Author Archives: MzEllen

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I guess I see two ways of looking at the Law (with variations on those themes).

1) Everything is legal, unless the Bible tells us it is not
2) Everything is prohibited, unless the Bible tells us it is not.

There are those who will show you in the Bible what you are supposed to be doing, and there are those who will attempt to put you under a law that does not even exist. If you believe that God wrote the Law,. and think you need to add to it, because God forgot a few things, that puts you in a dangerous position of trying to be more righteous than God - and I'm sure not going to try that!

I grew up in a church that pretty much took the second way of looking at things. Drinking was sin, as was smoking, dancing, playing with a regular deck of cards, etc. The strictness varied with the pastor. I remember one that prohibited his wife from buying their children clothes from the store if they could be made at home, and also prohibited her from using an electric sewing machine. Another kept his daughter away from youth group on an evening that I led devotions (as a female, I wasn't supposed to do that). I think it was that same pastor that eventually agreed to perform a marriage for a divorced woman (it was a "Biblical" divorce), but not in the sanctuary - it had to be done in his office (I never quite understood why, if the marriage was permissible, it couldn't be fully permissible. If it was not "good enough" to be done in the sanctuary, should he have done it at all?) These days, it's homeschooling, Christian schooling, quiver-full, even delaying marriage.

Take alcohol specifically. My mom and dad are teetotallers - as are other members of my family. I am not - I have a bottle of beer once in a while - more often, I'll have a glass of red wine. That is not a lifestyle of drunkeness. If you can show me in the Bible where having a drink is a sin, we'll talk again. But I will not put myself under bondage to a Law that does not exist. My dad and I disagree. But he does not condemn me for my occasional drink, and I respect him and don't drink around him - or even mention it.

Or, more recently - the "quiver full" debate. There is a difference between a quiverfull lifestyle (which I cannot do, but wish I could), a quiverfull mentality (which I probably have) and a quiverfull theology (which I cannot find). Yes, children are a gift from God and I'd love to have more - the Bible never says that we should not steward our resource and our health - in order that we can spit as many of those babies out as we possibly can.

God is pretty eloquent and I think that if He wanted to prohibit contraception, He could have spelled it out. He gave the Jews 613 laws - do we really think that He just "forgot" birth control?

I know - some will say that it was just a "given" that contraception was wrong. Excuse me, but the Jews needed something in the Law that laid out the penalty for having sex with animals!!! If they couldn't figure that one out, I'm guessing a prohibition against birth control would have had to be spelled out pretty clearly.

And then there's Onan...which many scholars today recognize as something a little deeper than birth control.

The fact is - these two things (and many others), alcohol and contraception is not in the Law. Any law against it is arrived at by methods other than God's Word. And that puts in the category of all the laws of all the teachers of the Law that put further yokes on the people. By the time Christ arrived, they "tied up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders" and they traveled over land and sea to win a single convert, only to make him twice as much a son of hell as they were.

What God has spelled out for us, we should obey. What God has put on our hearts, we must follow. But we are under no obligation to follow another person's heart, if it is following a Law that does not exist.

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These debates always trigger a much deeper dig for me...and I looked into Judah and I'm struck once again that the kinds of people God uses for His purposes. Certainly, He didn't use the perfect, and that is more to His glory.

I once heard a saying, "The footsteps your children will follow are the ones you thought you covered up..."

Judah was not the first son, he was the fourth son of both Jacob and Leah (the unfavored wife).

Maybe to understand Judah and "the trouble" with Tamar (I doubt that when God took an entire chapter to tell Tamar's story, all He had in mind was contraception), you have to go back to Judah's grandfather, Laben.

Remember, Jacob was all about avoidance (of Esau), when he fled to Haran. He and his mother conspired to lie to Isaac, in order to have Jacob sent to Haran. There, he found Rachel and asked for her hand.

A fine example for his grandson, Judah (who would later send Tamar away with the promise of his third son) - Laben promised Rachel to Jacob - and then secretly gave him Leah instead. jacob worked longer in order to have Rachel as well, which set the family up for even more problems.

Jacob loved one wife more than the other and the wives ended up detesting each other - their marriage was less about love and more about a son-bearing contest, even to the counting of giving their personal hand-maidens to Jacob, in order to rack up more "son" points. Even so, Jacob was loved by God.

