Joshua Part 4 - Jericho

Now we come to probably the most famous part of Joshua's life - Jericho.  This story has been talked about several times and I know that Veggie Tales made a skit about it but here is my rendition of the story.

Joshua finally got the people of Israel across the Jordan river.  Now they had entered the Promised Land.  God had been telling them for 40 years that they would get to this land and the time had finally arrived.  As I stated in the last post, they were facing a tremendous challenge when they got there.  There were seven nations occupying their land and each of these nations was more powerful than Israel.  But Joshua had God on his side so he was determined to conquer the land.

Throughout the first several books of the Bible, we see that while God is certainly a God that can do miracles, the Israelites learn much about tactics and how to do things militarily.  Fortunately for Joshua, this is not his first campaign as their military leader and he is at home fighting wars.  So Joshua sends out a couple of guys to do reconnaissance of the land.  He needed to know what he was up against and these guys were to go take a look and give him a report on the land.  While the two guys were spying out Jericho, they came across a woman named Rahab and they stayed with her.  It's interesting that Rahab was a prostitute.

Well the king of Jericho finds out that the Israelites stayed at Rahab's house and he isn't real happy about it so he sends some people to pick the two spies up.  Rahab hides them.  Somehow she knows that the Israelites will be victorious so she makes them promise to spare her family when they invade the city even though the city has real high walls that make it almost impossible to attack and win an easy victory.  The spies give her a scarlet string and tell her to tie it to her window when the attack happens.  Anyone in her house will be spared but everyone else is going down.  They leave and tell Joshua all the found.

So Joshua loads everyone up and they prepare to cross the Jordan river which is at it's flood level.  Joshua has the people carrying the Ark of the Covenant go first.  Now as soon as their feet touch the edge of the water, the Lord stops the water from flowing and everyone crosses.  The instant that the last of the people's feet touch the other side of the river, it starts flooding again.  So the children of Israel camped on the other side of the Jordan river.  The day the pitched camp was the last day that the Lord sent them manna from heaven for food. 

Now while Joshua was standing around, he looked up and there was a man standing there with his sword drawn.  Joshua fell down on his face before the man and asked if he was friend or enemy.  The man was the captain of the Lord's army.  He was an angel.  Now Israel had surrounded the city so that no one could get in or out and the angel said the Lord is giving you this city.  Then the angel gives him the strangest battle plan ever used on a battle field.  Here is what he tells Joshua to do.  I want you to get some priests and the whole army and I want you to walk around the city once.  Do this each day for the six days.  On the seventh day, I want you to walk around the city seven times.  On the seventh time, the priests will blow their horns and everyone give a loud shout.  When that happens, the wall of Jericho will fall down and you can rush in to capture the city.

I don't know about you but this doesn't make much sense to me.  If the angel had said, I'm going to call in the heavenly Navy Seals and they are going to blow the walls apart with explosives then I'm going to hit the whole city with a bunch of bombs from a bomber, that would make sense.  But we need to learn a lesson.  God's thoughts are higher than ours and many times what He tells us to do won't make sense to us.  But if we know it's Him, we need to follow His directions. 

Fortunately for them, the Israelites did exactly what God told them to do through Joshua and just like He said it would, on the seventh trip around of the seventh day, when the people shouted and the priest blew the horns, the wall fell down flat and Israel captured the city!

Joshua went on to help the children of Israel conquer the promised land and while I could say much more about it, I am going to stop right here.

That's another of the Minion's Bible Stories.

Joshua Part 3

Today I want to continue with the story of Joshua.  Now as we previously discussed, Joshua was a military leader as well as being one of Moses, the President's, right hand men.  Joshua had a heart for God and served him all the days of his life.  He was only one of two people who were adults that actually entered the promised land with the other children of Israel.  What about Moses you ask?  Well Moses saw the promised land but he didn't enter it with Israel.  I will get to that in a few minutes.

Now what I find interesting is that Joshua was destined to become the next President/Leader of Israel.  Israel wasn't a democracy so they really didn't have a president but I hope this helps you understand Moses and then Joshua's position in the government.  Now like we touched on in the last post, Joshua and Caleb were full of faith and when the Lord told them to go and take possession of the land, they were ready to do it but everyone else was to afraid to try.  So God sent them to wander around in the wilderness for 40 years until everyone from the generation of those that didn't believe was dead.  During that time, they took on two different nations and wiped them out.  The didn't start the fight, the other nations did.  But with God's help, they sure finished it.

So we see that Joshua did very well as the General of the Army.  As President, he would keep the same position as the top general of Israel's army.  He did all the right things.  He supported God's man in power, Moses, and he worked hard to do what Moses said.  But something was going to happen that he wouldn't like.  He was going to get promoted but it was going to come at a cost.  See one time when the Israelites needed water, God told Moses to talk to a rock and that it would produce water enough to take care of this whole nation.  Moses got mad at the people and he hit the rock instead of talking to it.  Now I haven't done the studying to determine why this made God so mad at Moses but it did.  Because of that Moses was not able to go into the promised land with Israel.

The Lord told Moses to appoint Joshua as the leader of Israel which he did.  Then Moses went up on this mountain to see all the land of Israel and while he was there, he died.  The bible says that the Lord buried him and is the only one who knows where Moses body is today. 

