The Boss'

Around every corner in the text there is something profound, interesting, or odd.

1 Samuel 11 opens with one of the bad guys, Nahash, an Ammonite, besieging the town of Jabesh Gilead. So the men of the town say, “Hey, make a treaty with us, and we’ll serve you.” So Nahash says, “Sure, I’ll make a treaty with you and let you live, but first, we’re gonna need to gouge out your right eye.” The men of Jabesh, understandably, aren’t thrilled with these terms. They’d rather keep both their eyeballs, thank you very much. They ask Nahash for seven days to think it over, and to see if they can find some help. Nahash, for some reason, agrees to this. I’m not sure why, when you have your enemy on the ropes, you’d let them run home and get their big brother to come and bail them out. It’s like the part of the movie where the bad guy goes on and on giving a speech about world domination, while the good guy is slowly picking his hand cuffs with a hair pin. You can see where it’s going. The men of Jabesh find rescue in Saul, the newly crowned king of Israel. He’s not happy when he hears about the terms of the treaty, so he cuts up his oxen – poor oxen – and mails a piece of them to every corner of the kingdom. Just as a way of saying, ya know, don’t mess with us. All the Israelites turn out to fight the Ammonites, but they’re sneaky about it. They send messengers to Jabesh Gilead to tell the men that by tomorrow, they’ll be delivered. The men of Gilead, in turn, go to Nahash, and lie. They say, “Yeah, we’ll come by tomorrow and surrender, then you can do the eye gouging thing to us, or whatever else you want.” (Did they keep the eyeballs? Or just pitch them all in a big bucket or something? I’m just saying, that’d be a ton of eyeballs.)

Imagine Nahash’s surprise when the whole Israelite army shows up. I can just see him leaning against the fence after school with his eye gouger, all cocky, smiling, waiting for the skinny geek to show up, and then the look of terror when the older brother who’s been locked away at reformed school shows up to kick his a$$.

I’m not sure what lessons can be drawn from 1 Samuel 11. I guess a polite way of describing the trickery that goes on at the end would be to call it shrewdness. Yeah, I like shrewdness better than liar. Nowhere does it say that God sanctions the behavior, but it does say that “the spirit of God came upon him (Saul) in power.” That’s how he was able to do what he did. The eye gouging bit, or course, does bring to mind Mark 9:4, where we’re told it would better to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye, than to be cast into hell with two. So there’s definitely a lesson there somewhere. Any ideas?

Endlessly fascinating, to say the least.

One of the things that we’ve put in place this year is an incentive to encourage our older kids to read their Bible every day. We told them that we would give them $100 on January 1, 2011, if they each read their Bible every day between now and then. For each day that they skip, we’ll deduct $10. Of course, we couldn’t very well expect them to commit to this plan if Lindy and I weren’t equally committed to it. For my own reading, I thought I’d pick up in a section of the Bible that I’ve never read, the book of First Kings.

Gotta love how 1 Kings starts out…here’s my summary description of chapter 1.

David is really old, and he’s really cold. They put on all his pajama’s, but he’s still cold. What do his advisors do? Do they say, “Let’s heat up some potatoes and put them at the bottom of the bed”, or “Maybe one of the engineers can figure out a way to bump it up a few degrees in the royal palace.” No. Their plan is this: “Let’s search for the hottest virgin in the whole kingdom, and have her come into the palace and lay in his lap. That’ll get the old blood flowin’!” Brilliant plan! Give that staff a raise!

Now, apparently it wasn’t a sexual thing, because it says that the king did not “know” her, but it is an interesting way to start the book of 1 Kings. Oh, and the Bible is silent on whether or not the plan actually worked to warm up the old king. Apparently that detail is not important to the writer.

Ben and Emma both started their reading in Genesis. We’ll see what they say when they get to the first chapter of First Kings.

In a sermon a while back, our pastor made a reference to Luke 8:14, where Jesus happens to be explaining the parable of the sower and the seed. He referred to the verse in passing because of the occurrence of a particular Greek word, but as I read it for myself, something really struck me about it. Here it is, in context…

Lk 8:4 While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: 5 “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. 6 Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”When he said this, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Lk 8:9 His disciples asked him what this parable meant. 10 He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,“ ‘though seeing, they may not see;though hearing, they may not understand.’

