This is from a devotional I gave at a recent men’s breakfast at our church (www.kirkridgearp.com).

These are definitely times that try men’s souls! We need encouragement because of work, relationships, life in general. I’d like to use the Bible to accomplish that.

Some encouragement I gleaned from these passages.

Luke 24:25 – 27

He said to them, “How unwise and slow you are to believe in your hearts all that the prophets have spoken! Didn’t the Messiah have to suffer these things and enter into His glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted for them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

• God revealed Himself.

1. He could have been an “absentee landlord”.

2. He set the world in motion and then abandoned it. When the time is right He’ll be back.

3. Which leads to - there is no rhyme or reason for what is going on, what is happening in our lives. Desperation and futility.

But that is not the case. He has revealed Himself in Jesus. Remember Philip’s request to see the Father in John 14:19. And He has revealed Himself in the written Word. These folk had the Word explained to them by the Word! We have the same material Jesus used on the Emmaus road. How does it read? “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets”. Open your Bible and you’ll see “Moses and all the Prophets”! Believers have the Holy Spirit to guide them John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. I would like to encourage you with the knowledge that we have these same resources. I would also like to encourage you to utilize those resources!

Acts 18:27 – 28

When he wanted to cross over to Achaia, the brothers wrote to the disciples urging them to welcome him. After he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace. For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating through the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah.

• Apollos refuted false doctrine.

1. Apollos “greatly helped” those who believed. How? Refuting the Jews, showing that Jesus is the Messiah. He refuted bad doctrine. But he didn’t leave it there. He gave good doctrine.

2. We have Sunday school, special classes, men’s breakfast, and most of all, Sunday service. All designed to equip us, to refute false doctrine, to give us good doctrine. Isn’t it an encouragement to be helped in this way, to be strengthened in our faith?

John 15:15 – 16

I do not call you slaves anymore, because a slave doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from My Father. You did not choose Me, but I chose you. I appointed you that you should go out and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.

• If you are in Christ, you are His friend.

Talk about being on the “A” list!!

1. He no longer called the disciples slaves. Slaves. We don’t like that word, do we? It has bad connotations.

2. Some Bible translations use “servant” instead of “slave”. We don’t want to apply that word to others. We certainly wouldn’t want it applied to us! Those who are in Christ are His friends! Paul wrote that we are no longer slaves, but sons. If we are sons, then heirs through God! (Galatians 4:7)

3. Have you ever felt like you abandoned God? You’ve done something that has seriously wounded the relationship? Don’t worry! You didn’t choose Him! He chose you! Warts and all! He knew all about you and still chose you!

Isaiah 53:10

Yet the Lord was pleased to crush Him, and He made Him sick. When You make Him a restitution offering, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days, and the will of the Lord will succeed by His hand.

• It pleased God to crush Him and not you!

1. I’m not a theologian but I don’t think God got some morbid satisfaction by crushing Jesus. Don’t you think it pleased Him because by Christ’s death, you were saved? That is why it pleased God – you were saved. His will was accomplished. Ligon Duncan called Jesus’ work “unique, unrepeated, unrepeatable…which He did for us and which we have absolutely no part of. It is totally outside of us, we contributed nothing to it, and we benefit everything from it.”

Isaiah 6:5

Then I said: Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.

• One second after we die we will be in the same position as Isaiah – almost!!

1. You remember this; Isaiah was taken to the throne room of God. What did he say? “Woe is me, for I am ruined”. Why? “Because I am a man of unclean lips…and because my eyes have seen the King”. His lips were unclean; his instrument of praise was not worthy to praise the Great King!

2. Christians won’t have to say “Woe is me!” We are still men of unclean lips and you will be seeing the King! Job said in chapter 19:25 that he would see God, in the flesh. The advantage we have is that we are friends of Jesus and it pleased God to crush Him for our sake!

3. R C Sproul said he looks forward to hear with his ears “The Lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!”

You may be sitting there thinking that you would like to have these encouragements for yourself but you're not sure that you have them, or you may be confident that you do!

1 Corinthians 15:16 – 17

For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.

The apostle Paul is arguing for the resurrection of Jesus and consequently the resurrection of all those who believe.

There is something in this passage that I always thought should have been different. I think the line of reasoning should be that if Jesus is not raised, there is no God; not that we are still in our sins. But Paul wrote we are still in our sins. Without Christ you are still in your sins.