This caused Joshua some discomfort because he was about to lead his nation into battle again but he was facing an impossible situation.  First of all, they had to cross the Jordan river while it was at it's highest level of the year.  That was no easy task.  Then once he got to the other side of the river, there were seven nations in the land of Israel.  Each one of these nations on their own was larger than the whole nation of Israel and the Lord told Joshua that he was going to lead Israel into victory against each one.  On top of all this, Moses was dead.  Joshua couldn't go to Moses to find out what should be done.  He had to go to the Lord himself and seek God through the Levites who were the priests of Israel.

I want to end today with what the Lord told Joshua because it has blessed me personally over the years.  I will finish what I plan on writing about Joshua with the story of Jericho next week.

This is from Joshua chapter one.  This is my paraphrase.  The Lord says, "Moses is dead.  Get over it.  It's time for you to lead this people now.  You lead the people over the Jordan and into the land that I promised them.  Every place that you walk I have given to you just like I told Moses.  No man will be able to stand against you all the days of your life.  As I was with Moses, so I will be with you:  I will not fail you or leave you.  Only stand strong in your faith in Me because you will deliver this land to Israel.  Do what Moses said and I will cause everything you do to prosper."

That's another Minion's Bible story

Joshua Part 2

Let's continue with our story of Joshua.  This has been very interesting for me so far because I started out thinking we would talk about Joshua and the wall of Jericho.  We will get to that in time but I am really learning a lot about his character as we go.  Joshua was constantly around Moses.  He was learning everything he could about how the Lord, through Moses, led the children of Israel.  Joshua seemed to be the type of guy who would do anything that Moses told him to do.

Now we know that the children of Israel left Egypt and they were headed for what the Lord called the Promise land.  That land was a good land and it is actually where the children of Israel came from before they went to Egypt.  But it had been about 400 years since they had been to their homeland and they were on their way back to it.

Now when they got to the edge of the Promised land (also called Canaan) Moses sent people to go check out the land.  He sent one man from each of the twelve different tribes of Israel.  Guess who was one of the twelve?  Yup, it was Joshua.  So these twelve guys head out to check the place out.  Moses knows they will have to invade the place so he wants to know stuff like whether the people live in tents or in forts, if there is a lot of wood and if there is any food.  These guys come into the land and they find a ton of food.  As a matter of fact, they cut down this big cluster of grapes that is so big it takes two of them to carry it.  That's a lot of grapes.  They also brought back pomegranates and figs.  The guys came back to Moses after they searched the whole country for 40 days.

Everyone of the twelve said it was a really cool place with plenty of food and that it would be a great place to live.  But here is where things get a little interesting.  Ten of the twelve guys came back and said, "Dude, there are giants living in that place.  These are the biggest dudes we have ever seen.  Some of them are really famous and there is no way on earth we could ever beat them.  We can't make them leave our land.  We aren't good enough to do it.  We even saw these giants called the sons of Anak.  After seeing them we looked at ourselves and we thought we were just little grasshoppers.  Also, they thought we were grasshoppers too and they know that beat us up."  This is the Minion translation of what the bible says.

So everyone in the whole nation of Israel freaks out.  They get all worked up and then they get mad at God.  They say, "God should have just let us die in Egypt or in the wilderness.  The Lord just brought here so these people could kill us with a sword and take our kids captive.  Maybe we should get rid of Moses and Aaron and find someone who will lead us back to Egypt."  Now God told these people that they were supposed to go and take this land back for them to live in.  He even gave them several things that he wanted them to do when they lived there.  But they were so afraid because of what ten of the men said about the land that they trusted these men's words much more than they trusted God's word.  That doesn't make a lot of sense does it?  If God tells us to do something, even if it seems impossible, He will make it happen because He says he will.

Now Moses and Aaron are pretty upset so they fell down on their faces before the nation.  It would probably be a good thing if our top politicians and our top Christian leaders got on their face to pray to God about what to do with our nation.  Notice I said that only ten of the twelve had bad stuff to say about the Promised land.  By the way, the Promised land is the country that we call Israel today.  Anyway, there were two guys who had something different to say.  One was Caleb.  Guess who the other was?  Yup, it was Joshua.  They stood up before all the people and said, "This is a great place to live.  If God told us to go take this land then He will make sure we do it regardless of the giants that live there.  It's a good land.  But we need to be careful now.  We can't rebel against what God said to us.  Dudes, don't be afraid of these wimps.  It doesn't matter how big they are.  They can't defend themselves against us because God is going to kick them out.  God is with us."

But these folks wouldn't listen and they wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb to death.  The Israelites were kind of mean weren't they.  We will hear more about the children of Israel and Joshua next week but for now I want to leave you with a few things we have learned about Joshua in this post.

