Organizational Leadership: Pray for Pastors! Judges 1.

The company I work for was started by Joe D. some 75 years ago. By the time I was hired, the baton had been passed to Joe’s son, Jim D. Jim was a slight, white-haired man. He was extremely nice, a great storyteller, and a talented networker. Mr. D. had powerful friends all over Texas. He was a gifted rainmaker, regularly bringing in millions of dollars in new business. When Jim retired, the partners voted to sell the civil engineering firm to a national company.

Now that the dust has settled, daily life under the new regime is not that different. But I receive a lot more email, sometimes a dozen messages a day from Pennsylvania and other places, most of which I skim at best. But once a week I get an email from the president of the new company, or as I think of him, the new Jim D.

His name is Mike. Mike is much younger, taller, and balder than Jim, but seemed friendly enough the one time I met him. I try to read Mike’s emails. I am not interested in the constant updates from I.T., H.R., and the “Ladies Who Lunch.” But something about President Mike does capture my attention. Because he is the man, you know what I mean?

A risk facing any growing organization, whether school, church, business, or nation, is the decentralization and diffusion of leadership. The larger an organization grows[1], the more it needs a strong, individual leader who can cast a vision for the organization and channel the energy and creativity of the people toward a few key goals[2].

When Moses died, Joshua became the new leader. Under Joshua’s leadership, Israel moved into the Promised Land, fought many battles, and established its claim to a great deal of territory. But when Joshua died, Israel did not appoint a new executive. Instead, authority was decentralized and tribal leaders ruled the nation. There was no king, no President Mike, and not even a judge.

Left to themselves, the tribal leaders were not that successful.

“Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley … The children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites … Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shean … Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites … Neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron … Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Accho … Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Beth-Shemesh … And the Amorites forced the children of Dan into the mountains, for they would not allow them to come down into the valley” Judges 1:19-34.

There may be several reasons the tribes struggled to free themselves of the Canaanites. But one of those reasons is surely the lack of focused, executive leadership. There was no Moses. There was no Joshua. There was certainly no King David. There was not even a judge like Samson or a prophet like Samuel.

Instead, “after Joshua’s death, power and authority were decentralized to the tribal leaders, and the tribes were no longer unified in purpose.”[3]

There was no President Mike sending weekly emails.

There was no Pastor Gregg preaching 30 minutes a week from a single location but being “livestreamed” to three other locations.

The 12 tribes were on their own. What happened? They fell into sin and idol worship, “whoring after other gods,” (Judges 2:17), and were soon captured by Aram, King of Mesopotamia.

These people who had finally—FINALLY—gotten into the Promised Land were forced to stop working on their own houses and farms and had to serve one of the evil kings they had failed to defeat.

But God was merciful and after eight years, raised up Othniel, brother of Caleb, to deliver Israel and serve as its first judge, Judges 3:7-11.

And who were these Old Testament judges? Did they wear black robes and adjudicate cases, rapping on the bench with an oaken gavel, a mahogany mallet? No. The judges decided cases, of course. But these were not judges as we use the term today.

The Old Testament judges were executives.

Each Old Testament judge was a single, national leader. The judges were often military leaders and battlefield strategists. But they were also national figures, celebrated leaders of a sort that could cast a vision for the nation, give the people wisdom and goals for the days ahead, encourage them in hard times, and congratulate them in good times.

The Book of Judges is really a book of Executives.

We need to appreciate our leaders. They carry heavy burdens.

Today a line from Shakespeare is paraphrased: “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” So true.

One of the crowns King Charles wears weighs over four pounds. That must get heavy after a while. But of course, we are speaking metaphorically. Being king is a heavy responsibility. So is president. Or CEO. Or principal. Or head coach. Or pastor.

I once spent about two years working as a church youth director. The work was hard enough. But the burden I felt for the souls of those students was so much greater than the nine-to-five work. Pray for your pastors!

Dear God, give us great, gifted, wise, humble leaders. Bless our churches with men who put God first and their family second. Bless us with wise leadership. Bless us with praying leadership. In this new day of multi-site churches, raise up gifted preachers, and especially raise up humble men of God who are content to play a vital supporting role. Bless us with bold but humble leaders. Make us grateful for each of them—and help us to show it!

AΩ.

[1] A related risk is the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, states that in many situations, 80% of the results are generated by only 20% of the causes. As most understand it, the Pareto Principle says that eighty percent of sales are generated by twenty percent of customers, or eighty percent of job tasks are accomplished by twenty percent of the employees.

But looking more closely into the mathematics, Jordan Peterson (former Harvard professor and well-dressed internet personality) explains that for a growing enterprise, the Pareto Principle may be more devastating than it sounds. “The actual [Pareto Principle] is, the square root of the number of people involved in an enterprise do half the work. If you have ten people who work for you, three of them do half the work. Now that seems understandable, right? But if you have a hundred, ten of them do half the work. And if you have 10,000 employees, a hundred of them do half the work. So what that means is that as your enterprise grows, the number of people who are engaging in counterproductive activity scales much faster than the number of people who are being productive.”

In other words, the Pareto Principle indicates that the larger an institution becomes the more its people are drawn off-task, losing sight of institutional goals.

[2] Consider the United States. When the thirteen colonies won independence from England, many wanted to operate as a loose confederacy of nation-states, linked only by a weak central government. But it soon became clear that if this nation were to survive, it would require a strong federal government. I say this as a tenth-amendment advocate: we cannot ignore states’ rights. But the federal government will always have superseding authority.

[3] Chronological Life Application Study Bible, Tyndale House, Carol Stream, 2004, p366, note on Judges 1:21.

You Are Stronger Than You Think You Are. Joshua 16 & 17.

One day in sixth grade, we attended a school-wide assembly. Everyone gathered in the lunch room to watch a display by a local Taekwondo school. I knew that Paul, my buddy across the street, took classes there, so I was on the edge of my seat.

For about forty-five minutes, the men punched and kicked and snapped boards and broke bricks. The children were so excited, cheering everything that happened[1]. Then one of the highly decorated, black-belted Korean instructors took the microphone:

“And now, we have something special for you. We would like to call Paul Schmalz up to the stage … Paul? Are you here?”

Paul’s class began cheering and pointing and Paul (who is not shy!) proudly strutted to the stage. I’m not sure what he was expecting. But it was not what happened.

The man put his hand on Paul’s little shoulder.

“Children, does everyone know Paul?”

More cheering.

“Well, what you may not know is that Paul is a student at our school. Paul is a … what are you now, Paul, a green belt?”

“Green belt, blue stripe.”

“Ah, yes. Green belt, blue stripe. Well, children, Paul did not know we were going to call him up here today. And what Paul also does not know is that he is going to break his first board for you this morning.”

