Chip Shots

As we slog our way through Israel's inevitable demise, we can't help but be a bit discouraged. King Solomon, who should have known better, foolishly turned his heart away from God, and toward the gods of his surrounding culture. As a result, when he died in 931 B.C. the kingdom was torn in two (Israel in the north, and Judah in the south). The northern kingdom, led by Jeroboam and a host of other kings, fell into idolatry immediately. Its political alliances and spiritual apostasy caused it to decline quickly. By 720 B.C., it was vanquished by Assyria and the ten northern tribes of Israel were lost forever. The southern kingdom, led by Solomon’s son Rehoboam, fared a bit better. By virtue of God’s promise to David, there was a natural succession through David’s line, leading to more stability. In addition, unlike the north, some of the southern kings remained faithful to God. But the end result was the same: By 606 B.C., the first of three deportations to Babylon ended the sove...

Elijah had had enough. He was ready to quit. After all, what more could he do? The nation was going down the tubes, and no one, not even God, seemed to care.  Exhausted, Elijah sat in the shade of a broom tree. It was merely a shrub, sometimes large enough to provide a bit of shade, but a pathetic place to find rest.  But rest was what he needed, and the broom tree would have to do. He’d been running away from wicked Queen Jezebel all day long. It was a desert a lot like ours. He was hot. He was tired. He was hungry. Out of gas, out of ideas, and out of sorts. “I have had enough,” he said, and he went to sleep in what little shade he could find. Ever felt like Elijah?  You have, you do, or you will. Sometimes, we’ve just had enough.  We thought the plan was good, but nothing turned out right. We thought we’d have a reasonable conversation, but all we did was fight. We thought we’d turned a corner, but there was just another red light. “I have had enough,” we say, and...

In a shocking series of events, King David, the one called "a man after God's own heart," was guilty of adultery and murder.  David had an affair with the wife of one of his best friends. When she became pregnant, he covered it up by having his friend killed on the battlefield. (You can read about it in 2 Samuel 11.) It is a sad and sordid story. His failure reminds us that even the best of us is capable of the worst of us. Every human being carries in himself or herself the highest aspirations and the lowest degradations possible. This truth is at the core of the biblical story: Humanity is beautiful; humanity is broken; humanity needs rescue.  There is only one Hero in the Bible. His name is Jesus, God-in-the-Flesh, the true Son of David. Troubling though it is, David's affair is a poignant reminder that God’s grace is generously given to all of us. Not a one of us is so low as to be beyond it, and none of us is so high as to be above it.  David’s failure reminds us...

  Mephibosheth thought he was a dead man. But instead of a sentence of death, he received a new lease on life.  He was the grandson of King Saul, who, along with his father Jonathan, had died in battle fifteen years earlier. At the time, Mephibosheth was only five years old. Hearing the news, his nurse hurriedly gathered him up in order to flee to a safe place. After all, everyone knew what would happen next: the new king would kill all of Saul’s family in order to solidify his leadership. Unfortunately, in her rush to save the child, she was careless. She dropped him, and Mephibosheth was maimed for life (2 Samuel 4). Now he was not merely a refugee; he was a cripple. When we meet him a few chapters later, he is hiding in the land of Lo-debar, which means, fittingly, “a desolate place.” He is Saul’s only living relative, an orphan condemned to living a broken life in a barren place. That’s were we find him in 2 Samuel 9. David is well-established as the king of Israel. The wa...

As the eighth son of Jesse, David's prospects were small.  When Samuel came in secret to anoint the next king of Israel from Jesse's family, David wasn’t even invited to meet the famous priest; he was left outdoors, tending to the sheep. Jesse's oldest son, Eliab, was brought before Samuel, who thought for sure he was the king God had chosen to lead Israel. After all, he was the first-born, nice looking, and tall of stature.  But God had other ideas. “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature," he said, "because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  One by one the sons were brought to Samuel, but the Lord rejected them all. Asked if he had any additional sons, Jesse responded in tones which must have sounded like this: “Well, there’s the runt of the litter; he’s out doing chores.” Like Cinderella, he wasn’t invited to the party.  But David was God’s man to...

