Ezra: The Prequel

One of the most popular Bible reading schedules is the M'Cheyne Reading Plan, which takes you through the Bible in a year. It has four readings a day, two from each Testament. The Old Testament starts with the book of Ezra, which is not an easy place to start if you don't know the back story. Ezra begins at the end of the captivity of the Jews and the return of the remnant back to Jerusalem. Because of a host of sins, the Lord punished them with 70 years of servitude and captivity in Babylon starting with the sacking of Jerusalem. The Lord promised and it came to pass, as it always does (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:9-10).

The deportation of Israel happened over the course of several events before it was all said and done (2 Chronicles 36). After the great King Josiah died, his son was put on the throne, but he only lasted a few months. Pharaoh (to whom Judah was paying tribute after defeating Judah in Josiah’s last battle) put his older brother on the throne, Jehoiakim. But suddenly, Babylon overthrew Egypt as the world power and came to Jerusalem and took the best of the young men they had to offer. Daniel was part of this captivity. Wicked king Jehoiakim plotted against Nebuchadnezzar, but that plan backfired because Nebuchadnezzar comes conquerors him.

Jehoiachin was next in line (yes, lots of strange "J" names, but to be fair, he would probably think Bob was a strange name) and was just an 18 year old boy and reigned for just 3 months before Nebuchadnezzar took him captive and then put Zedekiah on the throne, while he plunders Jerusalem taking the treasures from the temple and the king’s house. He took all the princes and the mighty men, and the craftsmen and left the poor and the working man behind.

Jeremiah told Zedekiah to remain under Nebuchadnezzar’s power, because that was the only hope (Jeremiah 7), but he doesn’t listen, and tries to join with Egypt to defeat Babylon. Everyone knows better than the preacher! Nebuchadnezzar hears about it and he is not one to put up with rebellion. His army surrounds Jerusalem. Jeremiah pleads with Zedekiah to reconsider (Jeremiah 36-37), but right before the battle, Egypt comes up and gives Judah some hope, but to no avail (Jeremiah 37:5-10). Lamentations chapter 4 tells the story of the 18 month siege and the horrors of what happens to Jerusalem.

This time, Nebuchadnezzar finishes the job. He burns the city, tears down the buildings, the walls, and leaves it in ruins. All the men who told Zedekiah not to listen to Jeremiah were slain. Anything of any value was stolen and what wasn’t pilfered was destroyed.

Nebuchadnezzar was powerful, but he wasn’t God and isn't going to reign forever. Daniel had a vision in chapter 7, concerning the world powers. After Babylon, the Persians would rule. And they did. Ezra 1:1, "Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia…"

So, if you are going to try the plan Saturday, this refresher might help. 

Hate, From a Distance

I've spent my entire life not caring about what Bette Midler thought on any subject. But, in this age of instant information, the ramblings of an elderly New York woman, using the fool's microphone that is Twitter, caught my attention. The alleged entertainer fired up about Joe Manchin said, "What #JoeManchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible. He sold us out. He wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate, and strung out." She apologized a few minutes later, and so, with the spirit of the grace of and kindness of our Lord, I'll forgive her insult. But it can be instructive to learn from other people's mistakes, so we avoid making them ourselves.

Don't let your mouth run ahead of your brain online. I'm sure Midler thought she was making a brilliant point but didn't realize her contempt for her fellow countrymen would be poorly received. "He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbour: but a man of understanding holdeth his peace," Proverbs 11:12. It's malicious to hate people you have never met based on stereotypes, but it's the work of a fool to let everyone know. Jesus said, "for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh." Don't get caught up in the Two Minutes of Hate and let the media drive you to despise other human beings for their financial gain. Philippians 4:8, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

Besides that, it was a poor tactic. Proverbs 18:19 says, "A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle." The worst way to win someone to your way of thinking is by insulting him. Once you've left the arena of ideas and entered the playground of childish insults, you've ended any chance of convincing them of their error or winning them to your side. Are you in a heated discussion and trying to persuage someone you are right? You might be able to land a few zingers and win a battle, but they'll close up like a castle, and you've lost the war.

Midler doesn't want the country to be "backward." The Bill she wanted passed included expanding taxpayer-funded abortion. In her mind, progress includes ending the lives of inconvenient baby humans and making me pay for it. Is that moving forward? If so, no thanks. Backward is the right move if you are heading off a cliff. West Virginia has lots of problems, but Midler doesn't have the answers. If progress means treating people you disagree with politically with hatred, then I'm happy here in The Mountain State.

Found and Lost

 

In 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei saw something curious through the telescope he made – four stars traveling around Jupiter. Stars in the sky are not novel, but stars traveling in the opposite direction as the others were intriguing. Galileo realized they were not stars but moons, and they rotated around Jupiter with such precise regularity, you could set your clock by them. Before cell phones worked their magic, you had to set your clock by some standard, something fixed. Imagine (or remember) a world where it took a lot of work to set your watch if you lost time. Jupiter's moons were that reliable, and the regularity of the moons was so precise you could calculate longitude by them. 

In the 1600s, there was no reliable way to find longitude. Latitude was no problem, but you need a standard to go by with longitude, something fixed (Longitude lines get smaller as you move toward the poles and are not the same distance apart as the parallel). If you are in the middle of the ocean, how are you going to be able to find your bearing? At the time, the only conceivable way to calculate longitude at sea was to know the exact time in a fixed location, compare it by the time on the ship, make some calculations of the time difference to find your bearing. But the problem was timepieces in the 1600s were large and couldn't keep time at sea because of temperature and atmospheric pressure changes. Besides, if a clock lost a few minutes every day, you'd be hundreds of miles off course by the time you crossed the ocean. And, there was no reliable way at the time to look through a telescope with the regularity needed to keep on track. Plus, sometimes it's cloudy. 

Galileo made a fantastic discovery. We learned about the universe, found moons we didn't know existed, and we saw the faithfulness of God in keeping in motion distant moons on uninhabited planets hidden far from the eyes of man 365 million miles away. Psalms 8:3-4, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" We have studied and learned much about the world we live in, yet so much is undiscovered and scarcely understood. It wasn't until the 1700s when John Harrison built a clock that could keep time at sea, that we could know where we were or how big our world was. With all of our technological advances, we can know our location in the world with GPS because we can shoot satellites into space. We can see off into the distant stars and keep time in perfect sync. We found something fixed in the wonders of God's creation through technological advances and forgotten the God who created all and holds all things in motion. We found our bearings of location and time but are lost without Christ. 

