Silver Lining

The five women in Matthew’s genealogy: Bathsheba
A Series on Advent
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
2 Samuel 11; Matthew 1:1-17 

[In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, there are five women mentioned. All of them were in some sense outsiders. In this Advent series we will be looking at these five women to gain a better understanding of “the word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.]

  

The 2012 movie, “Silver Linings Playbook”, is about a young man who is bipolar and was recently released from a mental institution into the care of his parents. While his main goal is to win back his ex-wife, he meets a young widow who offers to help him if he will enter a dance competition with her.

 

It’s a heartwarming story about relationships and the struggles that people face who have a mental illness. The title of the movie comes from a line spoken by the young man to his father.

 

“This is what I believe to be true. You have to do everything you can and if you stay positive, you have a chance at a silver lining.”

 

The story about Bathsheba has a silver lining but with a much darker side. It started with David who was the King of Israel. While Israel’s army went off to war, David stayed behind in Jerusalem.

 

One evening he couldn’t sleep, so he got up and walked around the roof of the palace. It was there that he saw a “very beautiful woman” taking a bath. Instead of turning away, he had someone inquire as to who she was.

 

Upon learning that she was “the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite”, David sent messengers to bring her to the palace where he slept with her. Soon afterwards, she sent David a message that she was pregnant.

 

In an effort to cover up what he had done, he had Uriah return from the battlefield. Then David personally instructed him to go home to be with his wife. But Uriah wouldn’t do it because the other fighting men weren’t able to do the same.

 

So, the next day, David tried again. This time he had Uriah eat and drink with him in the palace. He even got Uriah drunk. But once again, Uriah would not sleep with his wife, Bathsheba.

 

Desperate, David had Uriah return to the battle with written instructions for Joab, the head of the army. The letter told him to “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” Despite Uriah’s good character, he was murdered.

 

For her part, the only thing that Bathsheba did wrong was to be “very beautiful”. But this was a culture where men had all the power and King David was the most powerful man of all. To refuse him could have resulted in severe punishment.

 

How could anything redemptive come from this? David knowingly slept with another man’s wife and then had her husband killed. And yet, God is sovereign and somehow all of this mess fit into His plan of redemption.

 

Included in Matthew’s genealogy of “Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham”, is the following silver lining verse.

 

⁶ Jesse was the father of King David. David was the father of Solomon (whose mother was Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah).             Matthew 1    NLT

 

Like Bathsheba, God provides a silver lining for you and me. Even though we are sinful people, and our sin can result in terrible consequences – God can still bring about redemption through his son Jesus.

 

¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.                   Colossians 1                    NIV

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

 

Head Spinning

The five women in Matthew’s genealogy: Mary
A Series on Advent
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Luke 1:26-38; Matthew 1:1-17 

[In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, there are five women mentioned. All of them were in some sense outsiders. In this Advent series we will be looking at these five women to gain a better understanding of “the word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.]

  

Have you ever felt disoriented? It might have been from something very simple. Like when you went to your favorite grocery store only to find out that they had totally rearranged the isles. Or, maybe while driving at night the street that you were expecting to turn on wasn’t where you thought it would be.

 

But it could also be something major. Maybe you had a crisis in your life that turned your world upside down and left your head spinning. Mary had a head spinning experience that not only changed her life, but the world.

 

Mary was a young, Jewish girl living in the small obscure town of Nazareth in Galilee. She was engaged to be married to a carpenter named Joseph. No doubt her family, friends and faith filled her life. She was following in the path of most young girls her age.

 

But then an angel appeared to Mary flipping her world upside down.

 

³⁰ “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”        NLT

 

Because she was a virgin, Mary questioned the angel about how this could happen. He responded with a matter-of-fact answer that was anything but that.

 

³⁵ “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God”.               NLT

 

After two thousand years, the story of Christmas has become a cliché. It goes something like this: In a pristine scene of a clean stable with no manure or smelly straw, there’s a perfect newborn baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Shepherds and wise men surround the family with a star beaming brightly in the sky.

 

The story of the birth of Jesus has been told so many times that it’s been romanticized, homogenized and commercialized to the point that it has no impact. But for Mary… it had an immediate impact!

 

Somehow though, in the midst of this head spinning event, Mary managed to gather her wits.

 

³⁸ Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”  And then the angel left her.           NLT

 

Imagine what Christmas would be like if it was a head spinning event for you and me. Immanuel: God with us. That’s anything but a cliché.

 

Below is a link for a song by Faith Hill with the title “A Baby Changes Everything”.

 A Baby Changes Everything

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

 

Home Is Where the Heart Is

The five women in Matthew’s genealogy: Ruth
A Series on Advent
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Ruth 1; Matthew 1:1-17 

[In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, there are five women mentioned. All of them were in some sense outsiders. In this Advent series we will be looking at these five women to gain a better understanding of “the word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.]

