Today’s post is from special guest blogger Jennifer Bassett. Yep, my amazing (and most babe-alicious) wife. This is really great stuff, folks.
Joe and I (and Caribeth) have been doing a 21-day fast searching for God’s plan and for Him to move on our behalf (among other things). Caribeth has been fasting from sugar while Joe and I have been doing the fruits & veggies only Daniel Fast. It’s been awesome! Among the incredible benefits of this fast are things like finding out that Jacksonville has an amazing Farmer’s Market, we can live without meat, dairy and sugar, making up new veggie dishes is fun, and “resolve” is a powerful character trait when we seek God’s clarity for our lives.
I believe that a big part of the clarity that one receives from fasting is the fact that the enemy hates our resolve to do it and begins to really press our buttons and bring to mind our failings and unworthiness. Which backfires as we humble ourselves further before the King of kings and beat back the enemy with a “pressing on toward the goal” stick. Our faith and trust (which always go hand in hand) are exercised, and our appetite for things unseen becomes insatiable. He truly becomes our Portion.
While studying Daniel last night, I had a revvie. We were asked how we thought Daniel must have felt as he watched the captivity of Israel taking place before his young eyes. Many answered, “scared, lonely, worried.” But God revealed to me the thought that Daniel knew what was to come. The prophecies had been told for generations. This was the heritage that he lived. I wondered though, did any of them live like it was going to happen at any moment? Maybe at first, like when a hurricane is forcast – we all stock up on water and essentials and get our homes in order. Certain things become a priority and others fall by the wayside. But, what if that hurricane wasn’t coming for generations?
We talk about the “trumpet call” and longing for Jesus’ return. We see the signs everyday. But I know I don’t live like it may happen tomorrow. What would I risk if I believed His return was imminent? I tell you what I WOULDN’T do. I wouldn’t be letting Satan mess with me. I wouldn’t take his mind games about what others think or are saying about me. I wouldn’t let him play me like he does, allowing myself to wallow in the what-ifs and replaying moments in my mind that i had no control over. I wouldn’t fear others’ opinions more than God’s. And I certainly wouldn’t mourn over the loss of the things of this earth.
I would risk it all for the glory of His name, and love like I’ve never been hurt. I would walk with my head held high like a daughter of the King should walk, and I would worship Him unabashedly! I would dance like David danced and jump for JOY!
The enemy is defeated! The victory is won! The captives have been set free! Mourning is over…it’s time to take off the sack cloth and ashes, stand up, and feast at the King’s table.
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” John 3:17
Today’s post was to be a marvelous tome expounding on the impact of our personal testimony; how our personal, life-changing experience can’t be impuned and how our radical experience with Jesus can literally destroy all the logical, self-aggrandizing, over-confident, arrogant arguments that stand against the completely unreasonable, yet complete truth, of the Gospel.
It was truly literature of epic proportions!
Alas, my computer insisted on an automatic restart and my new fancy-dancy blogging software with the draft auto-save feature…well, didn’t. After writing well over 450 words of world changing prose it only saved the first half-paragraph.
So in lieu of the greatest defense of the Gospel ever written I’m posting an old, crusy joke. It just seems appropriate. I’ll rewrite “the greatest blog ever written” after I finish pouting.
Jesus and Satan got into an argument over which of them was the better computer programmer.
Finally, God got tired of the bickering and told them that he would judge a contest between them. They each had four hours to write the best program they could, and then God would decide the winner.
Well, they both got right down to business, and wrote lines and lines and lines of code. Both wrote exquisite lines of code. Bits and bytes flew across the universe with brilliance. Each created code in languages old and new; COBAL, C++, HTML, Java…even some that “no eye had seen and no ear had heard. It was the most marvelous display of cross-platform compiling ever witnessed.
But, just before the four hours were up there was a flash of lightning and a tremendous clap of thunder. The lights flickered, the power faltered, and both computer screens went dead.
When power was restored, God declared that time was up and asked to see the results of their work. Jesus flipped on his computer and displayed the most elegant program you could imagine, with beautiful architecture and wonderful syllogisms, triumphs of multimedia sound and pictures — all kinds of bells and whistles.