Grudging Grace

 

Theodore Beza (1519-1605) was a French Protestant theologian who succeeded John Calvin in Geneva. Before Theodore's conversion to Christ, he acted like one not converted to Christ. Imagine that, a sinner who acted like a sinner. He was a talented writer and published some popular poetry, which contained some salacious verse, and naturally, it was published and widely read. In the process of time, God graciously granted Beza the grace of repentance and faith, and when he received Christ as Saviour, he began living for and serving his Redeemer. But books do not feel remorse, and neither can they repent. So despite his change of heart, the books remained on the shelves of worldly-minded people. Demand was high for these poems, and there was a lot of money to be made in republishing. Now ashamed of the work, Beza refused to republish, despite the potential for making a ton of cash.

Beza had some enemies, including the Roman Catholic church, because of his doctrine, being a Reformer. Years after his conversion, someone drug up the amorous verse and charged him and the entire Reformation movement as worldly and wicked. I suppose any way to attack the doctrine of justification by faith and the gospel of grace. In response to his old sins and his past life used as an attack on him and his theology, he said, "These men grudge me the grace of God."

Human nature doesn't change. A young man wrote some foolish and sinful things in public in his youth, and later in his life, his enemies dug up dirt on him and tried to cancel him. Everyone has a past. Every Christian has sins we are ashamed of, and if you are a Christian, you have repented and renounced those sins. But the enemy grudges us the grace of God. Satan is our adversary and the accuser of the brethren. If he can, he won't give our hearts and minds a moment's peace in the mercy and pardon of God. He'll dredge up old sins and rub our noses in it.

It's not hypocrisy when Beza repented then spoke against the sins of his past –  it's the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification. Jesus Christ bore the sins of his people in His own body on the tree and was the substitute for sinners. Rather than me paying for my sins, Jesus paid the debt I owed. I receive His righteousness by faith and stand before God justified, clean, and pardoned. I'm not a sinless man, but I have a sinless Saviour who gave me His righteousness. I have a sovereign Comforter who sanctifies me and leads me in the path of righteousness. Trying to cancel a person for the past they left behind is the Devil's work. It doesn't prove Christians are hypocrites, it proves that Jesus Christ saves sinners, even the worst of sinners (1 Timothy 1:12-16)  and tries to begrudge a man God's grace, that saved a wretch like me.

Pray and Praise

When I first moved to North Carolina, a long-time resident told me, "If you don't like the weather here, just wait a few minutes, and it will change." I moved to Southeast Georgia about five years later, and a local there told me the same thing. When I moved to West Virginia, you guessed it, "…wait a few minutes, and it will change." Though the weather was different in each place, it's subject to change pretty quickly no matter where you are in the eastern US. It's not uncommon to drive to work in the sunshine and drive home in a torrential downpour.

Life is like that. It can change in an instant. We can wake up expecting a typical, ordinary day, and our world is turned upside down by lunch. The opposite is true as well. You may start the day depressed and downtrodden and on top of the world by supper time. The Bible doesn't promise a trouble-free life, but sometimes it is. Jesus didn't say for nothing, "In the world ye shall have tribulation." On the other hand, remember the second clause, "but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." At the beginning of the book of Job, he had a good life. At the end of the book, he had a good life too. It was different but, in many ways, better. But boy did Job have afflictions in between. Not just hard times but severe afflictions of the greatest sort. Any one of Job's trials would be enough to break some men, but Job had one tragedy after another, after another. Affliction is when you are affected by some lengthy trial or repeated troubler. Whether bodily sickness, grief, sorrow, disappointments, loss, or continued trouble (or when you have them all at once), James gives us instructions on living through affliction and happiness. James 5:13 says, "Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms." Go to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit and find help, comfort, and grace in a trial, and when you are merry, sing psalms. There is a lot of truth in the lyric, "I sing because I'm happy." James directs our happiness to the worship of the Almighty. God ordains our steps, and when those steps are on a smooth and easy path, the wind is at our back, and the sunshine feels good on our face, give thanks by singing praise to the Lord.

A few years ago, John Piper wrote an article before cancer surgery titled, "Don't Waste Your Cancer." His point was even during a great trial, there is an opportunity to worship, witness, and live closer to Christ in suffering. We miss the privilege to live well in abundance or plenty. When you pray in your affliction, it's an act of faith knowing the Father hears you, the Lord cares for you, and the throne of grace is open to you through Jesus Christ, and singing praises acknowledges God's blessings.

Name's not Welcome

 Proverbs 22:1 A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold. It's preferable to have a good name than great riches, so I want a good reputation.  It's preferable to have a good name than great riches, so naturally, I want a good reputation. A good name is when people speak well of you, think well of you, and esteem you among men. In other words, a good name is to have a good reputation.

Jesus didn't have a good name with most people in Jerusalem. He was a troublemaker (John 10:19), a sinner (John 9:16), demon-possessed, crazy (John 10:20), and a Samaritan (John 8:48). Nor did he have a name of esteem because they wanted nothing more than to see Jesus dead (John 5:16; 15:20). "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you," John 15:18. We know eventually, Jesus was falsely accused, then condemned to die, then nailed to a cross. Jesus did not have a "good name" to the majority of the people who knew him.

 The proverb is true, and we need to apply it the right way. Otherwise, it would lead to your fall. A good name is a value judgment. When someone hears my name, they will judge by three factors:

• What they have heard about me.
• What they know about me.
• What they designate as good.

I cannot control what people hear about me because the work of the slanderer and gossip are outside my jurisdiction. I do have some control over what people know about me. My actions and my words are under my power. However, I cannot control how people interpret my actions and words. William F. Buckley once said, "that if one man pushes an old lady into an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, we should not denounce them both as men who push old ladies around." While I can control my actions and words, I cannot control how people view those or interpret them, especially when they lack context.

 The most important of the three factors is what those who judge my name deem good. God determines good and evil. A godless man has a different standard of good than God Himself. I want a good name with God. Meaning I do what God has told me to do, whether others like that or not. I want to control what I can control and make sure that I live in a way that represents my Lord and His truth. I should not court the favor of the wicked, and if I live for the Lord and his glory, I should not care what they think of me. Having a good name is not courting popularity. Some of the best names I know walked alone. If having a good name meant being liked by everyone, I'd need to change my name to Welcome because I'd be nothing more than a doormat. 

 

Public Gratitude

"Therefore will I give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and sing praises unto thy name," Psalms 18:49. Before David became king, reigning King Saul tried multiple times to eliminate the competition. More than once, Saul had David trapped and there was no way out, but God delivered David every time. After one such occasion, David wrote Psalm 18 to praise the Lord for delivering him out of the hand of all his enemies. Later on in life, David pens a variation of this same Psalm after the Lord delivered Israel from a three-year famine, and he avenged the Gibeonites, and won another war against the Philistines (2 Samuel 22). David praised the Lord in thanksgiving his whole life.