First of all, Joshua did what his leader Moses told him to do.  Think about it for a minute.  If the land was like they described it, there were only twelve scouts and if they got into a fight, they could have been whipped pretty bad.  Second, Joshua knew what the Lord said about the promised land.  He knew that God told them to go into that land and live there.  When he was faced with a situation that looked different that what God told them about it, he didn't get upset.  He just expected God to do something about the situation.  He knew that God would fix it.  Let me stop here for a minute and ask, what situations are you facing in your life right now?  Are there things in your life that seem like they don't line up with what God has to say?  Maybe you need healing in your body or your spirit.  Well Jesus said in 1 Peter 2:24 that his body was broken and because it was, we were healed.  Start setting your heart and mind on what God said and don't let what your situation looks like scare you.  It cannot stand up to the word of God.

Lastly, Joshua was so passionate about what he believed God said that he was willing to stand up for what he believed the Lord wanted.  Like the country music song says, you have to stand for something or you will fall for anything.

Well it's happened again.  I have blogged myself happy and that's another of the Minion's bible stories.

Gideon

OK today I want to tell you the story of Gideon.

This story takes place after Israel has entered the land that God told them he would give them.  They acted badly and God allowed other countries to treat them pretty bad.  But after a while, the Israelites would say they were sorry and stop acting so bad.  When that happened, God would send someone to help them stop the other countries from being mean.  You have probably heard of Sampson.  He was one of those people. I will tell that story later.

Today let's talk about Gideon.  This dude was a just a simple farm hand.  He worked refining wheat and he helped make wine.  He wasn't a leader by any stretch of the imagination.  As a matter of fact, he was a wimp.  He was from the weakest tribe of Israel.  Not only that but his family was the weakest family in the tribe of Manasseh.  On top of that, he was the weakest dude in his whole family.  To put it in Texas terms, he was the runt of the litter.  He was the guy that always got beat up at school and the one that everyone picked on.  When a bully wanted to look good, they picked on him because he was an easy target.  I want you to picture a scrawny, wimpy, kid who is always whining.

One day, he is working doing the jobs that no one wants.  As he is working, an angel of the Lord, sat under this tree and said to Gideon, "The Lord is with you, you mighty warrior."  The angel was calling him  a man like the Rock or Brock Lesner.  Can you imagine that.  Surely the angel was mistaken.  This was just a wimped dude from a dirty poor family in a real small tribe and here this angel was calling him Arnold Schwartzenegger.  That sounds crazy.

But understand this, God uses his words to build things.  He called this man a mighty warrior because that is what he was going to become.  Also, God never looks at us where we are today.  He always sees where we could be with his help.  Maybe today you don't think you will ever amount to anything.  Well if you ask God about your situation, you will find that he always has a good plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11).  So for us, we can't look at ourselves through our own eyes, we have to look at ourselves through God's eyes.  When we do that, we will see that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

OK, let's get back to the story before I start preaching.  Now Gideon isn't convinced that he is a Navy Seal by any stretch and he points out to the angel that he is dirt poor.  He is the lowest person in the lowest family in the lowest tribe.  He tells the angel that he is the lowest on the totem pole.  Gideon starts telling God that he doesn't understand how this other country has been so successful at beating up on his country and God tells him to go and deliver his people from the bad country.  Gideon still doesn't believe God really wants to send him so he decides to test God.

He says to God, "Lord if you really like me, let me give you a test to make sure you are God and you want me to lead an army."  The first thing he does is make some food for the angel.  When he puts the food on a rock, the angel touched the food and fire came up from out of the rock and destroyed it.  This is when Gideon figures out he has really been talking to an angel and it scares him silly.  But God chose him and tells him it's OK.  So Gideon is still not sure that God wants him to go to war against that bad country and asks to test the lord again.  He says, "God, if this is really you, I'm going to put this jacket on the floor.  Please make the jacket wet in the morning and keep everything else around it dry."  That's exactly what happened.  Then he decides to test God one more time and says, "This time Lord, please make the ground around the jacket wet and keep the jacket dry."  That's exactly what the Lord did.  The next morning the jacket was dry and the ground was wet.

I will finish the story of Gideon in my next post.  What I want you to take from this is that sometimes it's OK to ask God to confirm himself.  You have to do it in the right heart.  If you really are seeking God and you feel like he is telling you to do something, it's OK to ask him to do something to confirm that he wants you to do something.  That's exactly what Gideon did.  But understand this.  If you just want to see some miracle for the sake of seeing one, it won't work.  God is not a circus act.  But if in your heart, you truly desire to follow God and are not sure that he is leading you in a certain direction, it's OK to ask him to confirm his plan for you.

That's another of the Minion's Bible Stories.

Israel

Hello everyone.  It's been a while since I posted a bible story and I apologize for that.  Today I want to tell you a little about how Israel was born.  Now Israel was born from the descendants of a man named Abraham.  He had eight kids that I have found in the Bible.  (Gen 25:1 for the others besides Isaac and Ishmael).  These kids went on to found many nations.  Now Isaac had two sons named Jacob and Esau through a lady named Rebekah (Gen 25: 24-26).

The Lord actually changed Jacob's name to Israel.  As many of you know, especially back then, Israel was the Lord's special chosen people.  Jesus would ultimately come from that people.  Israel is still special to God but when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we get adopted into the family.  Here's another great thing about our God - He doesn't differentiate between someone who was born into the family and someone who was adopted.  He is Love and he loves all of his kids just the same.

