"Ancient Feasting Implications" - #389

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Hello!

I hope you had a great weekend.

The State of California just created a web site database for sex offenders.  It's called Megan's Law and the list is located here: http://meganslaw.ca.gov.  We are going to send a letter in the regular mail to each of the 1,248 offenders who live in our city of San Diego.  This letter is going to include some encouragement from the scriptures, a gospel message, and an invitation to my church.

We are going to send 100 letters per month, so this project will take one year.  It will cost approximately $40/month for the postage, paper, and envelopes.  If you would like to support this ministry, please contact us.  We would be happy to have stamps, envelopes, or money in order to buy these things.

This week, we launched JCSM's Top 500 Christian Forums!  If you have a forum or want to visit some interesting ones, please visit http://jcsm.org/top500.  We already have over 25 members in our free, traffic sharing program.  If you're interested in joining, please go to the site and we have all of the details there.

We have five new Christmas songs in our chords, lyrics, and MP3 archive.  This brings our online total to 22.  You can read, print, and hear some of them here: http://jcsm.org/Songs/Christmas/.

A local church puts on a "Bethlehem Village" event each Christmas and we went this weekend.  My daughter liked petting the animals, riding a llama, and seeing the puppet show.  If you have the chance to enjoy a similar event, you should.  It was a pleasant break from our normal recreational events!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas this Saturday.  Take some time to reflect on Christ's birth and you'll be blessed.  Remember the true meaning of Christmas!

Many Christian bands are having concerts on New Year's Eve.  Knott's Berry Farm is having one in Los Angeles and there are surely many others.  Let me know if you're looking for one or if you want to know if there is one in your area.

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Welcome to the new readers of this message!  Here is your Devotion, A Moment of Introspection, JCSM's Challenge, the Word of the Week, a faith-builder from "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained," and the Quotes of the Week.  Have a fantastic week and God bless you!

Love in Christ,

Jason Gastrich

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JCSM's Weekly Devotions (click here to listen!)

"Ancient Feasting Implications"

Deuteronomy 12:5-7  "But you shall seek the place where the LORD your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His dwelling place; and there you shall go.  There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.  And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice in all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, in which the LORD your God has blessed you."

Genesis 26:28-30  "But they said, 'We have certainly seen that the LORD is with you.  So we said, 'Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a covenant with you, that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace.  You are now the blessed of the LORD.'  So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank."

Genesis 31:52-54  "'This heap is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I will not pass beyond this heap to you, and you will not pass beyond this heap and this pillar to me, for harm.  The God of Abraham, the God of Nahor, and the God of their father judge between us.'  And Jacob swore by the Fear of his father Isaac.  Then Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain, and called his brethren to eat bread.  And they ate bread and stayed all night on the mountain."

Matthew 26:26-28  "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body.'  Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you.  For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.'"

John 21:12-14  "Jesus said to them, 'Come and eat breakfast.'  Yet none of the disciples dared ask Him, 'Who are You?'—knowing that it was the Lord.  Jesus then came and took the bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish.  This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after He was raised from the dead."

Romans 12:20a  "Therefore, 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink;'"

Hebrews 13:2  "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels."

Insight: Eating meals was a very important part of ancient Jewish social, legal, and spiritual life.  They entered into covenants during meals.  They communed with God.  They enjoyed each other's company.  Even enemies were to be given food and drink and nobody was to be left out; especially because they could be an angel in disguise.

Commentary:  Adam Clarke comments on ancient hospitality.  "Hospitality was a very prominent virtue among the ancients in almost all nations: friends and strangers were equally welcome to the board of the affluent. The supper was their grand meal: it was then that they saw their friends; the business and fatigues of the day being over, they could then enjoy themselves comfortably together."

Prayer: "Dear Lord, help us to share what we have.  Remind us that meals are important times.  Thank you for wanting us to keep our promises to You and renew them.  Let us remember all we say to You and all You have said to us.  Thank you for our friends and families.  Bless them and let us enjoy our social time with them.  Thank you for those serious meals where we conduct business matters and make covenants.  Let us see things as You do and help us to understand how they were.  In Jesus' name, Amen."

