Colossians 3:2

Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.  Colossians 3:2

Paul is telling us where the focus of our attention needs to be. We can give our minds over to a lot of things, for instance, to our jobs - and there is a place for that. We can give our minds over to physical things - exercise, eating well, and so forth - and there is a place for these, too.

Indeed, humans need to set their minds on many things, but they need to be prioritized correctly - put into the right niche and position. Then each of these things has to be seen in relation to the Kingdom of God. Our priorities must be set according to this standard - the overriding goal of our Christian lives.

"Set your mind on things above" adjusts the focus of our attention so that we do not become distracted by things that are less important for any longer than needed, so that they occupy the right proportion and amount of time in our lives.

Revelation 2:11

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death.  Revelation 2:11

Jesus Christ encourages each of the churches to overcome, clearly implying that success within God's purpose is tied to it. God did not create us and call us into His purpose for failure. The Greek term for "overcome" here is nikáo (Strong's #3528), which means "to subdue, to conquer, to prevail, to get the victory."

Jesus indicates that Christian life is challenging. The Bible does not view the worship of God as a passing activity on which a person spends a few hours one day a week. Rather, it shows the worship of God to be a full-time responsibility, a work requiring dedication and discipline. God calls upon each of us to be "a worker who does not need to be ashamed" (II Timothy 2:15). Sin impedes proper worship.

The reasons for the use of such strong terms does not become directly apparent until the New Testament, where Jesus and the apostles give specific instructions to individual Christians on avoiding sin at all costs. The Bible's writers see us in a battle for our very lives! In whatever context it appears throughout Scripture, sin is viewed as failure—as succumbing, not overcoming. Each time we sin, we suffer a defeat in life's overall purpose.

Besides defeat, Isaiah 59:1-2 provides us with another reason why sin is perceived so dreadfully: "Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear."

This second reason is in no way secondary in importance; it is in every way equal to or greater than the sense of failure. Sin creates estrangement from God. This is extremely important because our relationship with Him is the source of our power to succeed. He created us to have an everlasting relationship with Him in peaceful and productive harmony.

God does not sin because sin destroys relationships. As sinners, we would not fit within a non-sinning relationship. Despite human reasoning to the contrary, whether the relationship is with fellow humans or with God, sin always works to produce separation. A continuing life of sin destroys any hope of oneness. It never makes matters better; it never heals. Lasting success and sound relationships are never achieved through sin.

How Expensive Is Your Religion?-Part Three

Christianity is not for the faint of heart. As we have seen, Jesus urges us to "count the cost" of discipleship to see if we have what it takes, and many of the patriarchs had to choose between God and family or other worthwhile yet physical things. If God put such painful choices before them to test their spiritual mettle, He will undoubtedly do the same to us.

As we saw in Part Two, Genesis provides many examples of such choices. For instance, in Genesis 25, three years after the death of Sarah, Abraham married Keturah, whose name means "covered in perfume." Abraham was 137 years old when Sarah died, and they had been married at least 62 years—some think as many as 110 years. He must have been lonely after her death, and even more so after Isaac and Rebekah moved south. At that point, he still had another 38 years to live.

Verse 2 records that he and Keturah had six sons together and probably several daughters. Then, in verses 3-4, we find that they also had many grandchildren. Her "perfume" must have been wonderful! Yet, in verse 6, "Abraham gave gifts to the sons of the concubines which Abraham had; and while he was still living he sent them eastward, away from Isaac his son, to the country of the east."

Some speculate that, like Hagar, Keturah was just a concubine among several others. Yet, that scenario seems unlikely. Just as Isaac is the Son of Promise, so Sarah was the Wife of Promise. Scripture lists Keturah as a concubine only to distinguish her from Abraham's primary wife. Notice, however, that he yet again sends family away. Surely, he loved Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah, along with his daughters and grandchildren. Yet he does the hard thing, the expensive thing, and created separation to allow God's plan to proceed. He gave them "gifts"—money or cattle or whatever—enough to set them up in a new place and to give Isaac, the Son of Promise, space.

