Praise God that through Jesus Christ salvation is made possible to all people. God doesn’t choose us based on our race, our gender or social status. God’s looks past that. Why do we have such a hard time looking past that? Can you remember the last time you pre-judged someone because of the clothes they were wearing, their physical qualities such as the color of their skin, their size or their gender? Can you remember the last time you compared yourself to someone else and thought less about yourself? Ask the Lord to help us look at one another, ourselves included, the way He looks at us.

This is good news! We’re not left alone flying solo in life. In fact, we don’t even have to fly our plane. When we received Christ into our lives, we were freed from the bondage of sin. Not that we become sinless, rather, this gives us the power in Christ to live a life of restoration because of Christ living through us. Christ desires to be the pilot of your life and your job is to live by faith in the Son of God walking in obedience to His Word. Is Christ the pilot of your life? Have you ever found yourself trying to regain control of the wheel and why do you think we do that?

Kids’ Questions & Answers

Q 1. What is my only comfort in life and in death?
A 1. That my body and my soul belong to Jesus Christ alone.

Q 2. What do I have to know to live and die in this comfort?
A 2. I need to know three things. One, I sin all the time. Two, who rescued
me from all my sins. Three, how to live a thankful life because Jesus
Christ rescued me.

Take It Home Activity

1. Make a list or draw pictures of things you own.
2. What happens when you don’t take care of these things? Tell a story of not taking care of something.
3. Read 1 Timothy 4:16 together.
4. How does God take care of us?
5. How can we live for him?
6. Remember that You Belong to God.

There is power in a u-turn story. God could have chosen someone else but He chose Paul, the least likely candidate, to become a holy and beloved child of His. When people heard of Paul’s u-turned life, what did they do? They praised God. We all have a u-turn story to tell. You may not have persecuted Christians in your past… or maybe in your own way, you have. But, not one of us deserves the love and grace that God has bestowed upon us. What is your u-turn story? At what point of your life did you surrender your life to God and to His work to turn you onto the path that He desires for you? May your sisters and brothers in Christ notice and praise God because of you!

Want God to esteem you? Of course! Are you humble? That may sound like an oxymoronic question but you can self-analyze whether or not you see signs of humbleness in yourself. To be humble is to acknowledge your place and give God the credit, not yourself, in all you accomplish and do. “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (I Co 1:31, II Co 10:17) Do you tremble at God’s word? Do you revere and respect God so much that you make it your heart’s desire to live how He wants you to live?

Have you ever felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit about doing something but you ignored it? Did you ever feel uncomfortable about doing something but you did it anyway? If so, it’s not too late to ask for forgiveness and ask for the strength to not do it again.

Fathers are…
A Role – This may mean role model, rolling in the grass, rolling with the punches or singing rock-n-roll.
The Wheels – We tend to oversee our vehicles: oil, gas, tires and cleaning. We are economical with the minivan but secretly prefer to drive an SUV or truck.
Clueless – Sometimes we have no idea what looks right, fits right, smells right, etc.
Concerned – We are often thinking did we shut the lights off, lock the doors, is the sump pump running, is the grass too long.
Second Class TV Viewers – We play second fiddle to what the kids and wives want to watch. “The Bachelor”, “Downton Abbey” and HGTV often take precedence.
Bi-local – We can be physically present but our minds are other places.
Giftless – This means we are clueless about gift buying and card selecting.
Openers – We open jars, cans, worms, windows, prayers, etc.
Referees – We can be a voice of reason when emotions can escalate.
Toll Booths – We are the toll booth through which all dating boys must pass through or they will pay!
Comedians – Sometimes planned but mostly improv.
Fathers – We are God’s created plan to lead our homes spiritually by example; to be loving and forgiving (and also be forgiven).

Happy Father’s Day!!

When we willfully sin and continue to live in ways that displease the Lord, the Lord gets angry. We have learned with Israel that unrepented sin leads to God’s withdrawal of His blessings and help. We are saved by grace and not works (thank you Jesus!) by inviting Jesus into our lives to reign, teach and guide us but the character of God does not change. How we choose to live still has consequences.