But let me tell you a story about the founder of Israel that you might find very interesting.  He was a liar and a cheat  He even stole the right to be the founder of Israel from his brother Esau.  Does that shock you?  It did me when I first read it many years ago.  So here's what happened.

The first thing that Jacob stole from Esau was his birthright.  This birthright included inheritance rights from their dad (see Heb 12:16).  Here's how it happened.  Esau was a hunter.  He was Mufasa, the Lion King.  He went out to the fields and hunted wild game, etc. for the family to eat.  Now Jacob was the kid who always hid behind mama's coat tails.  He didn't go out much.  He kept to himself and just sort of hung out.  But he was always a schemer. 

So one day, Esau comes out of the fields from hunting and he is about to starve to death.  Esau was the first born and he was the one who would rightfully have the inheritance from his dad.  Jacob sees this as a golden opportunity to "steal" Esau's birthright.  He tells Esau that he can have some stew if Esau gives him his birthright.  Esau figures that his birthright doesn't matter much if he is dead so he agrees and gives it to Jacob.  (Gen 25)  One thing I never really understood was why Esau just didn't take the food from Jacob.

Anyway, you would think that was enough because he got the inheritance but it wasn't.  Jacob also wanted to get his father to bless him.  This was the other part of the inheritance not included in the birthright.  Now his dad tells Esau to go out to the field and hunt some game.  Esau is supposed to prepare the food and bring it to his dad who will bless him.

While Esau is gone, his brother Jacob goes into action again with the help of their mother.  This is sort of a messed up family.  Esau's mom was plotting against him.  I think she probably needed therapy but I'm not sure Dr. Phil could have fixed that mess.  Anyway, while Esau is out in the field, their mom, Rebekah, convinces Jacob to go get a couple of goats to prepare as food for their dad.  Then Jacob puts on a disguise and pretends to be Esau.  Now their dad, Isaac, is really old and his eyesight isn't very good.  So Jacob and his mom, get the food together and Jacob takes it to their dad.

Their dad realizes that something isn't quite right.  At first, Isaac asks Jacob how he got the food so quickly.  Jacob lies to him and says that God gave him the food (lie number one in this exchange).  Dad is still not convinced and he asks Jacob to come close so he can touch Jacob.  Well good ol' Jacob is wearing a disguise and it works.  Dad asks Jacob if he is really Esau and Jacob says yes (lie number two in this exchange).  So Jacob feeds his dad some food and after his dad smells the disguise (a total lie on Jacob's part), he gives Jacob his blessing (Gen 27).

Now let me ask a question.  Have you ever watched one of those old movies where some guy is selling people some magic potion that he claims will do all sorts of stuff but it won't?  Or have you watched one of those movies where someone is trying to cheat someone out of something?  Those types of people are normally bad people because what they do hurts others.  I don't normally like those kinds of people.  The come across as bad people and those are not the kind of people I like to hang out with.

Well, that is exactly the type of person that Jacob was at this point in his life.  Can you imagine God choosing this loser to be the founder of His chosen people, Israel?  Well that's exactly what God did.  However, by the time Jacob's name was changed to Israel, he had changed a lot.  When he became Israel, he was following God and guess what?  He worked for a guy who ran a con game on him a couple of times.

The point I want to leave you with is this.  You don't have to be perfect for God to use you.  As a matter of fact, He already knows all of your imperfections before He chooses you and He still loves you completely.  So if you aren't perfect, don't worry about it.  Just give your self over to him and watch what a miraculous person he turns you into.

That's another of the Minion's Bible Stories

Christmas Part 4

Hello everyone.  Merry Christmas!  Today, I want to post the last installment of my version of the Christmas story.  It's the part of the story I think we are most familiar with.

When we left Joseph and Mary, they were headed to the town of Bethlehem.  Now Bethlehem is basically part of Jerusalem.  You might consider it a suburb because it is about 5 miles from Jerusalem.  So David and Mary go there but apparently there are a whole bunch of folks in town for this census thing.  Because of this, they can't find a room anywhere at any of the hotels.  This is a pretty bad thing because Mary is 9 months pregnant.

In Texas, I can tell you this would have been really bad news.  See they had to stay in a barn with no central heat and air.  Today as I write this, it's 41 degrees Fahrenheit outside in Fort Worth.  Not many women could handle being 9 months pregnant and actually giving birth to a baby in a barn under those circumstances.  Now ladies, I don't mean this as a slight against you.  I was in the room for the birth of all three of my children and after seeing what their mother went through, I don't know one man who could handle giving birth to a child under any circumstances!  But there they were and that is where Jesus was born - in a barn.  They wrapped him in a blanket and used the animal's feeding trough as a baby crib.  It's pretty amazing to thing that the greatest person ever to walk the earth was born in such lowly circumstances.  Do you find yourself living below where you would like?  Well, take heart.  Jesus started in exactly the same situation.  Guess what, he came out of that situation.  It didn't happen because he was the Son of God, it happened because he had faith in God and now you and I can operate in that same type of faith.

