Children, You Have a Promise!

Can you think of a time when a promise was made to you, but it was conditional? What I mean by conditional is that the promise the other person made was dependent on you doing something first.

People make promises all the time. Sometimes it is called a deal. For example, after verbally explaining what each will do for the other, two people shake hands saying, “We have a deal.” We might also call it an agreement, or say, “You have my word.” In formal business transactions, contracts are drawn up and signed.

There are many promises in the Bible and it is encouraging to know that God has never broken a promise. It is also encouraging to know that there is one promise that is specifically directed to children. Are you familiar with it?

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.

—Ephesians 6:1-3

Paul was actually quoting from the Ten Commandments. For that reason some people think that it does not apply to followers of Jesus today. However, the specific audience of Paul’s letter was/is Christians. God reissued to Christians an earlier promise made to Israelite children. The promise is simple: If you will honor your parents, you will have a good and long life.

Now, I cannot imagine that God meant for Israelite children to follow only that instruction. In other words, it makes no sense for an Israelite to turn to idols yet demand that God keep His promise because he had honored his parents. A person should not think that God can be manipulated.

My sisters and I are still the children of our parents even though our parents are deceased. We should not think that there is an expiration date on God’s instruction. So, the instruction to honor your parents doesn’t end when you grow up or even when your parents die.

Some parents are difficult to honor. However, that is no excuse to dishonor them.

God’s instruction is not limited to Mother’s Day and Father’s day, birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. Honoring parents is for every day.

Honor parents by obeying without complaining, without arguing and without becoming angry.

Never complain about your parents or talk about them negatively to your friends.

Honor parents by offering to help instead of waiting until they ask (force) you to help.

Show appreciation for the free food, free room, free transportation, free clothing and laundry service, etc. (Start by saying, “Thank you.”)

When you get your first job as a teen, in all likelihood it will cost your parents something, usually for transporting. Offer to share the cost.

Use your money, not your parent’s money, to buy gifts for your parents. Use your own money, not your parent’s money, for personal goodies (snacks, entertainment, etc.).

After moving away from home, continue to honor your parents by visiting them, communicating with them, sharing your life with them, and by speaking kindly about them to others.

Showing honor is not limited to my short list of suggestions. So remember, this is God’s command, and it comes with a promise for a good and long life. Honor your father and mother.

Mark Stinnett

May 29, 2022

Getting Your Bearings in Scripture

My eyes opened. The lighting in the room was all wrong. The ceiling was wrong. The walls were wrong. The curtain on the window was unfamiliar. Then, as my sleepy head cleared, I got my bearings and realized that I was at my grandmother’s house.

You’ve used that expression before, getting your bearings.

So, how do you get your bearings when studying the Bible?

The idea I am referring to is called context. Context refers to the surrounding text. Without familiarity to the surrounding text, meaning is easily lost.

Context provides the framework for understanding words. For example, consider four Bible verses containing the word spirit:

• The spirit of life (Genesis 7:22)
• Whose spirit moved him (Exodus 35:21)
• Your spirit is so sullen (1 Kings 21:5)
• The spirit rested on them (Numbers 11:25)

Each verse uses the word spirit in a different setting. The context helps us to get our bearings so that we can understand its meaning in each case. The following gives a more specific meaning of each use of spirit above:

• Life essence
• Human spirit or human will
• Human emotion
• The Holy Spirit

If we were to look up the term spirit in a Bible dictionary or in a Hebrew or Greek lexicon, we would be presented with something that might look like a menu of choices. However, dictionaries and lexicons merely report how words were used. Within a range of meanings, the context ultimately determines specific meaning.

Context also provides the framework for understanding entire phrases, verses or passages. For example, the Apostle Paul described love in 1 Corinthians 13. Is the ‘love chapter’ about our love for God? Our love for our fellow man? God’s love for us? The context suggests first a focus on love for a fellow Christian.

Sometimes context reaches beyond Scripture forcing us to consult non-biblical resources that help us to understand words and phrases through ancient culture. For example, Jesus used the phrase “gates of Hades” in Matthew 16:18. Simple reasoning has led to a number of conclusions among Bible scholars. However, that exact phrase was used by ancient Greek writers for death.