Suddenly Paul looked pale. I was in the back of the room, but I could tell he was terrified.

Paul had never broken a board in his life.

I was positive because if he had, I would have heard the story over and over. As I watched, Paul and the teacher had a quiet little conversation. Paul was trying to get out of it, but the master was not changing his mind. He gave Paul a little pep talk. Then he made him take a few practice punches.

I recognized everything that was happening because Paul constantly showed off all his skills on the kids in the neighborhood. There was the snap kick, the roundhouse kick, the snap punch and others. On stage, Paul began practicing snap punches, one fist shooting forward while the other snaps quickly back toward the body. He repeated the pattern over and over, warming up. Finally, the teacher decided he was ready.

Paul lined up in front of a man who was kneeling, holding a one-inch pine board in front of him. Paul let out a huge yell and gave that board his best punch—and nothing happened. The kids laughed. Then the master gave Paul a quiet little pep talk. Second try: huge yell, big punch, nothing. This time the crowd cheered and jeered. You could feel the shame in the air. This was about to become a moment of public ridicule–something the kids at our school had mastered. The instructor gave Paul another pep talk. Then Paul screamed like he was on fire, struck that board like his life depended on it, and his fist went right through it.

The crowd went wild!

For the rest of the day, everywhere Paul went kids wanted him to break boards and snap things. That meant mostly pencils, being the only wood available. There were broken pencils everywhere. For one day, one brief shining moment, Paul got to be the hero. And that night a hundred mothers must have called the Taekwondo school to ask how much the classes would cost. I know I begged to sign up. (My mom wasn’t having it.)

Sometimes all it takes is a good pep talk.

When the people of Israel moved into the land of Israel, they obeyed God and removed from the land many of the pagan Canaanites. But they did not remove them all. The tribes of Joseph suffered this failure of the will.

First Ephraim failed:

“And [Ephraim] drove not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute” Joshua 16:10.

The half-tribe of Manasseh also failed:

“The children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants … but the Canaanites would dwell in the land. Yet it came to pass … that they put the Canaanites to tribute” Joshua 17:12-13.

Both tribes managed to subjugate the evil Canaanites, making them serve as forced labor (much as Israel had served the Egyptians). But they were unable to rid themselves of the Canaanites entirely, complaining that these idol-worshipping locals had “iron chariots,” Joshua 17:16.

But Joshua told them they were underestimating themselves. That is what we do, is it not? We get discouraged, assume we will never be able to break the board, and we try to quit.

We think too much of the challenge in front of us. We think too little of ourselves.

Joshua encouraged them:

“Joshua spoke unto the house of Joseph, even Ephraim and Manasseh, saying, ‘Thou art a great people, and hast great power … for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots and though they be strong” Joshua 17:17-18.

We all need encouragement sometimes. We need great coaches, teachers, and parents to remind us of the power we possess, to remind us of our gifts, our talents, our strength. We need to be reminded of our Savior, who overcame the world, conquered the devil, and gives us new life. We can do all things through Christ!

As adults, we need to develop the skill of being our own encourager.

“David encouraged himself in the Lord” 1 Samuel 30:6.

Like David, you CAN learn to encourage yourself. Turn off the negative self-talk. Stop discouraging yourself. Stop worrying. Stop imagining the worst that could happen and make a choice to imagine the best.

Remind yourself of the power inside you, the way Joshua reminded the descendants of Joseph. Quote scripture to yourself!

Speak positively into your own heart, the way the taekwondo master spoke into Paul’s heart. Memorize these verses so you can recite them and pray them this way on your own behalf:

Dear God, remind me that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me! (Philippians 4:13). I know that greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). I know that in all these things I overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves me! (Romans 8:37). I am going to overwhelmingly conquer! Thank you, Lord. I will not give in to the temptation to quit because You will provide a way of escape (1 Corinthians 10:13). God, I fix my eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God! (Hebrews 12:2). I am focusing on Him who endured such hostility by sinners against Himself so that I will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:3).

AΩ.

[1] Actually, the students did not cheer for everything! If I had two best friends at the time, they were Paul and Chris. (Happily, we remain close almost fifty years later.) This story is about Paul, but it involves Chris too. One of the boards that was snapped broke in half and a big piece flew into the audience and hit Chris’s sister Heather in the face. She had to be taken to the nurse and probably went home (she was fine). The medical emergency nearly stopped the show. When the hour was over, our teacher asked Chris if he wanted to go to the nurse to check on his sister. He nearly got himself sent to the office when he replied, “No. I’m glad she got hit. I hope they hit her in the eye. She lied about me this morning and got me grounded for a month.” Mrs. Osborn was so upset, smoke was coming out of her ears. Years later, Heather told us stories of all the times she would punch holes in her own clothes (among other things) just so she could blame Chris for it and get him grounded. Their parents never seemed to suspect her.

“Thou Art Old and Stricken in Years” Joshua 13.

My father took aging in stride. He would laugh and say, “I don’t care what color my hair turns, long as it don’t turn loose!” In the end, most of his hair abandoned him. He would laugh about candles on his birthday cake and all the kind and sometimes unkind jokes. “Nothing wrong with a birthday,” he would say. “It sure beats the alternative!” In the end, he celebrated 88 birthdays.

My generation does not handle aging as well as he did. I read yesterday (on a screen in an elevator, of all things) that among those of a certain age, four people out of ten have made attempts to look younger, whether with hair color, hair growth treatments, Botox injections, plastic surgery, or more drastic measures.

And my generation did not grow up with smart phones, social media, and cameras in our pockets 24-7. We are not as obsessively visual as those who were raised with these things. My father—a serious photographer—would be shocked to know the number of daily selfies many young people snap, trying to capture that perfect look (one study says Americans spend an average of seven minutes every day snapping, editing, and posting selfies).

The amount of time and energy we devote to our “online presence” is staggering. And many of us spend an excessive amount of time working out, dieting, and otherwise attempting to modify our appearance. Today’s fixation on youthfulness will only get worse.

The King James translation of Joshua chapter 13 begins with an interesting comment on aging:

“Now Joshua was old and stricken in years, and the Lord said unto him, ‘Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed….” Joshua 13:1.

My Bible contains a note, defining ‘stricken’ as ‘advanced.’ Thou art old and advanced in years. But I like stricken. It’s honest.

As positive as he always was, my father would also admit: “It’s tough getting old.” My mother would say, “It’s not for the faint of heart.” Why not? Because sometimes you feel stricken. Because as one of Shakespeare’s youngest heroes puts it, every day we face “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” You’re going to suffer. Your body is going to fail. At some point you will die. And you may endure many pains and indignities along the way. We should be honest with ourselves and face things directly:

Getting old is tough. It will test you and challenge you in unpredictable ways and at inconvenient times.