What about the story of Lot in Genesis 19? God, in His mercy, literally took Lot, his wife, and their two daughters by the hand and pulled them from their evil city. They all left everything behind. Lot's wife is, of course, a prime example of someone "looking back." She felt that she was leaving too much behind. She did not consider that what lay ahead was worth the price.

Jacob had to leave home, and later, he had to flee from his uncle Laban. Isaac and Rebekah, in a manner of speaking, lost their son when Jacob left them. Really, they lost both sons because Esau married three pagan women just to spite them.

His brothers sold Joseph into slavery as part of God's plan. He was separated from his family, taken from the life he had known, and sent to a strange land, yet he kept the faith. He loved God more than father, mother, sister, and brother. Granted, his brothers had thrown him into a pit and then bundled him off as a slave, in chains no doubt, so this was not his choice. But he did not look back. He mourned his losses, but knowing God was working with him, he accepted it and made the sacrifices.

We should not forget the loss that his father, Jacob, suffered, believing he had lost his favorite son to the teeth and claws of beasts. Many more examples like these appear throughout God's Word.

God's people have always been different. Our beliefs—and the conviction of our beliefs—set us apart from family, co-workers, neighbors, etc. It is not easy to swim upstream, against the flow of worldly culture. It is difficult to explain to teachers why we must take our kids out of school to attend a "religious convention," the Feast of Tabernacles (Leviticus 23:33-36; John 7:2-14). It is hard to ask a boss for time off on a holy day. It is uncomfortable not to be on the same page with our families when they gather for Christmas or Easter. Our kids feel left out when they have no stories to tell at school the day after Halloween.

Recalling similar experiences, having been around the church for over 45 years, I realize that some of them were not the huge obstacles they seemed at the time. They were not as expensive as I feared. Nevertheless, they were sacrifices, and they accumulate as God molds us. Each step behind the plow (Luke 9:62) takes us a little further from our starting point. Losing a summer job at age 16 over the Sabbath (fired by a Jewish family, no less), while frustrating and difficult at the time, does not reach the level of losing a job when one has a family to support. A child telling a teacher he cannot exchange Christmas gifts with his classmates can be scary, but it prepares him for having to tell his boss something similar later. Each trial builds faith in us, preparing us for the next one.

God has called us out of the world. We are on a different course than most of those around us. Consider the apostle's counsel in Hebrews 10:35-39 (Contemporary English Version):

Keep on being brave! It will bring you great rewards. Learn to be patient, so that you will please God and be given what he has promised. As the Scriptures say,

God is coming soon! It won't be very long.
The people God accepts will live because of their faith.
But he isn't pleased with anyone who turns back.

We are not like those people who turn back and get destroyed. We will keep on having faith until we are saved.

Saved from what, the second death? Yes. From this evil world? Yes. From not knowing? Yes. The world at large does not know God. They are ignorant of His plan. They are deceived. We do not deserve this knowledge, we do not deserve forgiveness, and we do not deserve the future God lays out for us. Nonetheless, here we are!

If we can keep the plow upright and true and not look back, what are the "great rewards" that await us? What could possibly make this religion as expensive as our very lives? How about seeing our loved ones again, teaching God's way to those ignorant of it, creating and building, laughing and loving, with no Satan or demons to contend with? In short, everlasting life as a member of the God Family!

Revelation 21:2 (KJV) speaks of the future, when the Holy City, New Jerusalem, descends from heaven, prepared as a bride beautified for her husband: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (verse 4). Is this not a worthy goal?

 How expensive is your religion?

How Expensive Is Your Religion?-Part Two

We all have stories of people we know or have known who experienced separation from friends and family due to their beliefs. Perhaps that is our own story. From start to finish, the Bible is full of such stories too. Beginning in Genesis, God has called on His people to choose Him over family. 

Sometimes, the story is that their sins separated them from God and family. A brief survey of just the book of Genesis shows God's people making sacrifices, indicating how expensive their religion was.

In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve sinned, and God evicted them from the Garden of Eden. Though He sent them away, He did not abandon them. Nonetheless, their sin changed the relationship.

