Engaging Scripture

How to reach out when you are helpless – Honest Advent Week 1, Part 4

Know the feeling? If you’ve ever had a battle with a medical situation, maybe a mental health situation, maybe a difficult relationship, the story of this lady might resonate with you. If you’ve ever struggled financially, wondering why it seems that you can never get ahead of the bills, or your car or house breaking down, and you’re sick of reaching out for help, you know what the lady is feeling. It is a feeling of being vulnerable all the time. Feeling like you are just open and wounded, and often not by your own choice. It is a forced vulnerability, where life has pushed you to a place that you didn’t choose, and yet you don’t have any other option than to place your broken, hurting self in the hands of others. It gets old doesn’t it?

Turn to Mark 5:24, and we read another story that is quite similar to the story of the centurion. In fact, many of the miracle stories of Jesus feature a person who is helpless, reaching out to Jesus for rescue. I mention this particular story because the power dynamic is almost the opposite of the power dynamic in the centurion story. It could be that you read the previous post and don’t identify with the powerful centurion. Maybe the person we meet in this post will speak to you.

In Mark 5:25, we meet a sick woman who has no power to heal her body. She has tried so many different remedies, and nothing is working. She has clearly been in the down position for years. Talk about vulnerability. Her whole life has been one of vulnerability. Imagine how tired, how depressed, how frustrated she must be feeling. Look at verses 25-26. The constant suffering, the repeated cycle of seeking a new hope, only to have every single option result in a dead end. On top of that, the large expenditure of money has left her penniless. She suffered a great deal, and yet her life just got worse.

The woman has not given up hope, though, has she? There’s a light breaking in the darkness of the land, as there is word on the street of a healer, a miracle-worker. Verses 27-28 are astounding to me: 12 years of pain and emptiness and failure, and yet this woman hears about Jesus and he awakens hope within her. It’s not a jaded hope, either. You know what I mean by jaded hope? It’s that feeling you get after years of fruitless struggle, maybe in trying to find a relationship, or maybe in trying to improve your finances, maybe in trying to get healthy, and it has been one episode of bad news after the other. You are utterly defeated, and then a friend comes to you with yet another idea. You know your friend cares about you, but they have no idea how you feel, how you’re just done with it, and so you humor them, saying, “Yeah, thanks, let’s try it,” but inside you’re really thinking, “Whatever, this isn’t going to work.” When I read verses 27-28, even after 12 years of deep struggle, this woman still has faith! She knows. She is convinced. She believes. She knows that if she brings her vulnerability to Jesus, he can heal her. I love the hope that is blazing in her eyes.

And she goes to where he is, weaving through the crowd, and she reaches out, touching his cloak. In that one act of amazing faithful vulnerability, she is healed.

Isn’t it wild that Jesus knows that power went out of him? It’s not like he saw her coming and the crowd parted, and it was just Jesus and the woman, and he reaches out and heals her. No. He didn’t reach out to her. He didn’t even see her coming. She came to him. At the moment she touched his cloak, he felt something shift in the power of the Spirit that was working through him, and he knew someone had touched him. Interestingly, there were maybe a bunch of people touching him. Look at verse 24 where we read that a large crowd pressed against him. Despite this, when the woman touches his clothes, Jesus says, “Who touched me?” I can see his disciple Peter, who tended to speak the obvious, say, “Uh, Jesus, there are like 5 people touching you. What do you mean?”

What Jesus meant was this: in the middle of the crowd, when the woman, whose life was defined by painful vulnerability, brought her vulnerability to Jesus, her faith tapped into his healing power.

I find it fascinating that Jesus doesn’t seem to have made a choice to heal the woman! It wasn’t like he had to decide, “Should I heal her, or not?” Instead we can presume that God the Father, through the power of the Spirit resident in Jesus, allowed the healing because of the woman’s faith.

That is how we bring our vulnerability to Jesus, in faith that he is powerful! This doesn’t mean that we will automatically get what we want. Numerous people were touching Jesus, but it was only this woman who was healed. Perhaps none of the people touching needed any kind of healing, yet it seems that power would be constantly flowing from him considering how many people actually need healing in their lives! But in this case, at least, Jesus only refers to the healing that occurred in this one woman’s life. Why? Because she made herself vulnerable. She is for us an example of faithful vulnerability.

Check back to tomorrow’s post, as there is one more story of vulnerability that we will learn from.

How to find power when you feel powerless – Honest Advent Week 1, Part 3

Being powerless is a terrible feeling, isn’t it? Do you know what I mean? It’s that helpless feeling when life is bulldozing you and there’s nothing you can do about it. In today’s post we find out a very powerful man became powerless in order to access true power, and how we can learn from him to practice the same in our lives.

As we continue studying Honest Advent, week one is about vulnerability, and how it is a gift that Jesus really wants for Christmas. In the previous post, we met the powerful religious leader, Nicodemus, who allowed himself to be vulnerable to Jesus.

Turn to Matthew 8:5-13 where we meet another powerful person, but instead of an elite religious leader, this time it is a Roman centurion. At the time Jesus was alive, the Romans had a military vice-grip of control over Palestine. The Jews, therefore, were an occupied people, with Roman soldiers patrolling their streets and towns. They were forced to pay taxes to the Romans, to follow Roman law, to do basically whatever that Romans wanted them to do.

As you can imagine, the Jews did not like being subservient to the Romans. They hated the Romans, and they pleaded with God to keep his promise and send the promised Messiah to deliver them. Many Jews tried to be that Messiah. They raised up underground armies who would rebel and fight the Romans. Sometimes it worked, but never for long. The Romans were too strong.

