The Days of the Lord--by Linden Malki

God created the universe with time, and cycles of day and night, the cycles of the moon and the sun, giving us seasons to our lives. He also gave us the requirement of periodically recognizing His provision in creating the food that sustains our bodies. One of the very oldest mentions we have of acknowledging His relationship to our lives is Cain and Abel bringing a portion of their harvests to God as an offering.  Noah's first action when he came out of the Ark was to make a thank offering to God; and we see this happening as a joint activity of a family or a community.

In addition to the obvious cycles of days, months and years God also gives us a a pattern of "weeks", seven-day periods that give us a time for work and a time to break from working.  He calls it a Day of Rest, but it is more than just a day to do nothing It is a day that makes a difference; a recognition that God made the "heavens and the earth" and enjoyed the result. There are positive things we are asked to do on this day; we are to bring a portion of the results of our labors as an offering to God. This is not just a personal task; it involves the family and the community, and it involves everyone, including slaves, outsiders, and even animals. So what is the meaning of the Sabbath? We are supposed to take the day off from our normal everyday work. We are to bring to God a portion of the results of our work, and we do it as a member of a family ad a community. This has been an integral part of Jewish communities for four thousand years.

A major shift in emphasis on this observance happened two thousand years ago, and we are approaching the remembrance of the reason for this shift. Think about the the events of an historical week that changed the world; beginning with the public recognition of one man as the Promised One who would change the world. It continued with a celebration of Passover that was different than any other yearly commemoration; that again we celebrate on a regular basis to this day. It continued with a trial and a execution. The next day is the one we don't usually pay much attention to, because we don't see anything "happening." This was probably the most sorrowful day in the small community of Jesus's followers, the day that they must have seen as the end of their world. We can assume that they probably kept it as a usual Sabbath, but I suspect that they did not go anywhere or do anything. What was there to do? Prepare the final tribute to the Man who had changed their world, and go back to where they had come in three years earlier.

We now know what happened the next day--not on a Sabbath but on a "First Day", the First Day of God's triumph over the force of sin and evil. This small group of people who saw what had happened on that day became a group of one hundred twenty people who broke out into a holiday crowd on the streets of Jerusalem and changed the world. This is why we now celebrate the First Day in remembrance of what  happened on the day after the saddest Sabbath ever, and in memory of those who gathered on the the First Day to celebrate the Resurrection of the Savior of the world.

Faith of the Family--by Linden Malki

Sven Kristian Nilsson was born on an island in the strait between Sweden and Norway in 1812, one of four sons of Per Nilsson, a wealthy shipowner, but an alcoholic. He and a brother left home and  became merchant seamen; during a storm at sea his brother was rescued from a storm in the Atlantic, which brought him to the Lord and changed his life. The brothers were involved with the Mariners Temple in New York, an outreach to seamen, and Sven convinced his brother that they needed to return to Sweden and share their good news.  The problem was that the Swedish government did not allow any public religious activity outside of the state church, which was Lutheran. However, Sven's brother F.O Nilsson, had been baptised by a Baptist missionary in Germany, and back in Sweden, organized a believers' baptism in the ocean at midnight in September 1848, of his wife, brother Sven, and three others. F.O. Nilsson was arrested, tried, jailed for six months and banished from Sweden. The persecution also drove Sven and his family to emigrate to the United States, where he founded a house church in a Minnesota farmhouse shared with his ten children, and they were joined by a third brother and his ten children.  Sven became known as the "Happy Christian", and his children and grandchildren became active in churches not only in Minnesota, but in many parts of the US and the world. His daughter Hilma married another Swedish immigrant, who had been forced out of his home in Sweden when he became a member of a Baptist house church.  They moved to the Seattle area, where they were founding members of a Baptist church, and then western Oregon, where they organized another Baptist  church. All of their children, including my father, were active in churches and raised their kids in churches, and one of their sons became a missionary to China--and his son became a missionary in Jordan, a daughter in Hong Kong and Macau, and another daughter became a pastor's wife and two of their sons are pastors, including Mark Lambert, who was pastor at Judson Baptist and also a member of Calvary/Northpoint at one time. One of Sven's sons, Fred Oliver Nelson, came West, and founded a number of churches between Washington and northern California; their children and grandchildren became missionaries in Puerto Rico, Burma, Japan, Nicaragua, Alaska. One of the daughters met a young man whose family were founding members of Calvary Baptist Church in San Bernardino, and who became a pastor, missionary, and seminary professor. Another one of Sven's granddaughters and her family were missionaries in Hawaii.

I've probably missed a few, but the number of ministers, missionaries,  active church members and church plants that came from this one family is an amazing illustration of the power of God in the lives of families. We are created to live in families, and to be taught about God and His plans for us in our families. The difference between Godly parents and children; and others, even though they may know about God but not live it,  has always been significant. We are called to honor our parents and their faith, which can bring awesome ministry through our families.

Responsibility for each other--by Linden Malki

The first question that Cain, the first murderer, asked God: Am I my brother's keeper?  The answer from God: your brother's blood calls out from the ground.  Now God could have zapped Cain, but He didn't--He exiled him.