But God is sovereign. At his mother’s memorial service, my cousin Bobby began about a dozen paragraphs this way: “God is sovereign. He took care of this… God is sovereign. He provided for that… God is sovereign. He knew we would need the following…”

Joshua was old. He was stricken. But he was not finished! He continued to lead the nation. God came to him reminding him of his age only as a way of saying, ‘let’s get on with it! Time is running out!’

In the chapters that follow, Joshua leads the tribes to take control of more and more of the land allotted to them. Finally in chapter 19, the people give old-man Joshua a city. They gave him a whole city! And Joshua moved in, “he built the city and dwelt therein” Joshua 19:50. This man who is old and stricken led battles, then led a building program to refurbish his own city. And let’s not forget Moses—he was 80 years old when he met God at the burning bush. He was 80 years old when he began his forty-year ministry.

God is with the aging.

“Listen to me, House of Jacob, and all who have been sustained from the womb, carried along since birth. I will be the same in your old age, and I will bear you up when you turn gray. I have made you and I will carry you; I will bear and save you” Isaiah 46: 3-4.

God can use the aging.

“Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not understanding come with long life?” Job 12:12.

“They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green” Psalm 92:14.

God will reward the aging.

“Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained in the way of righteousness” Proverbs 16:31.

As you grow older, God will always have something for you to do. Keep bearing fruit. Keep loving people. Keep spending time with God.

As you decrease your physical activity, increase your spiritual activity.

Study the Bible more. Spend more time in prayer. Serve people where you can, even if it is something simple like sending them a note in the mail. Create a more complicated prayer list. Challenge yourself. Memorize some Bible verses. Make it your mission to love people better, and also to love Jesus better. Spend more time in His presence. Store up treasure in heaven. God is not finished with you!

AΩ.

Our Bad Habit of Indulgence Before Abstinence: What Do You Do the Day BEFORE? Joshua 3.

We love big days: the championship game, the graduation ceremony, the big vacation, the long-awaited reunion, the move to a new place, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and more. Some days are so big, we have to prepare the day before. Halloween became a thing in part because it was the so-called ‘hallowed’ evening before the Catholic church’s All Saints’ Day. It did not work out well, becoming an unholy day before a holiday that should have been a literal ‘holy-day.’

Europeans turned October 31 into a day of sin because of the all-too-common practice of indulgence before abstinence.

This pattern is even better-known in the case of Mardi Gras.

French for “Fat Tuesday,” Mardi Gras is the final day of indulgence before the abstinence of Lent.

Around the world the pre-Lenten season is known as Carnival, from a Latin phrase meaning “say goodbye to meat.” Knowing they are facing forty days of abstaining from meat (eating fish only), some Catholics indulge tremendously in the days and weeks leading up to Lent. (Given the gluttonous eating and drinking, I wonder whether the Carnival season does not invalidate whatever good people think they are doing by abstaining from meat for forty days.)

Finally, there is the worst example of Indulgence Before Abstinence, the bachelor party.

You know the idea: tomorrow morning a young man is going to give up all the other women of the world and settle down with one woman, so tonight he is going to go out and be as bad as he can possibly be.

As Wikipedia puts it, “bachelor parties in the US stereotypically entail massive alcohol consumption, hiring a stripper, and general rowdiness to which the bride might not have a positive reaction.” Nevertheless, some consider an out-of-control bachelor party perfectly normal. Fans call it “sowing wild oats,” or “one last hurrah,” or some say, “boys will be boys.” Sadly, bachelorette parties can be just as bad—and both are becoming more expensive every day, sometimes involving flights to Las Vegas, Mexico, or other far-flung destinations.

Why must we indulge before we abstain?

Why do people use the possibility that they might be good in the future as an excuse for definitely being bad in the present?

Let’s look at weddings differently. If the unchallenged God of universe, the Holy Lord of all creation is about to do something amazing in your life, wouldn’t it make sense to prepare yourself for a once-in-your-life encounter with greatness?

If God is coming to bless you with the love of your life, your beloved partner and spouse for the next fifty or sixty years, wouldn’t it make sense to prepare to meet with the Divine? To pray? To praise? To fast? To worship? Or if nothing else, to at least avoid making this a day of total failure, selfishness, and regret? (Do you really want to begin your marriage keeping secrets?)

The night before Israel crossed the Jordan to enter the promised land, Joshua made an important announcement. Did he tell the people to enjoy one last wild night of partying? To hold feasts, to drink until they passed out, to go from tent-to-tent, eating and drinking and celebrating and getting crazy? No.

“And Joshua said unto the people, ‘Sanctify yourselves. For tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you’” Joshua 3:5.

And of course, that is what happened. The next morning, the very moment the priests carrying the ark of the covenant stepped into the Jordan, the waters upstream “piled up in a heap” and the people crossed the river on dry land, Joshua 3:16-17.

THAT was an amazing day. A new generation—under Joshua’s new leadership—witnessed the miracle-working God at work. Once again, God rolled up His sleeves and got involved in their lives. And no one missed it because of a hangover. No one was throwing up from over-eating or over-drinking. No one was distracted and unable to take it all in. The people purified their hearts. They worshiped. They were ready. And God showed up and did something amazing.

Break the cycle of indulging before abstinence. When great things are coming, when God is about to do something exciting in your life, don’t indulge all your most fleshly appetites. Instead, follow the advice of Joshua:

“Sanctify yourselves. For tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you” Joshua 3:5.

AΩ.

*          Before my wedding, I went to Chili’s with a handful of friends, then to the forgettable ’93 Stallone movie about mountain climbing, Cliffhanger. Much more interesting is the story of my son’s “bachelor party,” a story so entertaining I will post it here in its entirety, because I just love this story!

THE SANDLOT BACHELOR PARTY.

One weekend in late June, my son and his school bus full of groomsmen spent several nights together in a large AirBNB. The night before the wedding three of the boys went out to buy Marshall a gag gift. But they wound up lost in Round Rock. Round Rock is home to the Woodbine Mansion, a stunning wedding venue in a plantation-style home reminiscent of the deep South.

But Round Rock is also a baseball town. Participate in Texas baseball long enough and you will find yourself playing in Round Rock. There are city fields, select fields, tournament fields, you name it. Dell Diamond, the minor league home of the Round Rock Express, hosts the annual college baseball series the Karbach Classic. Two years ago Marshall faced off against the LSU Tigers there during the coldest February in years. Just outside Dell Diamond is a neighborhood of streets named for ballplayers. I have a photo somewhere of the intersection of Hank Aaron and Willie Mays (cont’d below).