 

Thanksgiving is expressing gratitude to one who has shown you kindness, and so it must have an object. To be thankful, you need to recognize kindness and the grace you received from somewhere. You can be thankful for the kindness of others, and you ought to express that to those people while you can. But are you thankful for the people in your life? To whom do you direct that gratitude? To be truly thankful, you have to give expression to the Lord because it's, "the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." David was thankful for his mighty men, but he recognized the first cause and thanked God for his deliverance.

 

The dilemma of society is the difficult task of nursing an embittered grievance while expressing a spirit of gratitude. It’s impossible to be thankful for what you have, while resentful about what you don’t have. You cannot be thankful for the life God gave you while covetous of the things he didn’t give you. Even if God did provide you more of the things you want, you would not be grateful for them and start looking for more things not to be thankful for. Without gratitude to God, you can't enjoy the things you have now.

 

In the Old Testament, God chose Israel from among all the nations of the Earth to pour out his covenant mercy and grace. Therefore, every other nation was a heathen nation, founded on pagan principles and directed by their idolatrous worship. The Israelites were a people of privilege, blessed by God.  There were two types of people in the Old Testament, if you were not an Israelite, then you were a heathen. Paul quotes David in Romans 15:9. While preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, lost sinners will come to saving faith in Christ, and praise the Lord. These "heathen" people moved from being outside the camp to the inside and they were thankful to participate in the praise of the Lord God. David testified of God's mercy unto the lost and publically thanked God and Paul wanted to see the lost repent and join in the thanksgiving. Make your expression of gratitude to the Lord public and give God glory for the great things he has done.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Canceled?

Last year, Thanksgiving was canceled in many places because of COVID. This year, maybe we should cancel it because of a lack of thankfulness. I tried looking up some figures on the number of Mayflower Pilgrims who survived the first winter. What I found was a cornucopia of bitterness. The Pilgrims were "religious extremists" (which means they believed the Bible and acted like it) or articles about the cruelty to "indigenous peoples." I read another one about how it was the Pilgrim's politics that starved them out. The Pilgrims who settled this country were not perfect. But neither are the Puritans of Wokeness, who demand complete conformity to their ideology. I am thankful for this country and those who built it and care little for grievance mongers who want to tear it down.

The economy is bad and not likely to get better any time soon. But consider, nearly half of the Pilgrims didn't make it through the first winter due to sickness starvation. Landing in the North East at the beginning of winter, it is too late in the year to plant, and talk about supply chain issues! The IGA market opened in Clay County. I saw a news story noting this is the only grocery store in Clay County. Maybe, but there are small businesses in Clay where you can buy food. We have options. A few months ago, my family had COVID and we quarantined. The food supplies were running low, and my wife ordered groceries through a food service, and for a small fee, someone went shopping for us and delivered the food to our front porch. We had some neighbors and church members help us out as well, and I am thankful. Not only for people who were able and willing to help but that we weren't as sick as we could have been and were never in danger of starving. Imagine coming to the new world, with no shops, no stores, and facing a winter alone in a wilderness. And then coming out the other side, thankful. Not angry. Not bitter. But thankful to be alive, to have another day.

The Lord has shown our nation that there is a God in Heaven who does what He pleases. He humbled us with the virus, but we turned it into a means of political manipulation and fighting. We lifted up athletes and sports as gods and THE God took that away for a year, and we come back more defiant and bitter than before. We pride ourselves in our military power, and God humbled us in the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco. We pride ourselves on our economy and abundance, and God shut that off rather quickly. What's next? How long will we defy the living God? Marxism demands angry and bitter people. You cannot be thankful if your heart is full of envy of someone else's, "privilege," or, as I like to call them, blessings. I'm not ashamed of what God has blessed me with and won't apologize for God's kindness to me. "In every thing give thanks," 1Thessalonians 5:18. 

Uncharitable Charity

It's that most wonderful time of the year. The season when organizations guilt people into giving to their non-profit organizations. Soon, we'll start being reminded of "tax-deductible gifts" as we near the end of the calendar year and that without your partnership, the world may end, or something like that.

Am I a Scrooge? A heartless rapscallion? A cynical scoundrel with a heart as black as coal and twice as hard? I'm certainly not against charity, nor against (some) charitable organizations. I am opposed to entities who are more concerned with the organization than they are with the charity. It's hard to talk about missionaries and money, or how charity work isn't always charitable, or social justice isn't usually justice without sounding cold. But, allow me to mention all three topics.

In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul, a missionary, had a job. He worked "night and day" so that he wouldn't be chargeable to anyone as he ministered to them. This wasn't always the way he operated and isn't the best way (1 Timothy 5:17-18) but Paul sacrificed for the furtherance of the gospel. So, he practiced what he preached, and he preached on working. In verse 10, Paul said, "If any would not work, neither should he eat."

Is Paul also a Scrooge and heartless rapscallion? Didn't Paul have a dime to spare a brother? Anyone who has ever read the Bible knows God's people are to care for those in need (James 2:14-17). Jesus himself fed the hungry multitude. He could have fed the multitude every day if he had wanted to, but He did it only twice. We are to care for widows and orphans, but orphans do grow up and sometimes widows don't need charity (1 Timothy 5:11). Paul isn’t saying that if an octogenarian widow with two bad eyes and a missing leg isn’t working 80 hours a week, she’s lazy and should starve (1 Timothy 5:3;5).

Social justice says to take money from the wealthy and give it to people who don't have as much. But that's not justice at all. If a man is able-bodied and doesn't work, justice is for him to be hungry because he's the rapscallion. I'm all about helping those who need it but giving to a lazy man isn't charity. The word charity means love, and it's not loving to let a man live in sin and a man ought to be ashamed if he doesn't provide for his own (I Timothy 5:8).

I want to be loving. I want to give (2 Corinthians 9:7). I want to help people. But we should ask ourselves, what is it to help people? Is it helpful to perpetuate sinful behavior? Is it loving to allow men to continue in the patterns of life that keep getting them into the messes they are in? The "charity" in Charleston seems to have increased the homeless problem. Is that loving? Sometimes, justice and love require saying no and letting a man suffer enough to change or at least to see there's a problem. 

Pity and Comfort

"I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none." Psalm 69:20.  The Bible testifies of Jesus. Not every single verse in the Old Testament is a hidden type of Christ, but all roads lead to the Lord. Some passages, like Isaiah 53 are explicitly about Christ. Psalm 69, I believe, points us in two directions, one to David and the other to Jesus. David talks about his sins in the fifth verse and the ninth verse is quoted in the New Testament about Jesus. When we get to Verse 21, we have a prophecy fulfilled on the cross when the Roman soldiers gave Jesus vinegar to drink. What’s happening here? The Psalm looks at King David as a human man, born in sin and Jesus, Son of Man, in his humanity, yet himself without sin. Some verses are only talking about David and some are only talking about Jesus and serve to contrast the two. Other verses could apply to both. I believe verse 20 is such a verse.

