instead of debates, social injustice. You name it, and we’ve had it in the last few years.

Evil doesn’t claim a party name or a social divide. The behavior finds its way into every corner of society – every party, every race, every social class. We used to claim ourselves a Christian nation, not necessarily because the vast majority were Christian, but because we based our law and expected behavior on Christian values. Particularly, those last six commandments – honor your parents, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t covet.

When we live in a community with those principles, we live better together. Somewhere along the line, we quit living by those principles. Perhaps it started with lying, then coveting, then dishonoring parents, adultery, stealing, then murder. Everything skyrocketed. But why? Why can Christians (not nominal Christians, but Christians) understand scripture’s importance, but others can’t? Why is God’s word so much more evident to us than to those who do not follow Jesus? Why is the Bible just a fantasy to those who do not believe?

Paul gives us the answer in his second letter to the church in Corinth. He writes these words in what we note as the fourth chapter of his letter:

However, if our gospel still remains ‘veiled,’ it is veiled for people who are perishing. What’s happening there is that the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they won’t see the light of the gospel of the glory of the Messiah, who is God’s image. We don’t proclaim ourselves, you see, but Jesus the Messiah as Lord, and ourselves as your servants because of Jesus; because the God who said ‘let light shine out of darkness’ has shone in our hearts, to produce the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus the Messiah. (2 Corinthians 4:3-6 NTE)

It’s an interesting phrase, ‘the god of this world.’ Satan’s hold over this world is as flimsy and false as it was in the Garden of Eden or in the wilderness when he tempted Jesus. God is the God of all creation, including this world. But just as Satan blinded Adam and Even with his deception, he blinds men and women who fail to accept in faith the truth of God’s word.

We, in the church, the body of Christ, still have an interesting problem, though. Why do so many Christians misunderstand God’s word or use it in ways that clearly run against Jesus’ command to love God and love others? How can they twist scripture in ways that would permit the crusades or burning mosques, or killing innocents in riots? How is stealing, adultery, lying, murdering somehow okay when twisted into some kind of righteous behavior?

Today, part of our problem stems from the variety of translations used across various denominations and groups. Although the vast majority have few items that will change important aspects regarding salvation, some translations do. A small number of sects make wholesale revisions of God’s word to suit what they want to believe rather than what His word says. To reduce the probability of such an error, I encourage you to read a variety of translations. The vast majority render God’s word in much the same way. Newer translations come from the very oldest manuscripts available, some from as early as the second and third centuries. Compare versions and see what scholars say about any significant differences in word meanings before blindly accepting one over another.

Second, we forget the gospel writers penned their works for Christians living in their day and time, not ours. The letters they wrote to congregations and individuals around the Mediterranean in Greek address the first-century Roman world issue the Christians faced in their new found faith. We blindly read without thinking about the context in which the writers lived. In fact, we often forget Paul and the other authors of the New Testament wrote to believers, not unbelievers. They admonished people in the church for their behavior, not those in the pagan temples. Their letters could have started, “Clean up your own act before you start talking about those guys outside your doors.” We need to think about the culture, the difficulties the church faced, the ideas Paul tried to instill in a new faith with no theology before pressing our beliefs and denominational theology on the scripture we might read.

Finally, remember definitions change with time. Not only do we have the problem of the translations from Greek to English. The Greek New Testament contains about 5,400 words translated into an average of over 12,000 English words, two and a half times as many words. So, some translations are bound to use different English words for the same Greek word. But some English words change meaning over time. Bad now means good in the vernacular. Gay usually doesn’t refer to lighthearted and carefree today. Words change.

God’s word still provides truth. But how do we find that truth after telling you the pitfalls we face?

First and foremost, be a student of God’s word. Read and study it. When I say read it, I’m not talking about reading a verse or two a day and setting your Bible aside and saying that’s good enough. You can read the longest gospel in about two and a half hours. You’ll be surprised what you learn when you do so. You can read Romans in half that time—what a fantastic book. Read large chunks of the Bible at a time – several chapters or a whole book, so you understand how it came into the possession of those to whom it was written. The authors didn’t write chapters and verses. They wrote letters to the churches. They wrote prophecies to kings. They wrote biographies of Jesus. Read the Bible as you would those types of books, and you will get an entirely different perspective than by reading a few verses at a time.

Next, study smaller sections, starting with the gospels. Try to understand how the people lived during Jesus’ day. How did he act around them? How did the Romans act around the Israelites? Do you realize as Jesus walked the roads in Galilee and Judah, he saw criminals crucified along the roads? We sometimes forget he was not the first to undergo Rome’s most heinous form of execution. Jesus knew what was coming. He saw it every day. The crucified acted as road signs across the country to let people know they better obey Rome – or else. Think about the setting, the culture, the plight of the people he helped, spoke to, admonished, forgave. Use commentaries, history books, and whatever you find useful to help place you in that time to better understand what he told the disciples and those around him. Then do the same for the rest of the New and Old Testaments.

Then, as you read and study, begin with a prayer and a question. “God, what do you want me to hear from you today? What do you want me to change about my life?” You’ll be surprised at the answers you find in his word, his truth.

Finally, ask for discernment as you read and study. Spend some quiet time before and after reading to just listen for the Holy Spirit’s voice in your life. Test what you hear against God’s word. They will never conflict. They will always support Jesus’ commands to love God and love others. He showed us how and said for us to do the same. So, test what you think you heard from God. Then go and do it. Go wherever God is working and be part of his plan, not yours. Stop asking, “what is your plan for me?” Instead, ask, “God, what is your plan, and how can I be part of it?” It’s a subtle but important difference in how we approach God’s word.

Don’t let the self-proclaimed god of this world pull the veil over your eyes. Let the truth of God’s word, the creator of all things, the one who gave his life for us, be your guide in all you do. Truth is available for those who seek it.

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.

Scriptures marked NTE are taken from the NEW TESTAMENT FOR EVERYONE: Scripture are taken from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011.

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.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. I’m tired of politics. I’m tired of the pandemic. I’m tired of isolation and social distancing. I’m tired of biased news reporting. I’m tired of social media. I’m tired of the increase in violent crime. I’m tired of the growing disparity between classes. I’m tired of the constant bickering that never accomplishes anything. I’m just tired.

Do you feel that way sometimes? If you do, you’re not alone, and I’m not alone. I think we all experience it at some point. The Israelites experienced it during Isaiah’s prophecies. Judah and Israel crowned more bad kings than good ones during their histories. Few stood up to God’s standard as men after God’s heart. More carried the title “more wicked than his father.”

Most often, the prophets spoke out against the kings’ leadership because of two significant issues. First, they allowed and often participated in the worship of foreign gods, in contradiction to Yahweh’s first commandment to have no other gods before him and his second commandment to never make or bow to any image. Second, the kings failed to care for those who could not care for themselves in society, the widows and orphans who had no means of support. The kings made the poor poorer as they accumulated wealth for themselves.

Finally, God allowed his chosen people and the city where the Jews built his Temple to crumble. First. Assyria led Israel into exile, then Babylonia took all but Judah’s poorest and lowliest into exile. Jerusalem ground into broken stones and burnt timbers.

I look around at our country and see a lot of what Isaiah saw. Our nation seems to crumble around us. A few years ago, we heard about the infrastructure of Flint, Michigan. The lead in the water system poisoning its people because of the antiquated water system in disrepair. Then we heard about the bridges collapsing in several states under the weight of everyday traffic and discovered many of our interstate overpasses stood on the verge of collapse with no repair since erected in the 1950s and 60s. The overhead electric grid serving California sparked several wildfires that destroyed millions of acres of forest, hundreds of homes and killed dozens of people.

Our education system crumbles around us as we place near the bottom of the industrial world with students graduating from high school that can’t read or write above the sixth or seventh-grade level. Math skills among our graduates rank among the lowest in the civilized world, and few of our college graduates are problem solvers. They look for answers on the internet instead.