When this Roman centurion comes to Jesus, therefore, an emotional cultural clash is taking place. Jesus, his friends and followers are Jews. The centurion is Roman. They are enemies of each other. Furthermore, the Roman centurion is in the position of power. At his command, soldiers could kick people out of their homes, steal their possessions, demand the people to do pretty much whatever they want. In power dynamics, we would call this the up position. The Roman centurion has all the power and position to do what he wants.

But this particular centurion has a problem that has placed him in the down position. His highly valued servant is on his deathbed. The powerful Roman centurion has no power to heal his servant. Or maybe he tried and failed at that. Maybe he sought out doctors and remedies, and nothing was working. All the benefits of being a centurion in the up position in that society have turned out to be meaningless when it comes to saving his friend.

So what does the centurion do? He can not longer rely on the power of his up position. Instead he embraces the reality of his situation by evaluating himself realistically. When it comes to saving his friend, the centurion is powerless, in the down position. He admits this, and he reaches out to one he knows is in the up position. Jesus.

See what the centurion has done? He has made himself vulnerable. Making yourself vulnerable is really hard to do when you are used to being in charge, when you are used to using your power to get what you want. It takes humility and teachability to lower yourself, to make yourself vulnerable and reach out saying, “I can’t do this. I need help.”

But that is exactly what Jesus taught us to say in John 15:4, when he told his disciples, “Apart from me, you can do nothing, so remain in me, and I will remain in you, and you will bear much fruit.” When we express our vulnerability to Jesus we are showing that we have a healthy evaluation of ourselves, that we’re not too proud or arrogant to reach out for Jesus’ help. It shows that we recognize who we are in Christ, and who he is.

Notice Jesus’ response to the Roman centurion in Matthew 8:5-13. Jesus is elated! The centurion has given Jesus the gift of vulnerability, and Jesus loves it. In fact Jesus says he has not seen faith like this in all of Israel! That’s a bold statement considering what I mentioned above, that the Jews and Romans were enemies. Clearly, this centurion was not your typical Roman centurion, which Luke describes for us in his version of the account (Luke 7:1-10). There we read that not only was the centurion faithful in the moment of his powerlessness, but he had also, long before this moment, established a reputation for helping the Jewish community, including the building of their synagogue. Still, this powerful man correctly evaluated himself as powerless to help his servant, and when he reached out in vulnerable faith to Jesus, the centurion is a model for how we can give Jesus the gift of our vulnerability.

Like I said, Jesus is elated at the man’s vulnerable faith, responding by healing the servant instantly! This is not saying that if we are vulnerable to Jesus in our moment of weakness that he is somehow duty-bound to do whatever we wish. Displaying our vulnerability is not like saying, “I wish…” to a genie. But know this: even if we don’t receive the resolution to the situation that caused our vulnerability, our posture of faithful vulnerability is the gift Jesus delights in.

Consider what Jesus himself taught about this kind of vulnerability in his parable of the woman and the stubborn judge. Read Luke 18:1-17, where Jesus says we should pray and not give up, like a woman with a problem who keeps taking her problem to a judge, over and over, day after day, but the judge never wants to be bothered by her. Finally, though, the woman’s persistence pays off, and she gains a hearing before the judge. Jesus is not saying that God is like the judge, as if God doesn’t really want to hear from us, until we wear him down and he gives in. Jesus’ point is that we should bring our vulnerability to God, persistently, consistently, and we should not give up. Rather than being grumpy about this, Jesus reminds us that this delights him!

Vulnerability means saying, “I don’t get it.” – Honest Advent Week 1, Part 2

For Advent 2020, we are following the themes in the book Honest Advent as we think about the gifts we can give Jesus in celebration of his birthday. As we saw in the previous post, in Week 1, we are giving him the gift of our vulnerability. To understand what vulnerability looks like, and how we can give Jesus the gift of our vulnerability, we’re going to take a look at Jesus’ encounters with four people.

To read about the first one, open a Bible to John 3:1-10.

There we meet Nicodemus who is a member of one of Israel’s religious ruling parties called the Pharisees. Nicodemus is very curious about Jesus, and wants to have a private meeting with Jesus under cover of night. Why at night? Because of the track record of the Pharisees interaction with Jesus. The relationship was not good. Normally the air between Jesus and the Pharisees was ice cold because the Pharisees were constantly trying to trip Jesus up so they could accuse him of blasphemy or treachery. They were super jealous of Jesus’ popularity, and wanted to take him down. What was worse was that Jesus would confront them, point out their hypocrisy, and he always got the upper hand in their debates with him. So they hated him.

But not all of them. Some Pharisees were curious, like Nicodemus. He thought there was something genuine, something different about Jesus, and Nicodemus’ wondered if his Pharisee buddies were wrong about this guy. But there’s no way Nicodemus was going to risk his reputation by challenging his friends directly, or by getting sighted in public with Jesus. So a covert meeting is what it will take for Nicodemus to have a real conversation with Jesus.

The conversation is…well…weird. Jesus is characteristically mysterious, teaching in parables and metaphors, talking about people being born a second time, pushing Nicodemus to think deeply and figuratively. Pushing Nicodemus outside the box of the typical religious thought of the day.

You know what Nicodemus says? “I don’t get it”. “I don’t understand.”

