Making Life Work

From Ronald L. Dart's Born to Win notes.

    This message is crucial for Christians and non-Christians alike. For too long, for generations in fact, Christians have cloaked their faith in church speak, jargon that too often, even they don’t understand. In a sense, it is inevitable, because most church or religious radio and television programs are taped in church. That is to say that the speaker is talking to an audience of insiders who know the vocabulary, or at least think they do.

    On the other hand, when questioned carefully about their beliefs, too many Christians have to admit they don’t really understand what their church teaches.

    This is one difference between the Born to Win program and some others. I am not speaking...

From the program notes of Ronald L. Dart

    In the movie, The Ten Commandments, a voice said, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and the inhabitants thereof.” Did you know those words were inscribed on the Liberty Bell in 1753?

    When you think about it, the dominant theme of that movie was liberty—liberty for a people who had just been set free. In the same way, the central idea of what Jesus taught is liberty or freedom. That was intended from the beginning. Jesus wants us to have freedom.

    The purpose of the Law was to guarantee freedom. The whole idea was freedom for man. When at last you are given freedom, you don’t want control to rear its ugly head. The Law and freedom are no problem until man steps in and tries to control...

From Ronald L. Dart's Program Notes:

    Does God get angry? We know he does. Everyone has heard about the wrath of God. It’s fair to say many people don’t see what God has to be all that angry about. When they read the Scriptures about the wrath of God, they may shiver a little, but they really don’t understand. They either think of God as a belligerent tyrant, or they don’t believe he’s all that angry.

    Between the movies, The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt, everybody knows how the death of the firstborn in Egypt was the means God used to finally force Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. But, someone asked on one of our Internet forums why God had to kill the firstborn of Egypt just to get the Israelites out of there. After all, he’s...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Once the trees went forth to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, ‘Reign over us!’ But the olive tree said to them, ‘Shall I leave my fatness with which God and men are honored, and go to wave over the trees?’ Then the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come, reign over us!’ But the fig tree said to them, ‘Shall I leave my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to wave over the trees?’ Then the trees said to the vine, ‘You come, reign over us!’ But the vine said to them, ‘Shall I leave my new wine, which cheers God and men, and go to wave over the trees?’ Finally all the trees said to the bramble, ‘You come, reign over us!’ And the bramble said to the trees, ‘If in truth you are anointing me as king over you,...

 

By: Ronald L. Dart

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law (Deuteronomy 29:29). 

    There are things about God that we are never going to understand for the simplest of reasons. They have not been revealed, and theorizing isn’t going to help very much. It is revelation that we need if we are going to understand.

    One of the things that has been revealed, in part, is the work and character of the Spirit of God, and yet even that is not well understood. A troubling set of questions surround the Holy Spirit, and they suggest that we may have taken a wrong turn somewhere and we need to retrace our steps.

By: Ronald L. Dart

   Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart? When I taught Old Testament Survey class, we could never get through this section of Exodus without a lively discussion on this question. Did Pharaoh have a choice in the matter? Was it impossible for him to repent? "I thought all men possessed free moral agency. Did God take that away from Pharaoh?" asked a girl from Glasgow. "Seems like the poor beggar never had a chance," opined an Australian student.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    When God gave Abraham his great victory over the King of Elam, he was met on his return by an enigmatic figure, a priest, by the name of Melchizedek. What is of special interest about this encounter is that Abraham gave Melchizedek tithes (a tenth) of all the spoil he had taken from the opposing armies–much of it the property of the Kings of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 14:20). Why did Abraham do that?

By: Ronald L. Dart

Was it Jesus’ intent to create a hierarchy of human government over the individual Christian? Does the Christian ministry sit in Moses’ seat for the church? This article explains what you always wanted to know about church government but were afraid to ask!

    Paul stood on the beach staring out to sea. This would be his last time in this place. It would have been good to have visited Ephesus once more, but it was not to be. It was just as well. He would not have been in Ephesus one hour before a coalition of Jews and silversmiths would have been plotting murder. There was no point in putting temptation in their way.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    If Jesus told you not to think something, would you believe Him? Or would you continue to suppose that something were true when Jesus told you plainly it was not? For example, if Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets," would you assume that Jesus came to do away with the law?

    Surprisingly, many Christians think that Jesus came to destroy the law when He said specifically that He did not. He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17).

By: Ronald L. Dart

The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness (Lamentations 4:1-3).

    The high school graduating class of ‘94 was decimated by a terrible plague and no one paid it much mind. If a bus load of them had been killed on the way to a game, it would have made headlines–at least locally. If a school had blown up and killed a few hundred of them it would have made national, even worldwide, news.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    He is twenty years old, but he looks more like sixteen. In blue jeans and sweater, his hair neatly cut, he looks like he should have books under his arm and be headed for class. The district attorney says he is a cold-blooded killer. It seems he held up a convenience store late one night. The clerk offered no resistance and gave him all the money in the cash register. But as he scooped up the money and stuffed it into his pockets, this “student” calmly raised his pistol and shot the clerk squarely between the eyes just to leave no witnesses. Now the district attorney wants you, the jury, to find him guilty and sentence him to death.

