This passage from Isaiah 59 is a lot longer, but I have shortened it here. It always reminds me that we do not nearly appreciate the power and ugliness of sin. We have little respect for what it is and what it does. The more we think little of it, the worse we immerse ourselves in it.  Heaven will be a shock for even the most holy when all get a full picture of sin. Were we to here and now appreciate more fully the death spiral it creates for those who dwell in it, we would flee more consistently and urgently to its remedy. We would recognize more readily the desperate need of His mercies EVERY morning in each of our lives.
This week I went to visit my father who was sick. He lives in an assisted living facility. I was careful not to get too close to him. Soon after leaving him, I found out that the entire building with its dining hall was now to be shut down. Residents were to remain in their apartments and no visitors would be allowed to come. Fortunately, my father’s fever and sore throat was more palatable for him to bear than the GI tract infection that hit all the other residents.  It was the worst of the two that I picked up by germs in the air merely by stepping into the facility. The next morning, the day I was to have long scheduled surgery performed, I was as sick as a dog (another idiom we frequently employ). I was literally sick to death.  And I was reminded in this death-like illness that what some germs do to you physically, sin will do to you spiritually, and Isaiah the Prophet verifies it. I was so sick that at times death was almost more desirable. And yes I moaned out loud from the nauseating and physical pain as the above passage says in regard to sin.

One of the effects of sin spiritually is to blind you to its presence in your life, that is, until it’s terrible consequences descend on you as suddenly as if you were waking from a dream. The death and destruction spread in your sin’s path is more often irreversible than not, even though you yourself may be saved like a brand plucked from the fire.  But the chances of that are slim when you still have no acknowledgment of your own culpability. People in this predicament, even when they do not believe in God, blame Him and cry out why He caused this to happen; they don’t deserve this, or so they ignorantly claim. Whether they accept it or not, they are without excuse; their own consciences condemn them.

As basic as the knowledge of sin is to many Christians, it is the very snare that besets all of our lives from the most noteworthy Christians to the least.  Sin is indiscriminate. It does not avoid any Christian. One of the worst subtleties of sin is your proclivity to compare yourself with others. The Apostle Paul calls this foolishness. Rather, compare yourself to Christ. And to do that you have to know Him. Therein lays your remedy. But like many medicines or supplements you need to take every day to realize any benefit, you require a daily dose of Christ and His mercy to overcome the power, shrewdness, and ugliness of sin and Satan!

The historic sinking of the Titanic told a totally different story: the life boats were filled with women and children before any men, and the life jackets went to women and children of first priority. What has brought about the erosion of such chivalrous action in our day, and we can also say, moral action taught in the Scriptures? The dishonoring of women and children through the flood of the multi-billion dollar industry of pornography, the evil and violent behavior toward them engendered by the pornographers and those who clamor for their products, the massive sex slave trafficking of women and children, not just abroad but all over America, the proliferating of abortion mills, and the thousands of babies that are slaughtered in the womb every day, every hour, every minute, has been at the forefront of eroding away an essential character trait of any civilized and moral society: the honoring and protecting of women and children. The sexual, physical, and mental abuse of children, mostly in the alleged “safety” of their own homes has produced all kinds of evil throughout the culture to include the explosion of homosexuality in the last century.  America now sends women to fight her wars!  And at the forefront of the defense of all of the above, even if unwittingly, has been the great majority of the Feminist Movement, which has most every male leader running scared to dare stand in its way or of being accused of chauvinism, which is anything that dares question any part of the Feminist agenda. Every governing body, every legislature in the world is still made up of a majority of men, apparently men of weak character, who can find no solution to slow the tide of mayhem on women and children throughout the world.