We saw our political system crumble in this last election cycle as both parties slung mud at each other instead of outlining plans for how they would fix the problems we face. The rhetoric on both sides of the aisle continues to divide us, create distrust among us, discourage meaningful debate, and resolve real issues. We have few statesmen left in either House of Congress as parties vote as a block on every piece of legislation.

And it seems faith has crumbled. Before COVID, attendance across most denominations in the US consistently fell. People didn’t pronounce God dead, but many acted like it. We became a society afraid of telling the truth because we might hurt someone’s feelings. And I agree that truth without grace is disastrous. But so is grace without truth. We must stand for something, and if we call ourselves Christians, we must stand firmly on the commands Jesus gave us. Love God and love others. But we must not only stand on them, but we must also act on them.

Today there are more than 5,000 cults in the United States. A cult is a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object. We think of Jim Jones, David Koresh, and others like them, but more than 5,000 small sects register as religious groups worshiping a person or object in this country alone. And collectively, they bring in billions of tax-free dollars. Our faith crumbles.

Israel whined and complained about their plight. I just whined and complained about our plight. Look at any social media outlet and you will see an incredible amount of whining and complaining. But God, through Isaiah has something to say about our complaints. We find these words in Chapter 40 beginning at verse 21.

Do you not know?

    Were you not told long ago?

    Have you not heard how the world began?

It was made by the one who sits on his throne

    above the earth and beyond the sky;

    the people below look as tiny as ants.

He stretched out the sky like a curtain,

    like a tent in which to live.

He brings down powerful rulers

    and reduces them to nothing.

They are like young plants,

    just set out and barely rooted.

When the Lord sends a wind,

    they dry up and blow away like straw.

To whom can the holy God be compared?

    Is there anyone else like him?

Look up at the sky!

Who created the stars you see?

    The one who leads them out like an army,

    he knows how many there are

    and calls each one by name!

His power is so great—

    not one of them is ever missing!

Israel, why then do you complain

    that the Lord doesn't know your troubles

    or care if you suffer injustice?

Don't you know? Haven't you heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God;

    he created all the world.

He never grows tired or weary.

    No one understands his thoughts.

He strengthens those who are weak and tired.

Even those who are young grow weak;

    young people can fall exhausted.

But those who trust in the Lord for help

    will find their strength renewed.

They will rise on wings like eagles;

    they will run and not get weary;

    they will walk and not grow weak. (Isaiah 40:21-31 GNT)

Did you notice? God has this under control. He did for the Israelite and Judahites headed into exile. He did for the disciples and the early church as they faced indescribable persecution. And he does for us right now. God sees what happens to us. He knows what we need, how we feel, the anguish and burdens we carry. But God never gets tired. He never gets weary. His wisdom is beyond understanding. And he strengthens us.

Isaiah tells us the young with all their vitality may stumble and fall and grow tired in their journey. But those who trust in God, the creator of all things, will regain their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and never get winded or weary. They will walk and never tire or faint. Will all those things happen this side of eternity? My aging broken body says, probably not. But there will come a day when Jesus returns to renew and restore heaven and earth to its former glory. He will give us new bodies that never tire. We can enjoy that space with him forever when we give ourselves in faith to him.

This place may crumble around our heads, but we don’t fight against this visible place. It’s okay if it all tumbles down around us. We are citizens of a different kingdom. One that will last forever. We are children of the King and will enjoy the fruit of his renewed creation, a renewed heaven and earth, as part of his family. Our mission now is to introduce other to him through love, so his family can grow. So, do we whine and complain, or do we look at the reality of the spiritual warfare taking place around us a praise God for the hope within us as we love others into his kingdom?

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.

Scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation®: Scriptures taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

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.

In the lectionary this week, I came across some strange verses that we usually jump over, disregard, assume an inadequate translation, or mumble through them without thinking much about them. But over the last several months, I’ve been spending a lot of time studying what the Ancient Israelites believed and how Jesus’ contemporaries thought about their world as we passed from BCE to AD and the birth of the church.

Let me share some of that scripture with you, and then we will focus on what might cause some of you to think me a bit crazy. The lectionary comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 8, where Paul gives instructions to the church about being careful not to cause weak Christians to stumble because of their superior knowledge about God and the true nature of idols. He shares the verses specifically about food sacrificed to idols, but some verses in the middle of his discourse, we usually skip over. The passage to explore today includes verses one through 7. In the Good News Translations, they read like this:

It is true, of course, that “all of us have knowledge,” as they say. Such knowledge, however, puffs a person up with pride; but love builds up.  Those who think they know something really don’t know as they ought to know.  But the person who loves God is known by him.

 So then, about eating the food offered to idols: we know that an idol stands for something that does not really exist; we know that there is only the one God.  Even if there are so-called “gods,” whether in heaven or on earth, and even though there are many of these “gods” and “lords,” yet there is for us only one God, the Father, who is the Creator of all things and for whom we live; and there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created and through whom we live.

7 But not everyone knows this truth. (1 Corinthians 8:1b-7a GNT)

Rome considered Christians and Jews atheists in Paul’s day because they worshiped only one God. The rest of the world recognized and worshiped a multitude of deities, including the emperor. Most nations believed the gods placed their king on the throne and talked to him, giving him the laws of the land. At the time, most countries thought kings who took faithful care of their kingdom could become deities themselves after death. Some, like the Roman Emperor, declared himself a son of the gods. But serving and worshiping a single god just didn’t make sense in the culture of the day.

But each god’s temple supposedly stood as the place where their god would reside on earth. The Jewish Temple did the same. The difference between them is no idol or representation of God, Most High – Jehovah – appeared in the Jews’ Temple. Nothing could represent the Creator of all other beings, including all the other gods.

Reading the Old Testament carefully, you’ll find ample evidence the Ancient Israelites did not discount other gods, nor did Jehovah. He only demanded their sole allegiance to him. In fact, you can read the very first commandment with that culture in mind as God says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Why didn’t he say there is only one God, and I’m it? There is an interesting passage in Deuteronomy 32 that explains the Ancient Israelites understanding of at least some of the other gods. It is Moses’ discourse to the Israelites before his death, inspired by God and reads:

“Think of the past, of the time long ago;

    ask your parents to tell you what happened,

    ask the old people to tell of the past.

The Most High assigned nations their lands;

    he determined where peoples should live.

He assigned to each nation a heavenly being,

    but Jacob’s descendants he chose for himself. (Deuteronomy 32:7-9 GNT)

When you couple these verses associated with Noah’s sons in Genesis ten and count the nations that grew from their lineage, seventy nations, each with its own language, are named. Chapter eleven explains why those seventy nations spoke different languages. God scattered them by confusing their languages at the Tower of Babel, and each tribe went its way – seventy ways. The story continues through the folklore and Moses shares that God assigned those seventy known nations land with a heavenly being to watch over it. But Jacob’s descendants, Israel, the chosen people, he kept for himself.

Who are these heavenly beings? I think the gods the other nations worshiped. God’s celestial beings, sent to watch over those nations, became greedy and supposed themselves on the level of God, Most High. These are the rebels, thrown to the earth, and we, in our god-like “knowledge” obtained in the garden, worshiped them. That is the explanation from the Ancient Israelites through Paul’s day and into the Dark Ages.

They believed God used a council of heavenly beings, not angels, but beings like himself, but beings he created, god-like, but not God, Most High, to act as his council. Perhaps the seraphim and cherubim who guard his throne fit that category. Perhaps they are more god-like beings than angelic beings. The first, the seraphim, are usually described as fiery creatures giving light and burning away all impurity around the throne—the second, the cherubim, act as faithful guards. A cherub guards the entrance to Eden. A cherub stood in the path of Barack. Cherubim are not the chubby-cheeked valentine picture representations but mighty warriors around God’s throne.

