day no. 15,537: the way the anvil breaks its hammerers

"The anvil breaks a host of hammers by quietly bearing their blows."
-- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Anvils overcome hammers by enduring them. 

When you feel like you're taking a beating, remember you are breaking the enemy down by your endurance. Christ is the Rock and He outlasted His persecutors. They punched themselves out and He rose again. He took all they had to give and endured. In Him, we will see our enemies exhausted and ourselves established like an anvil, solid, resolute and blessed though buffeted. 

Romans 12:21
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

If we are in Christ, we will, like the anvil, endure many blows, but like the anvil, we will remain and our abusers will be broken.  The anvil strikes the hammer by insisting on remaining still. 

Psalm 46:8-10
Come, behold the works of the Lord,
how He has brought desolations on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
He burns the chariots with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”

day no. 15,536: one step sideways

"The difference between a hero and a coward is one step sideways." -- Gene Hackman

A man puts himself between the danger and his beloved. A step sideways removes him as the barrier. Courage rushes to breach the gap and resolves to stay there until the danger is either  destroyed or deterred. Cowardice steps aside instead of stepping up. It does not love anyone else enough to protect them at the expense of putting itself in danger.

John 18:4
Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered Him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am He.”

Love steps up.
Love steps between.

day no. 15,535: intellect before affect

"We are to invite people with truth that affects the emotions, not emotional appeals through which we hope to give them the truth." -- Rick Holland, The Art of Crafting a Life-Changing Sermon, The John MacArthur Handbook of Effective Biblical Leadership

Affection must follow intentions, by necessity and in that order.

Intentions left unexpressed fall flat. Information without manifestation is meaningless. Affections must materialize in order to justify the intention. However, you cannot begin with affection in order to get to intentions. You cannot use emotion to lead to the notion. Just as potions never produce long-lasting effects, emotions never lead to transformation that takes. Additionally, in employing emotions on the front end, you teach people to see the world through the subjectivity of their feelings instead of training them to see the world objectively as it truthfully is.

God's declarations are to be understood, believed and loved. You cannot love what you don't understand. You cannot love what you don't believe. But if you begin with loving feelings, what you know or how you understand will forever be clouded by them and what you believe will have no basis other than how you feel about it. You cannot create love out of lovely sentiments. All that to say, what you know must come before how you feel about what you know. How you feel is subject to change and cannot, therefore, support anything being built upon it. But what you know should produce affections which can flourish inside the protection of the walls built for it by solid intentions and reliable information.

day no. 15,534: counting years by thousands or tens

Before we get started, May the Voorst be with you. 

2 Kings 20:1
In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, "Thus says the LORD, 'Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.'"

God called Hezekiah to put his house in order so that the future would be set up for success. He was to look beyond his own lifetime so as to get what was in front of him prepared for those who would go beyond him. His house was currently out of that kind of order and needed to be placed into it. Hezekiah's house was in an order, but not the kind of order that God required. His house was ordered around something other than what God commands.

But instead of looking ahead, Hezekiah looked to himself. He cried out to God for healing and to go forward into the future in person rather than in planning. He did not look to the work of getting his house in order, rather he devoted his efforts into securing more of his own personal future. He did not have his progeny in mind, but only his own livelihood. He was not concerned with his legacy, but was very interested in his vitality.

And God surprisingly responded to Hezekiah's prayers by granting him his request. This answer to prayer proved to delight Hezekiah, but may have been more an evidence of God's discipline and displeasure than of favor being bestowed upon Hezekiah. Sometimes getting what we want is God's way of issuing discipline, not reward.

2 Kings 20:8-11

And Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "What shall be the sign that the LORD will heal me, and that I shall go up to the house of the LORD on the third day?" And Isaiah said, "This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?" And Hezekiah answered, "It is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. Rather let the shadow go back ten steps." And Isaiah the prophet called to the LORD, and he brought the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz.

Isaiah gave Hezekiah the option of seeing a sign that would guarantee that God's word of healing would certainly take place. His options were to see into the future or into the past. In keeping with his resistance to legacy, he chose to see the clock moved back. Time, if left alone, marches on either way and the dial inevitably goes forward, but only God could move the dial backwards. As far as logic goes, Hezekiah's logic was solid. The dial going backward is certainly more impressive in one sense, but it also highlights Hezekiah's insistence on reliving the past by staying alive rather than dying well in order to provide a legacy to those who would live beyond him into the future.

So Hezekiah was healed and returned to living for his own livelihood. He flourished and wanted to enjoy the good things that he had and show others how well off he was. So when foreign dignitaries arrived requesting an audience, he saw fit to provide them not only with the pleasure of his presence, but also with an audience to everything he had been able to retain by surviving his episode of illness.