  

In 1962, Elvis Presley released a song from the movie soundtrack of Kid Galahad titled, “Home is Where the Heart Is”. Here are the opening lyrics.

 

Home is where the heart is

And my heart is anywhere you are

Anywhere you are is home

 

These words have never been truer than for Ruth.

 

¹ In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. So a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.     NIV

 

The “man from Bethlehem” soon died leaving his wife Naomi with her two sons, who later married Moabite women. Ruth was one of them. After living in Moab for ten years, both of Naomi’s sons also died, this time leaving Naomi alone with her two daughters-in-law.

 

When Naomi learned that the Lord had brought good crops to her people in Bethlehem, she decided to go back and told her daughters-in-law to return to their homes. In a very emotional scene, one of them did so. But Ruth refused. Her home was with Naomi, and she made this pledge to her.

 

¹⁶ But Ruth replied, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. ¹⁷ Wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us!”          NLT

 

This wasn’t an easy promise for Ruth to make. She wouldn’t be going to some utopian life in Bethlehem. Naomi, as a widow without any sons, had no means of support. As for Ruth, she was from an enemy foreign land with foreign gods and, like Naomi, she was a widow without a son. But, return they did.

 

Once they arrived, the only food source that they had was for Ruth to glean from a barley field. It belonged to Boaz. As it turned out, he was not only a land owner, but also a relative of Naomi’s. In those days, that meant that he was a guardian redeemer.

 

The Hebrew word for guardian redeemer is a legal term applied to someone who has the responsibility to redeem a relative who is in serious difficulty. This could mean paying for their property so that it stayed in the family. Or it could mean marrying and providing a son who would inherit the property.

 

Although this concept seems very strange to us today, the origin can be found in the book of Leviticus. For Naomi and Ruth, it was literally a godsend. Boaz eventually married Ruth and they had a son named Obed who later had a grandson named David who was a distant ancestor of Jesus the Messiah.

For Ruth, the saying “home is where the heart is” meant being with Naomi and trusting in the God of Israel. Just like Ruth promised Naomi that she would always be with her, so the Lord promises you and me the same thing.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

A Notorious Outsider

 

The five women in Matthew’s genealogy: Rahab
A Series on Advent
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Joshua 2; Matthew 1:1-17 

[In Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, there are five women mentioned. All of them were in some sense outsiders. In this Advent series we will be looking at these five women to gain a better understanding of “the word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.]

  

What notorious act comes to your mind when you read these names? Bill Cosby… Lance Armstrong… O.J. Simpson… Tonya Harding… Anthony Weiner… Harvey Weinstein… Martha Stewart… Richard Nixon?

 

How would you feel if every time someone spoke your name, or wrote it down, the first thing that came to mind was the worst thing that you ever did? That’s exactly what it was like for Rahab the prostitute. She was a notorious outsider.

 

The nation of Israel, led by the newly appointed leader Joshua, was poised to cross the Jordan River and finally enter the Promised Land. But before doing so, Joshua sent two spies to check out the land, and especially the city of Jericho.

 

Jericho was a well-fortified city with high walls. Built into one of those walls was the home of Rahab the prostitute. Her home was strategically located for travelers who needed a place to stay and were looking for sexual companionship.

 

When the two spies entered the city, the appeal of Rahab’s inn may have been to go where people wouldn’t notice them. After all, it wouldn’t be unusual for men to stop there. Unfortunately for them, they were noticed.

 

As a result, the king sent messengers to Rahab, ordering her to turn over the spies. She confirmed that they had been there but had left when the city gate was about to close. In reality, she had hidden them on her roof.

 

Before helping the spies to escape she told them that all of Jericho had heard about the Lord saving Israel from Egypt and, “our hearts melted in fear”. 

Then she made this confession: “For the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below”.

 

But for the respectable Jews, Rahab would always be a notorious outsider. She was a Canaanite, a prostitute and a woman. However, because of her faith in the God of Israel and her good works, she was eventually given great honor.

 

³¹ By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.                                                                               Hebrews 11         ESV

 

²⁴ So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone. ²⁵ Rahab the prostitute is another example. She was shown to be right with God by her actions when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road.                         James 2         NLT

 

In God’s eyes, we are all notorious outsiders. There are things that you and I have done that we’d prefer to not publicize, let alone be synonymous with our name. But the good news is that like Rahab, there is still hope; there is forgiveness.

