Hear This and Understand

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted: but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” – Isaiah 40:28-31 (ESV).

When I was a classroom teacher I’m sure I often said to my students, “Now hear this, remember this, and if you don’t understand, please ask me and I will explain again.” As a teacher, I soon became aware that they sometimes tried to distract me from further instruction by having me explain yet again something that they probably understood. They, in their “student wiseness” had learned that they might distract me from going to something new and harder by reviewing again what they had already learned. Students are, as we say, “like that.” And teachers, too, are known to “belabor points.” We have examples in the Bible where God had to “reteach” believers, over and over again.

The beautiful passage, our focal verses for today, was preceded by a pointed question by Isaiah the prophet, speaking on behalf of the Lord God, asking the people: “Why do you say ”My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God?” (Isaiah 40:27). And then come the question and declaration (and I paraphrase): Have you not heard and known? God is everlasting. He is the Creator. He has no tendency at all to faint or grow weary. He knows everything about us because His wisdom is all-encompassing. He strengthens the faint and empowers those who are without stamina. We know that even youth and young men seek to outstretch their energy and grow faint. But here is great news for all of you: Those who wait for God to empower you will have strength renewed. Think of the mighty eagle soaring through the airwaves. They mount up with such ease and accomplishment. To fly is their God-given ability. And to fly with grace and expertise is their practiced manner. Runners, likewise, who persist and practice learn to set their pace, racing without undue weariness because they master speed and breathe properly. In like manner, those who walk can learn to walk without fainting.

The message in Isaiah chapters 40 through 66 was written by Isaiah to Israelite captives in Babylonian exile. They were naturally sad, discouraged and disheartened. God’s people were under worldly domination of a pagan king and they were in a strange land. They needed to be reminded of God’s power and their allegiance, still, to Him. “Hear this and understand” was a clarion call to know without a doubt that circumstances do not have to defeat God’s people.

Even in physical bondage the heart can know spiritual freedom and hope. In our weaknesses, God’s strength gives sufficiency. Waiting for the Lord is the best time possible to renew strength and to anticipate what God’s power in and through you will accomplish. Author Squire Rushnell in his book When God Winks at You proposes that there are “no coincidences with God,” but that God-winks are planned by Him for our “ah-ha” moments! His thesis is that God speaks directly to us through the power of coincidence. [New York; MIF Books, 2006]. When the Israelites in Babylonian bondage saw an eagle soar, it was a reminder (not a coincidence) of God’s power and care for them. Let us practice in everyday life seeing, hearing, and understanding what God is teaching us of His incomparable truths.

–Ethelene Dyer Jones 10.18.2015

Trusting the Lord’s Plans

“ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.’” –Jeremiah 29:11-14 (ESV)

The situation for the promises found in the focal verses from Jeremiah 29:11-14 is a letter written by Jeremiah the prophet (inspired by God) to the Jewish exiles taken in 597 B. C. to Babylon. He wrote the letter to reassure the exiles that God had not abandoned nor forgotten them. The letter, in addition to being sent to the exiles in Babylon, was also circulated to the scattered and discouraged remnant remaining in Judah. 

 

He advised the exiles to make the best of the situation they were in. They were encouraged to build houses (imagine their being able to do this in exile!), plant gardens, get married, have children. The general intent was to encourage them to stay strong and look forward to being delivered, even though they would be seventy years in exile. We know from how life is that many who went into exile would meet death before freedom came and the people could return to Jerusalem. But Jeremiah wanted to infuse them with hope and to assure them that God had a future and a hope planned for them.

Jeremiah encouraged the people to remain prayerful, to seek the Lord sincerely (with all the heart) and find Him. Just because they were out of their homeland did not mean that God had abandoned them. And they were to remember with certainty that God had plans for them, “to give them a future and a hope.” When anyone loses hope he cannot hold on, cannot aspire to better prospects or to a brighter future. God who holds the future, knows what our future is.

And God declared through Jeremiah that His plans for His called-out people’s purpose was “a future and a hope.”