The protection of women and children in God’s agenda is taught in the Scriptures from the Garden of Eden to the pages of Revelation. Adam failed to protect Eve from the serpent Satan and even tried to blame her for his own sin. God’s instruction for Israel when battle or crisis was imminent was the protection of their women and children. The nurture and instruction and discipline of children were aimed at their protection from the evil of this world and from Satan. (Deuteronomy 6 among numerous texts) The Psalmist expressed God’s desire for men to care for widows and orphans.  Jesus pronounced great judgment on those who would abuse children or lead them astray. (Matthew 18) And the Apostle Peter spoke of women and by proper inference, children, as weaker vessels deserving of honor and protection. Despite all of Hollywood’s fictional attempts to create and depict “Amazon women” the facts overwhelm their fantasies; women by a gazillion percent over men are raped, assaulted, battered, and physically tormented by men. Many men at the Judgment will hang their heads in shame and horror at their utter failure to acknowledge God’s command to honor and protect weaker vessels, women and children, whom He created.

At the Paul Anderson Youth Home we seek to teach the young men God sends us chivalrous manners in order that they might begin to consider God’s concept of what it means to truly be a man!

But this serves to introduce the subject of physical fitness which we are told is a not so practiced discipline in American lives. It is now being trumpeted that we are an obese nation. Along with the incredible speed of technological advancement in the last generation we have experienced both the blessings and curses which accompany it. Technology can be used for both sanctifying and paganizing purposes, and one of the non-sanctifying results of much of the new technology, I am not talking about work-out machines, is to steal time away from  more redeeming activity that is better for the body, and also for the soul.

Yet you may ask, what is the sanctifying goal of physical fitness? Why do we do it if we do, and what is our goal? Is it to look better, or to live longer, or to save on doctor bills? Probably, all of the above. But this wasn’t the Apostle Paul’s primary purpose to which he speaks in our text. I have often wondered what specific things Paul did to stay in shape, because when you read of what he endured, he had to be an excellent physical specimen. One factor, of course, is the thousands of miles he must have walked. What Paul says is that he went into strict training to win a crown that would never fade away; obviously an eternal crown to the glory of God. Have you ever thought that your physical activity is for the glory of God? Is that or could that be your motivating factor of first importance leading to discipline?

This past week I attended the memorial service of a friend and fellow believer from my younger years. He was 20 years my senior but I can still vividly recall his warm smile, sincere interest in me, and redemptive conversation when I was a child up through my early adulthood. Our paths went in divergent directions and to different areas of the country. At his service I was reminded of his disciplined physical activity that was performed with great joy and with great delight in His Creator and in His creation; and as often as he could he did it with his family and friends, including my father. I learned that at the age of 50 he set as a goal to climb all 54 fourteeners in Colorado; which means all 54 of the mountain peaks in Colorado 14,000 feet and over. He summited 43 of them before sustaining a stroke that precluded any more climbs at that altitude. He did all this while being a husband and father of four children; very active in his church; sustaining an energetic and compassionate veterinary career, to include many mission trips volunteering his veterinary services.  As I heard this I thought he should have lived to be 120 rather than 85. (Brain cancer took his life in a matter of weeks from diagnosis).

But he did not do all this to extend his life and neither should we; nor to improve his appearance or lessen his doctor bills, though these are subsidiary benefits not to be discounted. I think he did it of first importance to glorify God and to glory in what opportunities God had given him in his own body and in the delight of Creation. Physical fitness will never extend your life beyond what God has ordained for you, nor will it completely overcome the mystery of your genetics. Consider Jim Fix the great runner who died of a heart attack in his early 50’s while running, yet still outlived all the men in his family by ten years who also died of a heart attack. Consider the Strongest Man in the World, Paul Anderson, who died at the age of 61 from kidney disease, yet never gave up his physical fitness regime even when confined to his bed. No, God has ordained all the days for each one of us, and man knows not his time whether or not he chooses to pursue as physically fit a body and soul as possible.

Physical fitness with the goal of bringing glory to God is not a vanity; it is a necessity if God has given you a body capable of it. If you are to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30), physical fitness is a part of it.  Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and this speaks of the integral and intricate connection and communication of body and spirit, of mind and soul. Striving to be physically fit to the glory of God is an expression of your desire to love God more.