Why do they think God used a council? Scripture implies it. “Let us make man in our image.” When Ahab was king, God asked, “How shall we deal with Ahab, when he wanted to attack Edom? Isaiah heard him ask the group, “Who will we send?” Many other examples in the Old Testament show God talking to someone around his throne. I don’t believe he would discuss within the Trinity because the Trinity is him. He would be talking to himself. I think God was talking to his trusted council around the throne. He still performed the creative acts. He made the decisions, but I believe in the heavenly realm, God uses his council and other celestial beings to carry out his desires in that plane of reality just as he uses us to carry out his plans in this one.

God, Most High, Yahweh, Jehovah, created all things visible to us and in realms not visible to us. I think he destined humanity to take charge of this realm; we failed. Jesus came to renew us so that we can pick up the pieces and carry out the work God gave us in the beginning. The earth and heaven will ultimately be restored to their original glory, where God and humanity will walk together in the cool of the day. We will hold dominion over his visible creation and care for it through the loving actions he taught us as he walked among us.

We will respect our roles as stewards instead of owners of the things around us. But we will be pleased with that role because we will understand who God is and who we are with respect to his position in the created universe. I think at that time, the curtain between the earthly and heavenly realms will be drawn back, and we will understand how God has protected and cared for us in ways we never knew before. God will reveal himself to us in the same way he reveals himself to his heavenly beings now.

Let me end discussing a word Paul uses to describe Christians who think themselves strong. Knowledge. The strong Christians in Corinth believed they had knowledge. What is knowledge? The dictionary defines knowledge as:

          1) facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject: a thirst for knowledge | her considerable knowledge of antiques.

• what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information: the transmission of knowledge.
• Philosophy true, justified belief; certain understanding, as opposed to opinion.

2) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation: the program had been developed without his knowledge | he denied all knowledge of the overnight incidents.

Today we deal with way too much opinion and very little actual knowledge. What I’ve talked about today, I’ll admit, is very much my opinion, but based on a great deal of reading, study, and thought. Do I have certain understanding that all I’ve said is true? No, only if I could travel in time, instead of reading many renowned authors’ scholarly works, could I increase the certainty of my opinion. Scripture always holds an undeniable mystery about it.

However, our knowledge of those around us holds that same mystery. As you talk with those with whom you come in contact in the next few days, don’t assume you know how they feel, what they think, or even what they mean by their words. Their mind is a mystery to you as much as yours is to them. We often talk at each other instead of with each other and assume far too much of our knowledge and understanding. If I can’t explain myself to someone many times, how can I assume I know how they think or feel? Knowledge in any area of life - facts, information, and skills gained through personal experience doesn’t come easy. When applied to communicating with another person, the subtleties of each person’s different experiences make my experiences, facts, and knowledge suspect regarding their understanding.

How do we overcome the communication problem that divides us in so many areas? We follow the two commands Jesus said wraps all the others together. We love God, and we love others. Become knowledgeable in the exercise of love by learning about Jesus and his behavior. Act like him. Talk like him. Love like him. Then, your knowledge of loving like God will help you show Christ to those around you.

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.

Scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation®: Scriptures taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

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 many of us watched as the United States turned over its seat of power to a new man. President Joe Biden is now my president, and I will pray for him and my country’s leaders every day as I have for the last many years. It’s essential that, as Christians, we pray for our elected officials. He took the reins of a broken country, and I am sure he will do what he thinks is best to pull us together.

We have a new president. We have sixty-six new congressmen and women. My fear is we will have the same politics, the same division, the same racism, the same hatred, the same evil. Why do I think we will have the same as we had before? Because we have the same individuals living in the country and the government can’t change people’s hearts, only God can. But God uses people to do that.

            Take, for instance, the story of Jonah. It’s an excellent message for the church today if we listen carefully to what it tells us.

We know Jonah’s story well. God gave Jonah a mission. He told Jonah, his prophet, to go to Nineveh, one of the time’s most wicked cities, and tell them God would destroy them in forty days. Jonah fled to Tarshish, the farthest town from Nineveh in the known world. But God had other plans. He manufactured a storm that threatened to destroy the boat on which Jonah found passage until Jonah finally asked the crew to throw him overboard, and the sea calmed.

Jonah found himself in the belly of a great fish for three days contemplating his disobedience, finally asking for forgiveness. The fish vomited the prophet onto the shore a day’s walk from Nineveh, and Jonah started on his journey to the city. We pick up the story in chapter three.

Once again the Lord spoke to Jonah. 2 He said, “Go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to the people the message I have given you.” 3 So Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh, a city so large that it took three days to walk through it. 4 Jonah started through the city, and after walking a whole day, he proclaimed, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!”

5 The people of Nineveh believed God’s message. So they decided that everyone should fast, and all the people, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth to show that they had repented.

6 When the king of Nineveh heard about it, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat down in ashes. 7 He sent out a proclamation to the people of Nineveh: “This is an order from the king and his officials: No one is to eat anything; all persons, cattle, and sheep are forbidden to eat or drink. 8 All persons and animals must wear sackcloth. Everyone must pray earnestly to God and must give up their wicked behavior and their evil actions. 9 Perhaps God will change his mind; perhaps he will stop being angry, and we will not die!”

10 God saw what they did; he saw that they had given up their wicked behavior. So he changed his mind and did not punish them as he had said he would. (Jonah 3:1-10 GNT)

Jonah’s message and his response resemble the church far too much. I think it’s why these verses impressed me so much this week. At first, Jonah didn’t want to make any kind of announcement to the people of Nineveh. Let them do what they want. It doesn’t affect me in Israel. They live too far away for me to concern myself with them or what happens to them. They are just Ninevites, after all.

It sounds like too many Christians, doesn’t it? Why should I worry about those people? What do they have to do with me? They live and operate in a separate world, they don’t affect me, and I don’t affect them, so why should I care about them? God leave me alone and let someone close to them worry about them.

Jonah finally got the message that everyone belongs to God, and he desires that all should come to him in repentance and become part of his family. He knows all will not, but his desire is they would. But as Paul says in Romans 10:14, “But how can they call to him for help if they have not believed? And how can they believe if they have not heard the message? And how can they hear if the message is not proclaimed?” (GNT) Someone must share the message with them.

Jonah shared the message God gave him. “In forty days, Nineveh will be destroyed!” That doesn’t sound much like a salvation message, but Jonah walked a day’s journey into the heart of the city and began his proclamation from God. Jonah liked his message. The wicked city was about to disappear from the face of the earth like Sodom and Gomorrah. God would carry out his justice against these people who cared so little about his laws and righteousness. The chosen people would find retribution for the evils executed by this capital city that ruled the world against its distant subjects. Once Jonah started preaching God’s message for Nineveh’s destruction, I can see a bit of a smile creeping across his face.

Some may have thought him mad, but enough believed him that they tore their robes, put on sackcloth as a sign of mourning and repentance, threw ashes over themselves, and cried out to God for forgiveness. Word of Jonah’s message made its way to the king, and even he repented. He proclaimed the entire city, some sixty miles across, that everyone would wear sackcloth, fast, and change their behavior, in other words, repent. Repentance is not just saying we are sorry. It is changing our behavior, turning 180 degrees from the direction we face and turn toward God.

Look around and what do you see in our country? The seat of power doesn’t seem to do much for the distant citizens anymore. To whatever party you belong, you probably have significant problems with the opposite party. Of course, the problem is we don’t know what our party does or stands for because we listen to the media’s interpretation on everything instead of digging into the truth for ourselves.

All parties are equally corrupt. All parties work for their gain. Both Houses of Congress contain members who become multi-millionaires after a couple of terms at salaries of less than $200,000 a year. All parties bash the others to avoid anyone lifting the tent flaps to see what hides in their own dark spaces. And we allow it with our poor showing at voting booths. Think about it: only 67 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the November general election. In the average local elections, some state turnouts record as low as 28 percent of their voters hitting the polls. As the supposed model for democracy, we place in the bottom ten even with our highest voter turnout since 1900. So, we let the corruption continue by our apathy and inaction. We have our Nineveh, and if you visit, you will see a few Jonah’s on street corners proclaiming its destruction soon.