Maybe we have had to “go into exile,” to go away from familiar places we have loved and which have been home. It is not easy to pull up roots and relocate, to “start anew” in an unfamiliar place. Or maybe our exile is from illness or some debility that prevents our doing the work or taking on the pursuits we once enjoyed. These exiles are hard, but they are not the end of the road for us. “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord” (v. 11). Isn’t it a remarkable thought to consider that God has plans for our future and these include our welfare?

Couple this wonderful promise from Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles with Jesus’ admonition in the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:34, ESV).

Bible teacher Dr. Warren Wiersbe stated of Jeremiah 29:11: “God thinks about you personally and is planning for you. You need not fear the future.” Let us latch onto the promise in the verse and change any anxiety we have to hope and thanksgiving that even our future is secured by God Almighty. –Ethelene Dyer Jones. October 11, 2015.

Thoughts on Marriage

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm all the days of her life.” –Proverbs 31:10-12. “Let marriage be held in honor among all.” –Hebrews 13:4a (ESV).

I enjoy weddings—the beauty, sacredness and promise of love that surrounds them. God ordained that “man should not be alone” and so He “made an helpmeet for him.” (See Genesis 2:18). The family was the first institution God ordained following the creation.

In the beautiful Garden of Eden the first marriage ceremony was presided over by God Himself. When Adam beheld Eve, the wife God had created for him, he exclaimed:
 

This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

She shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of man.” (Genesis 2:23).

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24).

Saturday, October 3, 2015 was the wedding of my eldest grandson, Brian David Jones to his beautiful bride, Amanda Owens. The wedding was the sacred, solemn, beautiful ceremony one likes to attend and to witness. I remembered how Brian David had come, the first grandchild of seven, and from the beginning had been a winsome, bright, engaging little boy, beloved and loveable. Here he stood, a handsome man, mature in years, pledging to “love, honor and cherish” Amanda his bride, “as long as they both should live.” As I enjoyed the solemnity of the vows spoken and the beauty of the ceremony’s setting, I prayed that God would bless the union of Brian David and Amanda and give them love deep enough to transcend challenges and strength strong enough to meet whatever life brought their way.

The lines of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet kept hammering at the edges of my mind and I made the poem a part of my prayer for this newly-wed couple, my beloved grandson and his bride:

           Let me not to the marriage of true minds

           Admit impediments. Love is not love

           Which alters when alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove;

O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks to tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me prov’d

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d. –William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

May God’s graciousness and love guide and secure this marriage. –Ethelene Dyer Jones 10.04.2015

The Importance of Family in God’s Plan

“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 (ESV).

Pope Francis in his tour of America this week participated in a mammoth “Festival of Families” in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 26, 2015. In his address before the masses of people, and following the six testimonials by family members who shared their family and spiritual journeys, Pope Frances said in his homily, “The family is the furnace of hope.”

He encouraged families to remember how God the Creator provided for the family in the Creation and told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. The family was the very first institution on earth. Imagine the beauty and exhilaration of that first dwelling place, Eden, a place made especially for the family God had created. All was well until temptation came and Adam and Eve succumbed to the deceit of Satan. Their wrong decision cost them their residence in Eden. And ever after, man has subsisted by toil troubled by the conditions initiated by wrong choices and the presence of evil in his nature.

But hope came—for individuals and for the family unit—when Jesus Christ came to earth to provide the propitiation for man’s sin. Pope Francis painted a good picture of the family unit when he said, “The family is the furnace of hope.” Paul wrote: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2). 

Paul further in Ephesians wrote of Christ, the head of the church, as the bridegroom, and the church (believers) as the bride. This analogy shows the sacredness of the marriage relationship and the importance of keeping vows intact and family as a foremost institution of God’s intention for man and woman, His highest creation. Therefore, “Husbands, love you wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” –Ephesians 5:25-33 (ESV). 

