The Other We Need

The transcription is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. It discusses the relationship between God and man throughout history and the impact of sin on that relationship. It also reflects on the role of science and technology in society and the damage caused by human behavior. The importance of free will and the potential for humanity to rise above its animal instincts are highlighted. Overall, it emphasizes the need to choose a path that avoids unnecessary damage and embraces a higher purpose. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Isaiah 9.6-7 For a child is born to us, a son is given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and of peace there shall be no end, on David's throne and on his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from that time on, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of armies will perform this. Who wrote the book of Genesis? I've read a lot of opinions and scholarship about it, and there's a sizable group that don't believe it was written by Moses or even by a single source. Among those in this group, there are those that point to how God is portrayed to show that it could not be a single author. One of the evidences cited is the name of God. The original words change as the book progresses. Another is the position of God to man. At the start, God is face to face with humanity, breathing on us, Genesis 2.7. Then He's speaking to us, Genesis 4.6. Then He's visiting us, but not interacting directly, Genesis 11.5. And then He's dealing with just one man and guiding through single instructions or commands, Genesis 12.1. And then He's dealing through covenants, Genesis 15.18. And, of course, the pattern continues, and by Exodus to Deuteronomy, He's using the law, and He's speaking to humanity through a spokesperson, Moses, and then the prophets or the priests. Getting away from authorship, which is really scholastic hair-splitting, if you believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Word, this relational change between God and man has been put forward as evidence of different people viewing God different ways. But isn't it more of a roadmap, a single train of thought? I think it clearly points to the moves of humanity more than it looks to different views of God. We started side by side with the Lord, created in Genesis 1.26 to be perfect companions. The world was renewed with us in mind, Genesis 1.1-2. Having become formless, it was then made into a place where we could thrive, and thrive we did, talking with God face-to-face daily. Then Adam fell and took all his descendants with him. So we have separation between us and God, but we're still close. God's still speaking to us directly, but we push Him further away, and we go our own way, rebelling even more. We give ourselves over to the flesh, over to strife. We're starting to kill each other. We're just in every way possible. We are in the flesh to preserve the rest of the planet. God takes out those who are worshipping the flesh, Genesis 6.5. But man goes at it again. He decides to build a flood-proof tower and replace God in the minds of men on earth, Genesis 11.4, to bind mankind to a ruler and to keep from being spread out and dispersed. But God didn't want man dominated by man, though. So He stepped in. He spread mankind out through language and looked for someone still willing to follow Him. In Abram, He found a man willing to follow and willing to instruct his family. God started to teach Abram his ways, His way of living. There were few, if any, rules, but there was a lot of instruction. Humanity being what it is, we started to color outside the lines a lot. It got so bad that that one man who had a family who followed God had descendants who began to dabble. They looked to other things to worship and follow, to find that which enabled them to do what they felt like doing. God stepped in again. We got the law. We got rules this time. A codified set of behavior which would keep us near Him. Since we were obsessed with finding things to dominate us, things to totally give ourselves over to, He gave us the law. We could give ourselves over to it and let it dominate us and thereby finding ourselves in a position where we could fellowship with Him again. Was it successful? Well, yeah, in many ways it was. Look at the Psalms. Look at the books of wisdom. There's beautiful interactions with Yahweh God there. If you look at the Chronicles of the Kings, there are some wonderful interactions with the Lord. People that really gave themselves to Him and got the benefits of it. Golden years. But, of course, we didn't always get it right. There's also pleas. There's begging. There's people that turn away from Him. There's some horrific things that happen. I mean, the history of Israel is a constant struggle of what law they were following. The law of God or the law of flesh and sin. Every time they strayed from God's model of behavior, they had trouble. Whenever they chose to move out from the protection of the Lord, they were hammered by those nations around them. Just like the people who were in the land before Israel. God has been seeking a people who will follow Him since the beginning. Sin is the major factor poisoning our relationship with God. It is the single thing that is bringing strife and keeping us from peace. It is total opposition to righteousness. It is selfish. And so are we, because we have a sinful nature. We've decided our nature, ourselves, are the most important thing. Obviously, we then created gods to make us feel better about who we were in the world around us. We created deity to explain the world. Oh, but then we grew up. We have science now to explain the world. So we worship that. We put our faith in science to make our world better for us. Technological sciences. To make ourselves better, psychological sciences. To heal us and improve us, medical sciences. To dominate the species we find ourselves with, biological sciences. To dominate the world we find ourselves in, natural sciences. And to define ourselves as a piece of a puzzle within a larger framework of an impersonal universe, cosmological sciences. Pretty much everything that God told us about us and about what we should do back in Genesis 1, 26-28. We've replaced him with science. And we've reduced ourselves from images of God to animals. Yay us? We're literally the blind leading the blind. Does that mean science has no value? Of course not. It has value. We are literally only the best that we can do. We can send people to the moon. We can replace hearts with machines. We can transplant limbs and organs. We can save lives. We can walk on the ocean floor. We can fly in the sky. We can travel at great speeds. Record epic performances. Talk instantly with anyone. Transmit images. See into microscopic realms. Codify schools of thought. Heal mental and emotional trauma. Create passionate moments. And inspire others around us with mere words. We can also not cure the common cold. We kill each other. Hurt each other. Demean each other. Enslave each other. Literally and with thought patterns. We cheapen the best parts of ourselves. And train our children to do it. While also claiming it is both inevitable and right. We place feelings on higher pedestals than morals. We live in a completely made up system of value and commerce. We're damaging the planet system. Causing unheard of swings in the natural order. And recording physical changes to our own species in the last 50 years. That have never occurred before. We're doing our best. And our best is not nearly enough. Do I think we're going