Have you ever heard anyone say, “When in Rome…”? That’s only part of the saying, but it is so familiar that most people do not need the whole saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” That is sometimes the way New Testament quotations of Old Testament material work. For example, Jesus referred to “the abomination of desolations” (Matthew 24:15), and even indicated that it was spoken of by the prophet Daniel. Jesus expected his listeners to draw from the context of Daniel’s prophecy for understanding.

In a similar way, the quotation describing dramatic celestial events in Matthew 24:29 cannot be understood without first becoming familiar with the broad context of Old Testament prophecy that addresses the divine judgment of God.

So, sometimes context refers to the verses closest to the text while at other times context is an entire chapter or book or even related material in the Old Testament. Whatever the case, context is the key to proper understanding of the Bible. That's how you'll get your bearings in Scripture.

Mark Stinnett

May 22, 2022

Understanding the Deeper Things in Scripture

Is the Bible is easy to understand or difficult?

You might have answered, “Both,” and I would agree. Some material in the Bible is so simple that it is difficult to misunderstand. Who could possibly misunderstand the Golden Rule: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12).

The Apostle Peter warned: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:7). Easy to understand.

When faced with people who are difficult to get along with, the Golden Rule might be difficult to apply, though still easy to understand. Biblical teachings about God’s final judgment may seem like fantasy, and therefore unbelievable to some, but still, they are not difficult to understand.

So, one might say that most of the Bible is easy enough to understand, yet it can be a challenge to apply. (Some people do not want to apply biblical teachings.) Some people choose not to believe the easily understood teachings of the Bible. Ultimately, the challenge is not as much the ability to understand, but the choice of belief and the willingness to apply.

Then, of course, not everything in the Bible is easily understood, and the reasons are several.

Wording used in the Bible may be ambiguous. For example, Peter spoke of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). Did he mean that the Holy Spirit is the gift or that the Holy Spirit is the one giving the gift? Consulting the Greek text will not settle the question.

Sometimes people are simply not good Bible students. In Hebrews 12:17 the writer refers to Esau, the brother of Jacob, who forfeited his father’s blessing. The word order in the Greek text, as reflected in English translations, seems to indicate that Esau was not allowed to repent even though he “sought for it with tears.” However, by going back to the original event in Genesis 27:30-40 it is very clear that Esau wept for his father’s blessing but was refused. He was not refused repentance.

Sometimes terminology or concepts presented in Scripture are culturally foreign. The first verse of John’s gospel refers to “the word” which was with God in the beginning. Though John later identifies “the word” as Jesus, that term is packed with theological meaning of the religious culture of that day.

Even Peter acknowledged that some things written by Paul were “hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). Yet, that is not the same as impossible to understand. It is enlightening that Peter explained further by saying that those who are untaught and unstable distort Paul’s teachings “as they also do the rest of the Scriptures.”

So, what is all this about?

First, when God spoke and the Spirit of God inspired the writing of Scripture, there was meaning. God intended for man to understand. God intentionally communicated something to us!

Second, we possess the written record of the communication of our Creator. That IS important. It is important that we read it; it is important that we understand it; it is important that we believe it and apply it.

To avoid being untaught and unstable (literally, not grounded), one must first wholeheartedly embrace and apply those things that are easily understood. Only then can he/she move on to maturity and toward a deeper understanding of the more challenging things in Scripture.

Mark Stinnett

May 15, 2022

Faith or Fear?

Legs dangling off the edge of the roof, his dad urged him to slide off the roof into his arms. The distance from the boy’s feet and his dad’s reach was no more than a foot, but it might as well have been a mile. “Just drop off the roof and I’ll catch you,” his dad kept saying. The boy was unable to climb up, but too afraid to drop.

Minutes passed and he finally pushed through his fear and dropped off the roof...into His dad’s arms. Fearfully vulnerable; ultimately confident.

Fear is the opposite of faith. Fear is one of the greatest obstacles to faith. The Bible is full of testimonies of faith, but faith is sometimes misunderstood.

For some people faith is a belief conjured up in the mind with no reason to believe other than desire. It is as if to say, “I want to believe, so I will believe.” It is the boy with legs dangling, but only imagining that someone will catch him.

Faith in God is not that way.

