An old story example (part 1)

I don’t imagine that you’ve spent much time reading the Old Testament book 1 Chronicles.  Don’t worry, no judgment here…I’m not in it very often, either.  And if you’re like me, when you read through any Old Testament book, it’s very tempting to just skim past the genealogy sections, right?  So-and-so begat son-of-so-and-so, name-I-can’t-possibly-pronounce had a son with-another-name-I-can’t-pronounce.

However, genealogy sections were vitally important to the ancient Israelites.  Knowing where you came from had significant influence on your social standing.  Even though we can’t trace our own lineage back through those genealogies, that doesn’t necessarily mean those sections are empty of anything useful for us church-age believers.  While there are a lifetime of stories behind each name…oftentimes, there are interesting stories couched in between the lists of family lineage.  As the Apostle Paul said, the Old Testament is available to us for examples and insight into the God who loves us (1 Corinthians 10:11).

So, I want to share with you two little stories I found amongst the genealogies.  I think you’ll find them as interesting and as informative as I did.  We’ll look at the first one in this post and the second one in the next post.  The first story shows three of the twelve tribes establishing themselves in the Promised Land, but the local inhabitants weren’t willing to just hand it over.  As you read the following five verses, look for the reason why the three tribes were successful:

1 Chronicles 5:18-22
The descendants of Reuben and Gad and half the tribe of Manasseh had 44,760 warriors who could serve in the army – men who carried shield and sword, drew the bow, and were trained for war.  They waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish, and Nodab.  They received help against these enemies because they cried out to God in battle, and the Hagrites and all their allies were handed over to them.  He was receptive to their prayer because they trusted in Him.  They captured the Hagrites livestock – fifty thousand of their camels, two hundred fifty thousand sheep, and two thousand donkeys – as well as one hundred thousand people.  Many of the Hagrites were killed because it was God’s battle.  And they lived there in the Hagrites place until the exile.

Over 44,000 warriors…that’s a lot of skilled fighters; however, that wasn’t the primary reason they won the battle.  The three Israelite tribes were victorious because they cried out to God in battle…He was receptive to their prayer because they trusted in Him.  Despite their numbers and strength, their winning strategy contained two humility-filled steps: crying out to God and trusting in Him.  Not only did they seek God’s favor and assistance, they were counting on Him to fulfill the promises He had made to all the Israelite tribes (see Genesis 12, Genesis 26:3, Genesis 28:13, Numbers 34:1-12 for a few examples).

Since God had promised the land, the three tribes knew they couldn’t obtain the promise fulfillment without God’s involvement.  After the battle was over and the three Israelite tribes had won and taken control of the land, they recognized that it had been God’s battle all along.

Now, of course, us modern-day believers cannot claim this promise from God.  We’re not Israel, and God isn’t going to move us all to Palestine.  That said…what a great example this is for us…we can take this little snippet of history and be reminded that God fulfills His promises.  God keeps His word.  People may have lied to us.  Others may have let us down.  Our God isn’t like that.  He doesn’t leave us in the lurch.  He won’t forget.  God is good for His word, every time.

So, what promises are you crying out to God about?  What promises are you trusting in Him to fulfill?  We can’t do it on our own, no matter how skilled we are.  If you need a reminder, here are a few to consider:

Matthew 11:28-30
Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take up my yoke and learn from Me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

John 5:24
Truly I tell you, anyone who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.

Hebrews 13:5-6
Keep your life free from the love of money.  Be satisfied with what you have for He Himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you.  Therefore, we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.  What can man do to me?”

There are many more promises available to us, and I encourage you to look for them as you read through the New Testament.  But let’s take the Old Testament story as our example, alright?  Cry out to God and trust in Him to fulfill the promises He’s made.

Keep Pressing,
Ken

Worthless influencers make me worthless

Even though church-age believers are not required to live by the Levitical Law, reading the Old Testament is a good habit for us to maintain.  Paul said that the Old Testament is full of examples for us church-age believers to follow (1 Corinthians 10:11).  One powerful lesson we can learn comes from the author of 2 Kings, as he describes why God punished His chosen people when he allowed the Assyrian Empire to subjugate and exile the Israelites:

2 Kings 17:21-23
When the Lord tore Israel from the house of David, Israel made Jeroboam son of Nebat king.  Then Jeroboam led Israel away from following the Lord and caused them to commit grave sin.  The Israelites persisted in all the sins that Jeroboam committed and did not turn away from them.  Finally, the Lord removed Israel from His presence just as He had declared through all His servants the prophets.  So Israel has been exiled to Assyria from their homeland to this very day.