2 Kings 20:16-19
And Hezekiah welcomed them, and he showed them all his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them. Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah, and said to him, "What did these men say? And from where did they come to you?" And Hezekiah said, "They have come from a far country, from Babylon." He said, "What have they seen in your house?" And Hezekiah answered, "They have seen all that is in my house; there is nothing in my storehouses that I did not show them."

Hezekiah's treasure was contained in his house and storehouses. His heart was where his treasure was... which happened to be right in front of him. He lacked vision for the future and heart for his legacy. He did not see his riches as someone else's inheritance. He saw them as his own.

2 Kings 20:16-19

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, "Hear the word of the LORD: Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon." Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, "The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good." For he thought, "Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?"

Hezekiah, in the end, reveals in words what has been true from the beginning in essence. His concern is not for the future or for his legacy, but only for his lifetime. He did not see years by the millennia, but by the decade. He counted time in tens instead of thousands. He did not see generations, but geriatrics. He was not concerned with seeing his people live, his concern was on his life going on. It wasn't about putting his house in order to look ahead for the sake of someone else tomorrow, but for showing his house off for the sake of looking like someone today. And in the end, he thought himself blessed for receiving a hall pass from the future calamity his decisions would bring. 

day no. 15,533: character and charisma

2 Kings 19:30-31
And the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward. For out of Jerusalem shall go a remnant, and out of Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the LORD will do this.

God saves us in symmetry. He gives us roots that grow downward in order to anchor us deeply and nourish us lavishly, but He also gives us fruit that grows upward in order to put flesh on what is happening down below. The top matches the bottom. The inside matches the outside. God gives rich soil and sweet fruit. He drives us deeper than we could go and produces more through us than we ever could on our own.  The zeal of the Lord will do this: zeal... not an apathetic acquiescence, but a vibrant, committed, excited, assertive, intentional action. God wants to do this. He throws His heart and soul into it. He provides the anchor and the wind, He makes the seed and the blossom, the quality and the quantity, the character and the charisma.

day no. 15,532: hendiadys

While reading The John Macarthur Handbook of Effective Biblical Leadership yesterday (March 31, 2020) I came across a new word, hendiadys. It was used in a sermon by Tom Pennington on 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 referring to "of the Spirit and of power."

hen·di·a·dys /henˈdīədəs/
noun
the expression of a single idea by two words connected with “and,” e.g., nice and warm, when one could be used to modify the other, as in nicely warm.

from Wikipedia... a Latinized form of the Greek phrase ἓν διὰ δυοῖν, hèn dià duoîn, "one through two" is a figure of speech used for emphasis—"The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination". The basic idea is to use two words linked by the conjunction "and" instead of the one modifying the other. English names for hendiadys include "two for one" and "figure of twins." The term hendiaduo may also be used. The 17th century English Biblical commentator Matthew Poole referred to "hendiaduos" in his comments on Genesis 3:16, Proverbs 1:6 and Isaiah 19:20.

It is fascinating to discover a term for something you were aware of, but didn't know. We use terms like, "good and ready," "sick and tired," "heart and soul," "nice and easy," "the long and short of it," etc... all the time. But I wasn't aware that those were "a thing" until it was pointed out to me. And upon becoming aware of its "thing-ness" you immediately discover it is a thing you already knew It is the delight C.S. Lewis called, "of course."

day no. 15,531: uxorious

Yesterday (March 31, 2020) I learned a new word while reading Milton's Paradise Lost

That uxorious king,

whose heart, though large,
Beguil'd by fair idolatresses,

fell to idols foul.

I had never heard of the word, "uxorious," before and had to look it up. That is one of the joys of reading. I love new words and this one is a good one. 

ux·o·ri·ous

/əkˈsôrēəs,ˌəɡˈzôrēəs/

adjective

having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife

Milton uses the word to refer to Solomon who in doting on and showing excessive interest in his wives was led astray into their idolatry. Milton is in one sense saying that Solomon was already committing idolatry in his wives before he entered into the idolatry of his wives. He was idolizing his wives by being submissive to them even before he submitted himself to the idols they submitted to.

Adam plunged world into sin by the same kind of concession. His inability to say, "No," to his wife led him to lead the world into sin through his unwillingness to lead her. Since he was her head, he could not help but lead, but since he insisted on following her lead, he lead the whole world into sin, something Eve did not possess the authority to pull off even if she had desired to.

So abdication is the essence of the very first sin. By setting aside his assignment to lead, he still led, but led poorly and into devastation. Man is the head, there is no way around it. When he cuts his head off by refusing to lead, he does not escape leadership, he merely leads the rest of the body into death.