So at the instant that Jesus was born, there were these sheppards in a field keeping watch over their flocks and an angel of the Lord appeared to them.  I wonder why God chose them instead of anyone else?  He could have chosen the religious leaders or maybe even the government but he chose these sheppards.  When the angel shows up, the glory of the Lord shone all around these guys and it freaked them out.  They must have thought this was some type of alien that appeared out of no where in the sky.  They were terrified.  The first thing the angel said was, "Don't be afraid."  He went on to say, "I bring you news that is great for everyone.  Today in Bethlehem, the Savior of the world was born.  He is Christ the Lord.  You can find him wrapped in a blanket staying in a barn."

Suddenly there was a multitude of angels in the sky praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."  Then the angels left those guys and went back to heaven.  Naturally these guys wanted to see Jesus so they hurried off to the barn to see Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.  They found them right where the angel said that He would be. 

Now it looks like after reading the bible that there was another set of dudes that showed up after some time.  These other dudes had a lot of money.  Think of people like Bill Gates, the guy who started Facebook, and Warren Buffett.  These cats were loaded.  Now they heard that Jesus was born and went looking for him to give him gifts and when they found Jesus they gave him some pretty expensive stuff.

Luke 2 and Matthew 1.

There is no good way to stop this story because the story has been going on for over 2,000 years now and it will never stop.  I have heard people say that Jesus is the reason for the season.  That's true but remember Jesus is the season.  Everything good about Christmas is a reflection of Christ on the earth.  Always remember that Jesus has a gift ready for you for Christmas this year.  As a matter of fact, it is the first of many gifts that he has planned for you but you have to accept the gift.  It's the gift of salvation.  What does that mean?  Some think it means getting your ticket punched so you can go to heaven but it is so much more than that.  Salvation is the way to get born into a family.  That family is alive all over the world today.  Are you lonely this holiday season?  Do you miss family members?  Maybe you don't have a family at all and you are reading this. 

If that's the case, you can become a member of my family by simply saying this prayer.  "Jesus, I want to be part of your family.  Please come into my heart and make me your brother or sister.  I accept you as my Lord and savior."  It's that simple.  If you prayed that prayer for the first time, would you please let me know.  If that is you, I want to be the first to tell you, welcome to the family.  You are now my brother or sister.  Our brother Jesus is constantly hanging out with our Dad planning good things for us.  If you prayed that prayer, please try to find a good church that will teach you all about our family from our history, to the way we love each other to what our family business is all about.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Minion

Christmas Part 3

Hello Everyone,

This is part three of the story of Christmas.

Now Mary is pregnant with Jesus and Elizabeth is pregnant with John.  For those of you who don't know, John and Jesus' lives will be intertwined through out all of John's time on earth and most of Jesus.  I believe John is the one who ultimately baptizes Jesus and John gets his head cut of by the king because he tell the king that the king was doing something wrong.

OK, back to the story.  Mary decides that since she and Elizabeth are cousins that she's going to pay Elizabeth a visit and she does.  Here's something that strikes me as interesting.  It seems like several people must have known about what was going on with Mary and more than one believed her because when she rolls into Zach's house, Elizabeth says, "Your are most blessed of all women and the child you bear will be very blessed.  I know you are Jesus mother, why did you come to visit me.  As soon as you said hello, John started moving around.  You are very blessed because you believed that God will accomplish what he said he would."  We can learn something from this and I may have already pointed it out.  Mary was very blessed because she trusted God.  God is a gentlemen.  I believe that if Mary had told God she didn't want to be Jesus' mom, he would have passed her by and found someone else.  Now we don't have any record of this in the bible, but it's possible that Mary was not the first person God approached about this.  I can't prove that one way or the other.

But what we do know is that Mary had faith in God.  We also know that Joseph had faith in God.  So the Lord was putting Jesus in a house where his parents both had faith.  It is truly an amazing thing when people come together in agreement and stand in faith together.

So after Elizabeth talks to Mary, the anointing comes in Mary and she sings this song:

My soul glorifies God and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
For he is mindful of how humble I am (side note, this is the second place in the bible where someone called themselves humble.  Moses wrote that he was the most humble man ever to walk the earth.)
From now on all the nations will call me blessed
For the Lord Almighty has done great things for me
His mercy extends to those that fear him from generation to generation

He has performed mighty deeds
He has scattered the proud
He has brought down kings
But has lifted up the humble

He has filled the hungry with good things
But sent the rich away empty
He has helped Israel, remembering to be merciful
To Abraham and his descendants for ever

After this, Mary hung out with Elizabeth for three months and then she went back to Joseph's place.  You have to feel for Joseph a little.  Not only did he not get to go on a honeymoon with Mary but pretty quick after they get married, she takes a three month vacation to Elizabeth's house.  I bet Joseph had to stay home because he was a carpenter and had a business to run and her his new wife takes off and leaves for three months.

So let me close out what happened to Elizabeth and Zach.  Elizabeth finally gives birth to John and her neighbors and relatives all come over to celebrate and throw a big party.  That seems a little strange to me.  I can remember when we brought each of our kids home from the hospital.  I don't remember my ex-wife or I ever wanting to have a party.  As a matter of fact, we both wanted the opposite.  We both wanted to sleep.  If someone woke the baby up, it sort of made us mad but anyway, that's what happened.  We know that Zach didn't wake John up because he still couldn't speak.  Remember, God had shut his mouth.

