Jeff Fletcher – SeekGrowLove.com

“A young boy came across a butterfly cocoon and brought it into his house. He watched, over the course of hours, as the butterfly struggled to break free from its confinement. It managed to create a small hole in the cocoon, but its body was too large to emerge. It was tired and became still.

“Wanting to help the butterfly, the boy snipped a slit in the cocoon with a pair of scissors. But the butterfly was small, weak, and its wings crumpled. The boy expected the insect to take flight, but instead, it could only drag its undeveloped body along the ground. It was incapable of flying.

“The boy, in his eagerness to help the butterfly, stunted its development. What he did not know was that the butterfly needed to go through the process of struggling against the cocoon to gain strength and fill its wings with blood. It was the struggle that made it stronger.” https://www.lifeandwhim.com/first-moments-blog/2018/the-struggle-makes-you-stronger

The point of that story is that sometimes “helping” someone doesn’t really help them. The first few times you try to do something new and different it’s quite probable that you won’t be very good at it. Sometimes you need some extra help to get you going. When a child is learning how to ride a bike they usually start with training wheels or a parent walking alongside them to keep them from falling. They have to get used to the feel of peddling and how to get up to speed. But eventually, the training wheels need to come off or the parent needs to let go. Often, that may result in a wobbly ride or the child might even fall. They might even skin their knee and that hurts. But still, even at the risk of falling and skinning a knee, the training wheels need to come off if the child ever wants to learn how to ride the bike. Sometimes, the loving thing to do is give the person the freedom to struggle, to fall down, to make a mistake.

This is true of children learning to ride a bike, and it’s true of Christians learning to live by the Spirit. As we live as spirit-filled believers in the spirit filled-community, the Church, we will live fruitful lives. We will love, be at peace, be patient, kind, good, and gentle among other things (see Galatians 5). We will live by the spirit, not by the flesh, except when we don’t. Unfortunately, there are times when love gives way to hate, we become impatient, we aren’t kind, we do bad instead of good and we are harsh instead of gentle. There are times when we fall down in our faith and we need a hand to get back up again. When a member of the community falls beneath the weight of a burden, Paul says that others in the community should gently lend a hand and help them back up again. We should not be harsh with the one who has fallen and remind ourselves that we too could also fall and need a hand up.

Sometimes Christians do dumb things that are completely against what we believe. Sometimes the best of us let temptation get the worst of us. Think of King David, the man after God’s own heart, who committed adultery with his neighbor’s wife and then arranged to have her husband killed in an attempt to cover up the sin. Certainly not the finest moment for an otherwise godly man.

Paul doesn’t want us to be morally lax and intentionally sin against God. He just finished telling the Galatians to walk by the spirit and not by the flesh. But when we do fall, we need others to help us back up again. And the rest of us need to be ready to help the one who has fallen to get back up and on their feet. Paul here balances burdens and loads. We are to help others with burdens, but we are to manage our own loads. Sometimes people get handed something overwhelmingly heavy that they can’t carry on their own, we should help them. At the same time, we each have normal daily loads which we are expected to carry. We have jobs to do, and responsibilities at home to do. We have ministry responsibilities to carry out. We each need to keep up with our daily loads. I should not expect you to do my regular responsibilities. If I’m the pastor and it’s my job to preach, then most Sundays I need to be preaching. Once in a while, I take a Sunday away from preaching- vacation or other ministry responsibilities may take me away for a week here and there and I’ll need someone else to do the preaching for me that week, but most Sundays I carry my preaching load. The only exception to this for me was after I had surgery for cancer a few years ago. I took off about 4 Sundays in a row while I was recovering. That was an unusual burden. I was not able to carry that burden for a few weeks and others helped.

We shouldn’t do other people’s daily loads for them because it keeps them from flourishing and getting stronger. It would be like cutting a hole in the cocoon. Our “helping” is actually hurting when we don’t allow someone to carry their own daily load. But when a load becomes a burden, then the loving thing to do is help carry the burden. Sometimes, we need to practice “tough love”. Do what is your responsibility to do and give others space to do what is their responsibility to do, and when special circumstances arise and extra burdens need to be born, we help each other.

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for discussion:

When was a time that you had a burden you could not carry yourself? Did someone help you and how did they do it?
Was there ever a time when you just didn’t feel like carrying your daily load? Did someone hold you accountable and tell you to carry your own load? How did that feel?
Have you ever thought you were “helping” like the little boy with the cacoon? Is it sometimes harder to watch someone else struggle with their daily load than to step in and carry it for them? Why is it important to resist doing that?