 Think about the Lord Jesus, in such a pitiable state, but found no pity. In a desolate situation, but there was none to comfort him.  No arm of flesh to hold him up. No friend to ease his burden. The one who healed the sick and gave sight to the blind had none to pity him. The consolation of Israel himself without another to console him. When he asked for prayer in the garden, he could find no one among his friends to stay awake and pray. When arrested and brought to the farce of a trial, he was surrounded by enemies with none to pity him. 

 There is nothing so human, as to need a sympathizing friend in a time of trouble. There is nothing quite so dark as to endure sickness or pain alone. And our Lord, while he came to save his people, the good shepherd was alone. Jesus is a sympathizing priest and knows the pain of suffering alone. Jesus was truly man, made flesh like his brethren, and shared in the limitations and hardships of humanity. He suffered physically and emotionally, like David. Like us all. Yet Jesus did so without sin. He is the priest who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities.

 In John 16:32-33  Jesus told his disciples soon, they would be scattered and he would be alone. But though forsaken by all the world, he was not alone because the Father is with him. And because He is the sympathizing priest, he looked at those who would leave him and said, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." The compassionate Jesus, who was about to endure the greatest suffering known to man, pitied his disciples and provided comfort to those he came to save. What a savior.

 

 

 

Low Expectations

Everyone has a customer service story. It's a tough job. Eight hours a day, they only talk to people who have a problem or complaint. Working for a busy service, they may hear hundreds of complaints (some legitimate, some not), gripes, lies, and curse words a week. It's a tough job, and I'm surprised there aren't MORE horror stories of representatives who've had enough and snapped on a customer. Knowing the person on the phone may have just been called every name in the book, and a few that aren't in the book by the previous caller, I try to have some grace and kindness to the people on the other side of the phone when I have to call. That being said, some bring it on themselves. Like anyone else in the industry, some people are just bad at their jobs.

I had to call my internet provider because my service was terrible. Speed tests showed that I had slow internet by 1996 AOL dial-up standards. I called to have someone check it out, and when I told the representative the issue, I was told, "Well, you should be thankful you have internet. Some people live in places where they can't even get internet." I was dumbfounded. While it was true, I should be thankful for the blessing of the internet, I pay an exorbitant amount of money each month for a service I was not getting. I was not ungrateful, I simply wanted what I paid for.

 

I thought of that when I read an article by Micheline Maynard in the Washington Post suggesting Americans need to "lower their expectations." We are spoiled by fast delivers, fast food, and products on the shelves. The article was a bit of a political spin. Don't blame the people in charge or expect services you pay for. Lower your expectations. There's been a lot of commentary on that piece, but the funny thing is, the principle of what she said wasn't wrong. Americans have had it good for a long time. I have a box on the wall that with the push of a button, my house stays the temperature I prefer, no matter what the weather is outside. With the internet (as slow as it is) I have access to untold amounts of information at my fingertips. I can have a conversation with my wife about what we want for supper, not will we eat supper. I have it good now, but it's likely going to get tough. Thanksgiving is around the corner, and it's possible what we want isn't on the shelf or the price is so high we just can't afford what's there. Being thankful for what I have doesn't mean I must be blind to how we got here. I can both blame people in charge for their unmatched incompetence and be thankful for what I have. I can recognize God's judgment on idolatrous ungrateful people and blame foolish people for making foolish decisions that brought about the crisis. 

 

A Revolutionary Act

A pronoun is a word that replaces a noun. Without pronouns, we would speak like a second grader writes, repeating the noun over and over. "I love dogs. Dogs are good. Dogs are fun. Dogs eat a lot." Pronouns have been around as long as language. Notice the personal pronouns in Genesis 1:27 which says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." God created male and female, the Lord (he) created male, (him). If we go a few pages over in Genesis 3:6, we find some more personal pronouns, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat." With masculine and feminine pronouns for the male and female protagonists, I know what just happened. A male uses the pronouns he and him and a female uses the pronouns she and her. The husband is the male, the wife is the female.

Down south, "y'all" (a second person pronoun) is useful when speaking to a group of people where the listeners are included, but it's "they" (a third person pronoun) if it's a group of people that neither you nor I are a part of. There aren't any circumstances where "they" will work about yourself, because "self", is an individual, a distinct, single person. Of course, there is the majestic plural, or sometimes known as the "royal we" but that should be reserved for monarchs who can speak of themselves as "we" but since we still live in a constitutional republic, it's best to leave the plural pronouns for when there are at least two people, or if you are demon possessed. Mark 5:8-9, "My name is Legion: for we are many."

The fad of choosing pronouns can't last because the whole premise is built on the idea of denying the truth. John McWhorter, arguing for a brave new world of pronouns, wrote, "for thousands of years, in the ancestor of most of today’s European languages on the Ukranian steppes…its speakers were using pronouns that sounded roughly like “me,” “you,” and “we” (not to mention the “tu” familiar from French and Spanish). That’s how hardy pronouns are." But, McWhorter misses the point, and I blame his atheism. Pronouns are hardy because they reflect basic truths of reality. It's just a fact there are two sexes, male and female, and you are either one or the other, and that won't ever change. The only way this will catch on is if it's enforced with a heavy hand. It's hard to force people to deny reality, even with constant propaganda and social influence. It's the Devil who is the father lies. "For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth," 2 Corinthians 13:8.

Bitter Soul

 

It's strange, the things you think about at a funeral. My grandmother passed away last Sunday at the age of 88. I recalled a time, when I was just a small boy, visiting her during the summer. It was hot, and I was thirsty. On the top shelf of the fridge were these very small cans of juice. I never had pineapple juice before and to my great delight, it was delicious. In fact, if memory serves, I had at least another couple before I left. My next visit, I went straight to the fridge, opened the can and turned it up and then almost threw up. I ran to the sink and spit the rest out and tried to flush the taste out of my mouth. Some people (including my grandparents apparently) like the taste of grapefruit juice. But, when you’re a boy, expecting the sweetness of pineapple, grapefruit is a dreadful surprise.

 

Grapefruit juice may be the opposite of pineapple. One is very sweet, the other very bitter. Grapefruit has a bite, it's a hard, pungent taste. We can think about the bitterness of the soul the same way.  Notice how Paul, after contrasting the walk of the world to walking in the spirit, concludes this section in Ephesians 4:31-32, by setting bitterness against the Christian spirit, "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." Bitterness of soul is the opposite of being kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving.

 

A bitter person starts out angry. It could be justified, someone could have sinned against them. It could be unjustified, or they could be angry about some perceived injustice that didn't really happen. Some people have sinful anger at funerals, because their loved one is gone, and they don't like it. When anger is never dealt with, it sits on the shelf of your heart and spoils. God gave us anger for a reason. Anger causes you to react, and it's true purpose is to do good,  whether to defend the helpless, to defend the faith, or to bring people to justice. Though sinful anger doesn't have a righteous purpose, it still has to be dealt with. Anger (good or bad) doesn't have a long shelf  life, so when you hang on to it, feed it, think about it, your anger grows, spoils, and turns to bitterness.