Those are amazing words coming from him. Nicodemus is a Pharisee! That means he went through years of biblical and theological training. He is a scholar. In that society of first-century Palestine, think about how upside-down this is. The peasant turned prophet, Jesus, is schooling the Bible professor, Nicodemus. Look at verse 10 where Jesus boldly says to Nicodemus, “You’re Israel’s teacher, and do you not understand these things?” That’s a burn. Many people would hear that and start seething angrily inside, thinking “This peon is trying to make fun of me? No way!” Many people would shoot back at Jesus with a burn of their own and walk out of there. Even if they truly didn’t understand Jesus.

But rather than be embarrassed, rather than save face, rather than get angry, Nicodemus is an example for us of vulnerability. No matter if think we are spiritually advanced and biblically literate, we need to be vulnerable before God. We need to be teachable, remembering that we don’t have him all figured out. There is always more to learn. And we should take the posture of learners! Are you showing vulnerability by being a learner? What a gift that is to the people you interact with. What a gift that is to Jesus.

The Weirdness of Christmas – Honest Advent Week 1, Part 1

Last-Minute Ideas for Celebrating Jesus' Birthday - ROOTED FAMILY

Have you heard that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday party? We use that idea often with children. It’s not wrong, but it always seemed slightly off to me. First of all, the biblical Gospels say nothing about the day on which Jesus was born. The Gospels don’t mention the year, month, or the day of week. Scholars have done loads of research to discover how it came to be that the ancient Christians selected December 25^th to celebrate Jesus’ birth, but even that research is very undecided. It might have something to do with Christians wanting to provide an alternative to pagan religions celebrating the winter solstice, but it might also connect with Judaism. The scholars are just not sure. Then again maybe it’s not all that strange that we celebrate Jesus’ birthday when we don’t know the actual day, because it is a good thing to celebrate no matter the day.

But I still think the idea of Christmas as Jesus’ birthday party does have some oddness to it. Not only do we not know if we have the date right, but we also don’t seem to have the concept of birthday parties right, at least when it comes to Jesus’ birthday party. What do I mean? Think about it. At birthday parties we give gifts to the one whose birthday it is, but for Jesus’ birthday, we give gifts to each other! In fact, many of us give ourselves gifts from Christmas.

I think it gets even weirder still. If Christmas is Jesus’ birthday, then we should not only be giving him gifts, but we should also be giving him gifts that he wants. When you think of a person’s birthday, you think, “Hmmm…now what would they want?” We can rack our brains wondering what they might want, trying to remember if they’ve mentioned anything that they would like.

Are you the kind of person who gives hints all the time? Or are you the person who is reserved about parties and gifts, and they make you uncomfortable, and people never know what to get you? What I’m getting at is this: if we are to celebrate Jesus’ birthday by giving him gifts, what does he want? Is he like the person who gives us a list of ideas? Or is he like the person who doesn’t tell us what he wants? Keep reading, as I’ll get to that. But first, there’s another Christmas issue we need to think about.

Despite the fact that Christmas features us giving each other gifts on Jesus’ birthday, I think we actually do give Jesus gifts on his birthday. Are you wondering what gifts we give him? Maybe we could say that we give Jesus the gift of worship through Christmas carols and special worship services. We give him the gift of praise.

While that is true, and it could be considered a gift, I wonder if that’s what he really wants for his birthday. If you are Jesus, and your followers are celebrating your birthday, like they do every year on Christmas, how would you respond to that kind of gift? If it were me, I wouldn’t be too happy about that. But thankfully, it isn’t up to me. Maybe Jesus really loves our carols and Advent candles and Christmas Eve services. Or does he?

Obviously, we don’t know for sure. But we know enough about Jesus, especially through the accounts of his life and teaching in the four Gospels to have a pretty good idea of what he wants from his followers. So what does he want? What did he say he wants? Did Jesus ask for us to hold worship services in his honor?

Years ago I read the book Jim & Casper Go To Church, and I found it very helpful. Jim is a Christian, and Casper is an atheist, and together they travel around the USA, visiting churches of all shapes and sizes. They attend worship services together, and then they discuss what they experienced. Over and over, Casper says to Jim, “Did Jesus really tell you to do this?” It is a very thought-provoking comment. Did Jesus tell us he wants us to have worship services?

It’s not wrong to have Sunday worship. But we have to face the fact that Jesus did not tell his followers to have Sunday worship. His apostles do teach us to gather together regularly. But while Jesus taught his followers many things that he wanted them to do, have worship services was never one of his commands. Again, it is not wrong to have Sunday worship or Christmas Eve worship, as long as we are clear about what Jesus definitely did say he wanted. So for Christmas, for Jesus’ birthday, we would do well to think about want Jesus wants. What gift should we get him? This Advent, we’re going to learn what gifts Jesus himself told us he wanted us to give him.

To help us learn the gifts we are to give Jesus, this year for Advent we are studying Honest Advent. The writer of Honest Advent, Scott Erickson says this: “The Word of God was incarnated through human vulnerability, and we can connect with Jesus through that same human vulnerability.” Jesus wants to connect with each one of us, and this connection happens through vulnerability on our part.

Jesus wants us to give him the gift of our vulnerability. What is vulnerability? To understand what vulnerability looks like, and how we can give Jesus the gift of our vulnerability, we’re going to take a look at Jesus’ encounters with four people. All four are vulnerable with Jesus. What we will learn from these encounters is that our vulnerability is one of the most important gifts we can give Jesus.

So please check back in to the next post, as we meet the first person who gives Jesus the gift of vulnerability.

How to avoid your boss getting angry at you – Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, Part 5

One of the worst feelings is when your boss is angry at you. Here’s how to avoid it.