 

In Matthew’s genealogy, Rahab is mentioned as the mother of Boaz and a descendant of Jesus… not as a notorious outsider.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

 

Hand Me Down World

A Series on Advent
The five women in Matthew’s genealogy: Tamar
 (Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Genesis 38 

[In Matthew’s genealogy of “Jesus the Messiah, the son of David”, five women are named. All of them were in some sense outsiders. This was true not only because they were women, but for other reasons also. This Advent series we will be looking at these five women to gain a better understanding of our loving Heavenly Father who sent his son as a baby to live on earth. He was God incarnate.]

  

In 1970, the musical group The Guess Who released a hit song by the title of “Hand Me Down World”. It was written to raise social awareness during a time of turbulence. Here’s the chorus.

 

Don't give me no hand me down shoes
Don't give me no hand me down love
Don't give me no hand me down world
I got one already

 

Tamar knew what it was like to live in a hand me down world. In fact, you could say that she was the personification of a hand me down world. Her story is quite bizarre by today’s standards, but that wasn’t totally true at the time.

 

In antiquity, they had a custom known as “Levirate marriage”. This is where if a husband dies, then his brother is to marry his wife. By doing so, it keeps the family line intact and preserves the inheritance. It also protects the widow from having to sell herself to pay off any debt.

Tamar was married to the oldest son of Judah. When he died, Judah had his second oldest son marry her. But then he also died. Judah had a third son, but he sent Tamar to live with her father as a widow until that son grew up. Privately though, Judah feared that his son would die just like his brothers if he married Tamar.

 

According to the Jewish Women’s Archive, a national non-profit organization, there was a custom at the time where if a man had no son over ten years old, he could fulfill the Levirate marriage obligation instead of his son. This means that if Judah had wanted to do so, he could have married Tamar. But he didn’t.

 

Whatever Tamar’s motivation was, she laid a trap for Judah pretending to be a prostitute. As a result, she became pregnant. When Judah was confronted with the truth that he was the father, he responded in humility.

 

^26a Judah said, “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.”                   NIV

 

From this pregnancy, Tamar had twin sons, and along with Judah, all four are mentioned in the genealogy of “Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham”.

 

Does it seem strange to you that such a story would be included in Jesus’ genealogy? How could people like this be a part of God’s glorious plan? The same question could be asked of all of us.

 

It certainly was a hand me down world for Tamar. In fact, we still live in a hand me down world today. Thankfully though Jesus, the Son of God, entered our world changing things forever.

 

Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us’, brought hope for Tamar… and brings hope for us today.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

 

A Mountaintop Experience

A series on the story of redemption
The story of Isaiah
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Isaiah 6:1-13; Matthew 17:1-13 

[Everybody has a story. Even God has one. His is a story about love and redemption and faithfulness. In this series we are going to take a closer look at God’s story through the lives of the people that He touched. How their story became His story of redemption. And how your story is also a part of it.]

  

Have you ever had a mountaintop experience where you felt closer to God? 

The summer before my junior year of high school, I went to church camp. It turned out to be a weeklong mountaintop experience. I came home fired up about my faith. I wanted to pray and tell others about it. But my excitement slowly evaporated. 

 

Ironically, it was the summer before my junior year of college when a friend shared with me about a personal relationship with Christ. It made a lot of sense, and resulted in a summer long mountaintop experience that literally changed the rest of my life.

 

Isaiah had a mountaintop experience that also changed his life. His was in the temple in the presence of the Lord. It was a scene like you’d find at a rock concert with billowing smoke, flashing lights and sounds that would vibrate in your chest. There were heavenly beings with six wings that called out:

 

^3b “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”    NIV

 

Realizing that he was in the presence of a holy God and that he was a sinful man, Isaiah called out:

 

⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”     NIV

 

Then one of the heavenly beings touched his lips with a live coal from the altar and declared, “Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Here’s what followed.

 

⁸ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”                       NIV

 

Isaiah’s mountaintop experience was a calling that led to sixty years of prophetic ministry. He shared the same message that he heard in his vision of the Lord. It was a message to the people of Judah and Israel for them to repent; to turn back to the Lord.

 

There are other mountaintop experiences mentioned in the Bible that were literally on a mountain. Moses on Mount Horeb and Elijah on Mount Carmel. But none is more dramatic than when Peter, James and John followed Jesus to the mount of transfiguration.

 

⁵ While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”   NIV

 

To be in the presence of your Heavenly Father and to hear his words of love and pride, would be life changing. Truthfully, it would be a mountaintop experience.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

 

 

Straight Line Story

A series on the story of redemption
The story of David
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
2 Samuel 7:1-17 

[Everybody has a story. Even God has one. His is a story about love and redemption and faithfulness. In this series we are going to take a closer look at God’s story through the lives of the people that He touched. How their story became His story of redemption. And how your story is also a part of it.]