Families are in grave danger today. Divorce rates are astronomical. Let us reconsider the sacredness of the marriage vows and the mission God intended for the family. We need furnaces of hope where the light of God’s love ignites holy teaching, holy living and holy commitment to the values and solidarity of the family. Pray that in your family this may be your personal mission. -Ethelene Dyer Jones -09.27.2015

A Day for Rest and Worship

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. “ –Exodus 20:8-11 (ESV)

In the first statement of this commandment recorded in Exodus 20:8-11, a reason for rest on the seventh day of the week is in remembrance of God’s resting after He had completed creation. For the second listing of the commandment about the Sabbath, see Deuteronomy 5:12:14. In it a reason for keeping the Sabbath is in remembrance of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egyptian bondage. In the wilderness wanderings, it was forbidden that the people gather manna on the seventh day but that they gather enough on the sixth day to last for two days. It is interesting to note that a system of working six days had already been established by the time the Ten Commandments were given. This was as God had done in creating the heaven and the earth and all within them. On the seventh day God rested. It was beneficial that man, too, rest on the seventh day. The seventh day became a day of worship as well as a day of rest. 

 

Leviticus states that a ‘holy convocation’ (for worship) was to be declared for the Sabbath day.  Thus worship began to be observed on the Sabbath Day. In the New Testament we read that Jesus went to the synagogue on the Sabbath Day to worship: “And He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up. And as was His custom, He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He stood up to read” (Luke 4:16). Also in the New Testament, we learn that Christians began to observe the first day of the week as a day holy unto the Lord and for worship, in commemoration of the Resurrection of the Lord on the first day of the week: “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked to them…” (Acts 20:7a). “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,” wrote John in Revelation 1:10a.

Why did the observance of the Sabbath become so burdened down with “thou shalt nots” for Jewish worshipers? The observance of the Sabbath became somewhat the heart of the law. Prohibitions became burdensome. Some, like tying and untying a knot (as work) were enforced, and others as well were added to what was permitted and not permitted. By Jesus’ day, the practice of keeping account of Sabbath rule-breaking was so prevalent that Jesus was prompted to say: “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). This occurred after his disciples, hungry on the Sabbath, plucked some grain from a field they passed and were criticized. Lest anyone think they were “stealing,” as well as plucking grain (working) on the Sabbath, the Deuteronomic law allowed for anyone hungry to gather enough grain from a field to assuage hunger (see Deuteronomy 23:25). 

 

What shall we say of the Sabbath as it relates to Christian practice? Sunday, the first day of the week, is observed as a day of rest and worship. We are to consider the day set aside for the work of the Lord and for gathering in assembly to study God’s word and worship. Our society has made work on Sunday almost a necessity and a way of life. We ought to seek a time to set aside for worship and a day to rest. Hebrews 4:1-11 speaks of the Sabbath Day as a foretaste of the heavenly rest to come when we are gathered into the eternal kingdom. We should say with conviction about Sunday and the day of corporate worship: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord” (Psalm 122:1). -Ethelene Dyer Jones 09.20.2015

Praying for Needs and Using Scriptural Promises

“Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, And pity His people. The Lord will answer and say to His people, ‘Behold I will send you grain and new wine and oil, And you will be satisfied by them; I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.’ “ –Joel 2:18-19. “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, And praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has dealt wondrously with you: And My people shall never be put to shame.” –Joel 2:26-27 (NKJV).

The conditions under which Joel the prophet spoke are agreed by most Bible scholars to be after the exile to Babylon (586 B. C) because the exile is mentioned as a past event (see Joel 3:2-3), Jerusalem had been conquered (3:17), and no kings are mentioned as ruling in either Judah or Israel at the time of writing.

Times were hard, indeed, for Joel mentions a plague of locusts that decimated the crops, trees, and wine, and the people did not have anything to take as offerings as they went to worship. The message of Joel is a lament for the hard conditions, yet through the perilous times, he lends hope by affirming that the Lord will hear their cries, will send grain, new wine and oil, and they will be satisfied. One of the best promises is that the Lord will take away the reproach with which other nations regard the people who belong to the Lord. They will not want for basic needs like food and shelter, because the Lord will deal wondrously with them in restoration and meeting needs.