The land God had promised to Israel could only be kept by following God’s commands.  From the founding of the nation, God had warned them not to fall under the influence of the surrounding nations and to not abandon their relationship with and worship of God.  If they took that path, God warned that they would be removed from the land and placed into exile.  It would be easy for us modern-day believers to wag our fingers and shake our heads at Israel’s situation.  They were warned, right?  How could they fall like that, if they knew how great the consequences would be?

A little earlier in this same chapter, the author of 2 Kings gave a more detailed synopsis of how it all went wrong throughout the 700 years since the nation of Israel made their covenant with God:

2 Kings 17:7-15
This disaster happened because the people of Israel sinned against the Lord their God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt and because they worshiped other gods.  They lived according to the customs of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites and according to what the kings of Israel did. 

The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right.  They built high places in all their towns from watchtower to fortified city.  They set up for themselves sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree.  They burned incense there on all the high places just like the nations that the Lord had driven out before them had done. 

They did evil things, angering the Lord.  They served idols, although the Lord had told them, “You must not do this.”  Still, the Lord warned Israel and Judah through every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep My commands and statutes according to the whole law I commanded your ancestors and sent to you through My servants the prophets.”

But they would not listen.  Instead they became obstinate like their ancestors who did not believe the Lord their God.  They rejected His statutes and His covenant He had made with their ancestors and the warnings He had given them.  They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves, following the surrounding nations the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.

Israel’s heart was divided.  Throughout the centuries, they picked up their cues from the culture around them, rather than solely trusting the guidance God had given them.  Eventually, they looked just like those God had warned them to not be like.  Everywhere they turned in society, there was another “god” for them to follow or worship.  The Old Testament is chock full of prophets telling the people to return to God, but despite numerous warnings, God eventually followed through on His promise to remove them from the Promised Land.

This is the phrase that struck me as I read this passage: they followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.  There’s something about that description that just stings.  Israel’s situation was completely self-inflicted.  They made the choice to follow worthless idols, to imitate the culture around them, and to live a lifestyle that was contrary to what God had called them to. 

They became what they worshiped.  They became what they imitated.  They became what they followed.

This example makes me stop and ask a few penetrating questions:

Who or what am I following?
How quickly does my hand reach for my phone in the morning?
What am I compulsively checking for in my email, text, or social media accounts?
How much of my time do I allow for social media each day?
Which news organizations, streaming channels, or podcasts influence my daily narrative and activities?
What apps/games do I immediately open if I have time to kill or I need to wait for something?

Are the answers to the above questions leading me toward better or leading me toward worse?
In comparison to God’s direction for living our life to the fullest…which answers to the above questions would He consider worthless?

These are hard questions.  These are difficult stare-at-yourself-in-the-mirror questions.  While God did not abandon the Israelites, He was willing to remove blessings in order to get their attention.  From their example, we see that God takes our value very, very seriously.  He does not want us to become worthless, and so it matters greatly who and what we allow to have influence in our lives.

Keep Pressing,
Ken

Hello, my name is Timothy

Given the numerous mentoring examples in the Bible, it’s easy to see that God values the mentor-protégé relationship.  It is a special bond at an intimate level between two people.  Most of the Biblical examples give us just a snapshot – a mentoring moment or lesson taught – and then we must look at what happened next to the mentor and the protégé to find out how well the lesson was applied.  However, there is one mentoring relationship in the Scriptures where we get to see much more than a glimpse.  Paul and Timothy spent many years together, and much of their efforts and relationship is on display throughout the New Testament.

But who was Timothy?  How did they meet?  Why did they pair up?

We are first introduced to Timothy at the start of Paul’s second missionary journey:

Acts 15:40-16:2
Then Paul chose Silas and departed, after being commended to the grace of the Lord by the brothers he traveled through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. 

Then he went on to Derbe and Lystra, where there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a believing Jewish woman, but his father was a Greek.  The brothers at Lystra and Iconium spoke highly of him.

Timothy was a young man stuck between two worlds.  He believed in Jesus as the Messiah who would come from the Jewish half of his parents, but Timothy was also half Greek and grew up in a Greek city, surrounded by Grecian culture.  Since no additional information is given about his father, we can’t be sure of how much influence that heritage had – but the fact that he had not been circumcised suggests that Timothy wasn’t raised in a strictly observant Jewish household.  However, both worlds were still a part of him and people were aware of his mixed-race background. 