America's Foundation

The Constitution of the State of New York (1777), stated:

"The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed, within this State, to all mankind: Provided, that the liberty of conscience, hereby granted, shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness."  - 1777.  Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333, 341-343, 348 (1890).  David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 68.

Preamble of the Constitution of the State of New York (1846), reads:

"We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom: in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Constitution."  - 1846, Preamble of the Constitution of New York.  Tim LaHaye, Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1987), p. 93.  Benjamin Weiss, God in American History: A Documentation of America's Religious Heritage (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 155.  Gary DeMar, The Untold Story (Atlanta, GA: American Vision, Inc., 1993), p. 66.

A Moment of Introspection

Have you ever thanked God for not getting you what you wanted?

Eat a meal with a friend!  This may seem mundane or easy.  However, many of us neglect to slow down enough to eat with a friend or even our own family.

God bless you as you meet this week's challenge!

mishteh (Hebrew, see Genesis 19:3): drink, banquet, feast

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained

"The Skeptic's Annotated Bible" claims:

Genesis 19:4-5, 24-25 - God kills everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah. This was because, so say the Christian Right, some homosexuals lived there.

"The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained" responds:

Don't forget what sodomy means.  Plus, God had said (much earlier in Genesis 13:13) that these people were very wicked and unrepentant.  It seems that God gave them plenty of time to repent, but they didn't.  How much time should people get to repent?  How long should they hurt themselves and others before God says "enough"?

(This explanation came from "The Skeptic's Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained", by Jason Gastrich.  This book is on CD and explains over 3,000 difficulties regarding the entire Bible at http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.org.  There is also a 300 question workbook that accompanies the CD-ROM.)

Listening, watching, and reading are good ways of learning, but not as good as speaking, doing, and writing.

There is no such thing as Christian and non-Christian music; just Christian and non-Christian lyrics.

A pat on the back is only about 12 inches from a kick in the butt.

Don't worry about what people think of you because what people think always changes.

You can never be more right than God.

In Heaven, you're not going to earn money, argue, or suffer.  You're going to worship God.

When you have a situation where you can complain, you can also be thankful or try and learn from it.

Complaining has no spiritual value at all.

Complaining prolongs the time you wait for blessings.

Atonement = at one ment

God has already equipped or will equip you to do all He wants you to do.

The teacher needs to experience the truth before teaching it.

Genesis is the book of beginnings.

Exodus is the book of exit from Egypt.

The singular name for God is El.  The plural form is Elohim.

Instead of complaining about what we do not have, we should be thankful for what we do have and think of solutions to the problems we see.

The Ark of the Covenant was made of wood that symbolized humanity.  This wood was covered with gold that symbolized deity.

These quotes came from God, me, Doug Flutie, and Miles McPhearson.

Do you need more quotes?  We have thousands in our archives!  They are located here: http://quotes.jcsm.org.

These quotes can be used for sanctification and fun.  Most of them are directly based on scripture and scriptural principles.  Some of the quotes are humorous or rhetorical, others are written from sermons and Bible studies, and some are lyrics from songs.  If you’d like me to go into more detail on any of them, please email me.

Like most verses in the Bible, they can be debated.  To use what I’ve written in the most beneficial way, try and trace them back to the scriptures and apply the true principles to your life in a meaningful way!  Please don’t sell my quotes or publish them for profit.  If English is not your first language, you may not understand some of the quotes.  I'm sorry, but some of them are English metaphors and deal with multiple word meanings.  God bless you all!

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If you have never repented from your sins and believed, trusted, and accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, please email me!  I would love to share the gospel with you.  The Bible is very straightforward when it speaks about Heaven, Hell and eternal life.  If there is any doubt that you are going to Heaven when you die, please let me know today!  If you’d like to discover the biblical doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ, please go here: Audio Gospel Message - http://www.jcsm.org/godsplan/TheGospel.mp3. or the Textual Gospel Message - http://gospel.jcsm.org.

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