And this is where the night got interesting. While driving around disoriented, the boys came across a baseball diamond with its stadium lights on. Drawn like moths to a flame, the young men parked and decided to look around. After all, these were not your everyday, run-of-the-mill groomsmen. These young fellas with the round shoulders and the strong backs were baseball players. Like Shoeless Joe Jackson, they could not resist the lure of the game. Baseball season is never really over, you know?

In fact, not only these three, but ALL the groomsmen were either current or former baseball players—the wedding was actually scheduled in late June to ensure no one would miss it due to playoffs. Baseball brought these amazing young men together, baseball and the wedding of a team-oriented player that would probably have had fifty groomsmen if it would have allowed him to recruit more of his buddies of the sweat and sand. Few things were ever more precious to him than teamwork, camaraderie, and being with his bros, his dudes.

So the three race back to the house, tell everyone else, and soon the gang’s all there, playing sandlot baseball on a Round Rock field with the lights accidentally left on. There are thirteen officially. Eleven college baseball players. Two high school players. That’s two teams—one of six and one of seven. Which is perfect, of course.

Tyson, always a slugger, had a bat in his car. Someone else produced a spike ball. But they only had the one. Would it sail over the fence, or would it wobble like some quarterback’s dying duck? Tyson tested it and hit the first pitch 300 feet. So they made a rule: everyone had to hit from his weaker side. No one wanted to lose the ball out there beyond the lights.

No one had gloves. Or needed them.

They played game after game after game. From ten p.m. to eleven to midnight and later. They changed teams. They played hard. They were covered in dirt and sweat. One had played in the college world series the week before. But he played just as hard that night, out there under the lights. With no umpires. No fans. No announcers. No girls. No uniforms. No official equipment.

They tell me the two who had not played since high school were the most competitive of them all. Playing for their lives. For bragging rights. They had something to prove—to themselves, if no one else. This was the showdown, the game of the ages. For two whose final baseball season went up in COVID flames in the spring of 2020, this was a chance at redemption.

For others it was a reunion, a chance to play with old friends and make new ones, to bury rivalries and laugh and marvel at the love of the game. How do men connect? They sweat together. What gets them to bond, to open up, to reach inside and process something? Action. Shared activities. Sports. Tonight it’s baseball. A chance to laugh and hug and fight and remember. And dream.

Marshall would get married the next day—and the others were right behind. But those midnight hours on a municipal diamond were a special moment, a night to stop and be boys, playing a boy’s game, just for each other. A moment to pause between boyhood and manhood, to look back over the dramatic wins and losses in a lifetime of youth sports and savor the simple love of the game, the deep love at the heart of the journey. The love of the game that is the only ‘why’ that can keep a young athlete motivated in the tough times. If you’re a player, you’ve got to protect the love of the game. Never let that fire go out.

It would have been amazing to watch though wouldn’t it? –A dozen young men playing at a world-class level? Like some great musical performance, an improvisational jam session, Thelonius Monk playing with John Coltraine and Miles Davis, only you had to be there because it would never be recorded.

But no one was there. Not one cheering mom. Not one of the dads who gave these young men baseball, and in giving them the game, gave them so much more. Not one sister or girlfriend. Not one coach. Just the guys. Thirteen bros. The dudes. And an improvisational celebration of life, and friends, and marriage, and growing up, and a game that can grow with you.

The love of the game.

The love of the game.

They never did buy Marshall that gift. But when his friends cobbled together a night of pick-up games in an empty stadium, they gave him so much more.

A sandlot game on an empty field at midnight: The greatest bachelor party there ever was.

Deathbed Speeches and Uneven Blessings. Deuteronomy 33.

In the spring of 1985, our family of four drove to Baton Rouge to see my grandfather one last time. The man was born in a house in the woods in 1897, and doctors said he had little time left. After nearly a fifty-year career in the world’s largest oil refinery, the emphysema had taken a toll. Of course, Willie Wales was also 88 years old. He had lived with the lung disease for a long time.

My aunt Joyce, a nurse, had installed a hospital bed in her master bedroom, and although I know Paw Paw did not spend all his time in bed that weekend, he was in the bed on the morning we left. My brother and I were in high school. I remember coming into the room to say goodbye to him one last time. He knew he would never see us again.

But like my father, my talkative grandfather could be shy, a man of few words when it came to personal matters. And he may have had a lump in his throat. I’ve been told I’m a lot like him. But I was 17 years old. I was trying to be polite and hoping not to say the wrong thing—as I usually did. I was too distracted to analyze what Paw Paw may have been feeling.

But it must be hard to say goodbye—even when you are going to a better place. Such permanent goodbyes are not easy.

Paw Paw was always an affectionate man. I’m sure we hugged him and felt his sandpaper cheeks and looked into his blue eyes one last time. Then he looked at the two of us and offered what for Dennis and me became Paw Paw’s ‘famous last words.’

“Well. Y’all boys be good.”

“We will.”

And we smiled and slipped out of the room. Talk about a man of few words!

By contrast, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and David each gave lengthy “deathbed speeches.”[1] Of course, Moses was neither sick, nor in a bed. In fact, the Bible says he was 120 years old and “his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” Deuteronomy 34:7.

But God had revealed to Moses that he would soon ascend Mount Nebo, take in a long, slow view of the promised land, then die and be buried by the hand of God in an unmarked grave[2]. Knowing he and the nation would soon part—ending forty years under his leadership (a career that began when he was 80 years old!)—Moses prepared a word of blessing for the nation. He proceeded through the tribes. Though I am not articulating every trait listed, notice how different the brief blessings are:

  1. REUBEN. “Let Reuben live and not die, nor let his men be few” Deuteronomy 33:6.
  2. JUDAH. “May you be a help against enemies” Deuteronomy 33:7.
  3. LEVI. “They shall teach Israel Your law” Deuteronomy 33:8-11.
  4. BENJAMIN. “The beloved of the Lord” Deuteronomy 33:12.
  5. JOSEPH—through his sons EPHRAIM and…
  6. MANASSEH. “Let the blessings come” Deuteronomy 33:13-17.
  7. ZEBULUN and…
  8. ISSACHAR. “They shall take of the abundance of the seas” Deuteronomy 33:18-19.
  9. GAD. “He dwells as a lion” Deuteronomy 33:20-21.
  10. DAN. “A lion’s whelp” Deuteronomy 33:22.
  11. NAPHTALI. “Full of the blessing of the Lord” Deuteronomy 33:23.
  12. ASHER. “Most blessed of sons” Deuteronomy 33:24-25.
  13. *SIMEON was not mentioned by Moses. (Feel free to dive into that controversy, but it does not concern me here.)

