Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....May 11, 2020
We continue this week in looking at our faith and the gifts God has given us to share that faith...
Peter gives us list of 8 simple characteristics that are so basic we tend to overlook them... but we do so at our own risk. Learn the value of the "simple" qualities of your faith.
Cecil B. DeMille was making one of his great epic movies. He had 6 cameras at various points to pick up the overall action and 5 other cameras set up to film plot developments involving major characters. The large cast had begun rehearsing the scene at 6am and they went through it 4 times.
Now it was late afternoon. The sun was setting & there was just enough light to get the shot done. DeMille looked over the panorama, saw that all was right, & gave the command for action.
One hundred extras charged up the hill; another hundred came storming down the same to hill to do mock battle. In another location Roman centurions lashed and shouted at 200 slaves who labored to move a huge stone monument toward its resting place.
Meanwhile the principal characters acted out their reactions on the hill. Their words were drowned out by the noise around them, but the dialogue was to be dubbed in later.
It took 15 minutes to complete the scene. When it was over, DeMille yelled, "Cut!" and turned to his assistant, all smiles. "That was great!" he said.
"It was, C.B.," the assistant yelled back. "It was fantastic! Everything went off perfectly!"
Enormously pleased, DeMille turned to face the head of the camera crew to find out if all the cameras had picked up what they had been assigned to film. He waved to the camera crew supervisor.
From the top of the hill, the camera supervisor waved back, raised his megaphone, and called out, "Ready when you are C.B!"
It was a great scene.
It was a perfect day
The lighting ideal
All of the actors & actresses performed their parts flawlessly
Everything worked just as it should… except there was something missing. Something had been overlooked. And because something had been overlooked, all their efforts were in vain.
Can you imagine how discouraging that must have been?
Can you imagine how frustrating it would be to invest your life into a project of that magnitude only to find that it has been for nothing.
I. Paul told us that that could happen to us as well:
“… no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,
his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” I Corinthians 3:11-15
It is possible for us to end up empty-handed on the day of judgment. To stand before God on that last day and have nothing to show for all the time I’ve been in church. Or Sunday School or Bible study.
Paul was telling us that if we build with wrong materials - we can still be saved – but our Christianity will be shown to be ineffective and unproductive
Howard Hendricks said, “I’ve never met a Christian who planned to have a mediocre life…."
He’d never known anyone who planned to build with wood, hay & stubble
He’d never known a Christian who meant to have nothing to show for their lives…
He said, “I’ve never met a Christian who planned to have a mediocre life but I’ve met plenty of mediocre Christians.”
Peter recognized that possible too… BUT he wrote that that didn’t have to happen to us. Peter tells us that if we develop 8 specific qualities in our lives, we will avoid being “…ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:8
Peter tells us that if we want to avoid being unproductive in our relationship with Jesus
If we want to avoid building with wood, hay and stubble,
If we want to have our Christianity count for something and mean something…
…then we need to:
“… add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.
· Faith
· Goodness
· Knowledge
· Self-control
· Perseverance
· Godliness
· Brotherly kindness
· Love
Now – take a good look at that list, is there anything there that is particularly hard to understand???
· Peter says we start with our Faith...
· Goodness - & we build on that faith by increasing our goodness, actions/thoughts
· Knowledge And we should strive to increase our knowledge of God and His word
· Self-control - We should be continually work on controlling our emotions and our actions
· Perseverance - We should stand firm and strong in difficult situations
· Godliness – we try to imitate God in our lives
· Brotherly kindness - you’re nice to people
· Love - Learn to love others like God loves you
It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need a Bible College education to grasp the substance of those terms.
But Peter warns us (vs. 5) that we need to “make every effort” to add these things to our lives.
We should strive to “possess these qualities in increasing measure” (vs. 8). In fact, he tells his readers in vs. 12: “I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have."
"And I will make every effort to see that after my departure you will always be able to remember these things." (vs. 15)
Now… why is that so important to Peter? Why does he stress that Christians should:
…make every effort to add these qualities to their lives
…and that we should possess these qualities in increasing measure
And why would Peter go to such lengths to remind Christians of the importance of these “simple” qualities
… even going so far to make sure they’d remember them after he’d died?
Why would Peter stress these "simple" qualities as if they were a life and death matter?
John Denver was a famous folk singer of the past generation… How many of you remember how he died?
He was flying his Ultra-lite one day and it crashed. As with all such tragedies, there was a great deal of investigation into the circumstances surrounding what happened to cause Denver’s plane to fall from the sky.
What they discovered was that his plane was an experimental aircraft. It had two gas tanks.
And because of the nature of how it was constructed the valve to change the tanks was located directly behind the pilot – and it required a wrench to turn the valve from one gas tank to the other.
From the crash site, it appeared that Denver’s 1st tank of gas had become empty and that he had been in the process of trying to switch tanks when his plane went down…
But it wouldn’t have made any difference had he succeeded – because the 2nd tank was empty.