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FREEDOM. Not Legalism. Not Lawlessness. FREEDOM

Friday, August 12, 2022

Galatians 5

Every year on the 4th of July people in the United States come together to celebrate our freedom. If you are living in another country you might have different ways of celebrating freedom or you may not be particularly focused on freedom. Freedom means different things to different people. For the person who has been in prison, freedom means being able to go where you want to go and do what you want to do. For a student who is on vacation, freedom means not having to go to class and turn in homework. For a person who is single, freedom means being able to date. For the people who originally established the United States freedom meant being able to choose whatever religion or church that your conscience told you was the way to know God. It was also about the freedom to self-govern rather than be governed by a dictator.

Freedom can be a very good thing when it is rightly understood and practiced, but wrongly understood and practiced, freedom can be very dangerous. America is about freedom in some ways, but not every way. I’m not free to drive as fast as I want or in whatever direction I want on the highway. I have to obey traffic laws or else I could cause injury or death to myself and others, or I can be criminally punished and lose the privilege of driving. Freedom has to be rightly understood. What am I free from and what am I free to do?

When Paul talks about freedom here he has a couple of things in mind. We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We are not saved by following some law or other legalistic ritual practice. In the Church of Galatia, those who heard Paul preach the Gospel and were baptized into Jesus Christ were set free from the power of sin and death. They were free to allow the spirit of God to transform their lives so that they could do what is most important, love.

Paul is obviously very angry in chapter 5 because he sees that they have chosen to reject the freedom given by the Gospel and have chosen to place themselves under the yoke of slavery to the Jewish Law. Circumcision was the physical act of mutilating part of your body as a way of marking you as different. Jewish boys were circumcised to distinguish them as children of Abraham and followers of the Mosaic Law. One under the Law was required to obey all 611 laws ranging from what foods to eat, to how and where and when to worship, how to properly dispose of human waste, and ceremonially clean mildew. Paul had been raised under that Law and it didn’t make him any closer to God. It made him an enemy of Jesus Christ, and it certainly didn’t make him a more loving person. He found faith in Christ and receiving the Spirit of God to be truly freeing and life-transforming. He could not imagine going back to the slavery of the law. So he cannot understand why the Galatian Christians were choosing to trade their freedom in Christ for enslavement to the law.

Paul’s main emphasis is the Spirit and Love. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6) “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (5:14) “The fruit of the Spirit is love” (5:22). This is what’s most important for Paul, not the practices that separate Jews from Gentiles (circumcision, food, and observing The Law.)

But Paul also doesn’t want followers of Christ to get the wrong idea about their freedom in Christ. It is the Freedom from the power of sin, not the freedom to do whatever your flesh desires. Some believers take grace and freedom to a place where Paul and God never intended for it to go. The acts of the flesh that Paul lists: “sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” He is clear that a life that is given over to the flesh is not the life that results in life in the kingdom of God in the age to come. It’s a freedom from the power of sin, not the freedom to do whatever you want that opposes the life of God.

Receive God’s spirit through faith in Jesus Christ and live a life of love, that is what a life of fruitful and flourishing discipleship to Jesus Christ looks like. Legalism is one extreme to avoid, lawlessness is the opposite extreme to avoid. The goal is faith expressing itself through love.

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for Discussion:

Which extreme do you find more challenging in your discipleship- legalism or lawlessness?
Why is our freedom in Christ so easily misunderstood?

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No Longer a Slave

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Galatians 4

Parts of the Bible have been around for nearly 4,000 years. Some parts are very clear and transcend time, place, language, and culture. Instructions to not steal or to not murder generally don’t need a lot of contextual background to be understood.

Other parts of the Bible come from contexts that are very different from our context and certain points can be confusing or easily lost in translation. Galatians 4 uses words like slaves, heirs, and sons. Paul wrote this against the backdrop of the Roman Empire so it is helpful to have a background understanding of civic and family life in ancient Rome to more easily understand Paul’s points in this part of his letter to the Christians in Galatia.

Rome had different categories of persons. To be a citizen of Rome was to be a person of privilege. You had a lot of rights as a citizen: to vote, to run for public office, to get married, to make use of the legal system, to not be tortured or whipped. This citizenship status and the accompanying rights were given to certain men. Women had a lesser status as citizens and fewer rights- they could not vote nor run for public office. Children had no rights, but they came under the protection of their fathers until the time when their fathers released them to become full citizens.

There were other categories in the Roman Empire including Freedmen (former slaves, now free) who had some rights but were not automatically granted citizenship. There were also Client States or allies who had some limited rights as citizens but not full citizenship. Slaves had no rights and were not considered to be persons under Roman law.

Because Paul was a Roman citizen and was writing to Christians who were in the Roman Empire, they would have had a basic understanding of these facts. In addition to being a Roman Citizen, Paul was also a Jew and there were elements of the Jewish faith that would also have been well understood by these Galatian Christians, particularly those who themselves were Jews. Paul also utilizes what is known as an allegorical interpretation of the Bible as he argues his case here. An allegorical reading sees beyond the literal meaning of the story to the deeper symbolism found therein.