Their firstborn, Cain, murdered his brother, Abel, and was sent into exile (Genesis 4). Adam and Eve lost two sons and a daughter here. God "respected" Abel's offering (verse 4), suggesting that Abel was striving to live a godly life, unlike Cain, whose jealousy drove him to kill his godly brother. Abel's religion was very expensive. His was the ultimate sacrifice.

Sometime later, "Enoch walked with God" (Genesis 5:24). Jewish tradition says that he was killed by Lamech (Genesis 4:23-24). Did Enoch's preaching upset Lamech to the point that he ended up killing him? Possibly. Did Enoch count the cost and know that he could die? Perhaps. Enoch probably knew his beliefs upset his family, yet he did not look back from the "plow" (Luke 9:62). He did not deliberately antagonize Lamech or his family; his righteous example may simply have bothered them, just as Abel's bothered Cain. All the same, this man paid a high price for his religion.

How many millions or billions were lost in the Flood? Scripture says that Noah was 600 years old then. After all those years, did he have only the three sons mentioned in the Bible? Could he and his wife have left other children behind? In Genesis 7:1, "The LORD said to Noah, come into the ark, you and all your household." He could have had older children who were out on their own, and they surely left aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews behind to die.

Did Noah receive death threats in the hundred years it took to build the ark? II Peter 2:5 calls him a "preacher of righteousness." How much persecution did he and his family endure? If the world was so evil and violent that God was forced to destroy it, then he and his family probably faced death many times. When God called him, did Noah realize how hard it would be? He must have come to see this as time went on, yet he did not look back.

A medieval French rabbi, Salomon Isaacides, had an interesting take on Noah. He felt that God stretched the building of the ark over such a long time so that people could repent. God is indeed merciful, but Isaacides goes further. In Genesis 5:29, Noah's father names him, saying, "This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD has cursed." Because of this, Rabbi Isaacides believed that after the Flood Noah ushered in a new era of prosperity: that there was an easing of "the curse of Adam and Eve when the earth produces thorns and thistles where men sowed wheat and that Noah then introduced the plow." This plow, both physical and metaphorical, he did not look back from.

In Genesis 11 appears the Tower of Babel. God was probably working with a few people during that time. Think about how tough it must have been for them, swimming against the tide, only to have even more separation when God confused the language. They would have sought out those speaking a like language, which may have meant packing up and moving, as Genesis 11:9 says, ". . . from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth." After that, they would have to seek any of like mind. Their devotion to God proved expensive.

In Genesis 12:1, the story of Abraham begins: "Now the LORD had said to Abram: ‘Get out of your country, from your kindred and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you.'" At this point, Abram was a man in his seventies, well established in his city with many relatives and friends, yet God tells him to leave—without bothering to tell him where he is going. He says only that He would "show" him. "So Abram departed . . ." (Genesis 12:4). He packed up his family and possessions and off they went. His religion was worth leaving behind all that he had grown up with, all that he was comfortable with—really, his entire life to that point. It might have been even harder on Sarai, his wife, as women tend to be closer to home and family than men are.

There would be more separation for Abraham as time went on. In Genesis 13:9, after reaching Canaan, he realized that he and his nephew, Lot, had too much livestock between them. So, he said to Lot, "Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me."

Later, he has to send Hagar and Ishmael away. How hard was that? He and Hagar may not have had a truly loving relationship, but they certainly shared the bond of a son, Ishmael—his first son! How does a person send away his son with nothing more than some bread and water? But that is what happened: "So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and putting it on her shoulder, he gave it and the boy to Hagar, and sent her away. Then she departed and wandered in the Wilderness of Beersheba" (Genesis 21:14). Hagar had to be a bit confused. She had likely thought that by having Abraham's baby, she had it made, but suddenly, she finds herself wandering the wilderness, with her son—now about sixteen—in tow, and little to show for her efforts.