In a sense this is the very same “game” being played throughout the world with regard to God; the God who is the One True God who will not give His glory to another.  The two lying contestants are symbolic of the many false witnesses and sources of errant information in every corner of the globe. For millenniums millions have dichotomized between a God of the Old Testament Scriptures and a God of the New. Of course, the God of the Old Testament was often in their eyes an ogre.  In fact, we find such a dichotomy described as far back as the late first century by a Bible critic named Marcion (80-160 AD) who convinced a great many followers he was right. In recent years there have been some bestselling atheist authors who have espoused much the same fiction as Marcion. One of these writers, Richard Dawkins, in his book The God Delusion  wrote: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” One of his like-minded authors, Christopher Hitchens who wrote, God is not Great; How Religion Poisons Everything, recently met the “not great God” face to face when cancer delivered him into the presence of the real God a few months ago. What must his first words have been when he realized the folly which characterized his life? (Read Psalm 73 and Luke 16:19-31 for a glimpse) Or the responsibility he bore in leading so many down a destructive path?

Your answer to the question, “Who is God?” impacts your life in every tiny detail, if indeed there is such a thing as a “tiny” detail when it comes to your life and the nature of its future. In fact you really do not truly understand who you are apart from knowing who God is. Until you can knowledgeably say with the Psalmist, “This God is my God, forever and ever; He will be my guide even unto death,” you are ignorant of your true self as well as the true God. Knowing God is compiling all the truths of His person as it is spread on the pages of His word from Genesis to Revelation, and illustrated in the creation which He has brought into being and sustains from day to day. And this requires the integration and non-contradictory assimilation of those truths into the same Triune God who is always the same yesterday, today, and forever. The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New, and the God of the New is the God of the Old, and is NOT one of the many false gods who litter the pages of history down to the present! This is the claim of the Scriptures throughout and is repeatedly confirmed by the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth. Those who read differently, do so not on the written record communicated by the Holy Spirit, but in their own disbelief and willful twisting of the plain word to their own ends

Nevertheless, it is required of each of us that we “Study the Scriptures, to show ourselves approved unto God, a workman that needs not be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of truth.”(II Timothy 2:15) You will not know Him without diligent study and personal apprehension. Too many professing Christians simply do not know their God, and a few questions often expose the ignorance! One thing that ought to characterize every believer from now until he dies is the study of God’s Word for the purpose that he or she might know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. There is no greater work; no higher calling; no better use of time. Those who pursue it as a continuous activity in 2012 and beyond will have no cause for shame when the great Day comes. No matter how you look at it, the Word says that Day is soon. In other words, tomorrow is not too soon to get after it. What plan of study have you laid out for yourself in 2012?

These Magi were reputed scholars, known for their wisdom as counselors to Kings and Princes. They were students of the sciences, scientists of the skies, investigators of the rational universe.  Yet they undertook a long, arduous journey to see and worship a baby. What skeptics they must have stirred up. What mockers took delight in the scorn they heaped on them. What would people say of you were you to tell them you want to pursue a Magi journey in 2012? It was not enough for these “wise men” to know of this new born King from a distance. Their comfortable surroundings were not powerful enough enticement to abandon the journey. They must see for themselves.  They must see, and touch, and taste, and experience the very presence of this promised One. And whatever it took they were willing to pay the cost. A Magi journey in this day entails a purposeful, costly, and committed search to experience the presence of the King of Kings; to draw nearer and nearer to the Light of the world; to look in His face and retain in your face the Light which radiates from His.

Is there any more significant resolution for 2012 than drawing closer to the Savior; for you know you are not nearly as close as you can be; as you ought to be; as you want to be? Even one such as the Apostle Paul said late in his ministry, “I want to know Christ!” (Philippians 3:10) A Magi journey takes time out of your already busy schedule. It necessitates prioritizing. It requires you to spend thoughtful time with Him alone; to see Him as He is. An elderly, beloved disciple, John put it this way, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life.” (I John 1:1) Such is possible for every believer in his own pursuit of Jesus by the Spirit who lives in you.  It is costly; for like the Magi you must give up other things, important things, to pursue the most important. Procrastination only means that 2013 will be here before you know it, and you will be saying, “This year I am going to do it!” 2012 is here now, and it may be your only year to begin or take your Magi journey.