John Denver had committed one of the most frequent errors in flying. He’d forgotten to check his tanks to see if they were full.
Denver had overlooked something very simple. And it cost him dearly.
What Peter is telling us is that we don’t want to overlook the basics of our Christianity EVEN IF they seem such simple things. Because to overlook them could cost us dearly as well.
· Faith
· Goodness
· Knowledge
· Self-control
· Perseverance
· Godliness
· Brotherly kindness
· Love
These are simple concepts – but they make all the difference on whether we’re living our faith in a productive and effective way… Or if we’re just spinning our wheels.
Don’t overlook them. Constantly examine your life to see if you can improve one characteristic or another of these
Now – how do we add these qualities to our lives? Well… practice is one way.
People sometimes ask musicians, how they got as good as we are on our musical instruments. Practice is a major portion of that. We have worked on our techniques until we were fairly satisfied with how they played.
But, now speaking for myself, practice can only go so far… after a while, practice can get a little old. It can get boring. There’s only so much entertainment value I get out of playing the guitar all by myself.
Putting your talents to work forces you to practice and improve on what you already know
Now, I’m not the best guitar player around. There are many people out there MUCH more talented than I am.
But, the talent I have is strengthened by forcing myself to do things with what skill I do have.
Several years back there was a talk show called the Merv Griffin Show. And on one of those shows, Merv Griffin had a powerful body builder on as a guest. During the interview, Merv asked, “Why do you develop those particular muscles?”
The body builder simply stepped forward and flexed a series of muscles from chest to calf. The audience applauded.
Griffin waited for the applause to die down and then again he asked “What do you use all those muscles for?” Again, the muscular specimen flexed, and biceps and triceps sprouted to impressive proportions.
There was an embarrassed silence as Griffin asked – one more time - “But what do you use those muscles for?”
The body builder looked at Merv Griffin in bewilderment. It suddenly occurred to him that he had no idea what good his muscles were.
Similarly, we need to ask ourselves the same kind of question:
What good is our Christianity?
Are we being effective and productive for Christ
What are we doing for Him right now?
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
The baby grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was two years old, and he ran all around the house. He pulled all the books off the shelves. He pulled all the food out of the refrigerator and he took his mother's watch and flushed it down the toilet. Sometimes his mother would say, "this kid is driving me CRAZY!"
But at night time, when that two-year-old was quiet, she opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor, looked up over the side of his bed; and if he was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she rocked him she sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
The little boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was nine years old. And he never wanted to come in for dinner, he never wanted to take a bath, and when grandma visited he always said bad words. Sometimes his mother wanted to sell him to the zoo!
But at night time, when he was asleep, the mother quietly opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep, she picked up that nine-year-old boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she rocked him she sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
The boy grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a teenager. He had strange friends and he wore strange clothes and he listened to strange music. Sometimes the mother felt like she was in a zoo!
But at night time, when that teenager was asleep, the mother opened the door to his room, crawled across the floor and looked up over the side of the bed. If he was really asleep she picked up that great big boy and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. While she rocked him she sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
That teenager grew. He grew and he grew and he grew. He grew until he was a grown-up man. He left home and got a house across town. But sometimes on dark nights the mother got into her car and drove across town. If all the lights in her son's house were out, she opened his bedroom window, crawled across the floor, and looked up over the side of his bed. If that great big man was really asleep she picked him up and rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she rocked him she sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
Well, that mother, she got older. She got older and older and older. One day she called up her son and said, "You'd better come see me because I'm very old and sick." So her son came to see her. When he came in the door she tried to sing the song. She sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always...
But she couldn't finish because she was too old and sick. The son went to his mother. He picked her up and rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And he sang this song:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my Mommy you'll be.
When the son came home that night, he stood for a long time at the top of the stairs. Then he went into the room where his very new baby daughter was sleeping. He picked her up in his arms and very slowly rocked her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while he rocked her he sang:
I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
We continue to look at the condensed overview version of the OT Books of the Bible
23. Isaiah
Isaiah preaches judgment and comfort for the nation of Israel. Isaiah preaches of the coming King who will rule Israel and the nations in justice and peace. He also looks forward to a special Servant of God: one who will fulfill all Israel’s duties and bear their sins.
24. Jeremiah
Jeremiah, the “weeping prophet,” warns Judah in the last years of the southern kingdom: he serves as a (largely ignored) guide to Judah as they fall into Babylonian captivity.
25. Lamentations (technically poetry)
This small collection of poems laments the fall of Jerusalem, but celebrates God’s faithfulness to his people.
26. Ezekiel
Ezekiel foresees the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and the judgment awaiting rebellious Judah. But he also gives us a glimpse of the new relationship God plans to make with His people.
27. Daniel
Daniel is a collection of stories ad visions that give us hope that God’s kingdom will eventually prevail over violent world goverments. (And yes, there’s a famous story about a lion’s den.)
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou