“But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3 NKJV). You used to like email: no more postage! Immediate communication! Every time-saving technology we introduce, however, ends up demanding more time than we ever dreamed. Humankind is good at many things. One of them is adding complexity to nearly everything. This can be good in many areas: we've got mouths to feed, after all. But one major area to war against complexity is our relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul worried about the Corinthian church. He had shared the gospel in their city for a couple of years. He wanted to present them to Jesus like a bride ready for her groom. He feared, though, that the serpent who deceived Eve would also deceive them. He hated the idea of their minds being corrupted "from the simplicity that is in Christ." From simplicity to complexity, that is the poisonous trend. The Corinthian church went there. And we still blindly run into this stupidity, for the folly of mucking up a simple and pure devotion to Christ with complex arguments and systems is a bane to us. Jesus says, "And man shall be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." But then the complexors come and twist the words beyond recognition until, to their satisfaction, marriage is redefined into oblivion. Jesus says, "I'm coming back." But then the complexors come and build camps who argue and fight and ridicule the others. Some of them even have a specific date for his return in mind. Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We love him for his simple and good teaching. But then the complexors come and tell us he doesn't really love the humble, nor the poor, and especially not the poor and humble. Time and time again, the complexors suck the life out of our simple and pure walk with Christ. Look, it's not as if a relationship with Christ is incompatible with the complexities of life. It's not as if all biblical doctrines and study are straightforward and simple. No, God has given us minds and a big book to study. It's just that the Corinthians, like so many today, had drifted from the simplicity that is in Christ. He loves humanity. He came for humanity. He lived for humanity. He died for humanity. He rose for humanity. His blood produced a new humanity. He lives to help his new humanity. He is coming again for his new humanity, the church. Don't let the complexors plot and twist and do what they do, complicating your whole relationship with Christ until it's reduced to a debate on every subject under the sun.

Get Your Head Up! (Hebrews 2:5-9)Humanity was supposed to wear a crown — not one made of gold and jewels, but of God's glory and honor. We were supposed to be a regal people, free and self-controlled. Love and joy and goodness were intended to flow from our lives and hands and hearts. No impurity, no sin, no crime or death or ugliness was to ever come from any of us. Ever. We were intended to be the pinnacle of God's created order.We were made a little lower than the angelic realm but were crowned with glory and honor. And as for the rest of God's creation, it was to be placed firmly at our feet. Everything in this world was to be in subjection to us. We were to fill the earth and subdue it, governing the planet with equity and grace. Justice and rightness would be our only experience, all we'd ever know.The author to the Hebrews knew this and quoted from Psalm 8 to make his appeal. Glory, honor, a crown -- it was all God's intention for us.The language harkens back to the book of Genesis. There, in the first chapter, and on the last day of creation, God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion..." (Genesis 1:26). Genesis continued: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:27-28).Dominion. Subjection. In the purest and holiest manner, humanity was to preside over all of God's created order. Pollution, wars, disease -- all of it was far from God's mind. The dominion we were supposed to have was to be glorious in nature and for the good of every part of God's created order. Hebrews says it like this: "Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control."Unfortunately, however, there is another movement to the story. Hebrews continues, "At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him" (Hebrews 2:8). You see, when sin insidiously and deceptively entered into God's created order through the waywardness of humanity, humankind lost the subjection of creation.After Adam's sin, chaos unraveled its ugly clutches upon the planet. In a word, the partnership ended. Men and women, previously in beautiful partnership with each other, entered into hostility one against the other. The ground, which previously partnered smoothly with man, began to produce thorns and thistles. Brothers, meant to live in harmonious partnership with one another, began to war and divide and clan up. Life, meant to be an endless stream of fellowship with God, began to turn into a never-ending death parade. The waters, meant to partner and sustain us, flooded the earth and took life. Even the animal kingdom, meant to thrive under humanity's care and oversight, began to dread the very humans who should've cared for them. Humanity, it seems, lost the crown they were meant to wear.It ought to be evident that we still live in that chaotic lack of subjection. Life is still a struggle, in many ways, for survival. The wrestling match with creation started back at the fall of man and still exists today. Natural disasters still press upon us. The physical limitations of sickness, injury, and death still haunt us. The utterly fragile state of the human mind still chases us. And we respond the best we can with health care and hospitals and medicines and physicians. We start insurance companies, develop pesticides, embed fire departments, and build funeral homes to help us cope with the chaos. We develop city codes and disaster plans. We do what we can to survive this battle with the very creation we were supposed to subdue. But we often lose, and now, in our modern times, we know creation is also losing, groaning for our redemption so that it can experience its own (Romans 8:21).Is th