God saw Nineveh’s repentance, and he changed his mind. He didn’t destroy the city. Jonah got angry. He wanted vengeance. He wanted justice. He declared God’s message of destruction for the wicked, and God didn’t follow through. How dare he make such a fool of Jonah? That’s how the church acts sometimes. Why doesn’t God just destroy the wicked? Why doesn’t he just send lightning bolts or fire and brimstone down and show these guys what righteous justice is all about? Why doesn’t God take over and get rid of evil, so we Christians can live a more comfortable life? We seem to be a bit angry with God and the world far too often.

But Jesus said we should imitate him. He brought peace, love, freedom. He acted as a kingdom builder, getting as many as possible into God’s family – rich, poor, the right or wrong side of town, Jew or Gentile, prostitutes, thieves, murderers, tax collectors. Jesus didn’t care what you had done or who you were. He saw what you could be, not what you were. He saw the image of God in everyone and pulled it out of you. He came to seek and save the lost children of God.

Then Jesus gave the same mission to the church, those of us who wear his name. He told us to be peacemakers, kingdom builders, lovers of God, and others. But we have a pretty tumultuous history of power mongers, anger, violence, hatred, and war in his name. Some think that applies to the Crusades, and it does. But what are we doing today but the same when it comes to healing the nation and the world? As I read the comments on social media from those who say they are followers of Jesus, I often read hatred, anger, and a call for God to destroy instead of heal.

We run from the mission of reconciliation with our brothers. We want justice, not mercy. We want heaven to come quickly, so all those evil folks around us will just disappear, instead of working to help them understand the consequences of their actions and love them into God’s great family. We forget that someone shared the message of God’s love with us, or we would be one of those evil folks about whom we talk. Or maybe, if we’re talking about those evil folks, instead of working hard to love them into the kingdom, we just might be one of them.

Let’s take up God’s message for the church before it’s too late and grow his family with love. God wants more than ever for men and women to come to him and know his love in a corrupt and broken world. On which side will you stand? Jonah’s in anger, or Nineveh’s in repentance?

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.

Scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation®: Scriptures are taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

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.

In case you haven’t noticed, church attendance in the United States has been on the decline for the last several years. Now we can blame the coronavirus pandemic and our inability to gather without risk of spreading the disease. Still, that excuse doesn’t explain the decades before the pandemic when attendance continued to fall. For a few short weeks at the beginning of the pandemic, online church service attendance actually grew to levels above physical attendance in some denominations. That didn’t last as we got used to the pandemic and decided the church wouldn’t help us end it.

We could blame our enlightenment on the low attendance, I suppose. Except, I’m not sure how enlightened we are when I listen to the news. I find us filled with as much hate and prejudice and bigotry as ever, maybe even at higher levels when you read letters from any other period in our history. One would assume enlightenment would end that kind of thinking, but it has only grown in the last couple of decades. Our democracy may not last the way it is progressing. Our greatest problem? We left no room for God.

We leave lots of room for political correctness. We make sure we stay on the right side of an argument. We work hard to use the right words, so no one accuses us of being racist, the latest and most heinous crime in the country. We step gingerly around pronouns to avoid damaging the psyche of anyone in the LGBTQQIP2SAA community. That’s the latest acronym for the all-inclusive community of the various self-identified gender-specific groups, including more than fifteen different parties. But we still throw away our youngest and oldest in our society through our policies. We live in trying times.

I’ve discovered, though, that correctness does not equal right. If you read the last verses of the book of Judges, you’ll find the Israelites individually thought they acted correctly, but they did not act rightly. It says, “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” They thought themselves enlightened. They thought they could succeed by their rules instead of God’s. Today, we would say their motto was, “If it feels good, do it.” In that book, we find the same things in our society; abuse of power, abuse of the poor and helpless, and disregard for those in need. Their self-admired wisdom fell far short, though, and they paid the price for their disobedience.

For periods of time, God allowed outside nations to invade the land and wreak havoc on the Israelites. After they acknowledged their sin and would cry out for mercy, he would come to their aid, raise up a judge or warrior-leader, and rescue them from their enemies. But after repeating their cycle of apostasy and repentance through several iterations, we come to the end of the book of Judges when the author remarks everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Even the priests failed to follow the laws God set for the nation. Eli, the high priest, let his sons take advantage of the people, taking whatever they wanted for themselves instead of the portion of sacrifices set aside for them.

We find out how bad the situation had become spiritually with God’s selection of the last judge and first prophet, Samuel, in the book by his name.

Samuel served the Lord by helping Eli the priest, who was by that time almost blind. In those days, the Lord hardly ever spoke directly to people, and he did not appear to them in dreams very often. But one night, Eli was asleep in his room, and Samuel was sleeping on a mat near the sacred chest in the Lord’s house. They had not been asleep very long when the Lord called out Samuel’s name.

“Here I am!” Samuel answered. Then he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am. What do you want?”

“I didn’t call you,” Eli answered. “Go back to bed.”

Samuel went back.

Again the Lord called out Samuel’s name. Samuel got up and went to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “What do you want?”

Eli told him, “Son, I didn’t call you. Go back to sleep.”

The Lord had not spoken to Samuel before, and Samuel did not recognize the voice. When the Lord called out his name for the third time, Samuel went to Eli again and said, “Here I am. What do you want?”

Eli finally realized that it was the Lord who was speaking to Samuel. So he said, “Go back and lie down! If someone speaks to you again, answer, ‘I’m listening, Lord. What do you want me to do?’”

Once again Samuel went back and lay down.

 The Lord then stood beside Samuel and called out as he had done before, “Samuel! Samuel!”

“I’m listening,” Samuel answered. “What do you want me to do?” (1 Samuel 3:1-10 CEV)

Did you notice? In those days, the Lord hardly ever spoke directly to people, and he did not appear to them in dreams very often. He spoke directly to Adam and Eve. God spoke directly to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He spoke directly to many of the judges he called to lead the people against their enemies. He often appeared in dreams to the patriarchs and sometimes to their enemies to warn them against harming God’s people. But when Samuel went to the tabernacle under the tutelage of Eli, God stopped talking to people. I sometimes wonder if it was because they stopped listening and just did what they wanted anyway.

I think God has that problem with us sometimes. We let the noise of the world drown out his voice. We let all our electronics, social media, news, entertainment, jobs, business drown out his voice. As Elijah discovered, his voice won’t be heard in the whirlwind or the earthquake but the whisper of a gentle breeze. You must listen carefully to hear him. We get addicted to the things around us other than God instead of filling our hearts and minds with him, then wonder why we don’t hear from him.

God still speaks, though. His word is alive and active and sharper than a two-edged sword, Paul tells us. We must get away from the noise to let it speak to us. God’s spirit, active in his word, will prick our conscience and let us know what he wants us to do, how we need to transform our lives and our thinking to become more like him to prepare for citizenship in his kingdom. We can hear him in the words of Christian friends and mentors, carried by the winds of the spirit, guiding us into the right path instead of the politically correct path. Will they be the same? Sometimes, but not always. We can be sure the path will always be one of love. Remember the two great commandments, love God, and love others. All the rest hang on these two.

To hear God, take Eli’s advice to Samuel. Expect God to speak. When Eli realized the Lord called in the middle of the night, he gave Samuel instruction. Listen to everything he tells you. Listening means more than acknowledging soundwaves vibrate your eardrums and your brain registers the pattern as words and sentences. Listening means letting those words and sentences sink into your brain with meaning and purpose. It means understanding the task directed by those words. Listen to God.

Finally, Eli told Samuel to respond, “What do you want me to do?” James says we must be doers of the word and not only hearers of the word. To hear and know what God wants of me and then not to do it means rebellion against him, disobedience, and sin.