Consider –

• When Moses approached the burning bush, God told him to take off his sandals. “You're on holy ground!”
• When God called the people to Mount Sinai, He told Moses not to let anyone other than himself on the mountain, even an animal, or they would be killed.
• No one was to enter the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle except the high priest and then only on the Day of Atonement, for fear of death.

You must approach God on His terms! Not yours.

Jesus entered the Holy of Holies for us, when He died on the cross! The veil in the temple was rent signifying the tearing down of the veil of separation between us and God.

Jesus must be your Friend! He is our only hope, our only Mediator. If He isn't, you are still in your sins!

And if you are a Christian, I encourage you to do what the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 13:5 Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves. Or do you not recognize for yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless you fail the test.

Margo, Ryan, and I went to Kentucky to visit Ken Ham's creation museum (http://www.creationmuseum.org/). It took about 9 hours to get there. Our journey took us through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and then Kentucky. Margo and Ryan are good with maps so we had no problem getting there. We arrived on July 4^th. Unfortunately due to inclement weather we were not able to see any fireworks.

I was apprehensive about such a long trip to see a museum, especially one that had just opened. Of course, I wasn't expecting any glitches on the scale of those seen in the movie 'Jurassic Park' but I was wondering if this trip would be worth it. I'm happy to report that it was!

The lady at the museum with whom Margo spoke indicated that we should allow about 2 hours to see everything. We got at the museum just about when it opened (10 AM) and left when it closed (6 PM). So much for two hours!

The museum has a planetarium. We were told that this should be our first stop. No problem, as the next show started within a few minutes. While we waited we had a picture taken. This was taken against a green screen. We then had the opportunity to choose a background that consisted of about 4 choices including dinosaurs and I believe the ark.

Well, we finally got settled down in the planetarium. The show started in no time and we reclined in our comfortable chairs. I would say that the theme of the show was a journey from our local solar system to the outer reaches of the universe. A comparison was at first made of the relative distance to various objects around us. One that I found interesting was the Orion constellation. It is usually easily identified by 'Orion's Belt', a series of 3 stars. One of the stars that composes Orion is named Betelgeuse, pronounced like beetle juice I believe. It has a radius 600 times greater than our Sun! If it were in place of the Sun most of our solar system would be engulfed by it! Comparing our Sun with Betelgeuse would be like comparing a beach ball (our Sun) to a stadium!

I've always wondered about the size of the universe. Say if you went in one direction and could travel at immense speeds, how far could you go? Would you eventually run into something at the end? Is the universe shaped like a donut and you would (after going a very, very long way) end up where you started? The show didn't answer my question, but it did demonstrate one thing – the universe is LARGE!!

Afterward Margo and I discussed the show. We both came away with the same thought. Why did God make the universe so big? We suspected that if you were to ask God that question He would respond that He thought He made it too small!

As I tried to grasp the size of the universe, I wondered to myself how this should affect our prayers. I couldn't help think about the movie 'Clash of the Titans'. Sir Laurence Olivier starred as Zeus. In typical Greek & Roman god fashion, he and his wife played a game of chess with the characters. A perfect example of how the Greeks & Romans infused their man-made gods with human traits.

When we pray do we pray to the God who created the universe or do we pray to the kind of gods who sit on Mt. Olympus and play games with humans? By this I mean, do our prayers reflect a belief that the One to whom we pray is omnipotent? That our God can and does make changes in time & space that are beyond natural laws? Or do we pray to a capricious god that not only is incapable of doing any of the things the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob can do but is simply the figment of someone's imagination?

I'm sure we've all heard people pray what R.C. Sproul has dubbed the 'just' prayer. “Father, I JUST pray that You'll do this or that; I pray that Uncle Henry will JUST pull through fine after this surgery”. Get the picture of the “just” prayer? Should our prayers be more than asking for the 'minimum'? It would be the same as asking a friend, who happens to be a billionaire, for $20 to put towards a $200 debt. The billionaire is more than capable to pay the full debt. God is more than capable of doing far beyond what we can imagine. To me it seems to be almost an insult to God not to pray 'big'.

But let's not be disappointed when God doesn't answer the way we want. A perfect example of someone who 'prayed big' is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when He prayed that the 'cup would pass'. If there was anyone who knew that was not going to happen, it was Jesus. From eternity that plan had been in place, but it didn't stop Jesus from praying! I hope we'll keep our faith that our Abba, has our best concerns in mind and will answer accordingly!