From the little we know of the shepherds from Luke’s account, I believe they were acquainted with the prophecies of a coming Messiah in the Old Testament Scriptures. Shepherds, again by scholars who look for indications as determined by the knowledge of the culture, were assumed to be uneducated, poor, non-credible witnesses, and even thieves. But such stereo-typing does not tell us about the true nature of these shepherds. God, the Holy Spirit, has chosen to tell us all we need to know, and He has given us enough information to come to some fairly accurate conclusions about these men despite the lack of certain details.  Any truly objective and intelligent reader of the nativity accounts should know immediately that this is not the story any human would make up to explain an entrance of God into human history, taking on flesh and becoming man in these particular, revealed circumstances. The skeptics are only blowing smoke. Their minds are made up and simply are not swayed by truth. An open, observant, thoughtful mind has much to contemplate and consider for his own great benefit and spiritual health. Pity those who ignore such a magnificent beginning to the story of salvation.

Like us the shepherds were men who were terrified in encountering something totally foreign to their previous experience as the heavenly host lit up the night sky. Yet they believed the message and responded to it immediately and eagerly. What they saw, they believed. This was the promised Messiah, this Babe in the manger! Then they told about what their eyes of faith had beheld. Apparently their hearers believed them because of the genuine character of their testimony. But this is the last we hear of these shepherds. This is also the case with so many who had a life changing encounter with Christ in the Gospels; we do not hear of them again. We would love to hear sequels of their lives, but the Holy Spirit now keeps such information from us. There is so much that awaits us in eternity.

In pondering what happened to the shepherds, or the Magi, or the Samaritan woman at the well, or many of the miraculously healed; and having no following information, I came to a conclusion that these historical accounts are turned back on us. What happened afterward to you? What transpired in your life after you encountered Christ? This is the more important sequel to know and to live. One day you will sit down with one of or all of these shepherds and hear the rest of the story. But today it is your time to create your “after-story”. As you do, their “continuing story” may take on greater clarity in your mind and heart. What is the nature of your life as you leave the manger, or the cross, or the empty tomb, or the Mount of Ascension? What is your story going to be tomorrow? Will it be an account you will want to tell to your children, your family, and all you meet? And just possibly they will marvel at the things you are able to tell them.

Mary’s response to the angel’s announcement is one of the finest confessions of faith in human history. Not knowing all that it would entail, she, nevertheless, replied with no apparent hesitancy, “Be it unto me according to your word.” Her engagement to be married was shattered by the prophetic circumstance soon to be reality. How do you explain to your betrothed that you are pregnant, yet have never slept with a man, least of all him? How do you manage days of journey on the back of a donkey in your last month of pregnancy? How do you accept the un-antiseptic and uncomfortable accommodation for delivery? How do you care for a flesh and blood infant who is very God of very God? Shepherds coming to the stable hours after giving birth; Magi coming to your humble home in Bethlehem; soldiers coming with intent to kill. Who else will come? When? There are no directions to follow or guide book with details of what to expect next.

Do you not wonder what must have coursed through Mary’s brain? What was the content of her ponderings, the things she kept deep in her heart; from which she drew as years later Dr. Luke interviewed her? What did Simeon’s words that a sword would pierce her own soul do to her outlook on life each day? What was it like as a sinner to mother a sinless boy? To ask him why he put them through their anguished anxiety when he was missing from them three days in Jerusalem? God gave us His Son to care for and now we have lost him at age twelve? How embarrassing! Yet neither she nor Joseph understood his explanation. How many times was that the case? You must wonder if Mary thought back, or how often, to those words she spoke to Gabriel, “Be it unto me according to your word.”