We need more like Samuel today. Those who will expect God to speak, listen intently to his voice through the avenues his spirit uses to proclaim his words to us and then execute his commands. The world will do everything it can to drown his words in the political correctness that smothers truth and righteousness, but God’s word remains in the end. He created this place, and he will judge it in the future. If he will act as our judge, doesn’t it make sense to listen to him instead of his adversary? It’s time we stand boldly proclaiming God’s rightness in a world gone wrong.

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.

Scriptures marked CEV are taken from the CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION (CEV): Scripture taken from the CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH VERSION copyright© 1995 by the American Bible Society. Used by permission.

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 had a short history lesson on Epiphany, the church’s celebration of the Magi’s visits to Jesus in Bethlehem. I mentioned that initially, the church three separate events during Epiphany, the Magi’s visits, Jesus’ baptism by John, and Jesus’ miracle at the wedding in Cana. The Magi’s visits always took center stage during Epiphany since it marked Jesus’ revelation to the Gentile world. As you can imagine, that revelation gives the rest of us, outside the chosen people of Israel, the opportunity to become part of God’s family.

Jesus’ baptism very likely did not occur on January 6th. Still, as you may recall from last week, the early church chose January 6th to celebrate Epiphany, probably due to the liturgical reading from the first gospel circulated among the churches, the book of Mark. Those early gospel readers also believed Jesus was exactly two when the Magi found him, exactly thirty at his baptism, and performed the miracle at Cana exactly one year later. All three events, then, became part of the celebration during Epiphany.

Again, the timing is improbable, considering the precise timing of all the other events in Jesus’ life. Instead of being born in December, we can imagine Jesus coming during the lambing season in the spring, as the Lamb of the world. The Magi could travel in the fall and winter months to avoid the mid-east summer heat, but the probability of seeing Jesus on January 6th is indeed slim. And Jesus’ first recorded miracle at the wedding in Cana likely occurred earlier than a year into his formal ministry.

The reason we celebrate Epiphany, and formerly Jesus baptism and first miracle on January 6th seems solely an accident of where early Christians happened to read Mark’s gospel message. So, now the bit of history in front of us regards the celebrations’ separation timeline. How long has the church put Jesus’ baptism as its own commemoration time? The answer surprised me when I did some research on the topic.

For four centuries, beginning in the 1500s, Jesus’ baptism didn’t appear as a commemoration at all in the Roman Catholic church. Then, in 1955 Pope Pius XII wrote a separate commemoration for the Baptism of Our Lord as part of the Mass after Epiphany. He didn’t specify any date to use the observance but suggested it be immediately after Epiphany. Pope John XXII revised the Roman Catholic church calendar, setting January 13thas the commemoration date. Not until 1969 did the Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord settle on the calendar as it is today, the first Sunday after Epiphany, a decree made by Pope Paul VI.

Other liturgical churches followed suit, as many follow the lectionary established by the Catholic church. The church calendar provides observances for many events in Jesus’ life that we, in the evangelical community too often overlook at our misfortune. Jesus’ baptism is one of those. We read about it in all the gospels. Mark records it like this:

This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King, the Son of God.

 Isaiah the prophet told us what would happen before He came:

Watch, I will send My messenger in front of You

    to prepare Your way and make it clear and straight.

You’ll hear him, a voice crying in the wilderness,

    “Prepare the way of the Eternal One,

    a straight way in the wandering desert, a highway for our God.”

 That messenger was John the Baptist, who appeared in the desert near the Jordan River preaching that people should be ritually cleansed through baptism with water as a sign of both their changed hearts and God’s forgiveness of their sins. People from across the countryside of Judea and from the city of Jerusalem came to him and confessed that they were deeply flawed and needed help, so he cleansed them with the waters of the Jordan. John dressed as some of the Hebrew prophets had, in clothes made of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist. He made his meals in the desert from locusts and wild honey. He preached a message in the wilderness.

John the Baptist: Someone is coming who is a lot more powerful than I am—One whose sandals I’m not worthy to bend down and untie. I’ve washed you here through baptism with water; but when He gets here, He will wash you in the Spirit of God.

The Jordan River is the setting of some of the most memorable miracles in the Old Testament. On their journey through the wilderness to the promised land, the Israelites walked across the Jordan River on dry ground because God parted its waters. Elisha, one of the prophets of God, healed Naaman by telling him to bathe seven times in its waters. Partly because of miracles like these and partly because of a growing wilderness spirituality, many of the Jews in John’s day are out to hear him and be ritually baptized in the Jordan’s cool, cleansing waters. They are looking for God to intervene miraculously in their lives as He has done in the past. What they don’t know is that God is about to intervene, for at that time Jesus leaves Nazareth and heads south.

 It was in those days that Jesus left Nazareth (a village in the region of Galilee) and came down to the Jordan, and John cleansed Him through baptism there in the same way all the others were ritually cleansed. But as Jesus was coming out of the waters, He looked up and saw the sky split open. The Spirit of God descended upon Him like a dove, and a voice echoed in the heavens.

Voice: You are My Son, My beloved One, and I am very pleased with You. (Mark 1:1-11 The Voice)

In these verses, we learn some things. Baptism was necessary to Jesus as it began his public ministry. Another point we miss, but those Jews who knew their Old Testament did not, was the words Mark used to describe the sky opening. The Septuagint uses the same words here that it uses in Exodus 14:21 to describe God splitting the water in the Reed Sea for the Israelites to cross on dry land. The voice from heaven also gave public recognition that Jesus was the Son of God.

Another point we miss, that again, the Jews present who knew the Old Testament well did not, was the pronouncement from the voice Jesus was God’s beloved. Only twice in the Old Testament does God give that description to others, to King David and King Solomon. He described both as beloved when he continued his covenant with them and told them a king from their lineage would always sit on Israel’s throne. Hearing the voice declare Jesus as beloved acclaimed him as Israel’s rightful King. Jesus’ baptism identifies him with Israel’s exodus from Egypt and the kingly line of David.

Why do we need to remember the event? First, it reminds us who Jesus is. When we look back and explore the words describing the “Angel of the Lord” who went before Israel as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, we find it is Yahweh. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the word interchanges give us clues that, although God was never incarnate in the Old Testament, he did appear to men and women in a human form in the Old Testament. When God split the sky to announce his son, he reminds us Jesus, Yahweh in human form split the sea and led the Israelites to freedom.

When God calls Jesus his My Beloved Son, God puts Jesus in a unique category. He not only belongs in the line of Abraham, God’s chosen people to show God’s image to the rest of the nations, but he belongs to the lineage of David. As God’s Beloved Son, Jesus claims the throne of Israel and, by extension of God’s covenant with David and Solomon, the kingship of all the nations of the world. We know who he is, God incarnate, King of kings, and Messiah through his baptism.

Jesus’ baptism also serves as an example to us. If Jesus felt baptism important as the beginning of his ministry, a demonstration of his death to self and life in God, certainly we should follow his example. Baptism doesn’t save us, but it shows those witnesses around us and reminds us through the experience that we die to ourselves and become alive in Christ. Baptism will always be a significant milestone in the life of a Christian.

This week, if you have been baptized, remember what it is for and rejoice in it. If you have not yet been baptized or were too young to know what it meant, consider being baptized. Baptism doesn’t save you, but it is a pivotal event in the life of a Christian. We follow Jesus’ example symbolizing giving up ourselves and living in 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.

Scriptures marked THE VOICE are taken from the THE VOICE (The Voice): Scripture taken from THE VOICE ™. Copyright© 2008 by Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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 probably all celebrate the fact 2020 passed away a few days ago, and 2021 began. But 2021 will only improve if we allow God to improve us one by one. Only by letting his Spirit change us internally will this year be any better than last for you. Well, that’s tidbit number one, but not what we will talk about today.