This list does not seem fair, does it? Why does Levi get to teach the law to the nation, while Issachar will “take of the abundance of the sea”? Why is Asher the “most blessed of sons,” while Simeon is not even mentioned?

God’s blessings are not passed out evenly.

God’s blessings are uneven.

God is just and holy, but He never pretends to make everything “fair.” (And fair is a human construct, a broken shadow of God’s holiness and justice.)

Still, it is tough to see someone else receive a blessing that you do not receive.

It is tough to see a coworker promoted when you know they do not deserve it.

I have seen that sort of thing many times. It can be maddening. But you must let it go! God gives one person—or one tribe—a set of gifts that He does not give to another person. God’s blessings are uneven. Someone you work with is smarter than you. Or prettier than you. Or more popular. Or maybe they are paid more money but all they have is personality and charm, while you have bona fide credentials.

It has happened to all of us. In fact, God seems to particularly allow such things to happen around His children. What a great way to remind you to stay humble! Think of it this way:

Would you rather be humbled when a coworker is given a promotion that should have been given to you, or humbled by a failure of your own making?

“But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired” 1 Corinthians 12:18.

Dear God, thank you for the gifts you have given us. May we never fall into the sin of comparison. Show us when we are envious of others. Humble us. Help us to balance dreams and goals with humility and submission to You and Your will and Your wisdom. And thank you especially for seasoned Christians like my grandfather who live lives of absolute integrity decade-after-decade. May we be worthy of those who have gone before us.

AΩ.

[1] The term “deathbed speeches” comes from https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-two-blessings-of-the-twelve-tribes-varying-perspectives-similar-function.

[2] Having just written about the importance of words carved in stone, particularly those on tombstones and other memorials, it seems ironic that Moses was buried without such a stone. But God knew the people would make an idol of the grave, Deuteronomy 34:6. (Look at the way people react to Elvis’s tomb at Graceland.)

Memorial Stones. Deuteronomy 27.

Image: Erich Hartmann/Magnum Photos. From https://www.city-journal.org/article/with-meaning-for-all

After decades of taking my Bible to church every Sunday, I found myself bringing only my phone. One reason is that I have surrounded myself with chronological Bibles, which are AMAZING to read, but difficult to use during a sermon because chronological Bibles are not printed in a predictable order. (You can’t find anything!) A second reason is that Bible passages show up on the jumbotron anyway. Third reason? There is a pew Bible available. Fourth reason? I have a Bible app on my phone.

However, I have recently acquired a new Bible (printed in the traditional order) and I am bringing it to church with me every Sunday.

There is something to be said for hard copies, right?

When I worked as a litigator, I always had paper files at my desk. While typing a brief, I would look up at the monitor, then down at the papers—printed files, memoranda, printed copies of relevant caselaw. In my present work, I employ multiple monitors, often looking from the document I am composing on one screen over to a PDF on another screen. But when a task is particularly challenging, I still want a printout. I need something solid I can lay on the desk, that I can write on, that I can highlight, that I can scratch through and annotate in a dozen ways.

There is something to be said for hard copies.

When the children of Israel were preparing to cross the Jordan River into the promised land, Moses told them to immediately ascend Mount Ebal on the river’s western bank, and carve God’s law onto a series of large stones they would cover in plaster.

“Therefore, it shall be when you be gone over Jordan, that you shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in mount Ebal, and thou shalt plaster them with plaster … And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this law very plainly” Deuteronomy 27:4,8.

Scholars are not certain whether the Hebrews set in stone the entire book of Deuteronomy or merely the summation of God’s commands embodied in the Ten Commandments. But what we know for certain is that all the civilizations in the area knew the technology for whitewashing and carving stones. The Israelites would have obeyed this command easily.

But why? Why would God ask them to set up large stones and carve words into them? The answer may seem obvious, but in this day of statue desecration, it is worth discussing.

Why do we build statues? Why do we create monuments? Why do we chisel our thoughts in stone?

You need look no farther than the local cemetery for the answer:

There is something to be said for hard copies.

We erect tombstones not merely to mark a grave, but to memorialize a life. We carve words in stone so the words will remain long after we are gone. Carving words in stone is a way to speak to future generations. A great example is the Lincoln Memorial. The beautiful edifice is enclosed in a colonnade of 36 Doric columns, each 44 feet high, symbolizing the 36 states of the Union at Lincoln’s death. Lincoln himself is so huge that, were the statue to stand up, he would be 28 feet tall. And yet, it is the words carved into the walls of the memorial that seem to command the most attention.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_Memorial_%28north_wall_interior%29.jpg

“Inexorably eye and mind are drawn away from the figure to the left or right by the panels of text in the side rooms.”[1] Soon viewers find themselves wandering along the walls, reading the words of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

Written words matter.

My philosophy professor used to talk about the words scrolling from right-to-left across a digital stock ticker. The words move off the screen and seem to fall off into nowhere, disappearing forever. “Where do the words go?” he would ask.

Slightly more enduring are the virtual words created while text messaging. Words we type on the internet last a bit longer still. We print words we value. We bind in books words we value even more. But when words are deeply meaningful, when they resonate in the hearts of millions or undergird like a foundation the life of a nation, we carve those words in stone.

Israel valued God’s word so highly the nation carved it in stone.

Do we value God’s word that highly?

Did you know there is a writing surface more permanent than stone? It is the human heart. Words written there will last forever, 2 Corinthians 3:3.

When was the last time you carved God’s word into your heart?

When was the last time you memorized something from the Bible?

Imagine this hierarchy of the value of words: stock market ticker, text messages, words typed onto the internet, words printed on paper, words bound in books, words carved in stone, words permanently chiseled into your heart.

The words you value most will end up in your heart.

Memorize something!

AΩ.

[1] https://www.city-journal.org/article/with-meaning-for-all

Stories We Tell Ourselves. Deuteronomy 26.

We are a storytelling people. Or rather, we are a storytelling species. Every people group on earth tells stories. We tell them to children. We tell them to adults. The only time we stop telling stories is when someone is telling stories to us!

Look at the popularity of movies and television. Before TV there were radio dramas. There were silent films. There were Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls. There were plays. There were itinerant preachers and traveling storytellers, men who carried stories from village to village, entertaining people and connecting them to their roots and to each other, to God, to culture, to history. Who doesn’t love a good story?

But the content of the story matters. The “tapes” you play in your head matter. The truths your parents and teachers pour into your mind will shape your entire life.

The truths your life is based on can be as simple as your answers to six questions:

  1. Where do I come from?
  2. Where am I going?
  3. What am I good at and what am I worth–what is my purpose?
  4. What am I bad at and can I/should I improve?
  5. What do family members and friends think of me?
  6. Who is God and what does he think of me?

