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.