This week we celebrate Epiphany. It’s an exciting day in the Christian calendar, observed in various ways across the Christian world. The word itself takes on a definition used outside religious connotations today, and when you look in the dictionary, you’ll find the following:

• the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12).
• the festival commemorating the Epiphany on January 6th.
• a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
• a moment of sudden revelation or insight.

The Greek word is seldom used in the New Testament and generally used with Jesus’ second coming, rather than his birth. In New Testament times, the term more commonly found its way into secular writing, referring to visitations by one of the panthea of gods worshipped by the pagans.

Today, outside of the Christmas season, we most often hear the word used to describe a remarkable or sudden discovery. For instance, the COVID vaccine creators might have had an epiphany as they found the key to finally finding the answer to fighting the disease.

But on the Christian calendar, January 6th marks the Epiphany, the festival commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi. Why January 6th and not some other day? The Gregorian calendar and Julian calendars didn’t match and weren’t even around when Jesus was born. I expect Mary and Joseph didn’t even own a calendar. Most people didn’t in those days. Days of the week were kept to remember sabbaths, but otherwise, phases of the moon were enough to keep up with the months of the Jewish calendar. The priest let you know when sacrifices came due. No one needed to set an appointment for 9:15 on March 24th. Businesses and personal lives just didn’t work that way. So why January 6th?

The best explanation may come from examining the habits of early Christians in their worship. Arrangements of the earliest ancient manuscripts of the gospels follow a liturgical pattern. We assume the original manuscripts were probably written in letter form. Still, as early Christians gathered, read, and studies them, the new arrangement made it easier to incorporate this new faith into their lives. If a congregation started the year reading Mark, their first reading might have been the baptism of Jesus, since most scholars believe Mark wrote his gospel first. They would have found these words:

This is the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It began as the prophet Isaiah had written:

“God said, ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you

    to open the way for you.’

 Someone is shouting in the desert,

    ‘Get the road ready for the Lord;

    make a straight path for him to travel!’”

So John appeared in the desert, baptizing and preaching. “Turn away from your sins and be baptized,” he told the people, “and God will forgive your sins.” Many people from the province of Judea and the city of Jerusalem went out to hear John. They confessed their sins, and he baptized them in the Jordan River.

John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. He announced to the people, “The man who will come after me is much greater than I am. I am not good enough even to bend down and untie his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Not long afterward Jesus came from Nazareth in the province of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. As soon as Jesus came up out of the water, he saw heaven opening and the Spirit coming down on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.” (Mark 1:1-11 GNT)

From reading historical records from the early church leaders, scholars also believe that the first Epiphany celebrations included the commemoration of not just the visit of the Magi, but also Jesus baptism, and possibly his first miracle at the wedding in Cana. Each of these three events marks the revelation of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. His actions at Cana proved his abilities as a prophet like Elijah, who performed incredible miracles through God's power. His baptism by John revealed him as the son of God to the Jews. His visit by the Magi presented the new King to the Gentile world. The Magi’s visit to King Herod made the arrival of the Messiah known to the political world through messaging that must have rippled through the Roman empire at the time.

Today, we separate traditionally separate the other events from the Magi's visit in celebrating Epiphany and use the passage in Matthew that describes their visit to remember the incredible story of God’s revelation of Jesus to the world. It goes like this:

Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, during the time when Herod was king. Soon afterward, some men who studied the stars came from the East to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the baby born to be the king of the Jews? We saw his star when it came up in the east, and we have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard about this, he was very upset, and so was everyone else in Jerusalem. He called together all the chief priests and the teachers of the Law and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?”

“In the town of Bethlehem in Judea,” they answered. “For this is what the prophet wrote:

‘Bethlehem in the land of Judah,

    you are by no means the least of the leading cities of Judah;

for from you will come a leader

    who will guide my people Israel.’”

So Herod called the visitors from the East to a secret meeting and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem with these instructions: “Go and make a careful search for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.”

And so they left, and on their way they saw the same star they had seen in the East. When they saw it, how happy they were, what joy was theirs! It went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. They went into the house, and when they saw the child with his mother Mary, they knelt down and worshiped him. They brought out their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and presented them to him.

Then they returned to their country by another road, since God had warned them in a dream not to go back to Herod. (Matthew 2:1-12 GNT)

Why is it important we celebrate Epiphany? First, It reminds us of God’s intent to restore our relationship with him. He wants an intimate relationship with us as he had with Adam and Eve before the fall. Second, it reminds us of God’s intent to restore humanity’s original purpose to care for his creation. Jesus came to show us what true humanity looks and acts like, caring for and loving humankind and God’s creation. God wants to renew that in us. Third, Epiphany reminds us God will restore heaven and earth, recreating it to its former glory repopulating it with those he redeems, called by his name, those who believe in him for salvation.

Epiphany reminds us God had a plan ready in the event we failed. We did, and he put his plan into place. Adam and Eve invoked the punishment on all of humanity when they disobeyed God’s command in the Garden of Eden, but God will restore the garden one day. It would take the reversal of the curse of death for it to happen, though. Humans had to pay the penalty for sin, and humans had to conquer death. A human had to do that. The only way for it to happen was through God’s plan to become human and pay the penalty and conquer death himself. So he did – in Jesus.

For those who believe in Jesus as the son of God, who came to pay the penalty for my sin and yours, who died on a cruel cross, who rose from the dead, conquering death for all time, the curse is lifted. Restoration began with his resurrection. A new heaven and new earth are in the making as his Spirit comes to reside in us, empowering us with new life in him.

Epiphany celebrates that revelation. Take time this week to stop and remember, not just the Magi finding him in Bethlehem and bowing at his feet, but the opportunity we also have to bow at the feet of the one who conquered death, lifted the curse, and gives new life to all who believe in him. Epiphany is a sudden revelation or insight, a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being, the celebration of Jesus’ revelation to us. Make his coming a real epiphany in your life today and every day.

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.

Scriptures marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation®: Scriptures taken from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) Copyright © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved.

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.

How will you start your new year? Will it start with hope or despair? Do you think 2021 will be better or worse than in 2020? Will we get better at coping with the problems we face in the growing pandemic or will we get worse in our coping skills? I ask those questions about the pandemic elephant in the room because many think the vaccine on the street is the instant answer. But there is a problem with that thinking. You see, for herd immunity, it takes at least 70% of us having the vaccine for herd immunity to become effective assuming the virus’ mutations don’t hinder the vaccine ineffective.

It has taken a week to immunize the first million in the US. Assuming we get better at it and can get ten times better at immunizing our population of 332 million, that still takes us more than half of next year to reach that magic 70% threshold. Until then, our population remains at risk of illness and death at the hands of the pandemic. And to immunize the world’s population, which still endangers us in this global economy in which we live, will take two or three years at best, convincing the richer nations to pay for the vaccines for the poorer countries. What we still don’t know is how long the immunity lasts or if, like flu vaccines, we will need to take it periodically. If so, we may never escape the devastation COVID can cause worldwide.

And if the coronavirus stays with us, the economic downturn stays with us until we figure out how to live and work with social distancing. It means a completely new way of life for all of us. How we build our office spaces, our schools, our manufacturing plants, our restaurants and social gathering places, and every other place people gather to do things. The virus will affect every part of life if we must live with it from now on. Life has and will continue to change, it will be a question of how quickly we can adapt. Can we do that in just one year? We haven’t so far. We’ve relied on the government to help fix something it cannot fix. If we continue to expect the government to give us the answer, we will not have a very good 2021.

So, what do we do with a new year coming into view? Friday, we tear the last page off the old calendar and begin a new one. Many people will make resolutions they won’t keep. Many will start diets that last a few weeks. Some will begin both and stick to them until they reach their goals. A very few will decide it’s time to start that Bible reading plan and get closer to God in the new year. Some of those people will stick with it a few weeks and quit, but I hope more than ever before will stay with those plans and find real solace and peace in God’s word in the coming year. He is the answer to our problems.