Lk 8:11 “This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. 13 Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. 14 The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 15 But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

This is a pretty well known story, and, because Jesus takes the time to explicitly tell the disciples exactly what he’s trying to say, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of mystery here. What struck me about the verse was how Jesus described the seed that fell among the thorns…the seed that would be choked out. Choked out by what? By life’s troubles, yes, but what else? Life’s riches and pleasures. How often do we think of life’s riches and pleasures being obstacles to our maturing in the faith? For many professing Christians, life’s riches and pleasures are what we spend our time pursuing. I think we tend to carry Jesus around like a rabbit’s foot, so that we have that whole “heaven thing” taken care of, but then we set out in hot pursuit of the very same things that the rest of the world is pursuing. We read that verse and see ‘troubles’ and can nod our head in agreement. We’ve all seen and heard things, or experienced things personally, that have made us doubt our faith. But how many of us have received a promotion and said to ourselves, “I better watch out, this could be a real threat to my relationship with Christ.”? I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll have to admit that the better we seem to be doing, by the world’s standards, the less need we have of God. Turn left in your bible and you’ll see that Moses saw the fat and easy days that the Israelites had in store for them in the promised land, and what did he see fit to warn them about?

Dt 8:10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.

Note that Moses didn’t warn the Israelites about all the hard times ahead. He didn’t warn them to be on their guard if their crops failed, or if their flocks and herds diminished, or if all their gold and silver were lost. No, his warning was the exact opposite. I think there is a real lesson in that. Let the warning of Moses be a warning to us as well, especially as we seek to live godly lives in the middle of the most materialistic and pleasure driven culture in history.

“Blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields it’s fruit in season, and whose leaf does not whither. Whatever he does prospers. Not so the wicked. They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgement, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” -Psalm 1

We’ve been working on memorizing Psalm 1 as a family, and we were able to recite it together at a recent church service. The whole idea of reciting these passages in front of our church has really helped motivate us. Each of wants to know the verse really well so that we don’t stumble in front of a crowd. There is a risk, however, that the desire to master something in order to recite it will take away from our desire to really “know” it. I have found this especially true with the Psalms. They’ve proven to be quite easy for us to memorize,but are we getting all we should out of each and every verse? One of the great things about memorizing a passage with your kids is that they tend to ask questions, as you would expect. They question everything else, so why not this verse that they’re being asked to memorize? It is in the explanation of the passage that we stand to gain the most. Look at Psalm 1.

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.”

Easy to memorize, but what does it really mean? Most commentators explain this verse as describing a man being blessed who does not take the advice, or counsel, of the wicked, who does not stand, or posture himself, or present himself, in the way of the sinner, and who does not associate, or encourage, or find humor in, the seat of mockers. As I look back on just this one verse, it seems that I missed a number of valuable talking points with my family. How often do I seek advice from those who are ungodly? Do I present myself to others in a way that is consistent with the gospel, or do I “stand in the way of sinners?” When we turn on the TV, do we sit in the seat of mockers? Do our children find us laughing at those things that would make a mockery of our Savior? Do we find humor in the crude and profane? Do we snicker along with those who would mock Jesus and his message? If Christ were next to us on the sofa, (He is, of course.)would we be proud to discuss with the him the messages and images we’re allowing into our homes?

And that’s just one verse! It’s easy to see how memorizing just this one chapter provided us with many opportunities to explain these truths to our children. There’s about a month of devotionals in this chapter alone. I think that many parents spend a great deal of time looking for the “perfect” devotional to read with their kids, only to overlook the perfect book that is sitting right in front of them.

Is it Friday already? How can that be? Time certainly marches on, as they say.

First, I promise that new pictures of Jack are coming soon. Not having high-speed access at home has been hindering my ability to upload photos in a timely fashion. I manage all of our family photos in Picasa, on my PC. To upload them to the web, I grab them from the PC via my wireless network and put them into iPhoto on my MacBook. From there, I take my MacBook to the office and I use the PicasaWebUploader to dump the photos into a Picasa Web Album. Easy as falling off a log, huh?