 

If someone sins against you and they don't pay, there's no catharsis. You hang on to that anger, waiting for the day of wrath. Then you are bitter and will start being bitter about everything. A Christian, who has been forgiven of great sins ought not to have a bitter soul. The scowl of a bitter person doesn't match tenderheartedness. Bitterness will never pass with time, you have to "put it away" by turning to Christ. Repent, believe and be set free.

 

 

 

 

Assaying a Sermon

 

Somewhere around 1380 BC,  King Burraburiash of Babylon wrote a letter to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhophis IV about a shipment of gold they received. Burraburiash thought the delivery was suspect and had his people put the gold in the fire to test it and three quarters melted away. They were apparently swindled with counterfeit gold. This is the first recorded account of fire assaying. The ancient process is still used today for analyzing and determining the ratio of precious metal in ore. Though today, the King of Babylon would have just taken a sample of the shipment, rather than putting the whole shipment in the crucible, the principle is still the same. Fire assaying (to over simplify it) is putting the precious metal in a crucible at around 2,000 degrees to separate the precious metals from the slag. As soon as people started minting coins, bad guys started making forgeries. Then everyone had to test their money. You might think you have an ounce of gold but instead have a gold plated chunk of lead.

That's the idea Paul had when he said, "prove all things," in 1 Thessalonians 5:21. It's not just coins that are counterfeited. Since the fall, as long as there has been truth to declare, there have been counterfeiters trying to make a profit on the cheap. Put all things you hear to the test to see if what someone is telling you is the truth or a lie. You have to be aware and on guard. Unfortunately, you can’t believe everything you hear. If a preacher got behind the pulpit, opened his Bible then began to tell Christians to follow the example of Jeroboam and make a golden calf and place it just before the door of the building so the members can bow and give thanks to Baal before coming to Sunday school, I suspect that wouldn’t fly. That’s a counterfeit, but not a very good one. A good counterfeit looks and feels the same as the original copy. The dangerous false preacher is the one who has a message that is 99% truth but adds 1% of false gospel, which turns out to be no gospel at all.

That’s why you have to “prove” all things. Separate the precious from the slag. Don’t believe every word you hear, especially when someone tells you they have a word from God. We put everything to the test by the Bible (Romans 12:1-2) to compare what people are saying God said by what the Bible says. The false teachers in Galatia were right in the doctrine of the church, baptism, sin, and many other truths. They preached that salvation was by grace, through faith in Jesus. But they added one thing –  you also had to be circumcised. So in a sermon of 5,000 words, 4,950 could have been right on the money, until they added that one work to the gospel, which made the whole a damnable heresy. Be careful out there, prove all things.

End of Romans

Wednesday nights, at Buffalo Valley Baptist Church, I am generally preaching through a book of the Bible. I try to make each sermon stand alone, meaning I don't recap the previous message and then preach until I run out of time and say "I'll pick it up next week." If you were to come and visit us on Wednesday nights (please do, all are welcome!) you would hear a message, not a running commentary. Last Wednesday marked the 100th and final sermon in our series on the book of Romans. I only mention it, because the world is a different place than when we began Romans 1 two years ago. When we started the book, there was no COVID-19 and wearing masks in public in West Virginia was against the law. It didn't take long for the whole world to change,  but it did. Who would have believed me if I would have said, in the first message, that before I got to the end of the book, some state governments  in the United States would shut down church services, businesses would be shut down and the economy would be wrecked  because of a world-wide strain of virus that came out of China.

Prophets had a hard job, didn't they? I mean, it's easy to comment on events as they happen. You'll have people agree with you and disagree, but punditry isn't that hard. But think about the prophets who warned the kings of Israel of God's coming judgment, when the economy was roaring, the military was strong, and the borders were secure. Judgment? Famine? You're crazy. The prophets foretold the judgment when there was no reason to believe it was coming. Come to think of it, where were the prophets in 2019?  Aren't some of the TV evangelists (i.e., charlatans) supposed to be prophets, getting fresh revelation from Heaven? Here was a sure enough  worldwide catastrophe, and not a peep. I  wouldn't be surprised if they decreed and declared 2020 would be the "year of blessing and harvest."

 

The world changed, but the Bible didn’t change. I didn't switch gears when COVID-19 broke out because I didn't have to.  I didn't need to make retractions or revise my opinions. God's word was a comfort to us, it strengthened us, it fixed our minds on eternal truths. I didn't need to abandon preaching through Romans. Sure, I applied the truth to our lives in light of all that was going on. Romans 13, it wasn't theoretical. God guided us in how he wanted us to live. It was comforting to know that "all things work together for good," when life wasn't. It is encouraging to know, "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." I just kept on preaching God's Word to God's people because what Paul wrote in the book of Romans is still true and has not changed, even though the world did.

 

Power in the Pulpit

 

I recently preached a sermon on "Powerful Preaching" from Romans 16:25-27. I was looking for a quote by Jerry Vines in his book Power in the Pulpit. I logged into a digital book service, queried "powerful preaching" and clicked the wrong link.

I opened a book by Liz Shercliff called Preaching Women: Gender, Power and the Pulpit. I was curious and wanted to see what the lady preacher had to say about powerful preaching. I read the book, so you don't have to. 

"This is a book by a woman preacher, for women preachers, about women’s preaching. One of my ambitions is to challenge some traditional thinking and practice.

Thought showers among ministers and those training for ministry tend to focus on themes of teaching, feeding, inspiring, challenging and comforting. At root such models adopt a ‘preacher knows best’ stance. Authority might be attributed on the basis of: knowledge: because the preacher has studied commentaries and read erudite books and worked on the text for some time….

The assumption is that the preacher knows more than their hearers do about the matter in hand. And so preaching becomes the transmission of knowledge from one person, the one who has it, to other people, the ones who don’t. The preacher is at the centre of the preaching model, as disseminator of the word to their hearers. The preacher decides what needs to be said. The preacher chooses what points to make.

It is a patriarchal privileged power paradigm of preaching.

I define preaching as ‘the art of engaging the people of God in their shared narrative by creatively and hospitably inviting them into an exploration of biblical text, by means of which, corporately and individually, they might encounter the divine’. Here, the preacher is host. The table to which people are invited has been carefully laid, taking into account who will be there and what they need. A meal has been carefully selected and meticulously prepared. It is both a communal and a personal event. Guests are welcomed in, conversation will flow – sometimes among just a few, sometimes as community. It will be a unique experience for all."