When last we saw the children of Israel (in the book of Judges), they were in grave danger of losing their identity as God’s people. Even their national heroes had little regard for the God who had called them, rescued them, and returned them to their homeland. It is a pretty pathetic picture.  In contrast to this, the lovely little book of Ruth reminds us that even in the midst of national chaos, individual families were serious about following God. Ruth’s beautiful family story is followed by another family who refused to cave in to the chaotic culture around them. We meet them in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel: Their names are Elkanah and Hannah.  Like Ruth and Boaz before them, they were neither judges nor one of the priestly families. There was nothing special about them. But they were devoted to one another, to the God of Israel, and like Ruth, they had a child who would bring deliverance to Israel. Neither of these parents had any clue that their children would play s...

I may as well admit it: Judges is my least favorite book in the Bible. The violence is depressing. The unfaithfulness of Israel is disheartening. The cycle of rebellion, slavery and rescue -- repeat -- is discouraging. Why is this book in the Bible? In part, it provides a chronological bridge between Joshua’s conquest and Israel's monarchy in 1 Samuel. In addition, it shows how desperately the people of God need the Ultimate Deliverer who will bring final salvation. But that doesn’t change the fact that Judges is a dark book. As much as we’d like to cheer for Left-handed Ehud, Daring Deborah, Mighty Gideon, or Strongman Samson, their victories do little to lighten the heart. In fact, many of the judges are scarcely better than the people they war against. We almost find ourselves longing for the days when they were wandering in hope of the Promised Land. The prescient warnings of Moses (in Deuteronomy) and Joshua (in Joshua 23-24) certainly hit their mark: Once safely in their inhe...

When we meet Caleb in today’s reading, he is eighty-five years old. Forty years have passed since he was one of only two spies who insisted that the children of Israel could – and should – storm the Promised Land. (The other was Joshua, his current Commander-in-Chief.) Together with ten other spies they’d done a reconnaissance mission in preparation for their invasion into Canaan. As the Lord had promised, they discovered the land to be bountiful and beautiful. “It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit,” they said, displaying clusters of grapes so large that they carried them on poles between them (Numbers 13:23-27). It was a good land indeed– everything God had promised and more. At last, they had reached the Promised Land! Yes, there were fortified cities there. Yes, there were powerful people there. Some even called them “giants.” But hadn’t the Lord brought them out of Egypt, down to Mount Sinai, and over to Canaan in order to give them their ancestral land? Was not this...

If you ask many Christians what the Bible says about the poor, there’s a good chance they will mention this text: "Jesus said, 'You always have the poor with you'" (Mark 14:7).  Unfortunately, this verse is often misinterpreted. People assume Jesus is saying it doesn’t really matter if we serve the poor or not, for there will always be plenty of them among us. This is definitely NOT what Jesus meant. The Bible is filled with admonitions regarding our responsibility for the poor, both personally and corporately.  However, many American Christians are oblivious to their God-given mandate to serve the poor. They fail to realize that Jesus' words quoted above are taken from Deuteronomy 15:11, which says, “For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’” Clearly, the presence of the poor among us is not meant to excuse us from serving them. In fact, ...

"What stands out to you as you read the book of Deuteronomy?"  I asked this question of our small group several years ago. One person was quick to respond: “Why does it keep saying, ‘The Lord your God’?” She was right to notice this. A variation of "The  Lord  your God" occurs 254 times in Deuteronomy. That’s TEN times more than almost any other book in the Bible. Clearly, Moses had an important point to make. He wanted his hearers (and readers) to never forget that the God who had rescued and brought them to the Promised Land was in fact, “the Lord your God.” This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it should be. After all, it was a revolutionary idea among ancient peoples.  In every other culture, gods were distant deities, unpredictable, and capricious. Appeasing them was a guessing game at best. There certainly was no idea of a personal relationship with the gods, no sense of a God who cared about them, a God who was personally committed to them. Until t...

A recurrent theme in Numbers is this question: “Who’s in charge here?”  It begins on a high note. The tabernacle and its furnishings are completed as per God’s instructions. Aaron and the priests are consecrated accordingly.  The glory of God, before seen only on the mountain amid thunder and lightning, comes to rest in the tabernacle. They observe their second Passover with the memory of their deliverance from Pharaoh still fresh in their minds.  The motley crew who straggled out of Egypt a year earlier is now a mighty army, marching together under the standard of God’s glory. The Ark of the Covenant, symbol of God’s presence, leads the way.  It is an impressive sight. They are assembled in camps by tribe, three abreast, surrounding the portable tent of meeting. This always makes me think of the "canvas cathedral" where we worshiped for several years, as you old-timers will recall, and pictured above. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” Aaron says, a beautiful benedi...