In fact, God’s grace provides such remarkable peace and comfort in times of strife, despair, and hopelessness, that it the best time to resolve to give him praise. The lectionary Psalm this week points out our reluctance to praise as it lists humans last it its litany of who gives praise to God. Listen to the words of the 148th Psalm and let it lift your spirits today.

Psalm 148 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights!  Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his host!  Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD, for he commanded and they were created. He established them forever and ever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed. Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!  Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and women alike, old and young together! Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his faithful, for the people of Israel who are close to him. Praise the LORD! (Psalms 148:1-14 NIV)

Jesus told the Pharisees that if the people around him didn’t shout their Hallelujahs during his triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem, the rocks and hills would cry out their praise. All those inanimate objects of creation knew the importance of the one entering the city. He was and is the creator and sustainer of all things, of all life. He deserves praise. If people didn’t praise him, the animals around him would sing his praise because even in their ignorance, they knew he created them and was and is the son of the living God.

Our problem, we as the highest of the created order thought we could be like God from the beginning and we still think that. We think we know so much only to find out every day how little we really know. God is omniscient and lets us find out more about our universe a little at a time. Think about how much we have learned about this world in the last fifty years. In 1969, men first stepped onto the surface of an unearthly surface, the moon. Only two years ago, Voyager 2 left what we think is our solar system and entered what we think is interstellar space to find out space isn’t as empty or cold as we thought.

If our sun were the size of a basketball, earth would be the size of a pea, and the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy where we live would be 5,000 miles away. The black hole would also be the size of a basketball, but thousands of times as dense as our sun. So dense, light can’t escape the force of gravity that pulls it into that dark mass. Our galaxy is a medium-sized galaxy among the billions of galaxies we have counted in the sky. All which God created when he said, “Let there be light.”

In our arrogance, we think we know so much, but we haven’t begun to know what God knows. We don’t know how the earth and our universe began. We don’t know why it holds together or why the galaxies are flying apart at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. We don’t know how the brain works or how memories are stored within the electrical impulses between the neurons. We don’t know how mass turns into energy in nuclear reactions or how to reverse the procedure if Einstein’s equation follows normal mathematics rules so that. We aren’t even sure how many planets or moons exist in our solar system. Now some think there might be a small blackhole ninth planet beyond Neptune circling our sun. We are a truly arrogant species.

What will make 2021 better? Stop and give God the praise he deserves. Read his word. Let his voice, spoken through the prophets, the authors he inspired to record his text centuries ago, come alive for you. Talk to him as a friend in prayer. Imagine him in a chair beside you and talk to him. Share from your heart your every care and burden. Then listen to his guidance. Remember, it will never disagree with his word. He hasn’t changed and never will. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So, listen to his advice and follow it.

Then just praise him. Praise him for all he has done for you. Praise him for the creation he allows you to enjoy. Praise him for the breath he gives and the life he brings. Praise him for the opportunity to share his grace with others. Praise Him for the gift of salvation and the washing away of the guilt and stain of sin in your life. Praise him that no matter what this new year holds he will still be the same. Nothing that happens in 2021 will surprise him or change him. He is still the answer for bringing peace and comfort and joy to our hopelessness and despair. Praise him today and every day and the new year will be one of joy the world will never understand until they have Christ in their heart. Have a happy and blessed new year.

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.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

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.

The third week of Advent arrived. Christmas draws closer. Some of you may keep an Advent Candle tradition in your home or church and know the meaning of the various colors and symbolism of each candle. For those that might not know, the term advent can be found as early as the 4th and 5th century among early Christians as they await the coming of Jesus' return. It eventually spread across the entire month of December until it took the shape it does today.

The first Advent wreath came from a Lutheran minister doing missionary work among children. He formed a wreath around a wagon wheel and placed twenty-four candles around it. The children would light a new candle each day, twenty red ones on weekdays and four white candles on Sundays. Later, people formed wreaths of evergreens to symbolize Jesus giving life since, in the winter, evergreens remain alive while all other plants turn brown and die. The circling evergreens also depict God's never-ending love and eternal life we have in him.

Today's most common tradition includes an evergreen wreath surrounding five candles; a white center candle, three purple candles, and a pink candle. The first candle represents hope, purple in color, and is called the Prophet's candle. The color purple symbolizes royalty, repentance, and fasting.

The second candle represents faith and is called Bethlehem's candle. It, too, is purple. This candle recalls the prophecy where Jesus would be born. The third candle is pink. In the liturgy, the color rose symbolizes joyfulness and rejoicing. The third candle represents joy, called the Shepherd's candle, remembering the great joy with which the angels announced Jesus' birth to the shepherds.

The fourth candle is purple and represents peace, remembering Jesus came to bring peace to the world. It is called the Angel's candle and is also purple. The fifth and final candle is white, the Christ Candle. It is lit on Christmas day and signifies pure light and victory.

So, there it is, a short history of the Advent wreath and its meaning. This week, the third week of Advent, we light the Shepherd's candle, reminding us of the joy the Messiah brings into our world. The Angel's song announcing Jesus' birth to that group of shepherds on the Judean hillside filled them with awe and wonder and joy at all they heard. It was a great time of rejoicing as they came into the humble cave where the child lay attended by his mother and father.

But what about us? Here we are in the middle of a COVID crisis. Hospitals filled to capacity across the nation and around the world. Our politics are on the brink of collapse. Regardless of the outcome of the lawsuits and electoral college vote or anything else that might happen in the next month or two, the country's divide has grown so deep; no one will likely heal it in the next century.

We see social unrest already stirring as factions begin to realize a Democrat government can do no more to fix the nation's societal ills than a Republican government could. No one can legislate morality. Every country that has tried has failed. So, unrest is once again building because of likely broken promises that no one could keep.

As long as we require social distancing, the economy will slide in a negative direction. Unemployment will rise. The government can't fix it. Sending checks to everyone only means someone must pay for those checks. A little math tells me if you took the total income of the entire 5% at the top people keep harping about, that pays those checks for maybe a month or two, and then what? Then what is that the rest of us foot the bill. Printing money doesn't fix the economy.

We face a lot of uncertainly in this Advent season, so what do we have to be joyful? The answer is a lot. We approach Advent with all those problems, much like the early church approached their life. It wasn't a bed of roses for them, either. Most in the church lived in poverty. If they had possessions before they became Christian, many lost those possessions because of their faith.

Their politics were far worse than ours. At least, we don't get our heads put on poles along the road if we say something disparaging about the opposing party. Try doing that with Caesar, and that's what happened to you. Rome had plenty of enemies, but the emperor also had plenty of people on his payroll to find and destroy them. He ruled with fear as his most potent weapon. The soldiers stationed around the empire remained there because of the unrest.

And uncertainty in the early church? Could you eat tomorrow? Was the person you invited to the meeting another one of Rome's spies? Could you trust your neighbor to keep quiet about the number of people coming to your home every few nights to gather and pray? Would your employer suddenly fire you because he found out you weren't worshiping Caesar's image in the temple? How long might it be before the state came and took your children away from you as an unfit parent?

Still, Paul could write these words in his first letter to the church in Thessalonica:

Always be joyful. Continually be prayerful. In everything be thankful, because this is God's will for you in the Messiah Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit's fire. Do not despise prophecies. Instead, test everything. Hold on to what is good. Keep away from every kind of evil.

May the God of peace himself make you holy in every way. And may your whole being—spirit, soul, and body—remain blameless when our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, appears. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will continue to be faithful. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 ISV)

Always be joyful, prayerful, and thankful, even in the middle of all the bad things that might be going on around you. Despite the political upheaval. Despite the danger to health and life. Despite the economic woes that might head your way. Despite anything that might press against you, Paul told the early Christian community to be joyful, prayerful, and thankful because this is God's will for you in the Messiah Jesus.

