Skip to main content

God the Charge

 

 

In 1959 a new football franchise in Los Angeles was created as part of the new American Football League. The team owner, Barron Hilton of the Hilton Hotel family, held a competition to name the team. The winning name was the Chargers, which, according to Hilton, was based on the tradition at LA Dodgers baseball games of playing a bugle and the fans yelling, “Charge!” While that may be true, critics of Hilton accused him of picking the name because it happened to coincide with the launch of his new charge card company. 

 

When we talk about charging, we can think of troops (or athletes) charging into battle; or we can think of charging a credit card. But I want us to think of a different kind of charge for a minute. Deuteronomy 11:1 says, “You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His rules, and His commandments always.”

 

This is Moses speaking, knowing he was at the end of his life. The Lord allowed him to address Israel one last time, and in his final speech he encouraged the people to keep God’s charge. This Hebrew word refers to an ordinance that we have a duty to keep; it could be translated as a requirement. This is the idea behind our expression of being in charge. Sometimes we come into a chaotic situation and we demand to know, “Who is in charge here?” 

 

Moses didn’t want there to ever be any confusion about who was in charge. He would have Joshua as his successor, but God was the one in charge. Our human tendency is for us to be in charge. We want to write the rule book for our own lives. We want to be captain of our own ship. So why does God get to be in charge?

 

If we continue reading in Deuteronomy, over the next eight verses Moses recounted the “mighty acts” of God. Moses said, “For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did (v.7),” which included the Ten Plagues in Egypt, destroying the armies of Pharaoh after parting the Red Sea, and many other miracles in the wilderness. God is the Charger because He alone can work mighty miracles. He is the sovereign Creator of the universe. He is the Potter, and we are just clay in His holy hands.

 

We might not always understand God’s ways, and if we are honest, we might not even like them, but they are not up for debate. God is the Charger. He gives the orders, and it is in our best interest to follow Him. 

 

   

 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The “Christians Hate Gays” Myth

During these Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) hearings before the Supreme Court I keep hearing how much Christians hate gay people. This was news to me since I am a Christian and I don’t hate gay people. I also go to church with over 1000 other Christians, and if any of them hate gay people, they sure haven’t told me. Before moving to South Carolina I worked at or attended several churches in Texas; prior to that I spent a decade going to church in Florida. Guess what? No one hated gay people. In fact, I don’t know any Christians who hate anybody. The very uniform of a believer is his love, and if a person does not show consistent love, then he is not actually a believer. Are there non-believers who hate gay people and claim to be Christian? Of course. But that doesn’t represent Jesus or His church. Equating  hateful sign-wavers with Christianity is like equating a kindergarten baseball team to the New York Yankees. They may claim to be playing the same

Famous Frauds in Homosexual Science Part 2: Twin Studies

A second piece of shoddy science has been heralded as proving people are born gay. This time, instead of cadavers, living twins were studied. This study compared male identical twins to male fraternal twins; in each set of twins, at least one man was homosexual. 22% of the fraternal twins showed both brothers to be gay, compared to 52% of the identical twins. Since identical twins are closer genetically than fraternal twins, this study claimed that genetics play in to homosexuality, or that people are born gay. But an obvious question that arose from this study is, why did 48% of the identical twins only have one gay brother? If they are so close genetically, then 100% of the identical twins should have two gay brothers. This study does more harm than good to the argument from genetics. There are other factors to be considered. One is that the men doing the study (Richard Pillard and Michael Bailey) could have intentionally picked fraternal twins that the

The Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley

If you have spent much time in church you have probably sung some songs with lyrics like these: “He leads me to his banqueting table, his banner over me is love… Jesus is the rock of my salvation, his banner over me is love.” “Sweetest rose of Sharon, come to set us free.” “He’s the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star…” But are those songs biblical? They come out of the writings of the Song of Solomon, but are we to understand those lines as describing Christ? The Song of Solomon is a collection of love poems that were written between two people who were deeply in love and about to be married. While we know that King Solomon is one of the writers, the other’s name has escaped us, and we know her today simply as the Shulamite woman. Some people believe that since this woman is not named then she never existed; some teach that this book is pure allegory, only existing to serve as symbolism. King Solomon, they say, represents