Church words

Boys, all my life I've been around church words.  Many of those words I spoke and still speak without really knowing what they mean.  Learning what those words really mean has been like giving a person with bad eyesight their first pair of glasses.  A beautiful world I never knew was behind those blurry church words.  I want to give you those glasses.  Although, in truth, I'm really not the one to open your eyes.  I trust the One who can and pray He will as I pass onto you what I've learned.

Sin:  In the Bible you'll read the word sin and you'll probably hear it spoken of in and out of church.  Sin is not just the bad things people do (although it is that too). In the Bible sin means:  to miss the mark.

When you guys were 6 and 8 (just this past year) we took you to a community fair thing.  One of the booths there was for archery.  A game and fish officer actually taught you how to hold a real bow and arrow and shoot it at a target.  And you got the opportunity to actually shoot that bow and arrow yourself.  You steadied your arrow, pulled back your bow, aimed at your bulls eye target and let go!  Some of your shots were great!  You actually hit the bulls eye.  But some of your shots were sin... they missed the mark.

Now, not hitting the bulls eye isn't sin in the way you and I hear the word sin.  We hear it and we think of being bad or guilty.  And that is true, sin does involve being bad and guilty.  But knowing that sin is first of all missing the mark helps to understand God's beautiful mark for you!  There is a mark.  There is a bulls eye.  There is a way you were made to be.  But like a defective arrow, you and I and all people live in such a way that misses the mark God made for us to hit.

What's the mark?  God made us to reveal His glory. (More church words, I know. We'll get to that.) Like a mirror reflects the image of the person looking in it, we were made to reflect the goodness, the rightness, the love, the beauty of God who made us. 

The Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:3.  Every person has missed the mark of being the glorious reflector of God he or she was made to be.  Even when we try really hard to do what's right we fail.  The fact that we have so many rules and laws and punishments shows that we are trying to keep the damage from our dangerously off-course lives contained.  Like wild arrows missing the target we hurt others, ourselves and the world around us.

Spend a few hours with a couple of two year olds and you'll see that we don't even have to learn how to miss the mark.  We do it automatically.  Its like its natural or normal for us to be selfish and hurt each other.  But its not normal.  Its fallen.  Its the natural rotted.  Its not the way we were created to be.  But its in us.  And like a little mold growing from the center of a delicious berry pie, its going to spread and ruin the whole of who we are.  Its leading to our total rottenness and destruction.  Like a silent but deadly cancer that leads to the certain death of its host, sin is in us all, and its result is death.

Death is not part of the original mark of God's creation.  Death came because of the first man's sin and has been past down in our nature ever since.  We all die.  Even while we live we experience the decay, the breakdown, the dying effects of sin.

Some people think its mean to say we sin or we're sinners.  I think it even more cruel to say this is the way we're supposed to be. There's an wonderful anticipation of something better when you can see that you sin because you are a sinner.  You're not a sinner because you do bad things, you do bad things because you're not what you were made to be.  The Savior of the World came to save sinners, not people who think they are what they're supposed to be.  You have to know you're lost before you can be found.  You have to know you're broken before you can be healed.  You have to know you sin before you can be saved.

This [is] a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. -1 Timothy 1:15

More preface: When you ask...

Boys, There's a place in Deuteronomy where Moses told the people of Israel to remember God and His commands and ways when they got to the land He promised them.  He told them to love God with all that they are and to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the ways of God and to pass onto their children all the commands of God by talking about them in everyday life, repeatedly.  He told them to be careful not to forget the LORD when they got to the land God promised, full of good food and houses and wells and vineyards.  He told them that a day would come when their children would ask what the meaning of all these rules and ways the LORD had told them to live by, and that they should tell their children about their salvation from Egypt- how God had rescued them with a "strong hand."

He told them that after God had brought them into this rich land and driven out their enemies and provided them with plenty that they shouldn't think that God did this for them because they were such good people. No! It wasn't because they were such good people, it was just because God chose them to show the rest of the fallen world His goodness and love.

This section of scripture inspires me to remember its my love for the Lord and my obedience to His word that leads you, my children, to ask "Why?"  And when you ask why may my answer be something that says, "Because Christ died for us!"

My life, and the Bible teaching I give you, should point you to our Redeemer.

Preface: What's all the hoopla about?

Sons, I want you to know what the Bible is all about more than I want you to know all about the Bible.  I want you to know what the big deal is.  Why do I insist on teaching you "God stories" so often?  Why does "everything" have to be about God?  What's all the hoopla about?

A very long time ago, when there were no computers, no Angry Birds, no McDonalds, no cars, no electricity, no flushing toilets, no air conditioning, no Internet- the Creator of the Universe came to earth to redeem the people He loved. Loves.

Redeem is a rich word... but we'll get to that in another chapter.

There were no Bibles then, but there were written stories kept and passed down from the previous 2000 plus years.  Stories that told the history, future and purpose of mankind and God's relationship to them. These stories weren't made up by people.  They were true accounts of things God did and said.  These are the stories we have in our Bibles now.  All those stories of things God did and said were unfolding the truth about the very meaning of life.  The meaning wasn't a sentence, or a paragraph or even a book.  The meaning was a Person. A Person who is the Word of God made human.

The Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father." 

The Son of God, the Word made flesh, is what the hoopla is all about.  He was named Jesus and He is the Savior of the world.  He is the meaning of life.  He is life.  He is the Word that all those words from thousands of years past were spelling.  He is the Word that tells the one true story.  The Bible is all about Jesus, the Savior of the world.

I pray that every time you read the Bible you would remember that the One who saves you said its all about HIM!  Learn of Him and you'll learn the meaning of life... what the hoopla is all about.

That same day two of Jesus' followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem.  As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them.  But God kept them from recognizing him.

He asked them, "What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?"

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. "What things?" Jesus asked.

"The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth," they said. "He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago. Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive! Some of our men ran out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said."

Then Jesus said to them, "You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures.  Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?"

Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.- Luke 24:13-27