Although such mixed marriages were illegal in Jewish law, rabbinic texts reckoned a person’s decent through the mother’s line; and as such, Timothy would have been considered to be a Jew by the Jewish community.

Acts 16:3-5
Paul wanted Timothy to go with him, so he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places, since they all knew that his father was a Greek.  As they traveled through the towns, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem for them to observe.  So the churches were strengthened in the faith and were increased in number daily.

Was it necessary for Timothy’s salvation that he be circumcised? 

No, not at all.  Salvation from eternal separation away from God is only through believing (i.e. – trusting) Jesus for eternal life.

Then was Paul being inconsistent by circumcising Timothy?  Was this an example of Paul “giving in” to local peer pressure?

No, not at all.  Timothy was already a believer before he met Paul.  However, given Timothy’s well known heritage, for him to come with Paul and have access to be a missionary in Jewish synagogues, he would need to be circumcised.  Otherwise, the Jewish communities would consider Timothy an apostate, and they would not be willing to listen to what he had to say about Jesus.

Timothy was willing to endure significant physical pain in order to share the gospel message with those who would have looked down on him as a “half-breed”, the same way that Jews had historically looked down on Samaritans.  In fact, by agreeing to be circumcised, Timothy boldly demonstrated an evangelistic principle which Paul would later pass on to the believers in Corinth:

1 Corinthians 9:19-22
For although I am free from all people, I have made myself a slave to all, in order to win more people.  To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law – though I myself am not under the law – to win those under the law.  To those who are outside the law, like one outside the law – not being outside God’s law, but under the law of Christ – to win those outside the law.  To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. 

I have become all things to all people, so that I may by all means save some.

That is an incredible lesson for Timothy to grab a hold of so early in his mentoring relationship under Paul.  And it’s certainly not the last time Timothy is a reflection of his mentor.

Keep Pressing,
Ken

Much ado about mentoring

Many years ago, I was given a rather simple – and yet deep – illustration for the kinds of relationships each of us needs within the body of Christ. 

Everyone needs a Paul, a Barnabas, and a Timothy.

This straightforward description has always stuck with me.  Whenever I share it with someone else, I usually don’t have to give it much explanation – they immediately understand the details of these relationships:

Paul – someone who leads me toward God, provides a more mature example
Barnabas – someone who comes along side me as an equal, to both encourage and challenge
Timothy – someone who I am pouring my life into and providing a Godly example for

These relationships, especially those between a “Paul” and a “Timothy”, are commonly referred to as either discipleship or mentoring relationships.  While the term mentor is not specifically stated in the Bible, the word disciple is – and it generally refers to someone who is a learner, a follower, and an imitator of their instructor.  Howard Hendricks best described these special kinds of relationships:

Discipleship, as we know it today, tends to narrow its focus to the spiritual dimension. Ideally, it should touch on every area of life – our personal life and lifestyle, our work, our relationships. But discipleship always looks at these areas by asking the question, how do they relate to Christ? How does following Christ affect my personal life, my work, my relationships, and so on?

Mentoring, at least when practiced by Christians, certainly ought to center everything on Christ. But mentoring is less about instruction than it is about initiation – about bringing young men into maturity. Whereas the word for disciple means learner, the word ‘protégé’ comes from a Latin word meaning “to protect.” The mentor aims to protect his young charge as he crosses the frontier into manhood.

For my own part, I do not make a hard and fast distinction between discipleship and mentoring. There is a great deal of overlap. But I like the concept of mentoring because it focuses on relationships.

The point is we need the mature and experienced to kneel down with those of us in the family who are immature and have limited experience.  I feel that is one of the greatest areas where our modern church family has faltered – especially among the men, but women need these kinds of relationships, too.  We all need someone to challenge, guide, and protect us as we mature.  However, it is also vital that we turn to those around us and become the mentor they so desperately need.

To understand how to do this, we’re going to take a look at various mentor relationship examples that God has provided for us throughout the pages of Scripture.  We’ll watch how the mentors interact with their protégés.  We’ll observe their successes and their failures.  Most of all, we’ll be looking for how God was able to work with both of them because of their relationship.

A good starting point is a statement the apostle Paul gave to the believers in Corinth.  Right in the middle of his instruction about the many ways they needed to mature, Paul makes this bold statement:

1 Corinthians 11:1
Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ.

Whether you are the mentor or the protégé, for this special relationship to work we must both desire the same thing – we must desire to imitate Christ.

Keep Pressing,
Ken