With this as a background, Paul is showing these Christians that life in Christ is far superior to life under the Jewish Law. Becoming a Christian is like going from being a slave to becoming a son. To be a son is vastly better in terms of the rights given compared to being a slave. Paul uses this to show the stark contrast between living under the law of Judaism vs. being redeemed by God and granted the spirit and the gift of sonship whereby we are now heirs of God’s coming Kingdom. This should be a no-brainer. And yet, Paul has been facing opposition from those who are teaching that Gentile converts to Christianity must live under the Jewish Law. That is like telling an adopted son that he has to live under the rules of the slave. It’s crazy.

Today, it’s not terribly likely that you as a Christian are going to be bombarded by people trying to convince you to live under the Jewish law. When was the last time someone insisted that you get circumcised (if you are an uncircumcised male), eat kosher foods, strictly observe the Jewish Sabbath, make pilgrimages 3 times a year to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices at the temple (when there is no temple anyway)? We’re not likely to be enticed to enter into the “slavery” of law-keeping. However, we very likely are being invited to enter into the slavery of lawlessness or sin. Far more commonly, Paul talks about being a slave to sin and death. As sons of God, we don’t have to become Jews and follow Jewish dietary and ceremonial laws, but we do have to follow Christ and live godly lives. In Galatians 5 Paul will contrast living by the flesh vs. living by the spirit. Paul wants Christians here to understand that in Christ we are not slaves but free. We are not slaves we are sons (and daughters). We should use that freedom wisely and not misuse it to be enslaved again whether it be to the law or to sin/the flesh.

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for Discussion:

1. How does seeing yourself as a son or daughter rather than as a slave change how you live?

2. How have you misused your freedom? What parts of slavery do you find most tempting?

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The End of Division

Galatians 3

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

I don’t know about you, but to me, it feels like the world is really divided right now. More divided than we’ve been in a long time. Liberal vs. Conservative. The liberals call the conservatives Fascists or Nazis, the conservatives call the liberals Communists. We are divided between theists and anti-theists, or some would divide us as racist or anti-racist. Still, others would divide us as binary or non-binary, pro-live or pro-choice. Living in perpetual states of division is stressful, painful, and exhausting. In the words of Rodney King during the L.A. racial riots of the early 1990’s “Can we…can we all get along?”

That’s kind of what Paul was saying to the Galatian Christians. There was division going on in their Church. Paul taught them that we are saved by putting our faith in Jesus Christ as the son of God who died for our sins and whom God raised from the dead. This salvation is open to everyone who believes, young or old, male or female, Jew or Gentile (non-Jew). As Paul was traveling on his mission to other places in Asia and Europe to share the message of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of the Kingdom of God with as many as he could, he received reports that people had come into the Churches in Galatia insisting that Gentile believers must begin practicing Jewish law in order to be saved.

Paul was pretty angry with the Christians there who were being led astray by the teaching of these “Judaizers” (people who insisted that Gentile Christians must practice Jewish Law in order to be saved). Paul calls them fools and victims of witchcraft for allowing themselves to be taught something so clearly contrary to the gospel that he preached to them previously.

Paul goes back and shows from the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) that even back in the time of Abraham God made his plan very clear. God always planned to bring salvation not only to the Jews who were descendants of Abraham but also to Gentiles who were not biological descendants of Abraham. Paul shows that God called Abraham long before the Ten Commandments and Ceremonial Laws were given to the Jewish people. As Jews, they were always recipients of God’s grace. The Law was never a precondition to them being chosen as God’s covenant people. Paul wants it to be clearly understood that for the Gentiles they are brought into God’s chosen family not on the basis of observing Jewish ceremonial law or even moral law, but on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ.

In Christ, old barriers and divisions come falling down. We all become a part of the one family of God through Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter our nationality, our age, our sex, our citizenship status or our righteousness according to the law. What matters is that we come to Jesus Christ and have been clothed in Jesus Christ.

Later in Galatians Paul will talk about what it means to crucify the flesh and to live according to the spirit and produce virtuous actions by the spirit, but the fruit is a result of salvation, not the precondition to being saved.

The only true way to end division in the world is by becoming one with Jesus Christ through faith.

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for Discussion:

1. What are the kinds of things that divide Christians and Churches today? What action will you take to help remove divisions where you worship and serve?

2. Why is it important to understand virtue as a result of salvation rather than as a precondition to salvation?

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How Do You Save the World?

Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Galatians 2

The following story is based on a Poem by Loren Eiseley called The Star Thrower:

Once upon a time, there was a man walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of someone who would dance to the day. So he began to walk faster to catch up. As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn’t dancing, but instead, he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer, he called out, “Good morning! What are you doing?” The young man paused, looked up and replied, “Throwing starfish into the ocean.”