Verse 11 records matter-of-factly that "the matter was very displeasing in Abraham's sight because of his son." As some translations have it, it "grieved" him to send his son away. "But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice, for in Isaac your seed shall be called'" (Genesis 21:12). It would help all of us if, at some point in our trials, God would speak to us and reassure us. But even though God spoke directly to Abraham, he still had to send his son away. Heartbreaking and expensive! We often compare the sacrifice of Isaac to that of Christ and rightly so, but we often skip over his sending Ishmael away, which does a disservice to Abraham.

About twenty years later, he must go through all this again with Isaac (Genesis 22). Think of the commitment involved, that a man would be willing to sacrifice his son! As we learned in Part One, expensive means "involving a high price or sacrifice." Abraham's willingness to obey God at the expense of his beloved son certainly fits this definition.

In Part Three, we will continue our survey of people in Genesis who paid dearly for their beliefs.

How Expensive Is Your Religion? Part One

 Some years back, I had the opportunity to drive through southern Illinois several times. I was always amazed at the thousands of acres of corn and how precise the rows were. They may not always have been straight—perhaps going around the occasional tree or boulder—but each row was spaced the same distance from the next one, and the next one, and the next one, forming beautiful patterns as they followed the contours of the land.

In recent years, farmers have installed GPS in their tractors, and they can now do some amazing things. Once in southwest Colorado I saw plowing that defied description: field after field with rows stretching out towards the horizon, perfectly straight and symmetrical. They were so flawless it was as if they had been drawn by digital animation.

This is quite different from days gone by, when a farmer would plow behind his mules, horses, or oxen, and it took all his concentration to manage the animals and the plow in order to cut a straight line. Nowadays, the farmer can sit in an air-conditioned tractor cab, listen to music or talk radio, play on his phone, maybe go in the back to make a sandwich—and still plow a furrow to make Harry Truman envious!

In this light, consider Luke 9:57-62, a passage on the cost of discipleship:

Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, "Lord, I will follow You wherever You go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." Then He said to another, "Follow Me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God." And another also said, "Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house." But Jesus said to him, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

The Contemporary English Version (CEV) renders verse 62, "Anyone who starts plowing and keeps looking back isn't worth a thing to God's Kingdom."

Plowing in Jesus' day was done, not with a tractor, but behind an animal, something we have little or no experience doing. Few of us have spent any time walking behind a plow—and a garden tiller does not count as a plow! What was it like, trying to keep an animal-pulled plow upright and true? 

YouTube offers many videos of just this thing, people trying to hold a plow straight and keep a team moving forward. It does not look easy. It seems that if the plowman took his eyes off what he was doing, the plow would fall over.

So, once a farmer became proficient enough to hold the plow up and had the animals trained to move ahead, he would have to keep his eyes fixed on the end of the row to plow a straight line. Back in the day, Farmer John would send his son or his hired hand out to plow a field. He would come by later to check on him and perhaps find that the furrows were crooked. The plowman had started plowing but perhaps kept looking back. He was not committed to the task at hand or was not focused on the goal.

Hebrews 10:39 (CEV) reads, "We are not like those people who turn back and get destroyed. We will keep on having faith until we are saved." Are God's requirements too exacting and difficult for us? Are we committed to the way forward, or are we spending time looking back?

Luke 14:26-27 (CEV) is a passage used in pre-baptism counseling:

You cannot be my disciple unless you love me more than you love your father and mother, your wife and children, and your brothers and sisters. You cannot come with Me unless you love me more than you love your own life. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

When embarking on a quest, we must first "count the cost," as these verses are often labeled. In verse 28, Christ speaks of a building project, and before we start, the smart person sits down and figures out what it will cost. Does he have enough to finish it? He also uses the illustration of a king going to war. He must first look at his resources and ask if his 10,000 men can conquer the enemy with 20,000.

About these verses, commentator Matthew Henry makes the point that "we must consider the expenses of our religion." Expensive means "involving a high price or sacrifice." Is our calling worth our jobs, our families, our lives? Have we truly counted the cost?

Have we ever wanted something and then decided that it would take too much effort to acquire it? In the end, we decided it was not worth it; it was just too expensive! Maybe we desired something and were willing to move heaven and earth to get it. We would work long hours, perhaps take on another job, study, skip meals, lose sleep—we would do whatever it took.

