Daily Scripture Reading: I Samuel 4-8
Focal Passage: I Samuel 6:20
My father owned and operated a construction business and lumber yard when I was younger. I can remember spending many hours in the back of that lumber yard playing and working on different projects. However, there was one central tool in the middle of the warehouse that no one played around with. It was the huge saw that we used to cut lumber. This saw was fast, sharp, loud, and scary. When I was old enough to start using it, my dad gave me very specific instructions as to where to keep my fingers and how to avoid them getting caught by the saw. The saw was powerful and fast and could do many amazing things, but I always had a healthy respect (or in Biblical terms, fear) of the saw because I valued what it could do to my fingers if I wasn't careful and paying attention.
In the focal passage today, the Philistines had an interesting encounter with one of God's tools. The Ark of the Covenant was captured by them and every time it went into one of their Philistine towns the entire town would have things happen to them. This pattern that the Philistines observed convinced them to fear or respect God, and they decided to return the Ark of the Covenant back to its rightful owners: God's people, the Israelites. Even God's own people did not respect it the way that they should. In I Samuel 6:20 the men of Bethshemesh asked, "Who is able to stand in the presence of this holy Lord God?" They recognized that there was a huge difference between God and themselves.
We have lost the fear (respect) for God that we should have. The fear of God in the Bible is talking about a reverance, respect, honor or recognition of who God is (His holiness, His judgment, His power) in compared to who we are. We struggle with trying to be the best in our careers, have the best stuff we can possibly afford, with the highest education we can attain so that we can achieve for ourselves. We spend so much time building ourselves up, that we forget to acknowledge in our everyday lives that God is greater than all of us and He is ultimately in control of everything. Perhaps what we need is more people being stricken dead as soon as they disobey God (like in the Old Testament). Personally, I think I take in so much sin in my life that I become oblivious to God's presence in the world and in my life. I accept the things of the world and forget to have a hunger and thirst for the things of God. What do you think? Tell me about your healthy or unhealthy respect (fear) of the Lord.
Lord, help me to fear you today. Help me to hunger and thirst for your righteousness and allow me to seek first the kingdom of God!
You make very good points and have given us something very important to reflect on. I think we all tend to become desensitized by the world view around us. We are bombarded by so much sin that it does not offend us as it should. We do not put God or His word in the center of our lives 100% of the time as we should. I know that the more time I spend in God’s word the happier I am, the more I find that I try to emulate a Christian view as opposed to a world view. It takes a conscious and constant effort to build barriers around us to not let the world view taint us. It is like being around a negative person or a complaining person if you are not careful you can be sucked into that type of mind set. We can easily end up turning into that negative complaining person unless we fight that influence. Sin can infect our lives the same way, unless we keep our focus on God, on a fearful respect of God. We can find ourselves becoming worldly instead of Godly. It takes constant effort and focus but it is so worth the effort and the investment. I think we all need to help each other to maintain our focus, we need to take an active part of each others spiritual life so we can stay on track. I know that I certainly want and need help. I would want one of my brothers or sisters in Christ to point out if I was straying off focus.
ReplyDeleteThank you Pastor Keith for writing on such an interesting and important topic.