In our final section of Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, the Teacher (the author of Ecclesiastes) writes a proverb in verses 18-19 that is connected to the illustration he previously used of to help us determine if a leader is wise or foolish. In the previous post, we read the Teacher’s proverb in verses 16-17 that an immature leader is one who parties early in the morning, which is when work is supposed to start. The immature leader is, in other words, lazy. Here’s how my Old Testament seminary professor David Dorsey translates the Teacher’s continuation of that thought in verse 18: “18 Laziness causes the rafters to sag; idle hands cause the house to fall down. 19 Bread brings laughter and wine brings merriment, but money is needed to provide these things.”

That applies to all of us, doesn’t it? We should avoid laziness, and we should be people who work diligently. Of course there is a time to relax and enjoy life, as the Teacher clearly said previously in verse 17. Enjoy life, but with dignity and not shamefully, but only after we have worked diligently.

Wisdom, then, says that we should be people who work diligently. How would your boss describe your work ethic? How would your coach evaluate your practice? How would your parents say you are helping with chores? These are great questions for all of us to keep in mind as we seek to be wiser. Again, as with all proverbs they don’t tell us the whole story, because it would not be wise to be a workaholic who does not remember that life is fleeting, and who does not take time to relax and have joy in all things.

Finally, the Teacher concludes with one more proverb in verse 20. Here’s how Dorsey translates it: “20 Do not revile the king even to an intimate friend, or curse an influential person even in the privacy of your bedroom, because a bird of the air may carry your words, and a bird on the wing may report what you say.”

This reminded me of The Hunger Games or some dystopian future where robotic birds have microphones and are listening to what we say, reporting them to the government. Then I thought, our phones and computers and smart speakers and cars are already listening! How many of you have had the freaky experience of talking about something, only to have an ad for that very thing pop up in your social media feed in a matter of minutes?

But that’s not what the Teacher is talking about here. He is talking a bit more about gossip. How many of you have had the experience of talking negatively about a boss or a leader, just to have them or one of their friends walk by in the hallway and possibly overhear it? Or you accidentally sent a negative email or text to the whole company about the boss? Or maybe you share with person A, in confidence, your negative opinion about person B, only to find out that person A actually is friends with person B, and your negative opinion got back to person B, and now there are hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and your reputation is damaged a bit, not to mention that you are hurt that person A broke confidentiality!

Confidentiality is a messy thing. We absolutely need people in our lives that we can speak confidentially with about anything and everything. Spouses. Best friends. Usually those conversations stay in the privacy of our homes, and no word gets out, contrary to what the Teacher says. Remember these are proverbs, not promises. What, then, is the proverb here? That if you don’t want to break confidentiality, don’t share anything confidential. Wisdom suggests that we should be very careful and guarded about our words and who we confide in. Another way to put it: loose lips sink ships.

This brings us back to what we talked about in the previous section of Ecclesiastes, that what we allow our hearts and minds to dwell on will take root in our lives, and can be very difficult to uproot! So if you are spending lots of time reviling the king or those in leadership, that is where your heart will stay focused. And that is not where wisdom will grow from.

Consider that the things you talk about frequently are the things your minds and hearts are focusing on. So are you focusing on that which will bring good and noble character, on wisdom?

This week in our five-part series on Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, we’ve studied numerous proverbs, all around the theme of seeking wisdom and avoiding folly. Have you heard any proverbs that you sense God is saying you need to apply to your life? How can you pursue wisdom in a new area?

How to discover the character of a leader (and why it matters) – Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20

*Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash*

Does a leader’s character matter? Just about everyone would say, “Yes,” but what if their character is sketchy, and maybe their personality and tone really rubs you the wrong way, but you agree with their policies, or at least some of their policies? Is it okay, then, to overlook their character? These are difficult questions to answer. And thankfully, in today’s post, we have some help.

This week we’ve been searching for proverbs that The Teacher (the writer of Ecclesiastes) gives us about the difference between wisdom and foolishness. Once again, here is my seminary Old Testament professor David Dorsey’s translation of Ecclesiastes 10:16-17:

“16 How unfortunate are you, O land whose king is immature and whose princes feast in the morning. 17 How fortunate are you, O land whose king is noble and whose princes feast at appropriate times—and in dignity rather than shamefully.”

The Teacher really wants us to think about leadership doesn’t he? He’s at it again, talking about the difference between a wise and foolish king. The NIV describes the foolish king as a “servant” or a “lad.” This Hebrew word is used a variety of ways in the Old Testament, all of which point to someone who has no business being king because of their immaturity. It is why in the USA a person has to be at least 35 years old to be a presidential candidate. So notice above in Dorsey’s translation, how the Teacher calls the foolish king immature, and he calls the wise king noble. In the context of the ancient near east, the Teacher is referring to something very similar to what he said earlier in verses 6-7, when he wrote about slaves riding horses while princes were walking. In his world, the Teacher is saying that servants and children shouldn’t be kings and only nobility should be. Dorsey catches the gist of the passage very well. It is not wise to have leaders who are immature or haven’t learned how to lead a country.

This proverb becomes very clear in how the Teacher refers to the Land. In the Old Testament, the Land was a common way to talk about Israel. It was the Promised Land. God gave the people a land. While it was a geographical region on a map, it carried a greater significance than that. The land was a dwelling place of protection and provision. The land could be blessed, and the land could be cursed. The land, therefore, took on a life and character somewhat of its own.