“I guess I should have asked, “Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?”

“The sun is up and the tide is going out. And if I don’t throw them in they’ll die.

“But young man, don’t you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it. You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves. “It made a difference for that one!” https://starthrower.com/pages/the-star-thrower-story

How do you save the world? One starfish at a time. That seems to be how God does it. When you look at the history of salvation as revealed in the Bible, God often begins the work through a single person. When God decided to create one special nation who would enter into a personal, covenant-based relationship with Him, He began with one man, a man named Abram (later Abraham). God entered into a special bond with Abraham and promised to make him into a great nation that would eventually bring blessing to all the earth. Abraham was the father of the nation of Israel, God’s chosen people. Israel’s mission as God’s people was to be a light to all the nations of the world.

Israel struggled to fulfill that calling from God and became very inward-focused. They elevated their unique relationship with God and emphasized their “set apart” status, worn as a badge of superiority. They lost the mission imperative that God first gave to Abraham.

God always had the heart to reach all people, not just descendants of Abraham by birth. When the time came to expand his relationship with all humans and open the doors of salvation to the nations not descended from Abraham, God again started small. Through one man, Jesus of Nazareth, God’s only begotten Son, God would open the doors of salvation to people from every nation.

It was difficult for many of Abraham’s descendants to grasp that in Christ, God was extending his saving hand to all people. One of the issues the early church wrestled with was “what is necessary for one who is not a descendant of Abraham, not from the nation of Israel, to do to become a member of God’s chosen people?” The church agreed that they needed to be baptized into Jesus Christ and be obedient to Christ as their Lord and observe the basic commandments to not worship idols, not steal, kill, commit adultery or misuse the name of the Lord. But still, for many of the descendants of Abraham who had lived separated lives, eaten special kosher food, and not shared meals with Gentiles, it was very difficult for them to imagine embracing those Gentiles, whom they had previously considered to be nothing better than dogs, as equals in the sight of God.

While Peter, James, and the other Apostles continued to make their primary focus on sharing the message of Jesus Christ died and risen and coming again as King with their fellow Israelites, the Apostle Paul was called by God to bring that same message about Jesus to the Gentiles. Through Paul’s preaching and missionary work, God’s kingdom was expanding to include people from every nation, and language on earth. God made it clear to Peter in a vision that the dietary laws that they followed as Jews and the physical act of having all males circumcised were not to be a requirement for Gentiles coming into the Church. You didn’t have to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. But this did not sit well with many Jewish Christians who found it challenging to let go of those old prejudices and barriers.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians was written to correct his fellow Jewish Christian and convince them to change their attitudes and practices in relation to Gentile Converts. When they tried to make the Gentiles become Jews when they became Christians, Paul called this a “different gospel”. They were creating unnecessary barriers to salvation.

Do we today put up unnecessary barriers to salvation for people who are outside of the Church? Sometimes we place our cultural preferences and traditions in the same category as the message of Jesus Christ and require others to jump through those hoops in order to be accepted into the Church. When we create extra requirements beyond the basic teaching of the gospels and expect people to meet our cultural expectations in order to be saved, we are preaching a different gospel and keeping people away from Jesus and his saving love.

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for Discussion:

1. What can the young man in the Star Thrower teach us about going about the overwhelming task of rescuing the world from sin?

2. What are some unnecessary barriers to salvation that you have observed in church or in your own witness to unbelievers?

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The Hero who Rescues Us

Galatians 1

Monday, August 8, 2022

Like most people, I enjoy stories about people being rescued. There is a universal appeal to a story where it’s life and death on the line and the hero comes to the rescue. Sometimes, it’s an ordinary person with “a particular set of skills” like the father Liam Neeson played in the movie Taken. Sometimes it’s a group of people who pool their talents to do a heroic deed and defeat evil powers or existential threats. Think, Lord of the Rings, Armageddon, or Independence Day. Sometimes it’s a hero with otherworldly powers who is willing to put his own life and safety on the line, like Superman, the Man of Steel. Many people have noted that Superman can be viewed as a kind of allegory of the greatest hero of all, Jesus.

As Paul opens his letter to the Galatians he leads with Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead by God, the father. God raised Jesus from the dead after Jesus “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.”(Galatians 1:4). There it is, the heart of almost every hero story. This is the story of Jesus, God’s chosen one who gave himself to rescue us from evil. This is not only the overarching story behind Paul’s letter to the Galatians, but it is the big story of the Gospel, the story of the Bible, and the story of life. This is the story that is God’s story, it is history, and we are part of that story. What I just wrote is called a metanarrative. The post-modern worldview which has come to predominate our culture rejects metanarratives which are grand stories that explain the truth in clear terms. There is no place in post-modernism for things like objectivity and universal truth. You have “your truth” and I have “my truth” and “no one should impose their truth on someone else”. Of course, this is not actually practiced by those who preach it and who are working to impose “their truths” on others as if they are right and others are wrong. If you don’t follow “our truth” we will work to get you canceled.