Later, when Leah's daughter, Dinah was raped by a young man who was very taken with her, the young man's father was prepared to do the "right thing" and marry the two. Two brothers (neither of them Judah) lied. They said they couldn't do it - unless all of the males in that city were circumcised. They agreed, had the "procedure" and when they were recovering, Jacob's two sons killed them all and plundered the city.

So we're finding that the sons of Jacob didn't seem to be the "good guys"

Even the sons of the different mothers hated each other. Jacob already had a bunch of sons before Joseph was born. The older sons knew that Jacob played favorites, and they hated the favorite.

When the brothers decided to kill Joseph, Judah was the one that talked them into selling him into slavery instead.

[Reformed theology note: this is a place where I can see man's sinful choices working with God's sovereign plan. If God's plan to put Joseph in Egypt were to succeed, was it possible for the brothers to have killed Joseph, instead of selling him? Was Judah acting out of concern for Joseph, or in the will of a Sovereign God?]

Then, they all conspired to lie to their father (kind of what goes around, comes around...)

At some point after that (the Bible isn't clear on timing) Judah "went down from"his brothers and married an unnamed woman (the daughter of Shua), but we do know that she had three sons, Er, Onan and Shelah.

I once heard a saying, "The footsteps your children will follow are the ones you thought you covered up."

I don't know if these guys even tried to cover these footsteps, but Jacob got what he was in Judah; Judah got what he was in Er and Onan.

When Er married Tamar, God killed him because of his wickedness. So, on to the next brother...Onan. We all know what happened there (although the Bible doesn't say exactly why, other than Onan did a wicked thing). One thing is sure, Er didn't have an heir.

So, Judah (doing what that family seemed to have done best) - lied. Again.

Judah sent Tamar off to her father's house as a widow, with the promise of his next son - a promise that he never intended to keep. This would hint that Judah still had legal control over Tamar, else her father could have married her to another man.

As it was, Tamar sat at her father's house, in limbo, knowing that the youngest son, Shelah, was all grown up. She took matters into her own hand, dressed up like a whore and Jacob solicited her (not the other way around).

She had to trick Judah into being her "kinsman-redeemer", fulfilling the family obligation.

I am struck at how God's purposes are fulfilled by the basest of men. If God can use these people, He will, perhaps, be able to use me.

We've read about Judah and all of his trickery, but he was also the father of the kingdom of Judah; Christ is the "Lion of Judah".

Judah's sons never made it into the genealogy of Jesus - but Tamar and Judah did.

Later on, Judah's another kinsman-redeemer didn't have to be tricked - Boaz, who married Ruth - great-grandparents of King David.

Maybe, just maybe - the moral of the story is that - no matter how bad we are, no matter what our family history is, no matter what influences we've had to deal with - God can use us.

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Really. And I'm a little frustrated.

My daughter and I are taking a Bible Greek class through the local home school association and languages are evidently not my gift. Last fall I got my lowest grade ever in Spanish and Greek isn't any better. Who thought up the idea of needing 20 ways to say "the"? I'd way rather be taking probability and statistics. Most things come pretty easily to me and to have to work at something - it took me by surprise.

Anyway - languages do seem to be Manda's thing - she's doing really well and I'm very proud of her! I'm encouraging her to take Spanish (Greek will have to wait until she transfers to a four-year institution) and keep up with languages.

...continue reading →

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When my kids were little I worked for a little while for a historic neighborhood association. One day I was driving around (long story, but I was doing my job) a block where a little house had been torn down. That was the first time I noticed "that" house. It had been empty for years, it was boarded up, siding was missing, as was part of the roof.

But it grabbed my attention. No, God grabbed my attention.

...continue reading →

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I have to admit, I'm way too sensitive and way too passionate on this one. But it hurts to be told that you don't trust God because of your beliefs in this area.

Let me share a little of my history. When I was first married, I had my first miscarriage at around age 21. And then another - and then I stopped ovulating. At 23 I started fertility treatments (didn't trust God with my fertility, after all, it is God who opens and shuts the womb).

Every single month - my body betrayed me.

...continue reading →

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http://http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait22jul22,0,3359930.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

I don't know if that all took, but (is it just me) or is this guy having to really strain at finding things wrong with President Bush?

"Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement? Bush not only thinks so, he thinks it goes for the rest of us as well. In 2002, he initiated a national fitness campaign."

Oh, for Pete's sake! When I was in high school (and it was before the days of Bush the first) there was a presidential fitness campaign.

"The notion of a connection between physical and mental potency is, of course, silly.

Where has this guy been? Men's fitness (May, 2002) says, "In a study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, people who ran on a treadmill for 30 minutes prior to taking a computer test did better on the test than those who did no pretest exercise, and brainwave measurements showed that their decision-making speed had increased."

I understand liberals (and even some conservatives) having problems with some of the things Mr. Bush does - but exercise? Come on...

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I should have noted right off the bat that I do not agree with Mr. Courson!

The internal debate I have on the gift of tongues is (at this moment) triggered by a dillema that my dad is facing. My mom and dad attend a small, rural Missionary church in the thumb of Michigan and their pastor is "going all Pentacostal" on them.

I have so much respect for my dad, who is a great man of God, with a very quiet, rock hard faith. He doesn't always speak up, but when he does, you have better be listening because you know this is something that he has pondered long and hard.

And he is preparing to speak up in his church on this issue.

The sermon that I posted about (I believe) takes the Pentacostal stance on the gift of tongues to its logical conclusion (the sign of the New Covenant is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence of which is speaking in tongues). I believe this is wrong.

I'm not sure where I stand on the gift of tongues. Some will say that it disappeared with the closing of the Canon. Others will say that it disappeared before that - the only places the mention of tongues appears is very early on, chronologically. Others will say that it *is* for today, as used by Pentacostals. Still others will say that the gift of tongues is for today, but as Paul wrote, can be abused - and the typical Pentacostal church abuses the gift; Paul gave us guidelines and we should use them.

Every side will have back up, either logical or Scriptural (or both). What I know is that tongues is not the determining factor in whether or not we are "sealed", or whether or not we have the Holy Spirit (or are baptized in the Holy Spirit).

😉

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Searchlight Radios, "A Survey Through Scripture", by Pastor Jon Courson

I just listened to the first part of a two-part sermon on-line - My goodness! This man took a series from Genesis and Abraham and spent the better portion of his time teaching about the gift of tongues....

He starts out in Genesis 17, where God is giving Abraham a "sign" or "token" of the promise. Mr. Courson noted, God does that which is unexpected and unconventional. God promises to give Abraham a token of the covenant, an emblem. This token would be an item that would remind Abraham of the covenant that God was making with him.

So far, he's ok.

But then, he starts thinking...

"Token" of the covenant...Outward sign, seal...Token of the covenant God made with Abraham. Circumcision is the sign and the seal.

Courson says, in the New Testament, "sign" and "seal" are almost always connected with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the seal that was given to the believer, according to Eph 1:13 (In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit...)

So, the correlation made - in the OT, the sign is circumcision, in the NT, the sign is the "Internal work of the Spirit within" (quoted from Mr. Courson)

Note: in this next section, Mr. Courson makes the subtle statement that "praying in the Spirit" = "speaking in tongues"

Courson asks, "What is the sign? The sign is connected with the work of the Holy Spirit in a most particular way." 1 Cor 14:22(a) says, "Tongues, then, are a sign" - now, Courson is beginning to see something...(right). He's asking if seal of the Holy Spirit and the sign of praying in the Spirit (tongues) are connected with the idea of circumcision in some way,

Next, Mr. Courson makes the "solid" connection between circumcision and speaking in tongues

He asks, "Is there really a connection that we can make with integrity?" He quotes Phillipians 3:3 "For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God" Paul uses the idea of circumcision to give a NT application. The sign, the seal - are now words connected to the working of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers - not just correlated with the cutting away of the flesh (physical or spiritual), but with the sign and seal of speaking in tongues.

According to Courson, people get uneasy when talking about speaking about speaking in tongues - like when you talk about circumcision - because they're related. He says that there's a tendency to be embarrassed about tongues-speaking "perhaps because of the abuses of radical Pentecostal." People tend to say "oh, this tongues area is a little -" just like circumcision.

Here, Courson makes a statement that will enable his followers to make the statement that if one Biblically and theologically rejects speaking in tongues as the sign of the Holy Spirit - that one is speaking in the flesh.