What about you? Have you not also said to the Lord at one time, “I am yours, be it unto me according to YOUR desire?” Is that not the essential confession of true faith? Look at all you know from the brief accounts in Scripture of Mary’s life, and fill in the rest with your own pondering. And look at your own life and ask, Would I rather be a man or maidservant of the Lord of all creation, even with thorns or soul piercing sword, then one to whom He will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you?” Mary’s faith is a precious nugget of hope to us, who like her are sinners, who do not always understand what God is saying, or what is happening, or what will take place next in your life. If you are His, and you believe it by your faith, then Mary’s song (Luke 1:46-55) is your song! Read it and put yourself in Mary’s place. If the King of Kings is your King surely every generation one day will call you blessed, even as Mary was blessed through all that “be it unto me” entailed for her; and what it entails for you. Mary’s hope is yours too!

Merry Christmas to you from the Paul Anderson Youth Home family!

Job’s revelation about God above came after all was said and done concerning the trial that shook his life to the core. It speaks volumes, unfortunately, in describing the story of many a common Advent season; Christmas holidays following one year upon another. In this season we HEAR much about God, and His Son, from carols playing everywhere to the retelling of the familiar nativity story; singing Silent Night by candlelight in many a Christmas service; and going through all the traditional motions of “celebrating” the most important birth in human history. Yet our eye too frequently doesn’t SEE Him as Job came to see Him following his intense wrestling with God in his deep “valley of the shadow of death.” The atmosphere, the schedule, the “rush” distracts our attention from the all-important truths of Advent, and hence from seeing Him as He wants us to see Him. Yes, we do hear about Him with our ears, but our eyes do not pierce the clutter to see Him to the end that our joy holds true, and will not fade when the “rush” recedes and January comes.

It is not that we should give it all up, escape town, and ignore our Christmas/Advent family traditions. There is much that is good in what we do here with good intentions. The failure is that we do not carve out personal time and protect it to sharpen our Advent sight; eyes that look back with eager searching to the nativity, the cross, and the resurrection and forward to the “blessed hope” of the Second Advent. This is the message with which Paul exhorted Titus (2:11-14): “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting (that is, looking with Advent eyes) for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” While Jesus’ faithful disciples saw magnificent things done and spoken by Him while He was with them, He told them they would see greater things than even these. (John 1:50) But eyes with an ever sharpening vision is not a given for believers simply because they are believers. Job was a believer in Job 1, indeed a very disciplined and devout believer, yet it wasn’t until the last chapter of his book that his spiritual vision is awakened, giving him a perspective on an all new level. Such “seeing” only arises out of time alone with God, in His Word, in prayer, and in soul-ful meditation. If you do this you will follow a pattern Jesus set in the midst of an all-consuming public ministry schedule.

Perhaps there is no more demanding time of the year for you to forcefully (what it requires!) carve out time alone with God to focus on the meaning of the Advent (1st and 2nd) in your life that you might gain and nurture an ever more intimate, personal life with your great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. A test such as this reaps rewards not only for a meaningful Advent now, but as a pattern for the whole year ahead! In doing this all else will be enriched in your Advent season; and there is good promise that what you bring from your Advent eyes to those around you will penetrate their perspective as well. Advent 2011 is here. Don’t just HEAR about God and His Son this year; SEE Him!

Morbid! That is the sense one gets from this title. The young particularly think little, if at all, of death.  Even vigorous middle age folks do not expect a fatal heart attack will strike in the next moment. The elderly know it is on its way; just not today. I have been doing my daily worship lately in a nice copy of the 1853 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Every page of the text is encompassed with beautiful “illuminations” from woodcuts by Durer, Holbein, and others in imitation of Queen Elizabeth’s (the 1^st) Book of Christian prayers, to aid in devotion as one reads the Word and the collected prayers therein. One section of the book takes you through the Psalms in the course of a month, reading some on each day as Morning Prayer and others each evening as Evening Prayer. The illustrations around the text on every page immediately caught my eye. They are of individual people from every station, class, and age in life, of both sexes; and in each there is a skeleton, representing death, clinging to them, looking over their shoulder so to speak.