Paul has no patience for those who reject the Truth and listen to the voices of those who are trying to throw the followers of Jesus Christ into confusion by preaching a “different gospel”. I’m sure Paul would have a lot to say about what is happening in our world today. The loss of Truth, of metanarratives or big coherent stories around which we organize our life. As Christians, we are part of God’s Big Story and that story is Truth. Jesus said of himself that he is “the way, the truth, and the life.” The Bible speaks in binary terms: good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, male and female, lost and found, etc… The evil one has always tried to sow seeds of doubt and contradict such clear thinking. The evil one prefers to operate in the realm of “50 Shades of Gray.” Ever since the serpent tempted Eve by causing her to question and doubt God’s word introducing confusion and chaos into the world, there has been a war on the truth. Jesus told Pontius Pilate “The truth will set you free”. That was true 2000 years ago in Jerusalem, and it is still true today.

Jesus is a True Hero sent by God to rescue us from this “present evil age” which he did by laying down his life for us. That’s a hero worth believing in and following. Let’s not fall for the trendy lies of post-modernism, the lies of the evil one.

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for Discussion:

1. What is your favorite hero/rescuer story? What is it about that story that you find most appealing/inspiring?

2. How does Jesus as a hero/rescuer stack up against others (fiction or non-fiction)? How can you share the big story about Jesus with others effectively?

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Witnesses

Mark 16

Sunday, August 7, 2022

After numerous chapters devoted to preparing for the death and subsequent sacrifice of Christ, we finally reach the glorious reward of the Resurrection! Mark chapter 16, compared to the other gospels, is quite sparse in descriptive details of the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. However, what it does depict breathes a message of hope and love for the future of the church, as well as a final instruction.

When Mary and Mary were given the message to tell the remaining disciples that Christ had risen, the disciples couldn’t believe it. “When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.” Mark 16:11. In fact, it seems like one of the things the disciples are best at is not believing something until they see it. They did not have faith that the thing they had been listening to Jesus predict for the past several years would come to fruition. Don’t worry because Jesus rebuked them for not believing when he found them again. Do you struggle to believe what Jesus has promised us? Sometimes it’s difficult to imagine a world where we all get along, where there is no longer pain. But without faith, we will never see this world; not because it won’t exist, but because we lack the faith to see it. Have faith!

The final message Jesus gives the disciples is to “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Mark 16:15. That is our grand mission! What are you doing today to increase the Kingdom of God? Some of us are not called to verbally preach the word, and some of us are blessed with such a gift. But not being good at public speaking is no excuse to not spread the word.

Actions can speak significantly louder than words. In fact, that’s often the best way to spread the word; by living it out. To speak the message of Christ with empty words whilst living a life completely contrary is almost worse than to have never spoken a word at all. It is by watching the lives of those who follow Christ that we will be living examples of the love he provides us. In your joy, in your struggles, in your sadness, and in your blessings, praise God that you have been given this life to live. Focus on becoming the people that God has instructed us to become and devote your successes to Him. Live your life with the purpose of praising and worshipping Him, and He will reward you. As Christ commands it, do not simply speak the word; live it. Amen

-Mason Kiel

AND

2 witnesses are better than one! Today we have TWO writers for you – so below is your second devotion on Mark 16. Thank you Mason AND Jeff for writing for today. Keep sharing the good good news! Jesus is Alive!

Have you ever been a witness who was called on to testify in court? I have. It was an interesting experience. I had seen a crime committed, I reported it to the police, the criminal was arrested, I was asked to give a written statement to the police and I was later called on to testify at their trial. I will say that when you witness something that causes excitement, gets your heart pounding, and puts you in “fight or flight” mode, it affects your thinking and perspective. Everything seemed to be going faster than it really was. Normally it’s more believable when several people give their eyewitness testimony. Of course, no two witnesses agree on every detail. Each person sees different things from different vantage points. Each person remembers different details. Each person recalls the sequence of events in a slightly different order. These variations in detail are actually normal and good. If every witness testified exactly the same details in the same way the lawyers for the other side would be arguing that they were unreliable because they obviously got together and rehearsed their testimony, which is a big no-no.