  

A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. However, if you Google “how to determine the shortest distance between two points”, it gives you this formula:

 

1. Denote the given points as (x₁, y₁) and (x₂, y₂).
2. Apply the Euclidean distance formula, distance, d = √[(x₂ − x₁)² + (y₂ − y₁)²]
3. Simplify the square root.

 

Are you kidding me? All you have to do is take a ruler, connect the two points and draw a straight line. Voila! Easy peasy. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure it out. But, as Lee Corso from ESPN College GameDay says, “Not so fast my friend”.

 

Apparently, the Lord wasn’t a mathematician because he didn’t know how to connect a straight line when it came to his story of redemption. Consider David. But first, to understand his story, we begin with Saul.

 

Rejecting the Lord as their king, the Israelites asked Samuel for a human king like all the other nations around them. The Lord instructed Samuel to anoint Saul as king. He was a man of good standing and was a head taller than anyone else. When he was anointed, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul, and he was a changed man.

 

Saul ruled as king for forty-two years and started his reign well. He obeyed the Lord and was victorious in battle. 

But slowly, cracks appeared in his character. Eventually, the Lord rejected Saul as king and instructed Samuel to go to Jesse of Bethlehem; that he had chosen one of his sons to be king.

 

Now Jesse had eight sons and brought them out to Samuel one at a time starting with the oldest. One by one, the Lord told Samuel “No”, it wasn’t him. Finally, the youngest came out, David. He had been tending the sheep and was an afterthought. But he was the one that the Lord had chosen.

 

In secret, Samuel anointed David as king. Following this, the Lord’s Spirit came upon David. But it also left Saul, and was replaced by an evil spirit that tormented him. To relieve Saul of his torment, David was brought to play the lyre. Can you imagine the irony of this and the anxiety of David?

 

Eventually, when David defeated Goliath in battle, he became a war hero. As a result, Saul was extremely jealous of David, and tried to kill him. Because of this, David became a fugitive, running for his life.

 

This is anything but a straight line story. Did the Lord make multiple mistakes? Did he choose the wrong man to be king? Did he know what he was doing; what the ramifications would be? Did he truly have a long term plan in mind? It doesn’t seem like it.

 

Yet, when David finally replaced Saul as king and possessed the throne, the Lord made this covenant with him.

 

¹⁶ Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”          NIV

 

This covenant was fulfilled twenty-eight generations later.

 

¹ This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham…               NIV    Matthew 1

 

The Lord’s plan of redemption is not a straight line story. It’s not easy peasy. But he does have a plan and that plan includes you and me. It may not be a straight line, but it’s His plan, and we are a part of his story.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com

Hitting Rock Bottom

A series on the story of redemption
The story of Gideon
(Click on the link below to read the verses.)
Judges 6 

[Everybody has a story. Even God has one. His is a story about love and redemption and faithfulness. In this series we are going to take a closer look at God’s story through the lives of the people that He touched. How their story became His story of redemption. And how your story is also a part of it.]

  

You’ve probably hit rock bottom before. I have. My most painful experience happened a few years after getting married when our first child was still born. Everybody has their own story to tell.

 

Hitting rock bottom for the Israelites was directly related to the Midianites. For seven years, the Midianites and their allies would invade Israel, ruining their crops and taking their animals. Finally, the Israelites called out to the Lord for help.

 

That’s where Gideon’s story began. Like most of the Israelites, he was hiding in fear. One day, while threshing wheat in a winepress, an angel of the Lord addressed Gideon in the most surprising way.

 

¹² When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”     NIV

 

Of course, Gideon was anything but a mighty warrior. In fact, the first thing he said was to accuse the Lord of abandoning the Israelites. In reality though, the Israelites had abandoned the Lord by worshipping Baal and Asherah.

 

¹⁴ The Lord turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”     NIV

 

For Gideon, to “Go in the strength you have” meant taking that first small step towards living up to the name that the angel of the Lord had given him… mighty warrior. The defining moment occurred when he obeyed the Lord and took down his father’s Baal altar and Asherah pole. The following incident occurred.

 

³³ Now all the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples joined forces and crossed over the Jordan and camped in the Valley of Jezreel. ³⁴ Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him.      NIV

 

Even though Gideon wasn’t in a position of strength, the Spirit of the Lord came on him. From then on, Gideon was more decisive; more directed. Although he still needed encouragement from the Lord, he wasn’t hiding anymore.

 

Israel was constantly going through a cycle of sin and redemption. Like Israel, we do the same thing and sometimes hit rock bottom. But there is a silver lining. Here’s how Eugene Peterson put it in Matthew 5 from the Sermon on the Mount.

 

³ “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

⁴ “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.     MSG

 

We normally don’t feel blessed when we hit rock bottom. But sometimes redemption finds us there.

 

Copyright 2023 Joseph B Williams

www.lifelinebasketball.blogspot.com