to wipe out the world? No. Although I will say that if there wasn't a God. And we were left to do what we seem to do best. I think we could make the planet inhabitable to our form of life for some time to come. That isn't going to happen. Even in a fallen state. This world has the inbred ability to bounce back from everything we could possibly throw at it. Seriously. Set off every nuclear weapon on earth. Scour the surface with intense life destroying radiation. And in a few hundred billion years it would revert to livable again. We wouldn't be here to see it. But I'm sure the planet of the cockroaches would be amazing. But again, I don't think this is the actual path we're on. I don't think we'll manage to damage it that much. But we are doing damage. And it's avoidable damage if we want it to be. But to want it to be, we'd need the option of choosing it. Which is free will. Which is the one thing that we have that nothing else in creation does. Animals are trapped in their own instincts. We can teach many of them new things. To use new tools. Our language even. But their default will be their natural instincts. They are animals. And they need to be led. By a will or by their own instincts. They have to have that. We can choose to not do that. We have instincts. They've been bred into our flesh by our flesh. By eons of human behavior. But we can choose to lay them aside. We can choose to reprogram on our own. That's free will. That was our second greatest gift from God. And demonstrable proof that there's more to humanity than being an animal. That we are, in fact, not animals. We can scientifically class this flesh as a mammal. And place it within the natural order. But that is not our place. This is where we fell to. Not where we belong. We are, in fact, above the natural order. Does that mean we can do what we want? Well, yes and no. Yes, it's a possibility that we can do whatever we want. But no. Because look where it's taking us. We need to do what we want. But we need to want something better than what we want. We need guidance. Not to be told what to do. To be given a choice. We need a moral compass. We need something that is not us. That is so different and foreign than us that it is completely 100% other. It can look like us. But it needs to be, by its very nature, nothing like us or anything around us. That removes every idol, religion, and philosophical thought out of it. That leaves only Yahweh God. He is the one God that is nothing like us. Doesn't act like us. Doesn't have the same standards as us. Is the way He is regardless of what we think or how we act. His morals don't depend on what is best for our society or ways of thinking or our feelings. He can't be told what to do or how to do it. He doesn't need to abide by our thoughts, our world, or our rules, scientific, natural, or man-made. God in no way depends on us. He was before we were. If we cease, He will still be. We discovered Him and continue to discover Him, but we did not make Him up or base Him on anything that has ever existed on this planet. We look like Him, but He looks nothing like us. So how to bridge this gap? How to get the thing that we need to guide us and other to actually be able to guide us? Something that we can steer our ship by should we choose. The answer is that we don't. That's the whole problem. Humanity trying to solve the problem by getting something and using it. It's not our fault. We were made to do. The thing is that this isn't a we do, this is a He do. We go to Him, and instead of using or taking something and doing it, we serve Him. He does the thing. We become the tool by being willing to give Him permission to do it His way. We acknowledge the need for guidance, and then we let Him guide us. We have to take the we're number one attitude, and realizing we are only the top of this food chain. Not the food chain. This food chain. We're the number one top dog administrators of this planet. This creation. Not of all that there is. We're above this, but He is above us. We need saving. We're not saviors. For a child is born to us. A son is given to us. That's right. Jesus was given to us to bridge the gap. To be the thing that we can look to. To be the thing that we can recognize. A piece of that total and complete otherness that we can follow. He has it all. The way to live. The how to live. The help to live. Government, justice, and peace. Finally, peace. A guidepost. The guidance we need to follow the immutable law of righteousness. In Jesus we can do it. Through Jesus we can become dead to sin and death. We can be born again into the spirit that we never should have rejected. We can leave this sinful nature behind. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law couldn't do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And for sin He condemned sin in the flesh, that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us who don't walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Romans 8, 2-4 We don't need to follow our feelings. We don't need to follow the God of this world. We don't need to lay down at the altar of science. We don't need to be animals. We don't need to have a sinful nature. We can choose the one who started it all and will be here long after it all ends. We can accept that we need guidance by the only one qualified to give us guidance. We can accept the life that He is holding out to us, spiritual and physical. Romans 8, 9-11 We can accept the counsel of the counselor. We can move back to that face-to-face relationship we were created to have. We can once again feel His breath on our face as reborn, renewed, completely new creatures in Him. We can be restored. And really, who wouldn't want that? Abiding in Jesus is a great place to be. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Romans 13, 8-10 God loves you enough to free you from rules. That's right. That God you were taught had a series of do's and do not's doesn't in fact have them. Was there a law? Yes. Was it rules? Yes. But they weren't do's and do not's. They were let me and don't bind me. What was it that Jesus said to us in Matthew 18, 18-20? Whatever we bind on earth is bound in heaven. We can in fact restrict God. Does that mean that we get to tell God what to do? No. It means like a fussy toddler struggling inside her sweater, we yell and scream and pitch a fit if He tries to help us and insist on doing it ourselves. Are we binding Him? Only as it has to do with us. Is it wise? No. It is foolish. And often we end up sweaty, crying, exhausted and asking Him for help anyway. But He isn't far away. He's right there, has always been there and has been itching to have us let Him help. God is a God of love. He wants to love you. He wants you to love, not just Him, but to love, period. Not passion, love. If you simply love purely, you won't do any of those do not's. If you love, you will actively seek the do's. You will strive to let Him. We will run from not letting Him. We won't want to bind Him or prevent Him from helping. We will let Him. Like that toddler who is capable, but stuck in this instance, we can breathe, stop flailing and let Him do what He wants to do. The end result? We get a good thing. The problem is solved and there is love all around. God does that every day if we'll let Him. And that sounds like real love in action to me. As we close, remember that you have earth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love. And no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you. Just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loved us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.