Good news, though. I may have found a solution to my slow speed woes. Yesterday I met with an installer at the house to determine if I’m a candidate for high speed wireless. He says it will work…in my barn. Yeah, that’s the catch. Wireless internet is very directional, and my house is surrounded by trees, so I can’t put the antenna on the house. My barn/workshop, however, is in the clear, so I’m going to have the antenna installed there. Then it will be up to me to get the signal to the house. I’m kicking around my options as far as that goes. I’d like to get Cat5 from the barn to the house, just for the sake of reliability and speed. There are large power wires (unused) that are pulled underground between the house and shop right now, so I thought about trying to use one of those as a pull wire to get my Cat5 through. I gave it a pretty good pull yesterday, though, and I can’t budge it. I don’t know how they were pulled between the two originally, but I’m sure it involved some sort of directional boring equipment.

This service will not be cheap. There’s a two year contract and a bunch of other down sides, but we’re just going nuts out here not being connected. Lindy isn’t checking her email. She doesn’t shop online because it’s just painfully slow. I can’t jump on HowStuffWorks.com to answer all the questions that my kids are constantly asking. I can’t connect to work at all via the VPN because the connection is so poor. So, we stand to benefit in a number of ways if we can get this sorted out. I don’t spend anything on cable or satellite, so I don’t feel too bad having to spend a little bit on the internet thing.

Speaking of TV, should I even have one? I heard someone speaking the other day about a survey they had done of their newsletter’s subscribers. This newsletter was for Christian home schooling moms and dads… a pretty conservative crowd. One result of the survey was that only 16% of respondents had successful daily devotions if a TV were present in the home. Ouch. We don’t watch much TV at our house…several days will go by without turning it on. However, we see in ourselves, and in our kids, that we want to watch TV. It’s this wanting that I don’t like. If we want something, if we really desire something… should it be the entertainment available via the TV?

I didn’t mean to go into a whole thing on TV there. It just sort of happened.

In other news, Jack is doing great…and by great I mean that he’s driving us nuts. He’s eating good and gaining weight, so we thank God for that. However, he’s still stuck on the eating-every-3-hours schedule, round the clock. Often that means feeding him at 9:30, then again at 12:30, 3:30, 6:30… I take at least one feeding every night…usually whichever one Lindy likes the least. That 12:30 one is a bugger because you’re just starting to get into a nice deep sleep. The 3:30 isn’t that great either because, well, because it’s the middle of the friggin’ night. On the upside, PBS HD has some really great programming on at that hour. Beautiful travel programs and that sort of thing.

Jack is awesome though, in spite of any minor annoyances, and we thank God for every minute with him. We’re planning to have him baptized on January 13th at 10am at Holland Heights CRC. The scripture that we chose for his baptism is found in Psalm 119:9-16.

How can those who are young keep their way pure? By living according to your word.

I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.

I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Praise be to you, Lord; teach me your decrees.

With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth.

I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches.

I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways.

I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

We like this passage because of it’s emphasis on obedience to God’s Word, and hiding it in our hearts. We’ve been memorizing scripture as a family for a while now, and this verse just seems to ‘fit’ for us. It’s something for us to aspire to, anyway.

In the fall of 2006, our family spent a week at the Christian Reformed Conference Grounds.  The speaker that week talked about something he called “Home Discipleship”.  We learned a lot that week about how to organize a family worship time, and how to make it the centerpiece of our home schooling.  An important part of home discipleship is scripture memory.  Here’s what our family has worked on so far:

• Psalm 8
• Psalm 23
• Deuteronomy 6:4-9
• Luke 2:8-20
• Matthew 6:19-21, 25-27

Once a month or so we get together with some other families for a potluck, after which families have the opportunity to recite whatever they’ve been working on.  To my surprise, the kids really enjoy this.  I thought they would be much too shy, but they seem to enjoy being recognized for all their hard work.

It’s hard to over emphasize what a positive impact this has had on our family.  We work on the verses each night after dinner, so it’s made our devotional time much more consistent.  We’ve even tried singing a few songs during this time.  That may sound really corny, but it’s amazing what affect that can have on your attitude.  It’s hard to be grumpy or depressed when singing a classic hymn.  It puts us in the right frame of mind as we attempt to commit God’s Word to memory.

This week I discovered a great resource for Christian apologetics.  The site is called bethinking.org.  I’m amazed by the number of references and the depth of the resources.  There are dozens of audio files of lectures given by very well known scientists and philosophers.  A couple of my favorites talks are called “Has Science Eliminated God”, by Alister McGrath, and “God and Richard Dawkins”, by John Lennox.  It’s great to hear such knowledgeable individuals making such a sound defense of the faith.  Definitely worth checking out.