According to Courson, just as Abraham may have sat back when learning about the sign of his covenant, so believers today rebel against the "sign" of the New Covenant. He quotes 1 Corinthians 14:14 (For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful) to explain why our "flesh" reacts against speaking in tongues. Our minds like to engage in things that we understand and comprehend intellectually. Courson says that Paul writes, "although the mind is unfruitful, but the spirit is edified." (I couldn't find that part in this chapter).

Courson preaches, your mind (flesh) may rebel against the sign or seal of speaking in tongues. The flesh doesn't like circumcision and it doesn't like "praying in the Spirit" because the flesh and the Spirit are at enmity one with the other.

Courson adds that Paul says that when it comes to speaking in tongues, our mind (flesh) doesn't get it, because we don't understand what's happening. The Spirit is praying through us. Edification is happening within us, but we don't have a clue intellectually - we do it (speaking in tongues) in faith, according to what the Scriptures tell us - but t doesn't please the flesh.

Further (I think he's getting even farther awry here...) even as the flesh rebels against circumcision, so the flesh rebels against praying in tongues - the sign that we are the circumcision which worships God in the Spirit...He says: both tongues and circumcision deal with reproductive organs.

Courson states: there are only two reproductive organs in your body, one is physical, the other is spiritual. Proverbs 18 says that the power of life and death is in the tongue...

Here is where Courson introduces Word-Faith

He says that Christ taught us that when you want to see things happen in the spirit, say to the mountain be removed, don't wish it, think it - go on record - say it - faith is released through the words that we speak. The tongue has the power of death and life - your words will either 18:44 be reproductive or they will be murderous and detrimental.

Next, the implication that tongues-speakers are persecuted, just like the Jews, for their sign.

Further correlation between circumcision and tongues...Both are called sign and both are embarrassing. From that point forward (until fairly recently), Jews would be persecuted over circumcision. So also, today, people make fun of those who speak in tongues. "if they think I'm one of "those guys"...So there can be embarrassment for both the Jew and the believer who is doing the sign and seal in the NT of the tongue being expressed.

The, the "reason" that speaking in tongues disappeared from the face of the earth, after the closing of the canon.

The Jewish went for centuries ignoring circumcision...Let's not even do it, it's causing too much trouble...And in their history, both Biblically and historically - just like Christians, who say why even bother with this controversy. Christian community ignores speaking in tongues because of the repercussions

We are a marked people - we are different from the other folks - it was a continual reminder that we are different than other people - but it was a difference that was noted in either privacy or intimacy - like tongues.

1 Corinthians 14 - Paul said "I would" - not wish you could... (Check out the Greek - or the ESV)
Mark 16 - and these signs shall follow them...(note from my Bible: ((The most reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark 16:9-20.))

Paul told us "Follow me, as I follow Christ"
Point - I don't believe Christ ever mentioned Himself speaking in tongues, so if we limit ourselves to following Paul as he followed Christ, tongues is not on that list.

Paul also said, "But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue.
(Which is the beginning of Mr. Courson's next sermon...)

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I have been reading and listening to a lot of Mark Driscoll, "The Radical Reformission". He has a lot of great things to say, but I'm increasingly hearing things that I don't like - which I intend to address directly to him.

One of the things that he says in his book is that external things don't matter - and specifically mentioned "goth" as a way of dressing. Here's the thing - I work in a high school and there is a dark spirit (way of feeling, not demon) that accomanies that dark way of dressing.

Don't get me wrong - I like to wear black - it's dramatic and goes great with my complexion and you can accessorize very easily! But I hardly ever (ok, I just don't) wear black with dog collars, purple hair and black lipstick.

When you see a young person calling themselves a Christian, dressing in that way - it's okay to ask a few questions - like "what are they identifying themselves with?"

Another thing that concerns me about Driscoll is his way of speaking of certain groups of people. He consistently uses "limp-wristed" and other terms that are reserved for men who are - well, less than masculine.

I listened to a sermon last night on Genesis 1 - and he referred a couple of times to "hillybilly rednecks" and "hillbilly redneck NASCAR fans" This bothers me, because if his congregation picks up on this (or picks this up) they will have learned that in their church, it's ok to use pejorative terms that put down entire groups of people.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't want my kids talking like that - and I don't want to pick up talking like that.