Daily Bread Pastor Mike Anderson

Reflections: Happy New Years!! Of course this is the time when many people set out to make New Year’s resolutions. Each year we try to become better people, but often our efforts fail for various reasons. Of course there is nothing wrong with trying to become a better person, or in Christian parlance to become more Christ-like, but often this can lead to just trying to be a better, more moral person, or to “drink less”, or “cuss less” etc… Maybe this year you might try something different. Maybe a different way of looking at your life is a concept of “the exchanged life”. Dallas Willard describes this as, “How would Jesus live his life, if he were you!” Now that sounds a little daunting, but the reality is that I think Christian formation and the life we really always wanted is not as complicated as it may sound, or maybe how the church has made it out to be. What if each day you prayed in the morning, “God help me to hear your voice and listen and do what you would want me...

Reflection: There is a saying, “everything in this world has its price!” In the way of the world you can buy almost anything if you have enough money. Simon the Sorcerer had a lot of money on account of his sorcery business. People of both “high” and “low” means came to see him, and paid him large sums of money to watch him do his stuff. But the when the people saw and heard Philip’s ministry, they came to faith, and Simon did as well (or at least intellectual belief). As they followed Philip around, they saw what true power looked like, power that was from God and ushered in God’s kingdom of light into the darkness. When the apostles Peter and John heard that there was a revival in Samaria and people like Simon the Sorcerer were coming to faith, they discerned they needed to check it out. When they arrived they saw that these new believers were baptized, but had not received the power of the Holy Spirit. How they discerned this is not mentioned, and is a good question to t...

Reflection: Those that persecuted the early church thought that by dispersing them they might weaken them, but we see what happened in the book of Acts. After Stephen’s death, the disciples were scattered, but preached the Good News wherever they went. The effect was actually to increase the propagation of the Gospel to other lands and other people groups. The saying that captures this phenomenon is, “the blood of martyrs became the seed of the Church.” Today in the Old Testament reading, we start the book of Chronicles, which is another history of the Jewish people different yet similar to the books of 1 and 2 Kings. The Chronicler gives the history of Israel, starting with Adam. In Jewish tradition it was all from the male line. It is carried forth in the first 9 chapters almost entirely with genealogical lists, then focuses on the reign of David through the remainder of 1 Chronicles. Then Solomon’s building of the temple and his reign in 2 Chronicles 1-9, and the story of t...

Reflection: Before Jesus left, he told his disciples when they came under severe persecution and trial to not worry for the Holy Spirit would give them the words to say. And here today, we see Stephen, the first Christian martyr. The first one to die for his testimony to Jesus! We see the juxtaposition of Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, and the members of the Sanhedrin, gnashing their teeth and furious at him for his words. His words have cut them to the heart, and rather than repenting they take out their fury on him. The madder they got, the more filled with the Holy Spirit Stephen seemed to be so that as they were at their height of rage he was at the height of serenity. As Jesus had promised to be with him in this trial, so God’s provision matched the severity of his trial. God promises to be with us as we endure trials for His name sake. So filled with the Spirit is Stephen that he even asks that his persecutors be forgiven as they go to stone him. They drag him ou...

Reflection: Many of us are fresh off the celebration of Christmas. A time to remember when God chose to inhabit our planet through sending His Son, baby Jesus, born of Joseph and Mary in a manger near Bethlehem. Every Christmas we try to sort through the tinsel and ornaments, to make sure Jesus gets center stage of our celebration as we sing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”. “Emmanuel” means God with us. God had spoken through powerful prophets like Moses, who waited 40 years in the desert before his encounter with the Lord near Mt. Sinai, where he would receive the Law. We see how easy it was for the people of God to forget this central of God’s act in delivering the people from the Egyptians, as King Josiah instituted the celebration of Passover, which it says hadn’t been done in many years. Israel wondered why things were going so bad, and we get a clue when they forgot to remember what God had done for them, which was at the heart of the Covenant promises they had made to God....

Reflection: Recently some feared the end of the world according the Mayan calendar. My son was a little nervous about it, and I let him know that only God knows the end of the world, even Jesus said that he didn’t know but only the Father knew the day and the hour. There is a passage in 2 Peter 3:9 that says, “God is not slow in keeping His promises as some understand Him to be. But He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish but all to come to repentance.” As the psalmist recounts, “He remains faithful forever.” But you can see the people who He has called to be His own are far from faithful. We see in the readings today, the slow nature of the salvation story as God called Abraham and his 12 sons to be the patriarchs of the church. But for 400 years they were slaves in a country not their own (Egypt). And through the faithfulness of Joseph, God called the people back there and then eventually delivered them from the Pharoah. Eventually they would settle back in...

Reflection: “Tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth” , we offer hear in the courtroom as someone comes to testify. Yet often outside the court room truth telling can become elusive in our society today. Many manipulate the truth and subtly twist it to their own ends. The age we live in is characterized by a worldview of “relativism” where absolute truth is only a legend. Truth today is often based on one’s sincerity of what they believe to be true. Today’s theme in our scripture is truth. The psalmist says, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” Isaiah the prophet only spoke the truth to King Hezekiah, even when today it meant telling him he would not recover from his illness, though God would allow him to recover after his heartfelt prayer. And, in Acts, we see Stephen standing up before those who were supposed to be guarding the truth, and yet they brought false witnesses to try and discredit Stephen’s testimony. Why? B...

Reflection: Today the theme is “promises”. Often in the world we see people breaking promises. People in power and authority, husbands and wives, and sometimes even our friends can back out of the things they have said they would do. Sometimes we even fail to keep the promises we make to ourselves, especially if we don’t have someone keeping us accountable. Today we see though that God never goes back on a promise. In the psalm, David recounts how trustworthy God is in all He promises, and how God uplifts those who fall and call on Him during their distress. In the passage in 2 Kings, we finally see a king who actually trusts in the Lord with all his heart, and cries out to God when the Assyrians mock Israel and say they will handle them like every other nation they have trounced. But as Hezekiah reads the letter of ridicule, he prays to God and acknowledges that these other gods are made of wood and stone and are fashioned by human hands. Importantly, he asks God to inte...

Reflection: Just as we see our economy go through periods of growth and decline, and we have bull stock markets and bear markets, so in today’s reading we see of the cyclical nature of God’s people and their relationship with Him. Psalm 144 reflects King David’s new song, as he sees God deliverance and victory given to him as the great king of Israel. Then in 2 Kings, we see the low-point in the history of Israel, when despite many warnings by God’s prophets, they disobeyed the first commandment of the covenant to worship other gods. We see what church historians call “syncretism”, where Israel worshipped Yahweh the true God, but also inter-mixed the gods of the regions, especially more so when the people of Samaria were deported by the Assyrian invasion and foreign people groups displaced them. The basic thought was we will worship all the gods so we can appease them all. And you can see the various things they did to appease these gods, including child sacrifice. The passage...

Reflection: So often I hear someone say, “The God of the Old Testament seems much different than the God of the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament seems to be a God of judgment, whereas the God of the New Testament seems to be a God of mercy.” And while there is a movement of revelation of God’s nature in the person of Jesus Christ, God does not change. In theological parlance we say, “God is immutable.” For instance, we have seen numerous kings now in the Northern (Samaria) and Southern (Jerusalem) kingdoms who have repeatedly spurned God’s 1st commandment by worshipping other gods. Different kings have demonstrated different propensities in this, but since King David there has not been a king who has wholeheartedly worshipped God, or led the people of Israel to do so. Yet, God continues to give them second chance after second chance. He allows some correction and consequences to happen through foreign superpowers as a warning to them, but ultimately keeps showing ...