So eight days after his birth, when Zach and Elizabeth had not named the baby yet, the friends and family decided they were going to name the baby Zach after his father.  That's pretty pushy if you ask me.  First they come over and party like it's New Year's Eve then they get impatient about naming the kid and try to do it themselves.

Well, Elizabeth is having no part of it because she knows that the baby's name is John and she tells them this.  Unfortunately, no one in the crowd likes the idea and they tell her it is a stupid idea.  Have you ever had family trying to tell you what to do or trying to live their lives through you?  Well this is a bible record of it happening.  Anyway, they don't like her answer so they ask Zach.  This sort of reminds me of when a child asks one parent for something and gets told no so the child goes and asks the other parent.  Zach takes a writing tablet and with a written note, tells everyone that the boy's name is John.  As soon as he did that, God allowed him to talk and Zach started praising God.  Now the crowd was really in awe and they all started talking about it.  Word spread through the grapevine about the story and everyone wondered what John would amount to.



Luke 1:39 to Luke 2:5

To be continued....

The Minion

Christmas Part 2

OK so now we have Elisabeth and Zach expecting a son named John.

Now let's fast forward six months.  There was this guy named Joseph who was a one of King David's great...great grand kids.  He was engaged to marry this girl named Mary.  Now Mary had never had sex with anyone so she wasn't pregnant.  How do we know this?  Well that's what the bible says so I guess I just believe it.  One day while Mary was hanging out and I assume she is working on wedding plans or something, this angel appears to her.  I know this didn't happen this way but I imaging Mary getting wedding invitations ready, talking to the florist, lining out the church, getting her dress ready and working on the wedding cake.  All of the sudden out of thin air, an angel appears to her and says, "Greetings Mary, you are highly regarded by God and as a matter of fact He is with you."

So of course Mary does what we all would probably do, she instantly freaks out.  She is really afraid of this dude and has no clue what he is talking about.  The angel goes on to say, "Don't worry Mary.  This is really great news.  Out of all the women in the world through out all of time, God has chosen you to be the mother of a Son.  You will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Lord.  The Lord will give him a kingdom that will one day include all the earth and he will rule over it.  He's going to save the world."

Now Mary is confused and she says, "How can I be pregnant since I haven't had sex with anyone?"

The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will make you pregnant without having sex."  Then the angel tells her again, "You will give birth to the Son of God.  Just like your cousin Elizabeth got pregnant when she was real old, you will be too.  Nothing is impossible with God."

Here Mary says something real smart.  She says to the angel that she is God's servant and if it's God's will to do this, than she wants it to happen."  Then the angel left her.

(Luke 1:26-38)

So there's one huge problem at this point.  Mary has to go tell Joseph, her fiancee, that she is pregnant but that she hasn't had sex.  God made her pregnant without it.  I can tell you that I wouldn't have believed a story like that.  Sometimes my kids come in and tell me really unbelievable stories but something like this would take the cake.  If I was Joseph, I would have thought she just wanted to marry me and she was trying to make excuses for cheating on me.  We know that Joseph thought something like this because the bible says that he was planning on breaking up with her.

I wrote about Joseph in a separate blog so I will try to be brief with retelling the story.  Now Mary could have gotten in a lot of trouble for having sex before marriage and Joe was a real merciful guy who didn't want to get her in a lot of trouble so he decided to break up with her without telling anyone why.  While he was thinking about this, he fell asleep and the angel of the Lord appeared to him.  So this angel says, "Joseph, don't get all freaked out about this.  You know that crazy story Mary told you about the Lord putting a baby in her womb, well it's 100% true.  She didn't make it up.  Take her to be your wife but don't have sex until after Jesus is born.  This child will be the savior of the world."  Guess what, he obeyed instantly.  He married her that very day.

If it were me, I would not have been up for that kind of deal.  If I was one of Joseph's buddies listening to this story, I would have thought he was absolutely crazy.  The whole deal doesn't make any sense.  God puts a baby in your fiancee who is going to be the savior of the world and you have to marry her anyway.  On top of that, there is no honeymoon for a year!  Forget that, Joe you need to do something else.  But Joseph was a man of God who trusted God and obeyed what the Lord told him to do.  Joseph also made sure he was named Jesus when he was born.

(Matthew 1:18-24)

To be continued.....  The Minion

Christmas Story Part 1

Hello everyone.  Because it is the Christmas season, I will try to tell the Christmas story in my own words.

Now we all know that Jesus was born on Christmas day and that there were some wise men involved plus a barn with a bunch of animals and a star, etc.  But the Christmas story actually starts about 9 months before that.  The interesting thing is that there are two kids involved not just Jesus.  The first one's name is John.

OK, John's parents were Zacharias and Elisabeth.  Now both of them were too old to have kids.  I don't mean that they felt too old, I mean that their bodies were too old to have kids and they didn't have any kids because Elisabeth was barren.  Now Zach was a pretty important guy.  He was a real big wig in his church.    His job that year was to go into the holiest part of the temple and burn incense to the Lord.  We really don't do this today but it was a real important job.  It was so important that a whole bunch of people were outside the temple praying while Zach went in to do it.

