In Psalm 81, Asaph encourages all sing aloud and shout for joy to the Lord.
Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob! (Psalm 81:1)
Now’s not the time to hold back. Let loose with praise for who God is and what he has done for you. He’s brought you out of Egypt, subdued all your foes, and feeds you with the finest.
A great promise follows:
“Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” (Psalm 81:10)
It’s okay to be a church that looks like baby birds in a next with mouths open wide, crying out. Their pleas are heard, and their mother fills them, just as God opens his hand and satisfies the desire of every creature he’s made.
You can complain, gripe, and lash out. You can be discontent, grouchy, and irritable.
Or you can spend your energy on thanks and praise, and not only focus on God’s abundant grace, but receive even more in the process!
A whole generation has grown up in a world with smart phones. Apple sold the first iPhone in 2007, so anyone born after that has never seen a world without the pocket technology we use every single day.
Manna kept a nation alive for forty years. God faithfully gave his people this daily bread, just as he promised. A whole generation grew up on manna. They never knew life without it.
Then one day, the manna stopped.
“The manna ceased on the day after they had eaten some of the produce of the land” (Joshua 5:12)
They would never eat manna again.
I wonder if anyone would miss it. Before long, I am sure folks would be telling stories of the manna they ate when they were kids. Just like we talk about foods we ate growing up you can’t get anymore. Like Swanson’s TV dinners, Carnation breakfast bars, Hunt’s Snack Pack pudding cups, Jello pudding pops, and Bazooka bubble gum.
No more manna? The good news is that the produce of a land filled with milk and honey was amazing.
A “through the bible” devotion from Deuteronomy 29.
How many things have you owned for forty years? I’ve a sauce pan and some mixing bowls that were part of a set of Revere Ware my parents gave me for my first apartment after college. I bought my trumpet forty-five years ago. I’ve got a hammer, some screwdrivers, and a couple of wrenches I know I’ve had in my tool bag for decades.
I like to point out that sometimes God provides by letting your stuff last a long time. Getting seventeen years out of a hot water heater or 80,000 miles out of a set of tires is the kind of blessing God mentions in Deuteronomy:
“I have led you in the wilderness for forty years; your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandal has not worn out on your foot” (Deuteronomy 29:5).
I know, they don’t make things like they used to. I’ve gotten used to replacing things every few years, not expecting them to last very long. So when something does last, I take note and give thanks!
Another batch of indestructible dog toys is due in the mail today or tomorrow. My dogs annihilated the last batch and the replacements they sent in a matter of minutes. At least they’ve grown out of chewing up my sandals, so maybe I’ll be able to wear them for a while. (But probably not forty years.)
Great question. Some would say pizza. Ice cream comes up a lot. I have a granddaughter who would choose potatoes. Other granddaughters can’t get enough peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Plenty of people begin their day with a donut to go with their coffee.
Once in a while I hear someone extol the virtues of Waffle House. I’ve only eaten their once and that was enough. A friend of mine proudly tells the story of eating at a Waffle House all three meals one day. Better him than me.
Manna was the miracle provision of God to keep his people fed in the wildernss. After a couple of years, though, it was getting old. “There is nothing but this manna to look at” (Numbers 11:6). At that time they didn’t know they still had thirty-eight years to go.
In his song “So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt,” Keith Green imagines some creative ways to serve up manna (skip to 3:36 if you’re in a hurry):
Oh, manna waffles Manna burgers Manna bagels Fillet of manna Manna patty BaManna bread!
So what blessings are you sick and tired of? Family? Job? House? Car? Church? Closet full of clothes? Food?
Chances are you prayed for those things. God provided. God’s been providing for a long time. And all you can do is complain.
I’ve read that about 2/3 of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That doesn’t sound good. That means a household is one case of the flu, one injury, one unexpected expense, or one layoff from not being able to pay bills or buy food or cover some other expense.
In the Old TestamentGo made provision for such a family:
“Now in case a countryman of yours becomes poor and his means among you falter, then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a resident, so that he may live with you” (Leviticus 25:35).
If you keep reading, there are specifics about how to care for someone who has become poor. Don’t charge him interest if you lend money. Sell him food for cost. Hire him on as a worker. Treat that person with compassion, dignity, and encouragement.
One could boil down God’s commands into one simple idea: “Take care of each other.” Paul wrote, “Love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10).
Stuff happens. It might happen to you. Life throws curves at us. But if a faith community, whether a chosen people or a gathered church, takes care of each other, no one has to do it alone. God provides for us in many different ways. Sometimes it’s through me. Sometimes it’s for me.
And just like that, we’ve made it through Leviticus. I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I did!
God says to Abraham, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you”(Genesis 22:2).