When people read the Gospel accounts of Jesus they are seeing the story of Jesus unfold through the eyes of a variety of different witnesses. The Spirit of God is the inspiration behind each of the writers, but God works through human beings and through different witnesses. So it should come as no surprise when we read the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and also the writings of Paul, Peter, James, and others, that while they are telling basically the same story, they do so from different perspectives. The Gospel writers are either reporting what they themselves witnessed or what other eyewitnesses reported to them. They tell the same story with different perspectives and often emphasize different parts of the story or place the events of the story in slightly different orders in keeping with the overall theme of their account. Each story has different audiences in mind, different themes, and is not carbon copies of each other.

One very important rule that is repeated throughout the Bible is that there must be a minimum of two or three witnesses. (See Deuteronomy 19:15, Matthew 18:16, John 8:17, and several other passages). We’ve already noted that there are four Gospel accounts in the New Testament which fulfill that important principle.

It is also interesting to note the background of who is qualified to be a witness. Jewish law has a list of different types of people who are not permitted to be called as witnesses: “women, slaves, minors, lunatics, the deaf, the blind, the wicked, the contemptible, relatives, and the interested parties (Yad, Edut 9:1).” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/witness . The Talmud, which is a Jewish Commentary from ancient times gives more details about who the “wicked” are who cannot testify. At one point in ancient Jewish history, shepherds were included in the list of people disqualified from witnessing. “As a class, shepherds acquired a bad reputation as being lawless, dishonest, and unreliable, above all because of their habit of trespassing on other people’s lands to graze their flocks.” https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/20-february/regulars/out-of-the-question/shepherds-character-reference.

Here’s what I find very interesting: two categories of people who were not permitted to act as witnesses were shepherds and women. I’m not interested in debating the fairness of those exclusions, but simply note that at the time of Jesus’ birth, life, and death, some of the people who were not accepted as reliable witnesses were shepherds and women. Why is this important? Consider, who were the first eyewitnesses who heard the angelic announcement about the birth of Jesus? Luke says it was “Shepherds living out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks at night” (Luke 2:8). It was to these “unreliable witness” shepherds that the angels appeared. And it was these unreliable witness shepherds who went and reported to Mary and Joseph all that they had seen and then went out and “spread the word” about all that they had seen. (Luke 2:17)

Now, maybe that was just a fluke… but maybe not. In today’s reading, Mark 16, we fast forward to just after the death of Jesus. Who is it who first go to the tomb after Jesus died? Once again, it was to “unreliable witnesses” – this time it was women. To whom did the angel appear announcing that Christ had risen? “Unreliable witness” women. Maybe it wasn’t a fluke after all. Maybe it’s a part of God’s deliberate plan to choose people to be witnesses of these important saving acts of God, which the world normally rejects. Does God choose to reveal His great acts of saving to the lowly people the world rejects? It seems He does. In fact, now that you know to look for it, pay attention when you read the Gospels and notice how many times the witnesses God uses come from the ranks of the supposed “unreliable witnesses.” How many times does God use women, or tax collectors (another category of unreliable witness) or slaves, the blind, the deaf, or just plain sinners to be His witnesses? You’ll find that from beginning to end, the Gospel is filled with “unreliable witnesses” who turn out to be very reliable. And in a giant flip-flop of societal expectations, it is the lawyers and religious professionals from the reliable witness class who are the ones who bring false charges against Jesus.

But the real question that each of us needs to ask ourselves today is, am I a reliable witness for Jesus? Am I willing to tell the truth about what I have seen, heard, and known firsthand about Jesus in my own life? Am I willing to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about Jesus?

-Jeff Fletcher

Questions for Discussion:

Why do you think God chose “unreliable witnesses” to be the witnesses to Jesus’ birth and resurrection and other key events?
When was the last time you told someone else “witnessed” what you have seen, heard, or experienced about Jesus?
Who is someone whom you could witness to today?

2022 SeekGrowLove Bible Reading Plan Download

He Creates. He Destroys.

Fear the Lord.

Proverbs 1

Saturday, July 16, 2022

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but foolsdespise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7)

The Hebrew word yir-aw can be translated fear, terror, reverence, respect, piety. We are to fear, be in terror of, reverence, respect, show piety to God.

But God doesn’t really want us to fear Him, does he? Isn’t God all about love and grace and mercy and forgiveness? Why should we fear God?

Jesus knew God, his heavenly father better than any human being has ever known God, and here is what Jesus had to say: “Never be afraid of those who can kill the body but are powerless to kill the soul! Far better to stand in awe of the one who has the power to destroy body and soul in the fires of destruction!” (Matthew 10:28 JB Phillips translation of New Testament). That’s what Jesus said about his own Dad. Ever heard of the, “My dad can beat up your dad” game? Jesus says, “Wise up people, my Dad can throw you into the lake of fire where you will be completely destroyed forever.”