In the book of Joshua a number of remarkable faith events are recorded:

• Encamped a few miles from Jericho, the Israelites were instructed by God to circumcise all the males, the sign of the covenant between God and Israel’s forefather Abraham. Yet, Israel’s army would be incapacitated. Vulnerable!
• Afterward, Israel was instructed to celebrate the Passover which was followed by a seven-day feast; a celebration while unprotected and in full view of the enemy. Vulnerable!
• Israel traveled to the heart of enemy territory, out in the open and unprotected, to hear a proclamation from God. Vulnerable!
• The Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh wished to settle in the desirable land to the east of the Jordan River. The arrangement was agreeable, but only if their fighting men would join forces with their fellow Israelites against the enemies in Canaan. The conquest of the land of Canaan under Joshua’s leadership took 5-7 years and there is no indication that the men of the tribes east of the Jordan went home to check on their families. Their families: Vulnerable!

Why? Why did Israel comply with the circumcision, with the Passover, the public reading of the blessings and cursings? Why did the men of the tribes to the east of Jordan leave their families behind for 5+ years? Why did Israel leave themselves vulnerable time after time?

Faith. But what kind of faith did Israel possess?

Israel did not enter Canaan with a made-up desire to believe. They were not motivated by blind faith. They followed their God in faith.

The voice of God that left them in what seemed to be extremely vulnerable situations was the same voice that had commanded the plagues of Egypt; the same voice that commanded Moses as he parted the Red Sea; the same voice that commanded the destruction of the army of the Pharaoh of Egypt; the same voice that provided food and water in the wilderness for forty years; the same voice that defeated the Amorite kings east of the Jordan; and the same voice that parted the waters of the Jordan.

Israel believed in the voice of God who had been their protector and provider. He had kept His promises to them and their forefathers.

This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life. 

—1 John 2:25

Fear turns our hearts to the world we see; faith keeps our eyes focused on His promise. When you feel vulnerable and cannot see, trust His voice. He has promised!

Mark Stinnett

May 8, 2022

Drawn to Evil

What a struggle we must overcome. Just up the road is that neighborhood, and we might think...
“I wish we could afford that kind of property. It would be great to get to know those people. Perhaps they could provide some good contacts for my business. I’ll bet we could get our kids on their ball team, one of the best in the area.”

Or perhaps we think…
“I don’t know why they have such a large house with only two kids. They are no better than my family. In fact, I know that they have a rather ungodly lifestyle.”

Or perhaps we think…
“I know for a fact that he is unethical in his business dealings. He may not break the law, but he treats his employees harshly. He puts on a glad face for his clients, but then he talks about them behind their backs.”

Those are all made up thoughts, but not unrealistic in the way we may sometimes look at others.

It may be tempting to look at folks around us and wish we had what they had: possessions, position, lifestyle, etc. It may be tempting to wish we could rub elbows with those who appear to be important. Yet, to what end?

Do not be envious of evil men,

Nor desire to be with them;

For their minds devise violence,

And their lips talk of trouble.

--Proverbs 24:1-2

Now, I am not suggesting that anyone in particular is evil. Success is not equivalent to evil. Yet, we may become envious of others without knowing their character.

It is also important not to read this proverb as a means of defining evil people. What I mean is that we might think that we can evaluate whether a person is evil on the basis of whether we know them to ‘devise violence’ or know that their ‘lips talk of trouble.’

The proverb was not written as a means of defining evil. Rather, it is meant to illuminate the way of evil people. (Proverbs 2 describes the evil man as one who leaves the paths of uprightness.) The reality is that an evil person will ‘devise violence’ and will ‘talk of trouble.’ That is the nature of an evil person.

What we need to consider is whether that is the kind of person that we should desire to be like or desire to be with?

In our culture we are careful to not be judgmental. We are careful not to be critical of the choices of others. We like to get along. Yet, there is such a thing as an evil person and that person is described by God in a certain way. Have you ever thought about God’s view of those who are evil?

For the crooked man is an abomination to the LORD;

But He is intimate with the upright.

—Proverbs 3:32

Whenever you envy an evil person and desire to be with him, your desire is to embrace something that is an abomination to God, that is, something that is repulsive to God. Is that the kind of person you really want to desire and embrace???

Let’s resolve to keep our mind and heart focused on the righteousness of God.

Mark Stinnett

May 1, 2022