Church at the Chip, 11/4/2012 Buried in the midst of a lot of detail about the consecration of Israel’s priests is a jewel we might miss if we are not careful:  “There I will meet with the people of Israel.... I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God.  And they shall know that I am the Lord their God,  who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them.  (Exodus 29:43-46) Did you see it? “There I will meet with the people…. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God... that I might dwell among them.” Do you realize how beautiful this is? At last, God will live among his people. What a day this would be! From the time Adam and Eve first ate the forbidden fruit, God had been seeking a way to be with his beloved children. Remember? Although made in God’s image, disobedience ruptured their relationship with God. The image was cracked. An epic story of love lost and found began that day. Somehow, someway, someda...

The Passover meal is at the heart of the Jewish faith tradition. In slightly revised form, it is also one of the central observance of the Christian faith. In both cases, it involves the death of an innocent victim. Wait a minute! "The death of an innocent victim"? Yes. Both the Jewish Passover and the Christian Eucharist memorialize a sacrificial death. In the first instance, it involves the death of a perfectly spotless lamb, whose life was taken to set the Israelites free. In the second, it involves the death of the perfectly spotless Lamb of God, whose life was given to set humanity free. Christians and Jews find this a meaningful act of worship, a powerful reminder of God’s rescuing love. But how does it look from the outside? For many, it raises a lot of difficult questions. For example: Why should the innocent suffer for the guilty? Isn’t sacrificial death a barbaric practice that should be abandoned in the face of modern sensibilities? And if, as is generally asserte...

Jacob is a complicated biblical character, a man whose relationship with God was rocky at best.  We first meet him grabbing his twin brother’s heel while they are being born, as if to say, “Me First!” His name means, literally, “He who grasps the heel.”  What began at birth continued throughout his life. However, despite his character flaws, Jacob is the one to whom God promised his covenant blessing.  But he is unwilling to trust God work to things out in his own way. He tricks his older brother out of his birthright. Then he tricks his father out of the family blessing.  As a result, fearing for his safety, he must seek his fortune elsewhere. He runs away to his grandfather's ancestral land. There he finds the love of his life, his cousin Rachel — and the bane of his life, her father, Laban. In his unscrupulous uncle, Jacob seems to have met his match. Laban tricks Jacob into marrying his older daughter Leah, rather than her beautiful sister, Rachel. The trickster ...

The first few chapters of Genesis have flown by, but they are incredibly important to the rest of the story. Like the opening credits to Star Wars, they set the stage for the action to follow. What have we learned thus far? First, we discovered that the world is here as a result of God’s loving design. It is not the by-product of a war between the gods (as per ancient Babylonian and Egyptian creation myths), nor is it merely an accident of nature (as per contemporary secular materialism). No. By whatever means God chose to do it, it was God who formed day and night, the sky, the sea, and the land. It was God who filled these with planets and stars, with fish and fowl, and with plants and animals. And it was God who breathed life into humanity, giving us the privilege of caring for his creation as his image bearers on the earth. Next, we have learned that the root of this world’s problems are found in humanity’s desire to live life on our own terms. Rather than relying on the God who ma...

Introducing  "One Story that Leads to Jesus,"  our year-long trek through the Bible. To join us in this adventure, first download the  YouVersion  App. After you have done so, click this  link . It will take you directly to the appropriate plan.  During the course of the year, we will send reflections on the section of scripture we'll be reading each week. Here is the first installment:   An Epic Adventure Think of the Bible as a four-act play, an epic drama describing God’s love affair with the world he created and the people he made.  Yes, it is ancient. Yes, it is sometimes obscure. Yes, it can be baffling. But it is worth it, for it tells the true story of the world: why we are here; what has gone wrong; what God has done to fix it; and how the story ends.  It is a story of beauty, of brokenness, of rescue and renewal. Act One: Beautiful Creation (Genesis 1-2) In the beautiful opening act of our story, we discover that creation ...