In this proverb the land is either fortunate or unfortunate based on the character and actions of its leaders. If the leader is immature, the land becomes unfortunate, which is quite similar to the idea of being cursed. But if the leader is noble, the land is fortunate, and the land is in a position of blessing.

The Teacher is saying that leadership matters, and even more precisely, the Teacher is saying that the maturity and character of the leader matters. In fact, the Teacher is saying that the maturity of the leader can have far-reaching implications for the land. Gardeners, you have seen that right? It is unwise to let weeds and disorganization take over the land. There is wisdom in how you care for things; how you tend the garden has repercussions on the actual land. My mind also goes to Genesis where we are told we will have dominion over the land. How we care for the earth matters. There are wise ways and foolish ways to care for the land and they will both have significant impact.

How do we know, though, if a leader is mature or immature? Notice the word the Teacher uses as the contrast to immature: noble. That means maturity and nobleness are connected. It also means that immaturity and lack of nobleness are connected. If you want to know if a leader is mature or not, one way to discern is to look at their lives for evidence of nobleness or lack of nobleness. Also look at how the Teacher describes the noble leader, with dignity, rather than shamefully. How a person carries themselves and how they treat others can be with dignity or with shamefulness, and that is one way know if they are mature or immature. Dictionaries define noble character as “someone who has high morals and ideas – someone who is honest and charitable. Being of great courage, generosity and honorable.”

But again, these are proverbs that are generally true. If you look hard enough, you’ll find an exception. Clearly there are men and women of noble birth, who have had education and training for leadership, but who are foolish, and they should not be leading, no matter what family they came from or where they went to college.

We should actively pursue putting mature leaders in positions of leadership. Their lives, actions and choices will tell us if they are mature. They are noble, living and speaking with dignity, and thus have no or little shame, and they will lead toward fortune and blessing to the land. If we see people attempting to become leaders who live a lifestyle of ignobility, of indignity, who are shameful, we should not support them, as they will lead toward misfortune and cursing of the land.

This means we should examine our leaders. I am not just referring to political leaders here. Given the events in the news, of course that is where our minds naturally go. Political leaders are precisely who the Teacher in Ecclesiastes is talking about. But the wisdom in his proverbs applies to all kinds of leaders. The leaders of our community. The coaches on our sports team. Church leaders. Pastors!

Look closely at their lives. How they treat their families and their coworkers. Examine how they live their lives. Their actions will reveal their character, and when it comes to leadership, the Teacher clearly tells us, character matters. It is indispensable. Remember the story of the poor man with wisdom? His wisdom bested the loud-mouthed king with the military force. He is telling us that we should search out wise leadership.

Whether it is a national leader or a local leader, whether it is a coach of a major league sports team or of a little league team, whether it is a CEO of an international corporation or a pastor of a community church, we should seek leaders who have demonstrated wisdom by the choices in their lives. As Jesus once taught, “By their fruits you will know them.”

How to identify a fool – Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, Part 3

How do you identify a fool? It sure would be nice if fools and foolishness had their own costume, like the court jester in the picture above. Unfortunately fools and foolishness most often look normal. Worse yet, people can have sharply divided views on what is foolish.

Thankfully, the Teacher (the writer of Ecclesiastes) writes more proverbs that illustrate folly and wisdom in day to day life. In this week’s series of blog posts on Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, we’re discovering that the Teacher has many such proverbs to help us live with wisdom in our complex world. You can read the previous two posts here and here. Now on to today’s post. My Old Testament seminary professor Dave Dorsey translates the next few verses, Ecclesiastes 10:8-11, as follows:

“8 But whoever digs a pit may fall into it; whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake. 9 Whoever quarries stone may be injured by them; whoever splits logs may be hurt by them. 10 If the axe is dull and its edge unsharpened, the one who wields it must use more strength; but wisdom can help a person succeed. 11 If a snake bites its trainer because it has not been properly trained, the trainer will have done all his work in vain.”

It seems like the Teacher is really into digging, wood chopping, and snakes! When I read this, I thought about what life must have been like when the Teacher lived. His society and culture was quite different from ours, as evidenced by these three topics he focuses on. Then I realized, I actually experienced all these things this year. Digging in my yard to plant flowers and uproot old bushes. Lots of splitting wood, as we use wood as our primary heat source. And while I didn’t interact with a snake, when we went on vacation this summer to a state park, there were lots of warnings about rattlesnakes. Of the three, the one I most identify with is splitting wood. I have been hurt by split logs many times, just as the Teacher describes, when the force of the axe causes the split log to go flying back into my shins. As I search for the proverb in this section, I see a repetition of what he said in the first post this of this week’s blog series: “Misfortune surprises us all, but wisdom can help us succeed. So get wisdom.” If your axe is dull sharpen it. Or get a pneumatic log-splitter to do the work for you! The Teacher would agree with the phrase, “work smarter, not harder!”

The Teacher has even more descriptions of wisdom and foolishness. Hear how Dorsey translates the next few verses, Ecclesiastes 10:12-15:

“12 The words of a wise man bring him approval, but a fool destroys himself by what he says. 13 What a fools says, from beginning to end, is foolish and full of nonsense, 14 yet he talks on and on. 15 A fool tires of his work, but he does not know the way back to town.”