So this angel of the Lord appears right next to him and it freaks him out.  He was really afraid.  Think of something that really scares you and that will give you a hint about what Zach was feeling.  Now something I just noticed was that Zach was a man of faith.  See he had been praying that God would give he and Elisabeth a child even though they were past the age of child bearing.  I guess he knew that if God could do it for Abraham, God could do it for him.  So this angel tells him that he will get Elisabeth pregnant and they will have a child named John and that he will be really happy and so will everyone else when John gets here.  The angel goes on to say that John will not ever drink alcohol and that the Holy Spirit will be upon him before he is even born.  Also, he will turn many of the Israelites to God and lastly that he will prepare the way for Jesus.

OK so we should all stop hear and rejoice that Zach got his prayer answered and this mighty miracle took place right?  Well we would if that was what Zach actually did.  But here is something else interesting that happens.  Now understand that Zach has been praying for a kid for a long time and here an angel appears out of thin air right in front of him inside a place where only he could go.  The angel tells him that his prayer has been answered and immediately Zach goes from talking faith to talking doubt and unbelief.

Now I don't know if I would question the angel after his entrance, etc., but Zach wants to know how it will happen and says he is way too old for something like this and that his wife is too.  Why was he praying for it then?  He obviously had some measure of faith but that faith was shaken when the angel showed up.  I think it was shaken by fear.  Now the Lord already had a plan so he decided to make Zach unable to speak until John was born because Zach didn't believe him.

Let's stop for a second.  There is a lesson to be learned.  Sometimes we start praying for God to do something and then when we get a word from Him that He will, we instantly question it.  Have you ever needed to hear from God and when you got a scripture or someone told you something, you didn't believe it?  I think I have which doesn't make sense.  Also, notice that God showed up to tell Zach what he was going to do before he did it.  When Zach walked out of the temple that day, Elisabeth was not pregnant yet.   All Zach had to go on was the word of God.  But also notice that when God tells you he is going to do something, He will do exactly what He said.  Once you have a word from God on something, just keep standing on that word until He brings to pass what He said He would.

So there was a whole prayer group that marveled at how long he spent in the temple.  It was normally an in and out job but the angel changed the plans.  Now when he came out to them he couldn't talk so everyone figured that he must have seen a vision.  Then he finished out his term as the head preacher and went home to his wife and Elisabeth got pregnant.......More to come.

That's part one of Christmas by the Minion.

  

Joseph - Jesus' Dad

I want us to take a look today at the story of Joseph.  Now when I was a kid, the story of Joseph was about a guy who had a coat that was a bunch of different colors and I will get to that story at some point but today I want to talk about Joseph, Jesus' dad.

We all know that Joseph was Jesus dad but not really.  He was Jesus' step dad.  So why is he important?  Why is he even mentioned?  We only hear about him a couple of times so for years I didn't think he was very important but I was wrong.  This story is a little short but important anyway.

See Mary was the mother of Jesus.  While it is a very miraculous story, I will leave it for another time.  Basically, the Lord came to Mary and he started her pregnancy without them having sex.  Mary was a virgin at the time she gave birth to Jesus.  See Luke Chapter 1.

But what about Joseph.  Did you know that the Lord chose Joseph out of millions of people on the earth.  Why did the Lord choose Joseph?  We know that God doesn't just do things without thinking about them and He certainly wouldn't choose someone to be the step father to His son without thinking about it.  So why?  The answer was because Joseph was a man of integrity who knew the Lord's voice when he heard it and knew how to obey God when God told him to do something.  Let's look a little closer at this story.

So here's what happens.  Joseph and Mary are engaged to be married.  Before they actually get to the marriage part and the honeymoon, Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant.  Now put yourself in Joseph's place for a minute.  You are engaged to this girl and she comes up to you and says, "Joe, I know we are engaged but I want you to know that I am pregnant."  My first thought would be that she cheated on me and I would be really mad.  On top of that, how would you handle it if she said, "Joe, there's one more thing.  I didn't have sex.  The Lord just made me pregnant."  Now I don't mind people who lie to me when they tell me a story but don't insult my intelligence.  At least make the story a believable one.  That would make me even madder and I would definitely dump that chick.

This is exactly what Joseph had in mind.  He was going to dump her.  But here is where we get our first good look at Joseph's character.  The bible says he was a real good guy.  Now back then, Joseph could have gotten Mary in a lot of trouble for what he thought she did.  And after all, no one had ever heard of such a completely made up story like the Lord made her pregnant.  But because he was a good guy, Joseph had mercy on her and decided that he would just dump her very quietly not wanting to make a big deal out of this whole thing.  I would say that man knew something about giving mercy.  I don't know if I could have done it.

So as he was sitting around thinking about this stuff he fell asleep.  Now I can just see this.  He is sitting in his favorite chair thinking this whole thing over.  Have you ever been through a situation where someone made you really mad.  Maybe a boyfriend or girlfriend dumped you.  Were you able to go to sleep?  I can tell you I would have been up all night thinking about this stuff over and over again.  But not Joseph, he fell asleep.  That is another thing God needed in Jesus' step dad.  He needed someone who could stay at peace even in a really tough situation.  Because later, Joseph would face some much tougher ones.  People would want to kill his step son Jesus.