God asked Satan what he had created, but Satan dejectedly replied, “I’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing. My program was twice as good as that, but I lost it all when the power went out. Jesus must have cheated. How could he still have such a great program?”
To which God replied, “Silly Evil One, everybody knows — Jesus Saves.”
Please keep your moans to yourself.
“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt…”, “…Pharoah summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested.’” Exodus 12:29 & 31
Ten plagues it took for Pharaoh to change his mind: blood, frogs, gnats, flies, dead livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the firstborn.
A few days ago I wrote that the reason Moses asked for the people of Israel to be let go was to go in the desert to worship (“Worship in the Desert“). Repeatedly God told Moses to make that request of Pharaoh. Repeatedly God let Moses in on the fact that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart and that the request would be denied. But, Moses dutifully confronted Pharaoh knowing full well that it was a fool’s errand.
For those of you that follow my blog you know that I have a category of posts about scripture passages that are confusing to me or, frankly, I just “don’t get.” It doesn’t mean that I don’t accept them as the inerrant word of God, but I just don’t understand why God put them there…yet.
This is one of them. I have a hard time figuring out why God would purposely harden someone’s heart. I can consider it in my head, but my heart doesn’t quite wrap all the way around it. I understand, intellectually, that God used all of the plagues and the deliverance of the Hebrews from them for His glory, but my heart feels there must have been a better way. Obviously, there wasn’t a better way because if there was God would have done it that way. But, something nags at me that there must be more. I want just a glimpse of God’s thinking. I echo the words of Einstein, “I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are mere details.”
And then, there it is. Einstein…physics…a piece of the puzzle. Particularly, the law of conservation of energy. It states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed. It simply becomes a different form of energy: kinetic may become potential or heat become light, but energy cannot be created from nothing or annihilated to nothing.
God wanted the Hebrews to be free. While some biblical scholars don’t believe they were slaves in the traditional sense of being owned by individual slave owners, the Hebrew words used to describe them and their forced labor certainly implies a sub-human status in Egyptian society. Based on the Egyptians’ treatment of the Hebrews it’s not difficult to imagine them being regarded as possessions or tools as oppossed to living, breathing beings.
In short, the Egyptians regarded God’s chosen people equally useful either alive as forced-laborers or dead as fertilizer for their crops. Let’s go with the latter, for now.
If we regard the captive Hebrews as lifeless possessions exploited at the whim of the Egyptians, then freedom for them to worship in the desert meant “life” to them. In fact, in Exodus 6:6 God says, “…I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm…” Redeemed here is “ga^al” which could be translated as ”to redeem individuals from death.”
Are you still with me? Life is free…life is passionate…life is energy. Life without freedom…life without passion…life without energy is, at the risk of being obvious, dead. According to the law of conservation of energy if the Hebrews were to be set free from captivity, to come “alive”, then someone had to die. In this case, it was the firstborn of the Egyptians; in particular the firstborn of the King or Pharaoh that had to die.
Now, I know that this doesn’t answer my initial question of why the first nine plagues were necessary, but it does help with why the last one was. In order for someone to be free to live (spiritually), someone must die (spiritually).
If we jump into Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine and speed from the Old Testament to the New Testament we find the same law of physics applies. Only now it’s God’s Son, the Firstborn of The King, that died so that others could be free to live. And, Jesus’ passionate love for us was so full of ”infinite energy” that His death was more than enough in exchange for the life of every man, woman and child in the world! But, He had to die so that we could live. And, we get to die to ourselves so that He can live through us. Jesus didn’t come to make people better, He came to bring dead people to life (please see earlier ”Worship in the Desert“ regarding “have to” and “get to”) .
And, “Jesus-life” is freedom. Before He brings us to life we’re just dead, possessions being exploited by some slavemaster: lust, drugs, porn, money, power, status, control…whatever it is it keeps us dead, it keeps us captive so that we can’t “go to the desert to worship the Lord.” Someone had to die so that I could live. Jesus was that someone. He died so that I could be free to worship.
That’s “why worship.” Worship isn’t to set me free; it’s because I am free. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Free to worship!