This passage is mostly about how to identify a fool. But the Teacher does give a proverb about how to identify a wise man, “You’ll know a wise man by the approval his words bring.” Of course, that is a proverb that is not always true, because a foolish person can also receive approval, usually from other fools. What can be so difficult about identifying foolishness and wisdom is that generally the foolish ones view themselves as wise, and they declare that the wise ones are fools. They can do so very boldly, to the point where the wise, because the wise tend to be self-reflective, can start to second-guess whether or not they are actually wise. The wise can think, Maybe the foolish are the wise ones, and the wise have got it wrong all along? Why else would so many people look to the foolish person with approval? In the end though, the tell-tale signs of foolishness are there, and the truth comes out.

What tell-tale signs? The Teacher lays them out: the foolish person destroys himself. The foolish person talks nonsense. When the foolish person talks, they drone on and on and on. The fool gets tired of working. The fool doesn’t know his way home. In the end, the Teacher tells us, a fool will make himself known. So wait, watch, and it will almost always happen. The fool will implode. From the vantage point of history, which almost always reveals the truth, it will become obvious that the fool was foolish.

Pursuing wisdom and avoiding foolishness in leadership – Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, Part 2

What is wisdom? In the previous post, we started a five-part series on Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, in which the Teacher (the writer of Ecclesiastes) gives us a series of proverbs about how to live wisely. In that post, the Teacher described a bit of what wisdom does not do, or what it does not look like. But what is wisdom? What does wisdom do, especially when the world is falling apart around us?

Let’s keep following the Teacher’s logic, seeing if we can discern more proverbs about wisdom. Here’s how my Old Testament seminary professor Dave Dorsey translates Ecclesiastes 9:18b through 10:3.

“9:18b One wrong person can destroy much good. 10:1 Just as one dead fly can spoil a whole container of expensive perfume, so a little folly can spoil much wisdom. 2 The mind of the wise person prefers what is right, and the mind of the foolish person prefers what is wrong. 3 A fool reveals that he lacks wisdom wherever he goes; he declares to everyone that he is a fool.”

Did you uncover any proverbs about wisdom in this group of verses? I think there are at least three: First, “Folly can spoil much wisdom.” Second, “The mind of the wise prefers what is right, while the mind of the foolish prefers what is wrong.” Finally, “Fools make it abundantly clear how foolish they are.” In other words, “Want to know what foolishness looks like?” the Teacher asks, “You’ll know it when you see it.”

Jump on YouTube and you can easily find videos of people doing foolish things. Just search on “epic fails”. There are whole series of videos of stupid criminals, or lots of videos of people driving or riding motorcycles doing foolishness. It is just so easy to find. And frankly, we love it. Did you ever notice how much it gives us pleasure to delight in others’ foolishness? Those videos are hilarious.

But at some point, the laughing should stop and we need to remind ourselves, “That is foolish. That is serious. Foolishness at its core is not funny.” Especially when we consider how the Teacher contrasts wisdom with foolishness in verse 2. In the Hebrew the Teacher literally says “the wise prefer the right, and the fools prefer the left.” You can imagine how political conservatives, which are called The Right, have used this verse to caricature political liberals or progressives, which are called The Left. That’s not what the Teacher is saying, though. There was no conservative or religious Right in his day, and there was no liberal or progressive Left.

The Teacher is simply using the two sides of the body, the right side and the left side, to illustrate that the wise prefer right, and fools prefer wrong. He is saying they are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Foolishness and Wisdom are obviously quite different. The kind of foolishness that the Teacher is describing, though, is not just taking dangerous physical risks. The kind of foolishness that has the Teacher concerned is “that which is wrong.” What he is talking about is the opposite of wisdom. Wisdom prefers “that which is right.” This really helps us understand wisdom. To pursue wisdom is to pursue the right option. The right tone. The right choice. The right attitude.

This is why the writer of Proverbs says that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” By using the word “fear,” he is referring to a posture of awe and respect before God, such that a person wants to follow the way of the Lord, to live their lives like Jesus lived, to choose to be his disciple and do what he did. That is wisdom. Of course, then, the ramification of this proverb is that in order to be wise you need to know the ways of the Lord, you need to know his heart and actively be his disciple. Wisdom, therefore, is not head knowledge, or intellectual capability, but the application of God’s way to our lives, so that what we believe is clearly demonstrated by the actions and choices of our lives.

So now that we have a clearer sense of wisdom, the Teacher is going to help us understand and identify foolishness. Look at 10:4, and again, this is Dorsey’s translation:

“4 If a ruler’s temper is aroused against you, do not leave your post; for calmness can allay great offenses. 5 I have observed something foolish that rulers in this world often do. 6 They place fools in high positions, and put men of substance in low positions. 7 I have seen slaves riding along on horseback, while princes walk on foot like slaves.”

The Teacher has foolish rulers in the cross-hairs, doesn’t he? It would be very tempting to read these passages and think, “I wish this or that politician would read this passage.” And by the way, as I write this in 2020, considering the bonkers things that each of the major party candidates said from time to time during their campaigns, or over the years, they could each do well by following the Teacher’s wisdom. The reality is that we ALL could do well to follow the Teacher’s wisdom here, because all of us have been guilty of doing foolish things, such as what the Teacher describes: letting our temper get the best of us or making backwards decisions.

It is important to note that the Teacher is not promoting slavery in verse 7. He is simply describing what was in keeping with societal mores of his day: evidence of a backwards decision from a foolish leader would be to have slaves ride horses and princes walk on foot. Why? Because slaves did not have the education or experience to lead like princes did. The Teacher is describing a situation where a foolish king is essentially running his kingdom into the ground through bad decision-making, bad governance.

We can do the same in the various responsibilities we have. From parenting, to our jobs, to our marriage, to how we care for ourselves, to our use of time and money.

