2 Timothy 4:2,3 “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires”

Last night I watched the film “Heist.” It was very depressing movie, wrapped up in an entertaining package. The story is about a group of criminals stealing a shipment of gold. It is a movie about backstabbing, about greed, about betrayal, and deception. At the end of the movie, the main character is driving off in his old beat up truck with the gold in the back. To get there, he had to lose a friend, lose his wife, and he can not ever return and see any of his old friends or acquaintances. He had to give up everything for that gold.

This morning I went to a church near to my apartment building. I walked into that church and I very nearly turned around and walked out. I walked into the church, and was approached by the greeters stationed at the “customer service” style counter in the middle of the atrium. Overstuffed chairs, tassels, expensive carpets, gilt mirrors and pictures, flowers, and just an overwhelming sense of opulence hit me. The praise music all referred to God in the third person and is best described by the phrase “happy clappy” The sermon was all about how God wants to bless us, and if we are truly following God, then everything will work out (sounds good so far) and if we are really sincere and really into God, then we won't have problems afflicting our every step. (Woah, wait, what?) The teaching today included “If we are not praising God louder than Satan is yelling at us, we can not succeed and overcome our problems...so if you are a quiet person, you had better learn to be loud fast.”

When we follow God, we are grounded in the word, checking everything we are taught against it. We raise our Bible high as the standard, the bar by which everything is measured. And yet, our human nature is so contrary to what God wants that we able to be sidetracked easily. People in general will believe something because they want to believe it. They will listen to a lie because it agrees with their own preconceptions or natural urges. We would rather think that we are in the right, than hear something that would challenge us further. We want to be “good” and so Satan finds it easy to teach “truth” as people want to hear it, and we as Christians will oftentimes hear this false truth and believe it because we want to.

Jeremiah complained that the people listened to false prophets who prophesied peace and earthly desires (Jeremiah 23:16-22) in fact, in verse 22, God says through Jeremiah “But if they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.”

Jeremiah. Paul, Peter, and Jude all dealt with it as did John (who most definitely wrote about it in his letters).

Be wary, your adversary the devil stalks about like a roaring lion. The only way to protect yourself from theology that sounds good and seems good, but is not and will take you away from our savior is to entrench yourself so deep in His Word that you will recognize any attempt to pervert the Gospel.

Hold a pattern of healthy words which you have heard from me,
In faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.
Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit
Who dwells in us, Who dwells in us,
Hold a pattern of healthy words

Luke 12:24 “Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than birds!”

As I sit here, I watch the squirrels hide their nuts for the winter. They scurry around with their
mouths full of acorns, jumping from branch to branch to telephone wire to branch. The winter is coming and they are preparing. Squirrels do not hibernate during the winter, and so they need to have stashes of food that are easily accessible, and yet often times, they will forget where they hid their food. The nuts are covered by leaves and snow, the snow melts and softens the ground, and the acorns are buried and begin to grow, starting new trees.

Birds are also quite visible during the fall. They fly around, eating seeds and worms and what all
they can find, not caring what is going to happen later. They can fly, they can leave when it gets cold. These birds will migrate south, towards warmer places. As they fly, the seeds and dust in their feathers and the pollen that settles on them is carried south with them, helping the spread and balance of nature.

God created nature to nurture itself. We worry about provisions and can our supplies last. We
worry about having enough natural resources. We worry about everything except what we should be worrying about – living as God would want us to. Very few of us think of God beyond “He saved me!” We say that we know that He is our provider, but we then act as if He does not care or provide.

If God provides acorns for the squirrels, warm wintering grounds for the birds, and snow to cover the ground and incubate the seeds which will then grow into next-year's plants, can we wonder when He provides for us in more direct ways? These miracles of nature which we take for granted are much more difficult and complex than anything we want or desire.

How does a bird know where to go? How is it that a bird can fly that far, that quickly, in extended periods of flight without failing year after year? How does the squirrel instinctively know where the best place to hides nuts...places where the acorns can grow in the spring? How is it the butterflies can migrate without directions across the Gulf of Mexico. They are even smaller and lighter than birds! How is it the Salmon can and will swim hundreds of miles over waterfalls and rapids to get to the appropriate breeding grounds? How is it we can doubt God's hand when someone says just what is needed to encourage us?

The squirrels scurry around hiding acorns day after day, stockpiling for the winter. Sure, they will lose some piles. Sure they will be unable to eat everything, and yes, these squirrels can only do so much, but they still try. They still try. They stay faithful to what they instinctively know to be their job. If a squirrel fails to store enough food, it will starve or freeze. It does not know this, however. It just knows that its life right now consists of repetitious work, day after day after day.

Christ taught through nature. He pointed out that all creation shows God and proves His nature. In our journey to be like Christ, we too should strain to recognize God's nature from His creation. We should learn from it.

Let us begin to trust God further. Remember, Jesus wanted Peter to step out of the boat first, and then walk out on the water.

Praise to the Spirit of life, all praise to the Fount of our being,
Light that dost lighten all, Life that in all dost abide.
God, who are Giver of all good gifts and Lover of concord,
Pour they balm on our souls, order our ways in they peace.
God Almighty, who fills the heaven, the earth, and the ocean,
Guard us from harm without, cleanse us from evil within.
Kindle our lips with the live bright coal from the hands of the Seraph;
Shine in our minds with thy light; burn in our hearts with they love!