Keeping up those attitudes isn't always easy, though. The world will do its best to drag you into its mold of despair, discouragement, hopelessness. But as Christians, we know this is not the end. Jesus showed us death does not win. He burst forth from the tomb and promised a new heaven and new earth for those who believe in him for salvation. He promised to build a place for us and come to take us to that place to live with him eternally.

Hope allowed the early Christians to remain joyful, prayerful, and thankful despite their circumstances. And it is that hope that can enable us to have that same attitude despite our circumstances. The unrest and uncertainty of the present age do not dictate our emotions when we allow God's spirit to direct our lives. The hope of a future with him where death no longer touches us, where pain no longer cripples us, where sorrow no longer has a grip on humanity allows us to keep the joy and peace Jesus promised as his legacy alive in our hearts.

So, what should we do during the rest of this Advent? Spread joy. If Jesus' spirit lives in you, spread his joy to those around you who need to see some joy in these dark times. His spirit avails himself for just that purpose, to give hope, faith, joy, and peace when the world around us tells us we should feel something different in our circumstances. But we know this isn't all there is to life. We know the giver of life and that there is more than the few brief years we spend in this fragile shell of flesh and blood now. We know there is something more for those who live in Christ.

Let the pink candle, the Shepherd's candle of joy, remind you in this third week of Advent that Jesus came to bring joy into the hearts of all men and women who believe in him. He came to give life everlasting. He came to rid us of the guilt of sin and pay its penalty for us that we might have abundant life and real joy in living. Let his joy live in you and spread through you to those who need to see it lived out now.

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.

Scriptures marked ISV are taken from the INTERNATIONAL STANDARD VERSION (ISV): Scripture taken from INTERNATIONAL STANDARD VERSION, copyright© 1996-2008 by the ISV Foundation. All rights reserved internationally.

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.

The second week of Advent began in the most interesting times I’ve experienced. Of course, we all deal with the effects of the coronavirus here in the United States and abroad. The disease is wreaking havoc everywhere. Our healthcare workers truly exhibit heroic efforts in combating the progress, but they are exhausted and seem to take two steps back with every step forward sometimes. The virus is just a horrible enemy for the world at large.

I thought we would have a more focused Thanksgiving this year with many stores closed because of the virus. More people staying at home and enjoying a more intimate setting with their immediate family. But I was wrong. Store closed, but we experienced record shopping - $4.5 billion in online sales on Thanksgiving Day. Covid-19 did nothing to curb our appetite for materialism.

And although airports seemed a little emptier this year, I’m not so sure the roads were less crowded than I’ve seen them in years past. So, I think a lot of people headed for family gatherings away somewhere just to get away for a few days. We will find out in the next few days what that means for the multiplied spread of the virus. And please don’t blame the government for our failures to protect each other.

Here we are in a time of anticipation, but of what? More political upheaval? A miracle vaccine to stop the spread of the virus? An instant end to our economic woes? Christmas?

In our house, we definitely prepare for Christmas. To get in the mood, Carole starts watching Christmas movies in July. Decorations take a while. We might stop with the eight trees already up (I hope). Maybe there will be one or two more, but at least they won’t be the six-foot variety. Nativity scenes take prominent places in almost every room. Lights and garland go up on cabinets and shelves. Snow scenes and Victorian villages take shape as different rooms take on different themes throughout the house. Needless to say, our decoration preparation starts early in November and ends not many days before Christmas.

Then there are presents to buy. Carole is the master buyer. She begins finding just the right gifts for everyone starting in January and buys throughout the year, so our shopping is done before most people start. It’s also a great way to find bargains and spread the cost of presents. Of course, when buying just the right present in January, it’s easy to forget you have it, so you find another just the right gift in July. I’m not sure how much that saves, then, but it’s great to watch the kids and grandkids open gifts selected especially with their personalities in mind. Carole could be a great professional shopper, but she says that would take the fun out of it.

Last week, we talked about advent being a time of both looking back to the time of Jesus’ coming. A time of celebrating the fact of his arrival and remembering his life and sacrifice for us. We also talked about advent being a time of looking ahead to the time of his return. He promised to come again to be with those who believed in him for salvation for eternity.

The huge question Christians in the first century and Christians today continue to ask is when? When will he come? Our adversaries point to the 2000 year delay and say it’s a hoax. He broke his promise. He never rose from the dead. He never could because when you’re dead, you’re dead. Our faith is a farse and we might as well admit it. As believers, we know otherwise. We know God’s delay demonstrates grace, not failure. 2 Peter 3 reminds us in these words:

But we look forward to what God has promised—a new heaven and a new earth—a place where everything that has God’s approval lives.

Therefore, dear friends, with this to look forward to, make every effort to have him find you at peace, without ⌞spiritual⌟ stains or blemishes. Think of our Lord’s patience as an opportunity ⌞for us⌟ to be saved. This is what our dear brother Paul wrote to you about, using the wisdom God gave him. (2 Peter 3:13-15 GW)

God’s patience in coming is an opportunity for us to be saved. Paul writes about it, Peter writes about it, John writes about it, Jesus says he will come as a thief in the night when no one expects him. So, we patiently await his coming. His delay is not failure or a broken promise, it is for us. God wants to rescue us from sin and delays his coming because when he comes the opportunity for rescue ends. When he comes again, he comes for justice and judgment. God delays his coming to delay his judgment against humanity.

How, then, should we wait? What should we do? Peter points to some of it in these verses. First, be patient. Remember, he will come, but at his choosing, not ours. In the meantime, make every effort to have him find you at peace. What does that mean? I think we need to find ways to engage our fellowman with love. Not what we see spewing out of Facebook and Instagram, but with the fruit of the spirit Paul enumerates in Galatians – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When we exercise these characteristics in dealing with others, we will be at peace with others.

We should also make every effort to be without spiritual stains or blemishes, Peter says. What does that mean to us? John reminds us we are all sinners, but we have an advocate who will forgive us and cleanse us from every sin. So, we do everything we can to follow in Jesus’ footsteps of righteousness, knowing that without his spirit in us it is an impossible task and even then, we are bound to err on occasion. But we have an advocate that will help us along the way and we can become more like him each day as we confess our wrongs, ask forgiveness, and strive to not repeat those same mistakes again. We can be better with his help.

Finally, as we wait, we have a mission to perform. Mark reminds us of that first Advent when John the Baptist went about the wilderness preaching about the coming Messiah. The gospel by his name begins this way:

 This is the beginning of the Good News about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The prophet Isaiah wrote,

“I am sending my messenger ahead of you

to prepare the way for you.”

“A voice cries out in the desert:

‘Prepare the way for the Lord!

Make his paths straight!’ ” (Mark 1:1-3 GW)

That was John’s mission, to prepare the way for the Lord, the first time. But Jesus gave us the mission to spread the good news, too. And part of that good news is his promise to return. We, too, prepare the way for the Lord’s coming. We should share the good news that he came, but he is coming again to take those who believe in him for salvation to be with him forever.

I don’t think God expects us to where camel hair clothes, eat honey, and live in the desert, but he probably wouldn’t mind us giving up some of the luxuries we gather around us. He probably would ask us to remember the poor and those who are unable to care for themselves. He probably would ask us to be more generous, think less about our earthly future, and more about our future with him.

Advent comes around every year and it gives us an opportunity to stop and think about Jesus’ coming – past and future. We marvel at the nativity story and how God appeared on that first Christmas in those most humble beginnings. We should stop and think just as much about what his second coming will mean. It won’t be humble and quiet next time. He will come to rule the nations. He will bring justice and judgment to the world.

Remember during this Advent, his delay is for us. As Christians, he gives us one more opportunity to share the good news with someone else who needs to hear the message. For those who have yet to believe in him, he gives one more opportunity for salvation. He is coming and it may be very soon. Be ready.

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.

Scriptures marked GW are taken from the GOD’S WORD (GW): Scripture taken from GOD’S WORD® copyright© 1995 by God’s Word to the Nations. All rights reserved.