What leadership responsibilities do you have in your life? I’m thinking about any kind of leadership responsibility. Even those of you who are teenagers. You might have a younger sibling who looks up to you. You might have responsibilities at school, at work, on a sports team, or among your friends.

The Teacher is not suggesting that to be leaders we must have people following us, or doing what we say. Nothing like that. The Teacher is, however, saying that we should pursue wisdom and rightness in any relationship or situation in which we have influence. To do that, the fear and awe of the Lord, and who he is, and who he says we are, need to be in the forefront of our hearts and our minds. Why? Because as I mentioned above, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; the fear of the Lord is the source of wisdom. May wisdom be your passion as you lead.

How are you using your influence? – Ecclesiastes 9:11-10:20, Part 1

Influence. How are you using your influence? I’m writing this in 2020 amid a global pandemic, political turmoil, racial tension, and many natural disasters. It doesn’t seem like most of have enough influence to affect change. Rather it seems the events of this year have surrounded and battered us like a tidal wave. It seems our influence is non-existent, and we’re struggling to keep from drowning in the flood caused by the crashing waves. I feel it too. But as we tread water, fighting to keep our heads above water in 2020, rather than allowing ourselves to focus on the struggle, I’d like to suggest that we all do have influence. Even when misfortune strikes, and we seem incapacitate? Yes, we have influence even then. Keep reading, and I think you’ll see what I mean.

In this week’s series of blog posts, we are looking for proverbs, but not from the book of Proverbs! We are still in the book of Ecclesiastes, and just as we discovered earlier in our study of Ecclesiastes, the Teacher (the writer of Ecclesiastes, who also might have been the writer of most or part of the book of Proverbs) gives us a bunch of proverbs to help us find wisdom in our sometimes confusing world.

This is the fourth week of blog posts studying the section of Ecclesiastes that covers most of chapters 7 through 10, and all of it is advice for wise living. The first of these four weeks, starting here, was also a collections of proverbs, and if you want, you can open your Bible to 7:15-8:8 and review them. After looking back at that section, turn to 9:11-10:20, our passage for this week, and just like that earlier section, we are once again going to be searching for proverbs.

Remember that proverbs are not promises. Proverbs don’t come with guarantees from God. What are proverbs, then? Proverbs are wise sayings that are usually true. Generally speaking, if we follow the wisdom of proverbs, if we apply them to our lives, we will find them to be true and our lives will be better for it. For most of the proverbs, though, if we think hard enough, we can also find exceptions that conflict with the wisdom in the proverb. Those exceptions, however, do not void the reality that the wisdom in the proverb will most often be true. So let’s begin, knowing that despite the possibility for exceptions to the wisdom, this week we’ll find how beneficial it is for us to learn and apply the wisdom of these proverbs to help us understand how to live wisely in this complex world.

As I’ve done often in this series, I’d like us to hear the translation of Ecclesiastes by my seminary Old Testament professor, David Dorsey, starting at 9:11: “11 I have observed another thing in this world: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong; nor does food come to the wise, or wealth to the intelligent, or favor to the knowledgeable; but events and misfortunes happen randomly to everyone. 12 A person does not know when tragedy will strike. As fish are caught in a deadly net, or birds are captured in a snare, so people are taken by surprise when disasters befall them.”

Did you see the proverb here in 9:11-12? “Misfortune surprises everyone.” Most people have experienced this proverb’s truth time and time again. From the small nuisances of life, like getting a flat tire, to the major shocks, like a house fire. Of course, often, after the crisis is over, when we begin to investigate what happened, we find the tell-tale signs of why the tragedy occurred, and then the tragedy might not seem so surprising. We knew our car tires were running thin, and we neglected replacing them for months. Or we knew we had plugged too many Christmas lights in one outlet, risking a fire hazard. But then there are the complete surprises that seem to have no cause whatsoever. Getting hit by lightning. A serious illness. A global pandemic, maybe. How do we respond when great misfortune makes its way into our lives?

The Teacher goes on to illustrate this proverb with a story of a small town that faced a terrible misfortune. Let’s see if we can find the proverb about how to respond to misfortune, as we read the Teacher’s story. Here’s how Dorsey translates 9:13-18:

“13 I saw an example of wisdom that was very sad: 14 There was once a small town with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it, and built huge siege works against it. 15 There lived in that town a man who was poor but wise, and he saved the town by his wisdom. But in the end no one appreciated what he had done. 16 But I said to myself, despite this, wisdom is still more powerful than military strength—even if that poor man’s wisdom was not honored and his words were not celebrated. 17 The quiet words of a wise person are more valuable than the shouts of a ruler who is a fool. 18 Wisdom is more powerful than weapons of war.”

Does anyone else feel bothered by this story because you want to know how the poor wise man saved the town, but the Teacher doesn’t tells? Sorry. The point of the story is not how the poor wise saved the town from invasion. The Teacher has another point. Did you see his point, which is the proverb in this verses? He repeats a version of it three times, once each in verses 16, 17 and 18. “Wisdom is more powerful than military strength.” In verses 16 and 18, he repeats it almost verbatim. HIs rendition in 17 is a touch different, focusing not on military might, but on a foolish ruler who shouts.

The Teacher’s point is that wisdom is far superior. More superior than great military might, more than an obnoxious leader. In international affairs, a loud-mouthed leader with a large army can make a big conflagration and get what they want. If we look back over the course of global history, we don’t have to search to find examples of their devastation. But do any of the Hitlers or Bin Ladens compare to the impact made by the quiet wisdom demonstrated in the three short years of the ministry of Jesus? The Teacher is right, wisdom is better. Get wisdom. Seek it out. Desire it.

