I recently went on a 2-week Nova Scotia ride with 8 members of CMA (Christian Motorcyclist Association). It was a wonderful trip, and we all had a great time. I had gone on another Canadian trip a couple years ago, also with several members of CMA. Then, Al, the Wilmington NC chapter president sent an email out to the chapter asking if anyone wanted to join him and Cliff on a bike ride to Newfoundland. I had just moved to Wilmington NC from Southern Maryland and hadn’t joined the chapter yet and really didn’t know anyone, but I wanted to go so I quickly responded before even telling my wife. We went on that trip a few months later and it gave me an opportunity to get to know very well the five others that went on the trip. Nothing like an intense two-week time together to get to know each other.
For those that have ridden on group rides with me, you may know I like to listen to audio books while I ride. I love to read, and when driving a car or riding my motorcycle, I can’t read, so I listen. On the Newfoundland trip two years ago I listened to two books of a trilogy fantasy series that had about 70 hours of listening time.
On the more recent Nova Scotia ride, I decided I would listen to the Bible being read. I starting with Matthew and listened through Revelation, then I went back to Genesis and continuing from there. Similar to the experience of getting to know new friends on the Newfoundland trip, listening to that much scripture over a short two-week period helps one get a good visual overview of the Word, and its message.
Now, I’m not saying what I learned was a deep understanding of the Bible. But, what I am saying is that one very clear message came through. The Bible, both the Old and New Testament together tells a very clear story of the Gospel.
Isaiah, in chapter 53, tells how the chosen people, Israel, could not obey God, not in the least.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
From the very beginning, man could not and would not follow even the simplest of God’s rules. In the Garden of Eden, Adam did the only thing God forbade him to do. God even told Adam if he did that one thing, he would die. Even knowing that Adam still disobeyed God.
Adam was thrown out of the Garden of Eden, man became more and more disobedient. Cane killed his brother Abel. Man became so evil and removed from God that God decided to destroy all of mankind in a flood, except for Noah’s family. Not even then did man follow God. One of Noah’s sons continued in his evil ways and sinned against his father.
Abraham was a man of great faith, he loved and believed God. When He became so angry at the sin of Sodom and Gamora he destroyed those cities and saved only Abraham’s nephew, Lot, his wife and two daughters. As Lot and his family were running away from the destruction, Lot’s wife apparently with second thoughts about leaving her life in Sodom, looked back and she perished as a pillar of salt. Lot’s daughters were no gems of righteousness either. When they resettled with their father, they got him drunk and slept with him, not once, but each of them did so separately.
God had promised Abraham that he was going to make his descendants a great nation. Abraham’s decedents had moments of faithfulness but still abandoned the worship of God for other gods and man-made idols.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they didn’t even get across the Red Sea before they were complaining to Moses, accusing him and God of bringing them out of Egypt just to kill them. Then after experiencing the love and power in God’s rescue through the Red Sea from Pharaoh, they didn’t even wait for Moses to come off the mountain with the Ten Commandments before they were again worshiping a god of their own making, the Golden Calf. But God had mercy on them, again. When Moses presented them the Ten Commandments and the Law, God made a covenant with Israel. God wanted his people Israel to be a beacon to the world of how great their God was to attract the other peoples of the world to God. All that Israel had to do was obey God’s law, which was now written down in detail.
God’s grace remained with them as they turned away from God, over and over and over again. Israel’s refusal to be faithful to God caused them to be taken into captivity again and again, when He brought them back out of captivity, they still disobeyed and worshipped other gods.
Every time God gave Israel another chance to be his bright and shining star, they failed. In listening to Israel’s history, it got to the point that I wanted to move beyond the historical books to the poetic books. It is really discouraging to see how we, and I count myself as one right there with Israel in their disobedience, just could not obey God for more than a very short time. God called King David a man after his own heart, yet David, while following his own lusts, committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of the leaders in his army. She became pregnant. David’s way of covering up his sin was to try to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba to make it look like it was Uriah’s child. That didn’t work so David ordered him murdered by having him killed in battle. Even King David whom God promised that the Savior of the world would be his descendant, couldn’t live without disobeying God’s law.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome telling them that the Jews did have a special standing with God. They were entrusted with the oracles, the very Words, of God. But what advantage was that?
Romans 3:9-12
What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
Despite man’s inability to follow God and his laws, He still gives us His grace in offering his Son in our place to pay the consequence for our inability to follow him and for all the sins committed by everyone in the world. Everyone.
John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
If you come from a good loving family, you know your parents love you. All kids disobey their parents, and good parents forgive them, over and over again. There were consequences for my kids as they were growing up. When they disobeyed, they knew up front they would be punished. They also had a very good idea how severe that punishment would be. The most severe punishment was a spanking. There were only two things that would result in a spanking; lie or defy me or their mother. Even when my kids had disobeyed and I had to discipline them, they were still my kids, still my own and I would do anything for them, anything to benefit them.
Our Father in heaven made that same promise. Obey and things will go well, disobey and trouble follows. In the end, when we had enough history to prove without a shadow of a doubt that we were incapable of obeying, God came himself and stopped the horrible cycle. This is the Gospel, the Good News; “He sent His Son, Jesus, to live the obedient life you and I cannot live and to die the innocent death you and I cannot die, that we might be His own.” *
Alan W Richey
alanrichey@gmail.com
CMA Knights of the Light
Chapter meeting Sept 6, 2018
* ©The Rev. Dr. Samuel David Zumwalt, STS
szumwalt@bellsouth.net
http://www.societyholytrinity.org
St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
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