 

Jerry Vine's book was about powerful preaching, but her book is about power (authority) in the pulpit. She's not in favor of it. Paul, the arch villain of liberals everywhere, said people would be strengthened and changed by preaching in Romans 16:25-27. The Greek word Paul used does not mean "the art of engaging people in their shared narrative," but rather, "that which is proclaimed by a herald or public crier, a proclamation by herald." It doesn't surprise me in the least that a rebellious woman, who chose, as a profession, to rebel against God and His order, redefines preaching in her own image. It's hilarious to me that her woke feministic example of a woman preaching is her in the kitchen making supper.  

"As a woman preacher, I have found the idea of preacher as declarer of truth, possessing words from God to be delivered direct, hard to espouse."

 As a Christian, I found the idea of a lady preacher hard to espouse.

 Doesn't the Bible speak about women being silent in the church in 1 Corinthians, and isn't 2nd Timothy pretty clear on the matter? HA! You would say that wouldn't you. One simply cannot read the Bible and believe what it says. One must insert the text into a historical construct, only then can you understand the text is saying the opposite of what anyone with reading comprehension can clearly see in the text. She finds the idea of a preacher as a declarer of truth a difficult pill to swallow. So rather come to the conclusion that she wasn't made to do the job, she decided it was better to continue her rebellion and twist the scriptures. It's the Bible that must be wrong, not her.

"Paul, on the other hand, was an old-school Pharisee. He had been raised with a patriarchal narrative – he was a Roman citizen, structure and hierarchy were important; he was a Pharisee, keen on racial purity. Perhaps there was more than theological concern alone behind Paul’s instruction. Given that we have only one half of the conversation, it is impossible to put the whole into a context, but I wonder whether we take seriously enough Paul’s call, to both his sisters and brothers, to be mature in thinking: ‘Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking … in thinking be adults (1 Cor. 14.20).

Despite this, by the time the second letter to Timothy was written (at least 60 years after Paul’s death), an imperative against women’s leadership had crystallized. Canonization of the New Testament worked against women, for it came at a time when they had no voice; they were trapped in a vicious circle."

 You don't deny Paul said what he did, you shake your head at his old fashioned notions. Had Paul lived today, I'm sure he would have been more sophisticated. Besides, we don't know what the Corinthian Church asked him, so it's really a mystery. As for Second Timothy, that wasn't Paul (don't read 2 Timothy 1:1) because it disagrees with my paradigm, so it had to be written after the Patriarchy had already got their death grip on the churches.

 "It is not enough to dismiss [the Bible] as hopelessly out of date or irredeemably sexist, as some have done. It will not do to accept some bits but not others. Even if we fail to see it, others will surely notice a lack of integrity in a position that encourages us to ignore some biblical texts while taking others at face value. Taking the Bible at face value, we surely conclude that women should neither lead nor preach. Between these two poles, we must, as women preachers, find a coherent, authentic stance about the Bible."

 At least she is honest about her approach of deception. She uses Christian Feminist Theology as a system to interpret the text. Some of the terms she uses come from Critical Theory. She comes to the Bible as a "victim" of the patriarchy, and filters everything through that context. You read yourself into the Bible and if the Bible disagrees with you, find a way to explain it away, or just blame man, preferably a white man. Don't ignore the Bible, she says, rather reinterpret in a different light.

 Satan didn't deny what God said to Eve, that if she ate the fruit she would die, but he just said God was wrong. Eve had to look at the command of God from a different "power paradigm." God had power and didn't want Eve to have it too. You just have to adjust your way of looking at things, and then do whatever it is you want.

 The only problem with this approach, is it's wrong. Sooner or later, you'll come face to face with the Truth, and give an answer to Him.

I Believe in Science

I believe in science and I'm a Bible believing Christian! Science, in the general sense, means to know.  Noah Webster said science can also speak of "one of the seven liberal branches of knowledge, viz., grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music." We are continually told to "believe in Science" which is a denial of three of the first branches of knowledge. Science isn't something to believe in, but it's "the state of knowing." Grammatically, you believe in the scientific method or trust the research of scientists. Responding to anyone who disagrees with you by saying they "deny science" is a logical fallacy and showing deficiency in the rhetorical skill to make the case you are trying to make, because calling names doesn't change minds.

 

The modern Webster's Dictionary says science is, "the state of knowing; knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding." I believe in science because I believe in knowing things and not being ignorant. The pejorative of science denial is really a somewhat more sophisticated way of saying, "I'm smarter than you, idiot." I don't pretend to have all knowledge but not believing everything someone in a lab coat says (who also does not have all knowledge) doesn't make me a Philistine. Disagreeing with scientific conclusions based on competing data sets does not make you anti-science.

 

The Encyclopedia Britannica's article on science says, "Kepler’s laws, Newton’s absolute space, and Einstein’s rejection of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics were all based on theological, not scientific, assumptions." Having faith and knowing truth about the world around us are not competing ideas. Modern science began when men became skeptical of God and divorced ultimate truth from research. We have now arrived back to the intersection of science and religion, just as in the Middle Ages, only the religion is Science. By removing God and ultimate truth from scientific study, we have exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God as the foundation of knowledge for our own knowledge as the foundation of knowing. The Dogma of this secular religion will not be denied or you will be excommunicated (i.e., canceled). Being skeptical of scientific research of any sort does not make you anti-science. At the same time, skepticism without knowledge doesn't make you a free thinker, it could just make you argumentative. Scrolling through Facebook reading dank memes does not qualify as scientific research (not yet anyway).

 

The omniscience of God is a foundational truth of theology, once called the Queen of the Sciences. Omni comes from Latin which means "all or every" and we know what the latter part of omni-science means. God is all knowing and knows with perfect, pure, infallible, and infinite knowledge. God knows every event, great or small, every word and whisper, every heart and intention. Which is a comforting truth to those who have their faith in Christ. But consider without Christ, to have the Judge know with a perfect knowledge, your every thought. Put your faith in the all-knowing.

 

Assemble and Sing

This year I’ve had to miss some church. Though I was able to watch some live stream services, appreciated being able to listen to the Word of God preached, and was blessed and encouraged, it just wasn’t the same. I missed the gathering, the fellowship, praying together and singing together. As human beings, there are benefits to singing together. That's how God made us and we miss out on a God given blessing of our humanity by not singing together. However, God blesses in a special way when His people gather together and sing of Him. Colossians 3:16  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 

God wants his people to sing together. The only way we can teach and admonish one another in song is to actually sing. I’ve heard that people won’t sing in church because they “sing in their hearts.” But unless you have the gift of telekinesis and can admonish me with your mind, you are going to have to sing out loud. Singing with grace in the heart is referencing the person singing, not the manner. I know, not everyone is blessed with the tongues of angels and if their singing voice rang out like the sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, it would be a stark improvement, but God doesn’t say sing only if you have the pipes of an Irish tenor. Sing, because the more who sing out together the more the voices blend. Do you really think that everyone that belts out Country Roads in Morgantown has a good singing voice? I doubt it, but they still will play it on ESPN and it still sounds good. Sing out for one another and for the glory of God.  