Interestingly, this proverb is applicable to far more than the military, kings and would-be world leaders. “Get wisdom” applies to all of us. We all, old and young, have influence. Some of you have influence in your employment. Some in a volunteer capacity. Some in your families. Some with money. Some with time.

How are you using your influence? Are you using your influence like the loud foolish leader who tries to shout and intimidate, who tries to coerce and manipulate, for their own advancement? Are you using your influence like the weapons of war, causing damage and destruction to get what you want? Or are you like the poor wise man who uses wisdom for good?

What, then, is wisdom? So far the teacher has told us what it is not. It is not automatically found in the methods of might. It is not found in the use of manipulative words, in bullying, or in intimidation. So the Teacher has described a bit of what wisdom does not do, or what it does not look like. Wisdom avoids these negative actions.

Check back in to tomorrow’s post, as we’ll continue following the Teacher’s logic, seeing if we can discern more proverbs about wisdom.

God wants you to experience joy (and gives you a method to be more joyful) – Ecclesiastes 8:16-9:10, Part 5

How do we become more joyful in this life? We begin answering that question by noting that the human experience and expression of joy is deeply rooted in God’s desires for us. How do we know this?

Look at the middle of Ecclesiastes 9, verse 9. I love how Dorsey translates the final section of our passage this week, verses 9b-10: “For this is what God wants you to do as live and work in this life. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, because in the grave, where you are going, there will be no more working or planning or knowledge or wisdom.”

See that at the end of verse 9? “This is what God wants“! A joyful life is how God wants us to live.

That means we should evaluate ourselves, and we should invite others to evaluate us, to discover our level of joy. Ask people who spend the most time with you, “When you think of me, do you consider me a joyful person?” If the result of an evaluation of our lives is that we have to admit that we are dealing with discontent, complaining, bitterness, anger, then we are not living life as joyfully as we could be.

Therefore, as we attempt to answer the question, How do we actually become more joyful?, we remember the Teacher has already told us in the larger passage we’ve been studying this week, Ecclesiastes 8:16-9:10 (read the first post in the five-part series here.) What is extremely interesting is to notice how all the illustrations in the previous post depict people practicing joy.

Last month, my small group had an interesting discussion about how we often don’t feel like reading and studying the Bible. Maybe you’ve experienced that yourself. I have. Why is that? There are likely many reasons. What is so striking is that excitement seems to flow out of us many other times, in abundance, without even trying. At the sports game. At the party. Watching Netflix. We wonder why we can’t be like that about the Bible, about God, or maybe about a great many other things in life. How can I become joyful if I’m not feeling joy?

I encourage you to listen to this podcast. Scroll down to the Podcast section of the website, and look for “Welcome to Cognitive Studies 101”. The speaker, Leonard Sweet, says that cognitive studies has, in recent years, done some amazing work understanding the brain and emotion, such that, “It is easier to act yourself into a new way of feeling, than it is to feel yourself into a new way of acting.” Sweet goes on to day, “To get your brain to change, to get yourself to change, you don’t change by waiting until you get new feelings. Actions actually precede the emotions. Actions determine emotions! If you want to be joyful, then even when you are depressed, the way in which you become joyful, is not to wait until you are no longer despairing, it is to act as if you are joyful! Choose joy. Ask yourself what a person who is joyful would be doing or saying, then do likewise!”

But the fact of the matter is that we get stuck and we sometimes don’t know how to break out of a negative feedback loop or a depression. In those cases, I strongly urge you to seek professional help, to avail yourself of medication, to get exercise, to eat healthy, to force yourself to limit screen time, to serve others, get involved in volunteering, in a discipleship relationship with someone, in a ministry in your church. Be aware of your thoughts patterns and work hard to create new thought patterns. Remember we choose how we think. Choose to end your night by thinking about ways you saw God’s presence in your life. Choose to end your night with by listing what you are thankful for from the past day. I urge you to practice the habits of Jesus: prayer, solitude and silence, fasting, ministry, disciple-making, giving.

What the Teacher is suggesting is the raw material for choosing a joyful life. It doesn’t matter if you are young or if you are old, choose to live life with joy.

I love seeing the ladies of Faith Church’s quilting group gather on the first Tuesday of the month, sewing quilts for people in need. They even take the work home and quilt for hours at home. Over the years they have made thousands of quilts of many kinds. There is so much joy in our quilters because they are serving and giving.

Recently the kids in our children’s ministry made amazing chalk art outside under our portico. There pictures were filled with joy! I would love for Faith Church’s hallways to be an art museum of joy, filled with photography and drawings and paintings that express our joy in the Lord.

Again, sometimes there are hard things that need to be talked about, that need to be dealt with. Jesus and his disciples certainly had conflicted conversations. But because of God’s active involvement in our lives, we do not need to face difficulty with hopeless despair. There is a deep, foundational joy God wants us to experience, a joy that carries us through even the difficulties of this life. I have met quite a few people, who going through some of the very difficult things of this life, still carry themselves with joy.

What ways can you express joy in your life? Maybe after reading this post, make a list of ways you’ve seen joy in others, a list of things you are grateful for, a list of ways that you’ve seen God in the past week. We have a God who deeply loves us, who is a good God, who is FOR us in this life and who is available to us all day and all night. He finds joy in us! “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” My pray is that I and all of you who read this can grow in our understanding of God’s joy for us, so that may impact our hearts, minds and actions to follow him.