When God was faced with a world full of evil, He told one righteous man, Noah, how to save himself and his family.  When the time came to re-establish human society, God told Noah that people are responsible for each other's lives: For each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.  Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed, for in the image of God has God made mankind. (Genesis 9:5b-6)  To this day, Jewish tradition includes this in the covenant God made with Noah that  all human beings are called to honor.

Critics of religion often make a big deal about the amount of violence in the Bible, and in the history of the church. One thing about the Bible is that it is realistic about the nature of mankind, and God has made us with the capacity of both great good and great evil.  Yes, He could have made us incapable of evil, but that would have eliminated our appreciation of good as well. Yes, He did pass judgment on people in cases of deliberate and evil "religious" practices, and He did call upon some of His followers to execute the judgment.  We notice, however, that when this happens, we need to recognize that these practices were evil, and the judgments were specific, and limited to a particular time and place.  Yes, even people claiming to be followers of God have done horrific things, and that is something for which they will be held accountable.  It is interesting that most of the critics will judge believers for our shortcomings, but usually admit that there is validity to the laws they claim to not believe in the source of.

Bible scholars, Jewish and Christian, tell us that the commandment given to Moses is  "You shall not murder". The earliest translations into English were done at a time that "murder" and "kill" had the same meaning, and the Hebrew word used is restricted to a deliberate killing, not an accidental or

judicious death. We know that this is the case also because the continuation of the teaching of Moses in Exodus 21-23 describes the necessity of judgment  and its limitations. The law requires at least two witnesses in serious cases--but appropriate authorities are expected to enforce the law, and to be fair with it. We are responsible for each other! We are responsible to respect each others' lives, health, well-being, property, relationships, and to honor those who are responsible for us.

Heavenly Father Knows Best--by Linden Malki

The original intention of God when He created mankind was that we live in families, headed by a man and a woman committed to each other.  Our very flesh is both related and different, and the idea is that "a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." We are designed to connect intimately and in the process new life grows and becomes a child who has part of his or her very body derived from each parent.  This is a relationship that can be exhilarating at its best and incredibly painful when it goes bad.

St Paul put it like this: "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins ar person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, who were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. " (I Corinthians 6:18-20)

Part of the problem is that we are not all committed to life with His Spirit, and we are all imperfect creatures with temptations and a history of disobedience. From the beginning of human history, we have missed the ideal, both as individuals and societies.  God, in His relationship with people, has described His commitment to us and His relationship to us as similar to a marriage, with the ideal of fidelity to Him and from Him.  As individuals, we have often missed the mark, and as societies we have gotten involved in relationships that are not healthy.  We see even people who knew God tempted to get involved with people who didn't take God's ideal seriously, and have paid for it in pain, bad relationships, disease, children who were damaged or even sacrificed. 

It's often easier to get into bad relationships than out of them.  I grew up in a neighborhood where several families had kids who were totally unsupervised; one of my memories was at about 5 or 6, sitting on a curb with several other kids while an 11-year old told us what he and his girlfriend did. This guy grew up with a trail of broken relationships and abandoned kids, and a brother who "had to get married" at 16. Two of my friends had babies at 14. My mom installed protective inhibitions, which saved me from what I later recognized as a probable  molestation at 8. After listening to friends say that having said "yes" made it impossible to say "no", I decided that any reason I wasn't married to someone was sufficient reason to say "no".  I was blessed by a good marriage to a good man for 41 years and four children; who had also grown up in a church family.  I do believe that commitment and fidelity are well worth the effort!

Thieves in the Daylight--by Linden Malki

Some thieves come in the night, but the ones that really scare me are those who come in the full light of day. Three thousand years ago, a delegation of people came to the prophet Samuel to ask God for a king, because Samuel's sons were not trustworthy successors: " But his sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice." (I Samuel 8:3) People haven't changed much! God had this answer: Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”(I Samuel 8:10-18)

Right now we're hearing a lot of talk from politicians who think that the government is the answer to all our problems, just as the elders who came to Samuel about a king. The problem is that "the government" does not exist except as human beings with the same combination of good and evil as the rest of us. Some governments are thieves on a grand scale; the problem with big government is that those who rise to power have the same faults that God warned Samuel about back in his day. The third king of Judah and Israel, though blessed with wisdom that is still legendary, was followed by a son who was a world-class example of unwisdom, and lost half the kingdom. The Northern Kingdom had three hundred years of corrupt kings, topped by Ahab and Jezebel, still known for their greed exemplified by Ahab's coveting a poor man's field and Jezebel's conspiracy to steal the field and murdering the owner. There was not a single honest king in the history of that kingdom, eventually being stolen by a succession of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Alexander and his successors, and then Romans, Arabs, Turks, a British mandate, and still being fought over today. The southern Kingdom of Judah survived two more centuries, having held out against the Assyrians but then invaded by Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, but managed to rebel and were an independent kingdom for a century, but then absorbed by Romans and all its successors until Israeli independence in 1948--but still accused of having stolen it from the surrounding Arab countries.

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Over the last century we have seen a generation of politicians around the world being deposed, leaving behind (or taking with them) vast amounts of ill-gotten assets stolen from their empires. It's not the honest folks who have the ambition and greed to seize opportunities of power!