Of course God want us to love him. God longs to have a loving personal relationship with all of His children. God loves us so much that he allowed his perfect and sinless son to endure the betrayal and beatings and crucifixion and agonizing death on the cross so that we might have salvation and not be cast into the lake of fire which consumes all those who reject God’s grace and mercy through Christ. God’s love is 100. If you need a reminder of this go back to Thursday’s reading “His love/mercy/faithfulness endures forever.” That’s where God wants every single one of us to end up, fully surrendered to His divine love for us.

But not everyone is there yet. In order to fully love God we need to know God. God is powerful beyond words. God speaks the word and trillions of galaxies are birthed. Stars with planets swirling about them. God speaks the word and living things come into being, plants, birds, fish, mammals. God scoops up a pile of mud and blows into it and a human person is created. God rolls back a stone and sends forth his spirit and the dead Jesus comes to life everlasting. That same powerful God speaks a word and a star explodes. That same powerful God speaks a word and the earth shakes, volcanos erupt, powerful winds swirl and destroy all that is in their path.

When God was leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt they were terrified to go near the mountain where God came down to speak to them. After Moses was in God’s presence receiving the ten commandments his face was glowing and the people were afraid to come near Moses because he had been near God.

To truly Love God we must know God, and to know God means to recognize his unimaginable power to both create and destroy. In Jude 7 Jesus’ younger brother writes: “ Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” Yes, our loving God, who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son (John 3:16) is the same God who completely destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sexual immorality and perversion. I’m not making this stuff up, it’s there in the Bible.

I love God, but it took some time to get there. Before I could truly love God I had to know who God is and I had to understand that God, who is capable of such great love, is also capable of destroying those who rebel against him and his word. Fear and Love are not mutually exclusive.

A great old hymn by Isaac Watts begins:

“Before Jehovah’s aweful throne,

ye nations, bow with sacred joy;

know that the Lord is God alone:

he can create, and he destroy.”

To know God is to know that he can both create and destroy. To know God is to know that he is capable of incredible acts of love and mercy, and the power to destroy those who reject his love.

I like a lot of modern worship music, and yet, I think too much modern worship focuses only on God’s love and mercy and grace, grace, grace. Maybe some of the old hymns need to be dusted off and revisited. We need to be reminded that “he can create and he can destroy” because the “fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” and God knows our world is running way short of wisdom these days.

Isaac Watts hymn started with God’s aweful throne and a reminder that he can create and destroy, but it ended with God’s love:

Wide as the world is thy command,

vast as eternity thy love;

firm as a rock thy truth must stand,

when rolling years shall cease to move.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but it ends with Love for those who embrace all of who God is.

-Jeff Fletcher

Reflection Questions:

1. What is your favorite Love passage of the Bible?

2. What passage in the Bible really scares you?

3. How can you hold these two polarities in your mind?

2022 SeekGrowLove Bible Reading Plan Download

NO Pit TOO Deep

Look UP!

Psalm 130

Friday, July 15, 2022

The comedic author Erma Bombeck once wrote a book entitled: “If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits.” It’s a funny play on words using “the pits” as the antithesis of the good life. The “pits” she’s talking about are not really cherry pits, those things you spit out after you have eaten the deliciously sweet cherry, but the pits of despair. Webster’s Dictionary defines “the pits”: “something that is very bad or unpleasant. You caught the flu on your birthday? That’s the pits! This rainy weather is the absolute pits.”

You’re in the pits when things are going horribly wrong, or when you are feeling low. You feel low when you are depressed, like there is something heavy weighing down on you.

Psalm 130 is known as a penitential psalm (Psalm 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143). It starts out very low, “Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD”. This person is in deep despair because they are weighed down by feelings of guilt. They have done something terribly wrong and they are weighed down with the heaviness of regret.

In the Bible there are stories of people who are down in the pits of despair who cry out to God. When Joseph was taken by his brothers and thrown into a dry cistern down in the earth, he was in the pit. When Jonah was swallowed by the whale (or great fish), he was in the pit. When Daniel was thrown into the den of lions he was in the pit. But each of these people when they were in the pit cried out to God. And that’s what this Psalm writer does from the depths, they cry to God. They cry for mercy.

They acknowledge that it is only by God’s mercy that they are able to get out of that pit. If God kept a perpetual record of our sins that we had to carry around with us all of our lives none of us could stand under the weight. Imagine trying to swim holding a 100 lb barbell in your hands… you would sink to the bottom in an instant.

Psalm 130 is also one of the songs of ascents. This selection of Psalm from Psalm 120-134 were sung by worshippers journeying to the temple in Jerusalem to worship God by offering sacrifices. They would sing the songs of ascents as they climbed up Mt. Zion. They would sing them as they walked up the steps to the temple bringing with them their sin offering, their guilt offering and other reminders of their need for God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Notice as the Psalm begins they are “in the depths crying for mercy” lamenting that no one can stand in God’s presence as long as God remembers their sins. But feel them rising up as they get closer to the top of the mountain, closer to Jerusalem, closer to the temple, closer to God. There is the hope of forgiveness. There is this longing for God, they are waiting with their whole being for God, they are putting their hope in God. As they look up and draw closer to God they are literally coming up from out of the pits, out of the depths of misery and despair into God’s mercy and forgiveness into the arms of God’s unfailing love and full redemption. They are being bought from slavery to sin and given freedom in God.

So many people today, like this Psalmist, are in the pits. The rates of depression are incredibly high. A study in 2020 showed that 37 million Americans take anti-depressant medication (the numbers undoubtedly have gone up in the 2 years since then due to Covid lockdowns). Over 100,000 people died in 2021 from opioid/fentanyl overdoses. People take these pain killers not for physical pain but to try to relieve existential pain and despair. Suicide rates are rising because people find themselves in the pits and can’t find a way out.

Psalm 130 says to them and to us…. Look up, there is a way out. God is the way out of that pit of despair. God rescued Joseph from the pit and he became the most powerful man in all of Egypt and saved his whole family from starvation. God rescued Jonah from the pit of the whale and Jonah preached salvation to the entire city of Nineveh and they were restored to God. God closed the mouths of the lions and Daniel was rescued by God from the pit of lions. Even Jesus was in the pit of despair on the cross from which he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as he took the total weight of the sin of the world on his shoulders. God rolled back the stone and rescued Jesus from the pit of the tomb and brought him out to everlasting life.

There is no pit too deep for God to bring you out of if you will cry out to him, look up and move toward him. Ascend from the depths of despair to God’s mercy and forgiveness and true life through faith in Jesus Christ.

-Jeff Fletcher

Reflection Questions:

1. When was a time that you were in the pits? How did God help you out of that pit?

2. If you’ve experienced God’s saving hand in the pit, who can you share that hope with to help them out of the pit?

2022 SeekGrowLove Bible Reading Plan Download

Love that Endures Forever

Thursday July 14, 2022

Psalm 136

“We got spirit, yes we do, we got spirit, how about you?”

That takes me back over 40 years to my high school days. The cheerleaders out on the sidelines leading the call and response cheer to help get the crowd involved and pumped up to keep the team motivated.

Call and response is a part of the culture. In music, particularly jazz and some rock and roll, the call and response is a form of music with a long history. One instrument plays a riff, and another answers back.

Call and response is a big part of African worship. I once preached a community service with several hundred in attendance including a sizeable contingent of black worshippers who really got into the call and response and kept me, the preacher, energized.

The call and response is an old form of worship and Psalm 136 is a great example of how call and response was incorporated into the ancient Hebrew worship tradition. As you look through this great Psalm of praise and worship it’s all about call and response. One calls out, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good” and the other responds right back, “His love endures forever”. The other calls back, “Give thanks to the God of gods.” And the other responds: “His love endures forever.” And so it goes, call and response, call and response. It’s an interactive prayer in two voices and it tells a powerful story of Israel’s gratitude to God for his endless love and mercy and faithfulness to his people.

With each successive call, this Psalm tells the story of God’s greatness. God is greater than anything else that people worship. God’s greatness is revealed by his acts of creation. He made the heavens, the lights, the sun and moon and stars, this part of the Psalm shows God’s universal greatness to all people. Then, the Psalm shifts to how God reveals his greatness particularly to His people, Israel, by recalling the story of the Exodus and how God showed His faithfulness in delivering his people from slavery.

With each call revealing God’s creative and saving acts there is a response proclaiming the permanence of God’s love. The Hebrew word, “hesed” is a challenging one to translate. If you look at various translations of Psalm 136 you will see it translated as love, mercy, steadfast love and faithfulness. Hesed is a word so full of meaning that it takes a lot of words to try to capture the fullness of it’s meaning. And that makes sense. God’s love and mercy and faithfulness are so great and so dependable that it can’t be contained in one simple definition or translation.

As you go about your day, pay attention to all of the ways that God reveals his love and mercy and faithfulness to you. Be sure to give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, His love endures forever.

As an added bonus, listen to Michael W. Smith rock out on the song: Forever, which is based on this Psalm: https://youtu.be/3lPdtqgouCc

-Jeff Fletcher

Reflection Questions:

Choose one element of God’s power or character that is included in the Psalm and think about how God has revealed that to you in your life.
Try writing your own Call and Response Psalm to God. What parts of God’s story revealed in creation, the Bible and your own life experience would you include in the call? Which element of God’s character would you magnify in the response?
Do a word study on “Hesed” (Bible Gateway lets you compare multiple translations in parallel – for example, see Psalm 136:1 in various translations). What would your definition of Hesed sound like?

2022 SeekGrowLove Bible Reading Plan Download

Tag: Jeff Fletcher

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