 

 Another blessing of attending church and singing out is good songs with good lyrics they teach and admonish us. There are some songs in the hymnals that aren’t fit for public consumption because they just are not true. But singing good hymns, singing Psalms out of the Bible, and spiritual songs of the Christian life that are true teach us great things about our Lord. I learned of the Trinity and had that doctrine firmly grounded in my mind from the Biblical truth in the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy. I remember riding the school bus thinking about “God in three persons” and meditating on that truth. Blessed Trinity.  I’ve seen young men sing rap songs with hundreds, maybe thousands of words. They memorized it and internalized the song because they listened to it over and over again. Songs are easy to remember and how blessed it is to have the words of Christ in our heart, the truth in our mind and be able to sing forth praises of our God and king. What a blessing to assemble together with others who love the Lord Jesus and sing praises together. Before the age of recorded music, if you were going to hear singing, you had to assemble. I'm thankful for that technology and praise God for it, but it's no substitute for gathering and singing.

 

Psalms of, who?

I recently finished a book about the Psalms and it was frustrating work. The author has some really good insights and observations but in some passages I wondered if he and I were reading the same Bible. He spends a lot of time suggesting and offering the best thoughts of the latest scholarship and is very careful not to disagree too strongly against any wind of doctrine, but I was almost finished with the book before he hinted at his opinion. One popular thought among the scholars suggests (because they always suggest) David didn't write any of the Psalms.

These academics say the "sweet Psalmist of Israel" could not have written the Psalms attributed to him because he could not have been as sophisticated and theologically advanced as the Psalms attributed to him are, or so they say. Because critics don't really believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, they can spend their days teaching us why it's wrong. Many of the same scholars do not believe the history of the Old Testament can be trusted so they developed the "form-critical" view of the Psalms that categorizes groups of songs of praise or lament, and views them through that context. Why? Because they believe we can't trust the history of the Bible to get the context, so this is an alternative lens to read the Psalms. They view the Scripture, not as God's Word, but a historical text to preside over in judgment. These same men give credence to extra-biblical records and histories and those histories trump the Bible. The Psalms are an academic puzzle to be solved rather than God's truth to be believed.

I, for one, believe David wrote a good portion of the Psalms (Psalms 72:20). I'm standing apart from many of the learned, I know, but I think I stand in good company. Jesus believed David wrote Psalms (Luke 20:42;Mark 12:36). Peter believed David wrote Psalms (Acts 1:16; 2:25). Paul believed David wrote Psalms (Romans 4:6). The author of Hebrews believed David wrote Psalms (Hebrews 4:7). Not only did the New Testament writers believe this, but the author of Hebrews attributes a Psalm to David that doesn't have a title AND tells us it was God speaking through David as He was moved by the Holy Ghost (Hebrews 3:7). I'll believe the Bible.

This is why we must be discerning as we read the thoughts of men, no matter how much schooling they have under their belt. The best of scholars are men and all men are liars. Writing and publishing thoughts doesn't elevate thoughts and a seminary education doesn't sanctify them. A book is merely a one-sided conversation of someone's ideas and some ideas are trash. You may not read these scholars. But you might listen to men preach who have read them and are under their influence. My advice is to read the Bible with faith and read every book written by men like a textual critic, and preside over their works with suspicion.

Inherit the Wind

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, Proverbs 11:29.

I'd rather walk ten miles to avoid senseless trouble than to ride a mile into it. Eliphaz hit the nail on the head when he said, "man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," and I have more trouble in my life than suits me now, so why would I want to add to my own misery? But apparently, there are a special few who just don't have enough problems in their life so they have to get some of their own making. They must get out of bed, bored to tears, and stir up a heap of trouble to pass the time. The more likely explanation is that a fool doesn't understand the consequences of his actions. People (most people, most of the time) don't want trouble in their life but they have a funny way to go about it because living contrary to God's way is a sure fire path to misery now, and poverty for the future. Sin today troubles the house and will eventually bring it down.

 

If you bring trouble home, you are destroying the future of your own house. How can you expect God to bless your rebellion? The Lord has set before us the path of blessing and the path of judgment (Psalm 1) and having a respect for the Bible, but not following Christ's Words is going to bring trouble home. Venerating the book, but having enough dust on the cover to write "DAMNATION" across it, as the preacher said, is a sure way to bring your house to ruin.

 

You can trouble your house by who you bring home. There are many pious people who wouldn't let a blasphemer abide for very long in their living room or refuse to let a man mock God before their family, unless, of course, he's on television. That's different. Do you think you can bring ungodly people into your home night after night to instruct you and then reap the fruit of righteousness?

 

You can trouble your house by who you keep out of it. Some take great pains to keep people and trouble out of their house. They build fences, put up signs, install security systems, and have a dog on patrol. They remain vigilantly armed to the teeth ready to keep problems out, but they trouble their house because Christ is not in the home. They trust in their strength and their armory. They trust in their valiance and their bullets. But if Christ is not in the home, or the heart, then your fortress is built on sand and will crumble. God is the founder of the home (Genesis 2:23-24). The Lord is the leader of the family (1 Corinthians 11:3). And Christ is the provider and sustainer of the house (Psalm 127:1). So to shut the closet door and not seek the Lord's face in the home is to trouble the home and inherit the wind.

 

 It's bad enough to trouble your own house, but some have the gumption to try and bring trouble to the Lord's house.  The soul foolish enough to bring trouble to the Lord's house will inherit a whole lot more than wind. 

 

Seeking and Finding

Proverbs 11:27  He that diligently seeketh good procureth favour: but he that seeketh mischief, it shall come unto him. The book of Proverbs is wisdom literature, so keep this in mind as you read. It's like the man who returned his air mattress to the store complaining it wasn't sea worthy. He wanted the mattress to do something it wasn't made to do. Proverbs are not fortune cookies but wise words designed to teach us how to walk in the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 1:1-7). They are short and sweet generalized principles God gave us to help us make the right decisions in our life.

 

Our text could have a spiritual application, the child of God who serves the Lord with gladness will be rewarded in Heaven, while the wicked will get his payment in Hell. That's a truth, but I don't believe that's the truth here. This proverb is comparing people in the world who get what they got coming to them. Generally speaking, this is how the world works, but not always. Sometimes the good guy doesn't get the girl and the guy in the black hat gets away with the crime. But again, a proverb is instructing us in how to live in the fear of the Lord and giving us principles to live by and generally speaking, doing good will be a blessing and sinning will bring sorrow to your life.