Colossian 2:2-3 “that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is, Christ Himself, ³ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

I visited a casino during this past week. While I was there, I saw people playing various games and machines. They were just hoping for a lucky strike. They had aspirations for gain, a desire for the thrill of the win, a need to beat the odds and see how far they could get. I watched as elderly people sat in front of the penny slots, wasting their pensions for a chance to win enough to cover their losses. They pulled those levers in hopes that they could go home and tell people that they had won something while at the casino.

I was given a five dollar coupon for the casino, and I decided to take it and play it. After all, if they were going to give me money to go I might as well spend it and give it back to them. I went with the full expectation to lose that money. I walked away when those five dollars ran out, but there was this horrific thought which kept running through my mind. “If I had just stayed and played only a little while longer, I might have actually gotten somewhere.”

Just the chance of getting something and the flesh will pick up that desire and run with it, like a runningback during a tense game (much like last week’s Colts vs. Patriots game).

It isn’t just in gambling though, how many of us have thought “If I had just done things differently, the outcome might be different and more to my liking.” How many have told a friend “you know, If I had just played that computer game longer” or “If I had chosen a different place to go” or even “If I had said this or done that.” If I had… If I did… If I tried… If I, if if if if if if! Oh those insidious “ifs” which lead us to desire something different or covet someone else’s outcome (of their choices).

I have a friend who started wondering about the “what ifs” of life. In correspondence to him, I asked him “What is regret? What is acceptance? What is contentment with where God has led you? Before you start with the "what-ifs" think about the "what-dids"

God allows us to make our choices and then He works through the consequences to show us His nature and His glory(or if you are Calvinistically inclined, God directs our path in ways to help us learn and suffer for His glory.) God has given us an assurance, a promise of further knowing Him. We have a hope, nay instead we have a guarantee of Eternal Life with Him through the sacrifice of Christ. This sacrifice gave us the certainty to continue on with life, to worship God. He has vowed to be with us in all things, no matter what happens, no matter where, no matter why. We have this assurance. No longer are we fumbling around for change in our pockets, hoping that maybe this slot machine will give us contentment, or that roulette table will satisfy our desires. No more do we need to hope that there is more out there, that maybe we might be able to somehow find meaning in life.

God has promised us joy and contentment, should we follow Him. God has promised to satisfy our needs, should we follow Him. God has given us His word that there is more beyond our understanding, and He - like child at Christmas with a new toy - would love to show us everything He has made and done, and yes, it will take an eternity to see all His mighty works.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
born of his Spirit, washed in his blood.

2 Corinthians 2:17 “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.” (NASB)

One of the things that I would do in Highschool during my boarding school semesters in Kenya was to take a day trip every couple of Saturdays to a shopping center in Nairobi. Sarit Center was one of the closest things to a mall we had there, and you could find pretty much whatever you needed. You could go to the grocery store, the bookstore, the electronics stores, the bank, the curio shops, the food court, and the sports shops. Outside the Sarit Center’s fenced parking lot, you could walk among the street hawkers, selling their wares (and you could find some neat stuff). These street side “shops” would offer you “good deals” better than you could find inside Sarit at the various shops that sold pretty much the same thing.

The problem with the street-side peddlers was that their merchandise was (likely as not) diluted. The “ebony” carvings were more likely a local wood carving, covered with black shoe-polish. You often times did not know where your product was coming from, was it legitimate or stolen, was it adulterated or pure?

In the Biblical times, the city of Thebes had a rule (a “democratic” city) that no one who had sold in the market within the last ten years was allowed to take part in the Government. Merchants who sold out of stores (more likely wholesalers) did not deal out of the public market, or the Bazaar. The peddlers, or those who sold in the market were expected to do the same thing as the street-side salesmen in Kenya. The products were expected to be changed so that the salesman would get undeserved profit.

The word “peddler” caught my attention when I read this, my KJV bible uses the word “corrupt.” The word used in this passage is kapēleuō which means “to corrupt and adulterate, to get sordid gain by dealing in anything, to do a thing for base gain, to water down” The only time this word is used in the Bible is in this passage. The root word is kapēlos or “tavern keeper.” Tavern keepers were notorious for watering the wine, brewing bad beer, and serving inferior food at high price.

What Paul seems to be referring here to are people who (knowingly or unknowingly) teach a watered-down, more politically acceptable word of God that people like. This seems to have some profit attached to it, be it selfish, monetary profit (televangelists) or for a good reason (to bring people into the church). This is Christ mongering, using the standards of the world to try and gain from this new scripture interpretation.

We all have had experiences where we are being taught or we are teaching scripture, but the reasons may not be right. This will skew our interpretation of scripture, and those who learn this skewed interpretation will further skew it. Eventually this scripture is so misunderstood that it hardly resembles the original teaching. This happens with the best of intentions too!

We need to focus on Christ and we need to learn from the source, the Bible, that He has given us. We need to teach scripture as true and honest as we can. We need to live scripture daily in our lives with all sincerity, with all integrity, and with all the frankness that we are able to. This will not make us popular, it will not make us profitable and wealthy, but we will have peace of mind and strength and courage of heart. We focus on Christ,

Teach me Thy way, O Lord, Teach me Thy way;
Thy gracious aid afford, Teach me Thy way.
Help me to walk aright; More by faith, less by sight;
Lead me with heav'nly light, Teach me Thy way.