Chapter 1. Prerequisites to Your Decision (Psalm 120)“A SONG OF ASCENTS. In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. Deliver me, O LORD, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? A warrior’s sharp arrows, with glowing coals of the broom tree! Woe to me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!” (Psalm 120 ESV).The temple pulsated with life during Israel's feasts. When the people ascended to God’s holy house, the electricity was tangible. Worshippers left the quiet of their towns and villages to come together with all the ferocity they could muster. They were a people devoted to God. Each of them shared a passion for His name. When attendance at the feasts was high, when Israel's devotion was rich, the worshippers rejoiced. To hear the bleating of goats, to see the excitement of first-time pilgrims, to feel the temple mount beneath their feet -- it was all so glorious to that ancient congregation.But that joyous group was comprised of determined individuals. Each one of them had made their own, personal decision to follow hard after God. The group did not and could not, decide together. They made no collective determination. No, each worshipper had to choose for himself or herself, if they would make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Their worship was corporate and national, but because it was, in the first place, personal.A personal decision is where pilgrimage begins, and this is where the first Song of Ascents finds its application. The other songs in the collection are for the entire community. This first song, however, is one an individual must sing to embark on pilgrimage in the first place. If the attitudes found in this song were lacking in an individual Hebrew, they would stay home. The journey to Jerusalem was too treacherous for lighthearted conviction. Without the attitudes found in this song, avoidance of God’s house would have been a strong temptation. But to have these attitudes within the heart led to a voyage, to obedient pilgrimage, to a sojourn.These attitudes must be present for modern believers as well. We have been given the fulfillment of that temple and those feasts in Jesus Christ. He calls us to a sojourn, a pilgrimage. We do not travel to a geographical location three times each year. Instead, we make decisions to launch out into a style of life unfamiliar to the communities in which we live. Christ has called us into a life of discipleship. It is a life of self-denial and sacrifice far different from the course of this age. We wish not to be “conformed to this age, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2). We recognize our need to depart from the normal flow of this world into a better life, the faith life, the pilgrim life.Without the attitudes found in this first song, we cannot know the themes of the next songs. Without this song, we'll never leave this world system and enter into the pilgrim life. The course of this world, the lusts of our flesh, and the spiritual war we are in discourage us from pilgrimage. Our natural man does not want to pursue a life with God at the center, but with God as a bystander. Our flesh wants Him as a tool in the tool chest, useful when called upon, but not as our all-consuming fire. For us to give Him His proper preeminence, there are certain attitudes we must have. They are prerequisites to the true life of faith. We'll never enter the sojourn life without them.Prerequisite #1 — Distress"In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. Deliver me, O LORD, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue." (Psalm 120:1-2)The first prerequisite attitude is one of distress. The entire collection of pilgrim songs starts here. The individual called out to God, who answered him, because of this desperation. But why was

"Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." (Hebrews 3:12-13)Creeping, slowly and steadily, unbelief was ready to pounce on the early Jewish believers. They were, after all, outcasts in their culture, for their acceptance of Jesus as Messiah made them different, societal pariahs. So the author of Hebrews compared their generation to Moses'. When Moses took the Hebrew people out of Egypt, it was with God's plan to bring them into the Promised Land. But, on their way to the new territory God had promised them, unbelief took hold of their hearts and, sadly, they were kept from God's land. God still loved them and worked in their midst -- he gave them the law, the priesthood, and the manna -- but for forty years they lived outside of God's best. Only the next generation, led by Joshua, filled with belief, would experience God's desire and enter the Promised Land.The author of Hebrews used that Exodus generation to exhort the believers of his day. He wanted them to guard against creeping unbelief which would lead them to fall away from the living God. He does not mean a loss of salvation, for Israel's wilderness-generation was still in covenant with God, but the loss of victory and blessing. Their unbelief was a lack of trust. When a believer is hesitant to lean on God, to trust him, their lives, like that Exodus generation, are only a shadow of what they could be. So, here, Hebrews gives us four main ways to combat creeping unbelief.1. Take Care to Avoid the Unbelieving Heart (3:12)It was the evil heart of unbelief which kept the wilderness-generation out of the promised land. Moses sent twelve spies into the land for forty days. Upon their return, they reported that it was a good territory, but filled with giants. Two of them dismissed the giants as small obstacles for God, but the other ten spies told the people to tremble because of them. "We are as grasshoppers in their sight," they said, and this grasshopper speech filled the consciousness of the congregation. Soon, they refused to go in. Unbelief kept them from God's best for their lives.We must take care to cultivate environments of belief, rather than mistrust in the living God. He is worthy of our trust, for he is always good and faithful, but our bodies of sin will often feel otherwise about him.Watch out for this halfway spirit, the one which has been delivered from slavery to sin, forgiven by God through the blood of Christ, but never able to go further. Don't let career pursuits or philosophical questions stop you from going all the way into God's best by trusting him. He is sturdy, worth leaning the weight of our lives upon. Though we might quickly trust our own mindset over God's revealed word, we must work hard to remind ourselves how our view is limited. A sheep does not know the plans and strategies of his shepherd. Livestock is incapable of the advanced thoughts of a human. Nor can we always understand God and his ways. We must lean on and trust in him more than our own senses.2. Exhort One Another Every Day (3:13)We must deal with the heart of unbelief, and we need a community to do so. It is in a relationship with other believers that we find the encouragement and grace we need for the fight. We need to speak into one another's lives, building up the other for the life of endurance.Daily exhortation requires honesty. We must allow room for difference in our brothers and sisters in Christ, of course, and we must approach one another with total humility, but we must also use tactful, yet frank, honesty. Paul said, "Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently" (Galatians 6:1 NIV). Sometimes a good and honest word is in order.Daily exhortation requires frequency. It says, "Exhort one anot

“When anyone brings a grain offering as an offering to the LORD, his offering shall be of fine flour...a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the LORD.” (Leviticus 2:1–2 ESV).The ancient Israelite approached God with blood sacrifice, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:22). One offering, however, was different. The grain offering came not from Israel's flocks, but from their crops. Various forms of grain were cooked or beaten or prepared for God, and then sacrificed to him and given to his priests as a supplement to their meal. Uncooked flour, bread baked in an oven, or bread cooked on a griddle or pan was offered to the Lord.One reason I love thinking about the grain offering is that the worshipper was giving to God the fruit of their labors. They worked the soil God entrusted to them. They planted, watered, and tended that field. Soon, the seed began to grow. Eventually, an entire crop was ready for harvest. The grain offering was a way for the worshipper to give God a bit of the direct fruit of their hard work through the year.Life is, as they say, so daily — a little planting here, some watering there, and then slow, imperceptible growth. The ancient Israelite farmer had a family to tend, a community of faith to embrace, and a God to worship. But, mostly, his life was filled with hour after hour of working that field. He tended and watched and problem-solved, all to get that grain.We often forget how much the life of faith is applicable for our every moment. It is easy for preachers to talk of church life, the prayer life, and relationships, but the workplace is often forgotten. This ought not to be. I fear I have not spoken enough about how the word of God and his glorious gospel informs the way we live out our workplace lives. And it isn't all "God-put-you-in-your-workplace-to-evangelize-the-lost" either. God made your body. He gave you a task. Now you can honor him by doing well and making that bread, son.Then, after making the grain, we give some to God. It's a way of saying, "God, even my ability to work and produce and create and sweat and earn has come from you. Thank you for helping me. Here's some of my fruit." What a joy! God helps us labor, and we want him to have some of the fruit of our work. The grain offering was a way for Israel to acknowledge God in their toil. I hope we do something similar by recalling and remembering God's great faithfulness to help us in and through the daily grind.