I have just seen the Christian movie, “War Room.” The emphasis of the well written script, the story line and movement of the movie is that Christians win victories as they sincerely turn to the Lord in prayer. Prayer is not an option but a necessity if the Christian wants victory over Satan and steadfastness in living. The importance of using the Word of God as a guide to prayer is also prominently emphasized. An older Christian woman is able to guide a troubled younger nominal Christian woman to establish her own prayer closet and be honest in prayer and intercession. Elizabeth, the major younger character, uses scriptural promises to claim victory over challenges that only the power of God can change.

In “Acts of Dependence: Praying for Our Needs,” Joni Eareckson Tada who learned to live with her paraplegic condition following a diving accident states: “Two things God honors above all else: His name and His Word” [quoted in A Life of Prayer. Garden City, NY: Crossings Books, 2004, p. 99]. From many places in the Scripture, we learn of the greatness of God’s name. Psalm 145:1-3 magnifies His name and teaches us to Honor Him: “I will extol You, my God, O King; And I will bless Your name forever and ever. Every day I will bless You, And I will praise Your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; And His greatness is unsearchable.” From John 1:1-3 we learn the importance of the Word.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. The Word is Jesus Christ who came to earth to reveal God the Father. Since God honors His name and His Word, we pray “in Jesus’ name.” “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” To pray in Jesus’ name means that we are seeking His will and that we will be submissive to His authority.

Try using Scripture as you pray. You will be talking in “God’s language” and conforming your mind to His will and His way as His word teaches us to do in Romans 12:2: “not being conformed to this world but being transformed by the renewing of our minds…to the will of God.” -Ethelene Dyer Jones 10.13.2015.

Work to Honor God

“Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” –Ecclesiastes 9:10a (NKJV)

“For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: ‘If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.’ ” -1 Thessalonians 3:10 (NKJV).

Recently I read an article by T. R. McNeal on the theology of work. He stated that God is a working God who worked to create the universe and all that is in it. He works likewise to sustain it. Mankind, created in God’s image, was place on the earth to work. “Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15). Labor did not come about due to man’s fall. Man was already working to cultivate the earth and make it produce. After man became rebellious and sinned by partaking of what God told him to leave alone, Adam and Eve were expelled from the beautiful Garden of Eden, and work became complicated. Because of the fall, “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life…In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.” (Genesis 3:17b, 19a. NKJV). The commission made to Adam ages ago to work and subdue the earth still remains in force. Today, agriculture is not the main mode of work. Mankind is engaged in work that is physical, social, cultural and spiritual in nature. But whatever we do to make a living, God’s people are to practice integrity in work. We are to work to honor God and to help mankind.

My mother and father were strong proponents of the words from Ecclesiastes 9:10a: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” No shoddiness in work habits and products from labor were allowed. Another adage they practiced, akin to the lesson from “the preacher” in Ecclesiastes: “If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing right.” On the farm, we saw living proof of what Paul wrote about in 2 Thessalonians 3:10: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.” Our theology of work also practiced “Give an honest day’s work for a day’s wage.” With these teachings learned early in life given orally and practiced by both precept and example, I gratefully learned the value and necessity for work and that Christians should strive to be honest, conscientious and productive in their work.

Another important aspect of work—whatever we do to make a living—is to view our labor first and foremost as serving God. For a Christian, the primary aim of any type of work is ministry to and for others. Christians may work on a farm, in an office, teach, administer, labor. Jesus taught that we are salt and light, His representatives in the workplace. Think of the difference we can make if we apply a sound theology of work in whatever we do. Spend time thinking about the sacredness of your work and what God expects you to do and to be through your work. Pray that whatever your hands find to do in the work-a-day world that God will be honored and that you and others will be blessed by your labor. At this Labor Day weekend (and every day), thank God for the privilege of work.

–Ethelene Dyer Jones 09.06.2015