Stories supply us with answers to these questions, teaching us who we are. Our sense of self is largely influenced by our sense of context, i.e., who we are in comparison to other people living today and other people who lived in the past:

I am a Christian and that means this… I am an American and that makes me different in this way… I am a boy and that means… I am a girl and that means… I am an athlete and therefore… I am good at math, so I might be good at a career like this … I do not enjoy public speaking, therefore I …

God gave the children of Israel a short speech to memorize and quote back to the priest while performing a first fruits offering. Read these words and imagine how God’s words would have influenced the self-concept of those who committed these words to memory:

“My father [Jacob] was a wandering Syrian, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, but few in number. But there he became a great, mighty and populous nation. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us and imposed hard labor on us. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction and our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and wonders. And He has brought us to this place and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Now behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which You, O Lord have given me” Deuteronomy 26:5-10.

Do you see the way this passage gives the Jew a powerful sense of self? A Jew is not merely a Jewish person. Being Jewish means identifying with a people group that is some 4,000 years old. Being Jewish means being a blood descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose name was changed to ‘Israel’). Being Jewish means knowing that you come from somewhere, that you are part of a people who were slaves in Egypt, rescued by God, wandered in the wilderness, received the law from Moses, then conquered and settled in the Promised Land of Israel. Deuteronomy 26 informs the Jew that he is good at gratitude and sacrifices, but he probably should strive to do it better. The passage reminds him that God rescued his people, and God provided the land of milk and honey. Deuteronomy 26 says, in effect: Hear oh Israel, you are God’s chosen people, but you must remain humble and grateful because everything you have comes from God.

Now THAT is a truth on which a life can be built. That is a story that teaches a young person who he is, where he is going, and the purpose of the life he has been given. That is a story that will never steer your life off course.

What stories has the world been telling you? Do you believe them all equally? Or do you accept the good and reject the bad? (And how can you know which is which?) The easiest way to recognize the good, the TRUE, is to have parents who have spent their lives memorizing Biblical wisdom.

I wish everyone could be raised by a pair of Proverbs-31 Parents who “speak with wisdom, and faithful instruction on [their] tongues” Proverbs 31:25-26.

The messages we hear the earliest and the most often are the messages that will determine the future of our lives. Yet most of us begin as early as adolescence to swallow the beliefs of others: peers, celebrities, teachers, songwriters, movie directors, favorite athletes, influencers, and more. And that is part of being a teenager. Young people try on alternative viewpoints to see how they fit. Some they will keep, others they will reject.

The problem is, young people adopt many ideas that are wrong, and it can take years to untie the knots created by wrong thinking. And it does not take a lot of bad ideas to shipwreck a life[1].

There are ideas that are correct and there are ideas that are wrong. And you will only be able to sort them out with Biblical knowledge and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That is, you must read, understand, and master the Biblical text. Learn your way around the Bible. Memorize everything that you find deeply meaningful. Become a scholar of the word of God. And pray for wisdom about every idea you encounter in the river of ideas we swim in. Be humble enough to seek the Holy Spirit’s leading on everything!

Dear Lord, bless us with Your wisdom. May we be like the “Men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” 1 Chronicles 12:32.

AΩ.

[1] For example, Americans have long believed that people are philosophically equal, based on the “all men are created equal” idea enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But today there is a notion that not only am I the moral equal to all the experts and PhDs, but my ideas are equal to the ideas of all the experts and PhDs.

This is ridiculous. And that’s not to say experts are always right. Of course not. Most lawsuits include experts on both sides—they cannot both be right. But these are people with the training and experience to choose the appropriate methodology to evaluate evidence in a manner that tends toward an accurate outcome. In other words, they are actual experts. And the opinion of an expert, while it should be questioned, should not be dismissed without careful reflection. Expertise should mean something. But today it is fashionable to dismiss expertise, often with anger and resentment, but without performing any legitimate analysis.

American culture has a cancer and that cancer is anti-intellectualism. Where does that cancer rage the most? In evangelical churches. Our preference for the backwoods preacher and his homespun wisdom (both of which I love!) can leave us unwilling to think hard about doctrinal or cultural problems, to read anything challenging (including much of the Bible), or to do any research. And no one better mention church history, LOL…

Paul, the Great Teacher of Grace, Did Not Hesitate to Place Great Demands on Christian Behavior; Good Behavior is Not Legalism. Galatians 5:4.

“I spent my whole education degree studying how Jesus taught. He never asked anyone to memorize anything.”

That was my friend James talking. James is focused on grace. He only reads the New Testament. He says things like, “Well, I’m not really an Old Testament guy.” James considers the idea of spiritual disciplines to be legalism. James is also a seminary graduate*.

Some Christians have taken on a posture that deeply resists anything even remotely similar to a rule. I’m not sure whether to call this an anxiety about legalism or an unbalanced view of grace.

But whatever you call it, this refusal to take on “rules”–even self-imposed rules–is unhealthy.

It renders us unable to commit to personal goals. We dislike New Year’s Resolutions. We cannot create for ourselves plans, schedules, or good habits, particularly in spiritual matters. We resist goals and rules of any kind, even the most benign rules we might have invented for ourselves.

My friend James considers memorizing scripture a legalistic practice. James is wrong**. Legalism is adopting rules in order to be justified by them.

Paul describes what we would call legalism this way: “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” Galatians 5:4.

No Biblical author expounds more brilliantly on grace than Paul. Yet, Paul commands believers to follow all sorts of rules that Christians today might describe as “legalistic.” The difference is this: Paul encourages us to live holy lives to give glory to God, not because we “seek to be justified by law.”

Christians should live holy lives. “Be holy as I am holy” 1 Peter 1:16. Make good choices. Follow the rules (yes, rules!). Here’s one of Paul’s many ‘rules’– “There must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks” Ephesians 5:4. It is not legalism to suggest we clean up our speech!

Paul, the great champion of grace, may be the most un-legalistic person in the Bible! Yet he commands believers to speak right, eat right, serve each other, and so much more. We should live right. Make good choices. Don’t shy away from ‘rules’ or goals or New Year’s Resolutions.

Create a rule for yourself now and then! It’s the fastest way to develop good habits; it is the fastest way to grow. But don’t drift into the prideful self-delusion that tells you that your new good habit somehow makes you better in God’s eyes. That is, don’t fall from grace as you “seek to be justified by the law” that you invented.

AΩ.