That is a big ask. It seems so unlike God. Why would he ask Abraham to do such a thing? And why would Abraham even consider doing it?
There is only one answer, and it’s the one Abraham vocalizes. “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering” (v8).
It’s too much to ask. The cost is too high. The sacrifice is unthinkable. God is the only one with the resources to redeem a life. He’s the only one who can redeem my life.
We have the advantage of seeing how the whole story plays out. God will provide the ultimate sacrifice, his son, Jesus. He is the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.
Of course there is a lesson in all of this. Unless we walk the path of obedience, like Abraham did, we won’t get to experience what God provides.
Moses, you’re going to have to throw down that staff if you want to see it turn into a serpent.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego can’t bow down to an idol if they want to encounter the Son of God in a fiery furnace.
The priests had to take that first step into the Jordan river to see God stop it’s flow so the nation could cross into the promised land.
A widow didn’t experience God’s provision until she baked that last loaf of bread for Elijah.
Letting my light shine makes the world a brighter place. Asking opens my eyes to the ways God provides. Confessing my sins opens a door for grace. So does forgiving someone. Praying for someone I don’t like changes my attitude towards them. Imitating the Good Samaritan and helping someone unleashes mercy in a cruel and heartless world.
While walking the dogs on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, I had a conversation with a house-shopping couple from Canada who pulled up along side of us. They wondered if this neighborhood ever flooded. (It doesn’t.) They were also surprised at the cost of living here. I thought it was affordable, but with current prices, taxes, interest rates, and the exchange rate, it’s more expensive than it used to be.
As I walked away, I realized how blessed we were to have built our house nearly thirty years ago. I’m not sure we could afford to do it in today’s market.
After my wife and I got married, our first home was a one-bedroom, one-bathroom upstairs apartment on Spy Run in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, which we rented for $200 per month. The kitchen was five-foot by five-foot square, barely big enough for one person to stand. We only lived there for about four months, before packing up and moving to Baltimore for my vicarage (internship).
In Baltimore, the churches sponsoring us put us up in a three-story inner city row home. It was at the end of the row, so it had a little bit of a side yard between us and one of the churches we worked at. It was a run-down, falling-apart, and patched-together affair than probably should have been condemned. Living here for a year taught us we could live anywhere. No matter where in the world we went, from earthquake-shaken Haiti to remote villages in Kenya to single-wide trailers in rural Florida, we would say, “Well, it’s not as bad a Baltimore.”
After a year in the inner city, we moved back to Ft. Wayne for my last year of studies and rented a small house owned by a couple heading out for their internship. By the time previous owners had finished adding on a few rooms, there was a thousand feet of living space. (And it was better than Baltimore.) When the brutal winter weather hit, we discovered that the master bedroom, way in the back, had no ductwork for heat. It was chilly until we bought a kerosene heater.
After graduation from seminary, we moved to my first church in Coventry, Connecticut. There we lived in a parsonage, a two-story, five bedroom, 2-1/2 bath home on four acres next door to the church building. We moved in to the 2,700 square foot home with a bed, a crib, a table with two chairs, and maybe a dresser. We never did furnish the entire house the five years we lived there. I mowed the four acre yard, planted a big garden, split piles of logs for the wood burning stove, and let our two Labrador retrievers run freely.
The thing with living in a parsonage is that you don’t build up equity in the property. We didn’t make and didn’t save much in Connecticut, so when we moved to our second church in Iowa, we needed a lot of help finding a place to live. For the next five years I would be one of several pastors on staff at a well off church in Urbandale, a western suburb of Des Moines. We weren’t able to afford a home in that community, but found a small home in West Des Moines, not far away. The church gifted us with most of the downpayment on a 1,000 square foot, $65,000 house, the first we owned.
Five years later, we got the call to serve the church in Palm Coast, Florida. Our Iowa home sold easily, netting enough profit to buy our next home in the south. Rather than rushing into a purchase, we rented a home for the first six months. With three children, we wanted a four-bedroom home. There were few to choose from, so we decided to build. We never thought we’d be able to build a home. But building lots were going for $8,000, construction costs were $50 per square foot, and taxes were low, so we built a 2,000 square foot Palm Coast home for about $100,000.
In the years to come, we were able to refinance. We got into an adjustable rate mortgage that was tied to the prime interest rate during the years it was at zero percent. Our monthly payment and interest was actually lower than a car payment! Homestead laws meant our taxes barely inched up each year. Housing booms enabled us to refinance and remodel our home without increasing the mortgage payment. This was one of the ways God faithfully provided for us over the past forty years.
Having written that last sentence, we would do just fine if we were to start all over again.
Waite for it... 