 

The man who is actively working for good will procure for himself good in return. In the first half of the proverb, the person isn't looking for favor, nor is he working to get blessings, but he's diligently searching to do good. The blessing is a byproduct of what he labors for, it's the unintended consequences of doing good. I'll be honest, sometimes it's hard to do good. As bad as it sounds, a person can get weary in well doing. But I've found that doing good, even when we don’t feel like it, generally comes with its own blessing. On the other hand, the man who is looking for mischief will find it and a whole lot more. He will get all the unintended consequences that come with wickedness. We love the pleasures of sin now but hate the consequences. So when a person pursues evil, he'll find it and then get to deal with all that goes along with it.

 

So why do we do bad things? Doing the cost benefit analysis, sin costs more pain in the long run than the temporary pleasure you might get out of it – but we do it anyway because that's our nature (Jeremiah 17:9-10). Wisdom tells us to stop, but we don't listen and despite the pain it brings us, we do it anyway. This proverb proves our dire spiritual condition. That's why we need a Saviour. We need someone to make us clean and give us a new heart (Ezekiel 36:25-27). By trusting in Christ, the Wisdom of God, you can be made clean. 

The Only Comfort

The Heidelberg Catechism (or the 1680 Orthodox, if you are a Baptist) starts things off by asking, " What is your only comfort in life and in death?" I think all of us could easily answer the first part and maybe list more than a few things in this life that give us strength, hope, and consolation. Maybe it's a parent, or a sibling, or trusted friend who can help bear life's burdens. Maybe your job gives you strength and hope to keep pressing on, day after day. President Ulysses S Grant was diagnosed with throat cancer and didn't have much in the way to leave to his wife. He spent his final days writing his biography. There were days when the pain was almost unbearable and he hardly had the strength, but he pressed on, determined to finish the work because he wanted the book to be a source of income for his wife after he died. She was his comfort in life, and knowing he'd leave enough to sustain her was a comfort in the last days of his life.

But what about the second part? If we make a list of our comforts in this life, what would carry over to be our comfort in death? Your work may give you comfort now, but you can't take your job to the afterlife. Your friend may be a consolation to you now, but want about the second after you leave this world? What hope does your family provide you in your death?

What can comfort you both in life and in death? What can provide hope and assurance to me now, and when I die as a sure ground for hope and consolation? I believe the catechism is true when it says there is only one comfort that can help in life and death. "That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him."

I belong to Jesus and I am his purchased possession. He saved me from my sins and delivered me from Hell, and gave me his righteousness. I'm loved by my Father in Heaven, who chose me before the foundation of the world in love, and preserves me, keeps me, and protects me in this world and the world to come. I'm indwelt by the Comforter, my friend who seals me, guides me, and blesses me with assurance and fills me with the fruit of grace.

Fool Aware

A few weeks ago in Alaska, a man and his dog were hiking when the dog spotted a bear cub. The border collie chased the cub away, but mamma was not pleased. She went after the hiker, bit him a couple times before she gave up and went on her way. Bear attacks are rare because bears generally will avoid people if they can help it, but they have limits. Messing with her cub is one of mamma bear's limits. Earlier this summer, I preached a meeting out west, and much to the dismay of my boys (and the joy of my wife) we didn't see any bears in our travels. But I did see a lot of fools doing foolish things and that's more terrifying. Proverbs 17:12 says, "Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly." Since I was heading into grizzly country I read up on some helpful literature from the Forestry Service on being "Grizzly Bear Aware". The Bible has good information about being "fool aware."

Folly is being ridiculous, absurd, and frankly, stupid. Coming back home, we stopped at a National Park for a few hours and went for a hike on a pretty famous trail. It has a beautiful view at the end, but a tad perilous in places. Just past a sign on the path that said, "Dangerous Cliff. Keep Right," a group of impatient teenagers, who thought we were walking too slow, passed us on the left (the side with the dangerous cliff) and jumped off a rock to get around us. One girl slipped when she landed, but was able to get her traction before she plummeted to her death. I passed erratic drivers texting on their phones while driving 90 MPH. I saw people shooting off fireworks in the middle of a drought, in the middle of a dry-as-bones prairie.

God made the world and the world operates according to God's rules. Folly is when you act contrary to or in defiance of God's world. Jumping off a roof is dumb, because in God's world, there is gravity. When silly people act without considering the consequences, or without wisdom, you get a dangerous situation. Most sane people know better than to get in the way of a bear and her cubs, but don't know better than to get in the way of God and His prophets (2 Kings 2:22-24). Sinning is also dumb, because in God's world, there are consequences for breaking his moral laws too. Many cultivate common sense, but not spiritual sense. We warn teenagers about texting and driving, but don't consider where they are going or who they are texting. We caution Jonah to wear a life jacket to stay safe, but not to consider the danger of rebelling against God.

I made it back to West Virginia without any bear encounters, but plenty of fool sightings. I was in much more danger of the fool than the bear.

Mice and Men

"What do you want to do when you grow up?" I never liked that question as a child because I never thought of having a job as being something that anyone wanted to do. I wanted to play center field for the Cincinnati Reds, or be a fighter pilot, or herd cattle in the Old West. But since that wasn't going to happen, I had no idea how to answer the question. It always seemed to me like such a grave matter, a question with such finality that if you answered the question, your fate was sealed and your destiny was fixed. Once you started down that road, you could never turn back.

But often in our lives, even if we know what we want to do, the best laid plans go awry. Life doesn't always turn out like you hope. Proverbs 20:24 says, "Man's goings are of the LORD; how can a man then understand his own way?" The Christian must always live for the glory of God and commit our ways to the Saviour, and trust in his providence. We can plan, but since our steps are of the Lord and our goings are ordained by God, we can't really correctly predict how our life is going to turn out.

I read of a man who was most likely asked to leave the military because he had a drinking problem. His plan was to retire as an officer, but now out of military life, he was directionless and just couldn't seem to get his life in gear. To support his family, he started selling firewood on the street corner. His life certainly wasn't going the way he planned. Through a series of events totally out of his control and a helping hand from an acquaintance, he was given another shot in the Army. This time he did better and worked his way up the ladder. His name was Ulysses S. Grant and he eventually served as the 18th president of the United States.

Living with the understanding that our goings are of the Lord comforts the soul when life seems spiraling out of control, because in reality, God is in directs our lives. Especially when life is hard and we don't understand. Work to achieve your goals in life, but learn to roll with the punches. This truth gives us direction, as we should be more concerned with our the state of our soul. Our plans change, our lives may be drastically different from our plan, but the Lord never changes. No matter what state we find ourselves in, we can still live for God's glory. The answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up," is, for God's people, "I want to be holy, as my Father is holy. I want to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I want to be wise, understanding the will of the Lord. I want to be a doer of the Word, not just a hearer."