* James believes in something critics have begun to call “hyper grace.” https://www.gotquestions.org/hyper-grace.html

** As for Jesus not encouraging scripture memory, this fallacy is called the ‘argument from silence’ and cannot be used to prove a conclusion. Jesus never mentioned memorizing because it was understood. The entire nation was encouraged to memorize the five books of the Torah while still in school. The value of scripture memory was understood.

Grace is Amazing, But You are Peculiar. A Rambling Conversation About Grace and Legalism. Deuteronomy 14.

Are you peculiar? You should be.

More on that below–first, a word about grace. Grace is incredible. It is similar to forgiveness, but not the same. You might say forgiveness falls under the umbrella of grace. But grace is more than forgiveness. Grace is restoration. God does not simply forgive your sins. He restores your life—your soul—to something greater, something akin to what you might have experienced before the fall. God restores your life and redeems you—placing value in we who were once without value. Grace is God giving you esteem again. He removes your shame and fills you with esteem, with value, with purpose, with hope, with joy.

Grace is all the ways in which God makes right all that sin had made wrong.

But grace is not just about mankind, or about our standing with God. The large umbrella of grace also includes truths about God Himself.

He will not fit into the box we would like to place Him in. God surprises us in so many ways, not all of them pleasant. But they broaden our understanding of God—and that is another moment of grace.

Consider Hebrews 11:17-19. When Abraham is certain that Isaac must live because he is the child who fulfills God’s promise (Galatians 4:28), yet Abraham is also certain that Isaac must be sacrificed because God commanded it (Genesis 22:2)—these two mutually exclusive ideas forced Abraham to confront a God he could not possibly understand. And that is a God of Grace.

When I confront the truth that God is beyond my comprehension, I attribute that to God’s grace.

For me, every mystery of God is another tally mark in the God is a God of Grace column.

I understand one god. I might even understand three gods. But I cannot understand a three-in-one God. The Trinity is a mystery of grace.

I may comprehend predestination. I may comprehend free will. But if I believe that scripture supports both doctrines, I again confront a God of grace.

And most telling, I understand sin and hell. I understand a holy God. But I cannot fathom the mystery of a holy God who “knew no sin, yet became sin for us,” 2 Corinthians 5:21. How can holiness become unholiness? And why would God do it “while we were yet enemies” (Romans 5:8)? And how many truly horrible, murderous men, men of unfathomable evil will be in heaven? Surely heaven will include a shocking number of cruel, despicable, seemingly worthless sinners that God redeemed for no reason but His own glory. Think of the worst person you know. Imagine discovering that person in heaven. Because if they are not there, I guarantee someone equally unworthy will be. Why?

How do you reconcile such lavish grace, such reckless love? God is a God of great Grace. He is beyond our comprehension.

Such an eternal, unpredictable God, a mysterious God who insists on remaining invisible, and who refuses to explain so many mysteries—what else is He but a God of great grace. This is no binary, either-or, black-and-white God. This is not a series of ones and zeroes, switches that flip on or off. Decisions are not always yes or no. Nothing is as simple with God as we might like to believe.

God is good, of course. He loves you, absolutely. God will always be the loving One who said, “bring the children to me” Mark 10:14. God is loving and kind and compassionate and merciful and good. But He is not simple or predictable. He is beyond our definitions, our comprehension.

God will not fit into the box we have fashioned for Him. Because He is a God of great grace.

Consider one peculiar command.

“Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself. Thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien. For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God” Deuteronomy 14:21.

Moses has just reminded the people of Israel about all the kosher laws: eat only land animals with a cloven hoof that chew the cud. Eat only those fish with both fins and scales. You may eat birds, but none from a specific list (generally meat eaters and scavengers). The animals that do not make the cut are described as “abominable,” Deuteronomy 14:3.

But the passage concludes with a note about animals that die of natural causes. “Thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates … or sell it unto an alien.” The standard seems different for the animal that dies. It is not described as an abomination—and you can share it with non-Jews. Let them benefit from the meat, if it interests them. But it is not for you.

Why not? What if a cow fell from a ledge, and you saw it happen? That’s a great deal of fresh meat—and not an insignificant loss to the owner. Why can’t a Jew eat the cow?

Because God says, “thou art a holy people … the Lord hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto Himself” Deuteronomy 14:2.

Holy and peculiar are similar words. “Holy” means “set apart.” It means being “called out” or different. God expects His children to be different, not just like everyone else. “Peculiar” means the same thing—in this arcane usage, “peculiar” means “special” or “particular.”

God’s children are to be set apart. Called out from the crowd. Different. Special.

We are “not of this world,” John 17:16.

For that reason, God commanded His children not to eat perfectly good meat if the animal died in any manner other than a ritual, kosher killing (there were rules for how it was to be done). The Jewish people were not hunters for the same reason—because wild animals could not be killed according to the rules.

But imagine what the foreigner would think. The Jewish farmer who pays you to pick his crops offers to give your Gentile family an entire cow simply because it stepped off a ledge and died? That is peculiar, is it not? The foreigner would ask questions. He would wonder if it was a trick. He would say “what’s the catch?” But there is no catch. The farmer is a Jew and His God will not allow him to eat this cow.

And that opens up an opportunity for a lot of conversations! The foreign man’s entire family will be talking about this—and all the friends with whom they share the meat. Everyone will be amazed by the Jewish man who gave away a perfectly good cow because his God said not to eat it. It is peculiar.

As I said above, I LOVE grace. I could talk about it forever. And I’m not the only one. Christians love grace. We bask in our freedom in Christ. We enjoy our freedom to eat what we want. Many Christians enjoy the freedom to drink whatever they might want. We enjoy many things once considered taboo not only for Christians but for all Americans: Piercings. Makeup. Two-piece swimsuits. Tattoos. Short sleeves. Mini-skirts. Four-letter words. Long hair on men. We even go to the movies (gasp!). It’s funny, but there was a time….

My great-grandmother (whom I never met) thought Christian girls should not be seen in short pants. My wife’s parents were raised in a church where the men sat on one side of the aisle and the women sat on the other. We can be a legalistic people. We love rules—and that can be a problem. Jesus did not redeem us from the law only to see us return to the law again, Galatians 5:1-4. We are not under a law. “All things are lawful for me” 1 Corinthians 6:12. No one extolled grace more than the Apostle Paul, and yet, no one placed higher expectations on other believers than Paul.*

The fact is, you can—you should—live a peculiar life, a set-apart life, a HOLY life, without living a life centered around rules.

And that is where grace comes into play. God would not place you under a series of rules. But you can make good choices. You can clean up your language, for example. Paul, the Bible’s great champion of grace, spoke many times about speech (see, e.g. Ephesians 4:29, 5:4, and Colossians 4:6). In fact, Paul spoke many times about a great many matters of good behavior and good habits. Like I said, no one explained grace better than Paul–and no one set higher standards for his Christian brothers and sisters than Paul. High standards–rules, if you will–do not conflict with grace.