At first it is quite an unexpected sight. But it definitely gets you thinking biblically. The Word of God does not avoid the subject of death.  In fact, its very purpose is to prepare one for death; even to explain why death is, what it is, and what to do about it. If death is such a prominent subject on practically every page of the Bible, why not visually illustrate it to vividly remind one of its nearness? Nevertheless, our fallen nature is to avoid the very thought of our death or a loved one’s in any way we can. Hence we surmise it is “morbid thinking,” when it is actually righteous, truthful, sanctified thinking. When the Psalmist wrote about God, “He will preserve my going out and my coming in forevermore,” he knew well it did not mean he or his would avoid the experience of death, or that tomorrow on this earth is promised any of us.  The “sting” of death of which the Scripture speaks encompasses a number of truths, one of which, it is a subject we steer clear of as we would an oncoming car, or falling off a cliff. We naturally avoid things that will hurt or damage our bodies or separate us from those we love and for whom we care; we are sure it will cause great pain (sting)! And death is, at least this side of the divide, in the estimation of most, painful!

Paul quoted a verse of Psalm 44 in Romans 8, “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” This certainly speaks of dying to self so you might live now to Christ and serve others today for His sake. It also means that the thought of death in serving Christ and others, doing your duty as one whom Christ has purchased with His own blood, causes you to look death in the face without fear, no matter when God has planned it for you. And it means we are often to consider the potential nearness of our death, even as the Judge is near, right at your door (James 5:9).  The intent is the powerful perspective of your death being near should cause you to daily reorder your priorities in a right direction, and live with those around you in an increasingly sanctified manner; being more intentional of soon standing in the presence of your Savior. Such thinking is not morbid! It is living in freedom; not fearing the bonds or the sting of death.

Perspectives like National Geographic’s which ignore the major element of sin and its inevitable results, while denying the existence of a Creator, seldom produce much in the way of helpful solutions to the human condition, much less prudent advice to the rollercoaster experience of accompanying children through the oft dreaded years of teenage-dom. I have found far more science and wisdom in understanding teenagers by observing a woman who has worked with many hundreds of teenage boys for 50 years and a much smaller number of teenage girls, but especially one strong willed one that qualifies her as an expert in both sexes. This strong-willed daughter is now a wise and beautiful mother with one teenager of her own and two more on the way.

Glenda Anderson Leonard has been looking teenage boys in the eye for half a century. They quickly realize they can’t con her as they have been able to do so well with other adults. But what is more they are just as quickly taken with the knowledge that she genuinely loves them as her sons, even while she does not mince words in speaking truth to their face, hoping to reach their heart. She is particularly knowledgeable of the makeup of a teenager and the changes going on in their mind and body; the temptations they face and the hopes they have. As a dear friend wrote us both this week, Christ calls us to focus primarily on the glory of each one made in His image, both to teach and to love, rather than always seeing them in the ruin that sin has perpetrated in their lives. Such can only be done with eyes of faith and actively, continuously integrating the mind of Christ into your own; for the ruin becomes so overwhelming in your own eyes that you forget the image of God in them that has not been completely obliterated by sin. Consider Christ with the Samaritan woman at the well, an ancient Elizabeth Taylor in marriage behavior; or the woman taken in the act of adultery; or the rough fishermen called to be disciples. He saw through the ruin to the glory. Glenda does that with these teenage young men, and the success of her commitment has been evident over these past five decades. Her formula summarized in her own words has been: Structure and discipline, plus love and commitment, with consistency, based on God’s Word.

The time put into your teenager or child is a measure of your love for them and your commitment to them; don’t say you love them when you barely take the time to have meaningful conversations with them on a regular basis. Structure, discipline, and consistency are all principles that ooze out of every page of Scripture. It cannot be done without putting time in two major places with consistency: into God’s Word and with God, and two, into the life, mind, and heart of your child or teenager. The reward is too awesome to measure; failure too devastating to contemplate. But God is too strong and willing not to call on for help.