By: Ronald L. Dart

    Just what does it mean to "keep the Sabbath?" What should a person do on that day? Or, as some would prefer to ask, what should a person NOT do? Can you work at your normal job? What about emergencies? Can you buy groceries on the Sabbath? What if you have unexpected guests? The Sabbath is indeed a holy day, and to worship God properly requires a right view of His day.

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

 

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years" (Genesis 1:14-19).

    Nothing God gave to man has been used so consistently for the purpose He intended. Every civilization of man has used the sun, the moon, or both for the demarcation of time. They had no choice. Even a hunting society had to take notice of the passage of seasons. When would the animals migrate to the north and when would they return? How soon would the antlered animals make their move down from the high country? No people dependent upon the land could fail to notice that there was a time to plant and a time to harvest. Their problem was the prediction of that time, and that required the observation of the sun. It required a calendar, and some form of calendar has always been a mark of civilization.

By: Ronald L. Dart

 

“There are two kinds of people in the world,” intoned the preacher, “the saved and the lost. There is no middle ground with God.”

    Now there is a sobering thought. If indeed there are only two kinds of people in the world, and if I am “people,” I must be either saved or lost. And if I’m not consciously aware of having been saved, then I must be lost. And if I’m lost...

By: Ronald L. Dart 

    In the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing, there was one question raised that no one really stopped to answer. Is it wrong for the United States to seek vengeance for the murder of the 5000 innocent people who died on September 11? Should we, as a country, turn the other cheek? There were those who thought the criminals who did this act should be brought to justice, but that it was wrong to merely seek revenge on Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization.

    I suppose you know where the term "shotgun wedding" originated. It has been the root of many metaphors, but it arose in a time when we assumed that a man had to take responsibility for his actions. A man seduces a maid (or vice versa), and she turns up expecting a baby. I never heard of a true shotgun wedding, because the man married the girl without the father’s prompting.

    Things happen that shouldn’t, but if we take responsibility, sometimes they can be made to work. This was realized (long before there were any shotguns) in the Law of Moses. "If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife" (Exodus 22:16 NIV). In Moses’ law, this was to be done whether there was a child coming or not.

By: Lenny Cacchio

    The Passover is a great celebration of freedom.  To the Jewish mind, it represents both the birth of a nation and the coming out of the physical bondage of slavery.   To the Christian mind, Christ our Passover became the Lamb without blemish who died and delivered us from the bondage of sin.  Jesus told us that whoever commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34), and Peter tells us that we will be brought into bondage by whatever overcomes us.

    So to both the Jew and the Christian, Passover is about freedom. When the slaves of the Old South were introduced to the Gospel, the idea of freedom from slavery fired their imaginations, and they sang the words of that wonderful old spiritual “Tell ol’ Pharaoh, let my people...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    The scriptures say what they say, and sometimes it’s hard to understand why.  There was a time in Egypt when a couple of Israelite women told very deliberate lies and were honored for it.   They were so honored for this that their names, Shiphrah and Puah, have been preserved for every generation since.

    Being hesitant to extol the virtues of taking liberty with the truth, I am a bit uneasy that the scriptures say what they say.  But if there were not a lesson in it for us, they wouldn’t say it that way.

    Shiphrah and Puah were midwives when the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt.  In spite of their position of servitude, the Israelites were a prolific lot and began to outnumber the native Egyptians.  ...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    I am a proponent of immigration, but only of the kind that follows the rules.  I’m not just speaking of the rules of the country.  Those are important rules too, although those rules seem to be too porous for proper enforcement.  Rather, I am talking about an ancient law that is surprisingly wise in its intent and application.

    The books of Exodus through Deuteronomy are very much a codification of the basic law of an ancient nation.  They contain hundreds of civil laws and judgments that clearly pertain to an ancient culture, but quite often would be impractical to apply literally to a 21st century culture. 

For example, there is an interesting tidbit from the civil code found in the book of Deuteronomy: “You...

By: Lenny Cacchio

"The Message" is a modern semi-translation, semi-paraphrase of the Bible. I neither endorse it nor condemn it because it is like most Bible versions - a sincere attempt by fallible human beings to present the words of scripture in understandable English.

One passage from "The Message" nails a concept in a way found lacking in most translations. "All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, He brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us." (II Corinthians 1:3-4, The Message)

The phrases...

By: Lenny Cacchio

    Instant access to information on the internet is certainly one of the blessings of our age.  In a fraction of the time that it once took, we can read about the geography of Madagascar, research the veracity of the latest urban legends, check the value of our investments, look for employment opportunities, listen to the President’s latest speech and the opposing party’s reaction, and learn about the latest alternative energy sources.  We can buy a best-seller, download music, research the trade-in value of our cars, chat with a stranger in Finland, argue politics with someone in New York, buy tickets to Las Vegas, and ask advice on anything from homeopathic medicine to the deciphering of logarithms.      All of this we can do...

By: Allie Dart

 

    "What is the most serious threat confronting teenagers today? It’s promiscuity and pregnancy" according to Insights, March 2, 1998. How did this happen? Our society is constantly redefining morality and overlooking the standard whereby we should base our morals.

    But should society be the standard for basing our morality? A counter- culture movement hit our nation throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Students protested what they considered to be repressive of women’s sexual pleasure, which was to be kept within the walls of heterosexual marriage. Medical contraceptives were ushered in, taking away the fear of pregnancy for the free-love movement. This movement told us that premarital sex releases people...