I think the supposed tension between law and grace[1] makes it seem like a balancing act, as if it is two sides of the same coin, and we should try to be good, while also enjoying the freedom from all restraints that allows us to eat bacon-wrapped shrimp.

But this notion of a peculiar people is one of several things that persuade me that freedom from all restraints might not be Biblical.

I used to attend a men’s Bible study that was … unusual. It was held each Friday afternoon at an auto shop. After the day was done, the men would barbecue steaks and chicken, pass out cigars and beers, and sit down to talk about Jesus, often after watching scenes from movies that raised various men’s ministry-type of questions.

I remember watching some of the more PG-rated scenes from COOL HAND LUKE, followed by a Bible-oriented conversation from a retired pastor who had managed to incorporate into his Bible teaching every four-letter word in the English language. It was jarring. But it left me with a question:

If I am not peculiar in some way, if my life is not different or set apart or special, why would a lost person have any interest in what I have to say?

If my religion never requires me to do something peculiar such as giving away a cow that died in a sudden accident—then how will an unbeliever notice my witness?

I love grace! It is greater than and preferable to the law—though God’s law is of immense value and the Old Testament is a storehouse of (largely) untapped treasure. Jesus says we should master both law and grace, both the Old Testament and the New, Matthew 13:52.

But I also want to live a life that is different. I want to speak without cussing and do or not do a number of other things that signal to the lost that maybe my life is different somehow. I hope to be able to articulate the reason for the hope that I have (1 Peter 3:15), but I also want to let my light shine in a way that gives God glory and attracts others to His light, Matthew 5:16.

May God make us a peculiar people!

AΩ.

[1] There is no tension between law and grace, https://dadsdailydevotionals.com/2024/08/21/is-there-tension-between-law-and-grace-titus-214/

* Some of us have taken on a posture that deeply resists anything even remotely similar to a law. No personal goals, no New Year’s Resolutions, no rules of any kind. One example is my friend the seminary graduate who told me memorizing scripture was legalistic. I disagree. Legalism is adopting rules in order to be justified by them. Paul describes what we would call legalism this way: “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace” Galatians 5:4.

No Biblical author expounds more brilliantly on grace than Paul. Yet, Paul commands believers to behave and follow all sorts of rules some of us today might describe as “legalistic.” The difference is this: Paul encourages us to live holy lives to give glory to God, not because we “seek to be justified by law.”

Christians should live holy lives. “Be holy as I am holy” 1 Peter 1:16. Make good choices. Follow the rules (yes, rules!). Here’s one of Paul’s many ‘rules’–“There must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks” Ephesians 5:4. Live right. Make good choices. Don’t shy away from ‘rules’ or goals or New Year’s Resolutions. Employ a rule for yourself now and then! It’s the fastest way to create good habits; it is the fastest way to grow. But don’t drift into the prideful self-delusion that tells you that your new good habit somehow makes you better in God’s eyes. That is, don’t fall from grace as you “seek to be justified by the law” that you invented.

Addie Presley Gives Dating Advice. Deuteronomy 7.

“And you know, I just told her, ‘don’t date a boy you would not be willing to marry.’”

We were in Portland, Texas at the home of my mother’s aunt and uncle, Addie and Norman. Their daughter Kay, probably a senior in high school at the time, was out on a date when we drove in from Houston. I was so small I had no idea what dating was, but I knew Kay was somewhere with a boy—a movie, I assumed.

The implication of Addie’s words was obvious: you never know who you might fall for. What might look today like a meaningless cup of coffee might grow into love.

Addie’s dating advice stuck with me, accidentally memorized in the sort-of magical way that only one or two sentences a year might be: don’t date someone you could not marry. Her concern was that her daughter avoid dating a boy from a different religion, because such differences, while intriguing in a boyfriend, can create serious challenges in marriage.

Moses gave similar advice, warning the Hebrews not to marry the pagans living in the Promised Land:

“Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and He will quickly destroy you” Deuteronomy 7:3-4.

Why were the Israelites told not to marry the idol-worshipping Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, etc.? Because the relationships would end in divorce? No. The risk God warned of was that these pagans would draw the Jews away from the one true God.  “They will turn your sons away from following Me.”

Does that strike you as a serious risk? If you were to marry a non-believer, aren’t the odds just as good that you would lead that person to Christ? I don’t think so. It is certainly possible, particularly if a Christian is devoted to Christ and devoted to their spouse. But I don’t think it is the norm. The more common result is that a Christian living with a non-believer slides down to their level. That is human nature.

Remember the old television show, the ODD COUPLE about two mis-matched roommates, one fastidious and neat, always picking up after people and sliding coasters under their glasses, the other a bit of a slob, spilling food in the kitchen and smoking cigars in the den? Imagine that in a marriage.

Imagine being a neat person and discovering that you married a hoarder. Will you be able to keep a clean house? How many years will you last, trying to beat back the tide of garbage and unnecessary purchases turning your house into a dump?

How long will you keep fighting the fight before you begin to relax, to give-in in small ways, no longer maintaining the standards with which you began? Is it impossible to keep going at the highest level? No. But it becomes difficult when you live with someone who seems to be working against you at every turn. The simple fact of human nature is this: as years pass, it is much more likely that the hard worker will relax into a lazy tolerance, than that the passively destructive hoarder will begin to clean up after himself. *

The Christian life is the same way. There is work involved, and a disinterested spouse will not make it easy!

Jesus compared our souls to a clean house (Luke 11:25), and it takes work to keep things clean.

There are disciplines to the Christian life: Read and memorize scripture, apply it to your life and change your behaviors, share the word with others, and more. But it is hard to exercise spiritual discipline when you are married to someone with no interest in such things, or worse, someone opposed to spiritual disciplines. Thus, heed the warnings of Moses:

Do not marry unbelievers.

Or as the Apostle Paul put it in the New Testament, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” 2 Corinthians 6:14.

As my Aunt Addie would have added: Don’t even date someone you would not be willing to marry. Marriage is one of the two or three most critical decisions you will ever make. Don’t get it wrong by marrying outside the faith in the hope that you will influence your spouse toward Christ. It is more likely an unbelieving spouse will influence you to move away from Christ–to settle into a lukewarm complacency, a life that never makes any difference.

Finally, if you find yourself unequally yoked (married to an unbeliever), never give up hope! With God all things are possible, Matthew 19:26.

AΩ.

* Such a relaxing of housecleaning standards is fine. Most of us should learn to compromise. But the same cannot be said of the Christian life.