Where does the Kingdom of God fit? Is it "not worth the effort," or does it merit the sacrifices?

Now, we cannot "earn" our salvation. Remember, however, that Christ says in Luke 9:62, "Anyone who starts plowing and keeps looking back isn't worth a thing to God's Kingdom." Once we start down this road to the Kingdom, we must keep moving forward and not look back. We are all aware that salvation is a gift and not earned by any works, but we should also know that God requires our full obedience and cooperation to receive this gift (see John 14:15; I Corinthians 7:19; Matthew 19:17; I John 2:4; 3:4; 5:2-3; etc.).

In Matthew 10:34-39, Christ warns His disciples that persecution will come and that they will have to make hard choices:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

In some cases, to answer God's call will involve leaving family and friends behind, perhaps symbolically, perhaps literally. We will look into this more fully in Part Two.

Romans 3:20 & 4:15

"Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin". Romans 3:20

"because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression."   Romans 4:15

Together, Romans 3:20 and Romans 4:15 produce a general principle that covers, not just biblical morality, but also secular. Laws reveal to us our religious and/or civic duties. In reference to God, law awakens us to a consciousness of sin. Through God's laws we become aware of the contrast between what we do and what we ought to do.

By enacting laws, our legislators tell us what is moral, right, and good in secular areas of life, but instead of calling a transgression of the state's laws "sin," we call it "crime." In many cases, crimes are also sins. The difference between secular law and God's law is that the latter contains clear moral values and reveals our duties toward the Creator God. Where do people get their ideas regarding what is moral?

We must conclude that religion, law, the state, and morality are each parts of the same family. Thus, every system of law is a system of ethics and morality. Since law establishes standards of conduct, those standards are the establishment of religion, a way of life we are to be devoted to following. Therefore, in truth, there can be no absolute separation of church and state.

This point escapes most Americans, but not every American. For instance, some journalists have clearly identified communism as a religion. In such a system, the government is the god. At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans made no bones about this principle, declaring and demanding under the penalty of death that Caesar be worshipped as a god. This is part of the "divine right of kings" principle. Beware, because this idea is about to be reborn:

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. (Revelation 13:11-12)

When the Beast arises, he will be accorded this honor that belongs only to God.

In the Western world, a new religion is rising. It is not really new, but it has a fairly new name: secularism. It is a type of idolatry, one that has been increasingly challenging this world's Christianity over the past century, and it is gaining ever more strength in numbers and devotion here in America. The war between it and this world's Christianity is virtually over—with Christianity rapidly becoming irrelevant. Persecution in the courts is already an established fact, and outright persecution on the streets cannot be very many years away.

Luke 6:46

But why do you call Me "Lord, Lord," and not do the things which I say?  Luke 6:46

This verse poses a question that we need to answer correctly to make righteous use of our knowledge of God. A powerful influence works in us to justify why we do not conform to God's way more thoroughly, despite what we know. If we must learn any lesson in all of life, it is that God is God, and His Word is sure. Virtually everything in life on this earth is under the sway of Satan, working through carnal-minded men at enmity against God. The Devil's way is designed to influence men's thinking to believe that man is supreme, while simultaneously giving lip service to God as if they know Him.

What does the Bible reveal about this? Do men not have power, knowledge, and will? Of course! But what happens when they come into conflict with God's will? What happened when man tried to build the Tower of Babel? Or when Pharaoh attempted to keep Israel in slavery in Egypt? Or when Balaam sought to curse Israel? Could the Canaanites thwart Israel's invasion of the land? Did Saul manage to kill David? Could Jonah resist God's command to preach to Nineveh? Could Nebuchadnezzar execute Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Did Herod succeed in slaying the infant Jesus?

Proverbs 19:21 says, "There are many plans in a man's heart, nevertheless the LORD's counsel—that will stand." Do we consult with God before we launch into pursuing our plans? Many times, we fail to do this because He is so far from our thinking in practical, everyday situations that we do not consider if He has any plans for us as part of His will.