Well while he is sleeping, the Lord appears to him in a dream.  Basically God appears and says don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife because that crazy story she told you about the Holy Spirit making her pregnant is true.  She didn't cheat on you.  Oh by the way, you are going to call this boy Jesus and he will be save his people from their sins.

OK, so what would you have done if you were Joseph's friend and he told you this story?  First of all, I would tell him that dream was just wishful thinking.  That there was no way this girl got pregnant without cheating on him and that he needed to wake up.  I would have told him that I knew he was a great guy because he didn't make a public example of her.  I would have said that she didn't deserve such a great guy like him and that I though his dream was just what he wanted to believe, that he didn't hear from God.  That was crazy.  The bible doesn't say this but I bet some of his friends told him that very thing.

But Joseph knew he had heard the voice of God.  Joseph must have had some practice to know when it was really God and he was convinced enough that this was God to do what he was told.  How many times have we heard the Lord tell us to do something?  Maybe the Lord told us to do something nice for a friend or say something nice to a family member and we didn't.  Now here the Lord tells Joseph to take this woman as his wife but not to have sex.  He tells him what to name the kid and Joseph just trusts the Lord and does exactly what the Lord tells him to do.

25.

That's another Bible story by the Minion.

David and Bathsheba

OK.  For all you teenagers who are used to sex and violence on TV, this is a story of sex and violence right out of the bible.  Here are some facts about David.  The bible says that David was a man after God's own heart.  He is one of the greatest kings in all the bible and he was Jesus' great great ... great grandfather.  As a matter of fact, God chose David to replace King Saul and God knew David was going to screw up pretty big time before it even happened.

Now it was the time of the year when armies went out to war.  So King David sent his army out to destroy some dudes called the Ammonites but David didn't go with them.  He stayed at the capital, Jerusalem.  Now David was a warrior and had been all his life.  I suspect, David was a little bored because he didn't get to go out with the rest of his army like normal.  So David was up walking around the roof of his house and he spots this hot chick.  She is naked and taking a bath.  Her name was Bathsheba.  Well naturally, this got David all hot and bothered.  The thing was, David had a whole bunch of wives and even more mistresses.  Back in those days it was cool and so that's what he did.  So in the bible at that time, David had more than one wife and God was cool with this (see 2 Samuel 12:8).

The problem was this lady was already the wife of a guy named Uriah.  Now I am not really sure whether or not David raped her or not.  But it seems kind of close.  He sent messengers who took her to David and they got it on.  Unfortunately for David, it wasn't safe sex.  They didn't have condoms or the pill in those days so he knocked Bathsheba up (she got pregnant with David's kid).  This was really bad.  So far, David is a pervert for watching her take a bath, he's an adulterer for having sex with her while she was still married and I think according to today's standard's he's a rapist.  This is a long way from the boy who killed Goliath but the worst was yet to come.

David knew he would be in trouble for knocking Bathsheba up so he tried to cover up his sin.  Bathsheba's husband was in the army and was out killing the Ammonites with David's army.  So David sent for him to come home.  When Uriah got home he went to see the king and the king pretty much told him to go home and have sex with his wife.  David thought that this would fix things.  They didn't have paternity tests in those days so if Uriah had sex with Bathsheba after David did, everyone could claim the baby was Uriah's and the situation would be fixed right?  Well Uriah was a good guy and he wouldn't go home to his wife.  He didn't know she was pregnant and he told the king that he couldn't go home to her and have sex knowing that all his buddies were out there fighting.  He slept over at the palace and headed back to the front.  Now David was really in a tough spot.  He couldn't lie about the pregnancy thing and he was about to get in a lot of trouble.  So he devised the worst plan yet.

His commanding general was a dude named Joab.  So he sent orders to Joab telling him that he wanted Uriah placed on the front lines of the fight.  Now the Israeli army was surrounding this town that was protected by walls.  They were working on taking the town.  But this could be tricky business.  So David told Joab to attack the city with Uriah on the very front line.  Then David told Joab to retreat so that the Ammonites could whack Uriah.  Problem solved.  Uriah gets killed during the battle and David marries Bathsheba.  That's exactly what happened.  After Uriah got killed in the fight, David married Bathsheba but there was a little problem of the Lord.  See the Lord saw the whole thing and he didn't let David get away with any of it.  David got punished.  But David did something that many people didn't do.  He asked the Lord to forgive him and the Lord did.  David went on to be a great king and lived to a very old age.  What's more, he had another kid with Bathsheba named Solomon.  Solomon went on to be the smartest dude in the whole world.

So what bad things have you done today?  David was an adulterer, a pervert who watched women bathe (that was pornography from 3000 years ago), a rapist, an attempted liar and a murderer all rolled into one dude.  Even after all that, God still forgave him and used him to do big things.  So I want you to understand that sometimes we make mistakes but even when we make really bad ones, God doesn't leave us or abandon us.  Even when we make colossal mistakes, God still has a really good plan for our lives.  No matter what you have done, God has great plans in store for you.  Don't ever give up on you.  God never does.

This story came from 2 Samuel 11 and 12.

That's the Minion's version of David and Bathsheba