“…count your blessings, name them one by one…” that old familiar hymn rings out the reminder of the importance of recalling all that the Lord has done for us. Sometimes it’s easier to focus on the things that we’d like changed instead of focusing on all the things that are right. Have you re-called your blessings back to God as thanksgiving… one by one?

So here is the question:

So, I am reading Exodus– what does it mean that the Lord hardened pharaohs heart? Does that mean the Lord purposely made him resist Moses?

Specifically, she is referring to the 19 references in the book of Exodus where it states that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  Perhaps, this is one of the starkest examples:

And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. (Exodus 4:21, ESV)

First, it’s important to make sure that we are defining the word, “hardened”, in a way that honors the text.  The Hebrew word, חִזַּק , , means to make strong, or in this context, to make rigid. 

If we do a close reading of the verse, God is telling Moses that even though Pharaoh will see the movement of God in spectacular fashion, he will not change his mind because God will harden his already set opinions of the Jews.  This is the important point: God does not harden a new opinion into Pharaoh.  Instead, God acts in Pharaoh’s personality in such a way that Pharaoh is forced to live out what he already believes.   So this gets to part of the answer.  But such an answer makes me think about a few other questions:

1. Who is God to act in such a way?
2.  Does humanity have free will?
3. What are the implications for us who seek to follow such a God?

The first question, and the most important one in this discussion is, who is God to act in such a way?  By answering the question we move quite close to getting a very well-rounded answer to how God acts in the world.  To be honest, most of us don’t do much rigorous thinking about the nature of God and who he is.  Listen to these great words of description of God by Adam Clarke:

“God is the eternal, independent, and self-existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from Himself, without foreign motive or influence;

He who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that He has made; illimitable in His immensity, inconceivable in His mode of existence, and indescribable in His essence; known fully only by Himself, because an infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself.

In a word, a Being who, from His infinite wisdom, cannot err or deceive, and from His infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, and right, and kind.”   –Adam Clarke

Even a casual reading of Scripture will reveal the reality of Clarke’s definition of God (if you don’t believe me, get to reading!).  God is a being of immense power (consider that our sun wouldn’t even constitute a single atom in the being of God); he is a person of immeasurable goodness that can only do right; and he is the only person in the cosmos that knows the depths of a man’s heart.  It is this God that hardens a man’s heart.  Because of his goodness, kindness, wisdom, knowledge and eternal sightedness, I have faith that if he hardens a man’s heart it is for good.  In reality, God hardening Pharaoh’s heart was the best good that God could do.

Does that mean that you and I, or pharaoh for that matter, are not free?  I think the reality of JI Packer’s “antimony” helps explain what theologically is going on.  Here is the definition that Packer gives of antimony, “A contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable, or necessary.”  He goes on to say, “the whole point of an antinomy in theology, at any rate is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one.”   So here is the antimony of Pharaoh and God’s actions.  Pharaoh is a person who has the ability to choose what he will or will not do (at essence, this is what it means to be a person in scripture—“choose this day who you will serve”). But the scripture makes clear that God hardened his heart.   How does man’s choice and God’s sovereign will work?  I am not sure but only know that both human choice and God’s sovereign movement is a part of the Scripture.  From ths side of heaven, we live in the mystery.  But to come back to an earlier point, God is of such immense greatness, he alone can live in such a tension.  This seems to be the best explanation I have seen.

Now, to bring it to our level, what does it mean to follow Jesus in light of such an awesome and powerful God?   Are we free to choose?  I simply think that we misunderstand what freedom is.  These days people define freedom as the ability to do whatever my body aches to do.  But the bible tells us that this is no freedom at all.  For when desires run us, they will ruin us.  This is what we see in Pharaoh’s life.  He was not free—his disdain for God’s people and his arrogance ruined him.  God gave him over to these base passions and it destroyed him (think Romans 1).  The only person who is free is the person who has been touched by grace and is now living from a deeper, more true reality—the life of the Spirit.  For such a person, he or she is now free to be compassionate, kind, forgiving, content with second place, strong, disciplined and full of love.  This is how the bible defines freedom.

Pharaoh was not free.  God is sovereign.  Pharaoh made choices.  Thankfully, God is good!

So, here are some rough thoughts from my brain.  What do you think?