Posted by admin on January 20, 2012
Mark 14:27 “All of you will desert Me, Jesus told them.”
“We see in this verse, how well our Lord foreknew the weakness and infirmity of His disciples. He tells them plainly what they were going to do. “All of you shall desert Me.”
Let us take comfort in the thought that the Lord Jesus does not cast off His believing people because of failures and imperfections. He knows what they are.
He takes them, as the husband takes the wife, with all their blemishes and defects, and, once joined to Him by faith, will never leave them. He is a merciful and compassionate High priest. It is His glory to pass over the transgressions of His people, and to cover their many sins.
He knew what they were before conversion: wicked, guilty, and defiled; yet He loved them. He knows what they will be after conversion: weak, erring, and frail; yet He loves them.
He has undertaken to save them, notwithstanding all their shortcomings. And what He has undertaken He will perform.
Let us learn to pass a charitable judgment on the conduct of other believers. Let us not set them down in a low place, and say they have no grace, because we see in them much weakness and corruption. Let us remember that our Master in heaven bears with their infirmities, and let us try to bear with them too.
The Church of Christ is little better than a great hospital. We ourselves are all, more or less, weak, and all daily need the skillful treatment of the heavenly Physician. There will be no ‘complete cures’ until the resurrection day.”
(J. C. Ryle, “The Gospel of Mark”)
Posted by admin on January 18, 2012
George Foreman was Tebowing before Tebow
One of my favorite athletes of all-time is George Foreman. I don’t follow boxing like I used to and even have some qualms about it since my conversion but I have always loved the sport and George Foreman is certainly amongst the greatest champions of all-time. Watch Foreman’s first fight against Joe Frazier on YouTube and all you can say is, “scary”. Who can forget Howard Cosell’s, “Down goes Frazier!” “Down goes Frazier!” “Down goes Frazier!”
George lost the title he won from Frazier to Muhammad Ali in Zaire in 1974. A short time after that he lost again to Jimmy Young. After that fight in the dressing room George had a near-death experience and spoke of being in a place of utter despair. In that despair he acknowledged God and said he was pulled out of the terrible place he was in and coming to he began shouting that Jesus Christ was alive in him.
One might wonder if George had taken to many head shots that night but the subsequent years would prove that something significant had happened to him. Everyone who knew him said that he became a different man, no longer angry and violent but gentle and happy.
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Posted by admin on January 6, 2012
Jeremiah 42:5-6 “Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with which the LORD your God will send you to us. “Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the LORD our God to whom we are sending you, so that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the LORD our God.”
Jeremiah 43:1-2 “But as soon as Jeremiah, whom the LORD their God had sent, had finished telling all the people all the words of the LORD their God– that is, all these words–Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie! The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘You are not to enter Egypt to reside there’…”
Think about the great people of faith the Bible tells us about, the people that I am sure we all say we want to be like. We say we would love to have the closeness with God that they did. What brought these people close to God? Was it a primrose path that God had cleared of every difficulty and challenge? Were they close to God because God always granted them their own way or spoke to them what they always wanted to hear?”
Let’s consider God’s message to some of these people:
Abraham: Leave your family and by the way, I’ll tell you where you are going later. Send your son Ishmael away. Lay your son Isaac on an alter and offer him as a sacrifice to Me.
Hagar: Submit to Sarah.
Isaiah: Walk around naked and barefoot for three years.
Moses: Return to Egypt and confront Pharaoh. You will not enter the Promised Land.
Hosea: Marry a prostitute.
Mary: Bear the shame of a pregnancy before marriage; risk the loss of your betrothed.
Paul: Suffering and persecution await you.
Jesus: No, the cup will not be taken away.
May I ask you, Does the God you believe in ever say anything unpleasant to you?” Do you want to know God and obey Him badly enough to receive from Him the word you did not want to hear?
The god who only ever tells you what you want to hear is not the real God but an idol created by your own sinful heart. May God give us His grace to listen to what He would say to us, pleasant or unpleasant. To have God we must be willing to hear both.
Posted by admin on January 5, 2012
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Declaration of Independence)
Like it or not, atheists must acknowledge that the founding fathers of our country declared in our great Declaration of Independence that our self-evident right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes from the Creator.
How can government speak of these rights, uphold them and promote them without reference to the Creator? How can this be done without violating the so called separation of Church and State?
Further, seeing that this founding document declares that these rights come from the Creator do atheists forfeit a claim to these rights? If our fathers said they come from the Creator and atheists deny the existence of the Creator can they claim the rights attributed to His existence? Does their personal choice to deny God’s existence carry more weight than the corporate declaration of the founders that there is a Creator and our rights come from Him?
To show the extent of the folly we live under, how can public schools rightly teach our children about our unalienable rights? Would they not have to make reference to the Creator? Wouldn’t this require a discussion in our schools that includes God? What if a student asks who the Creator is?
Lastly, isn’t it interesting that amongst the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a pastor, John Witherspoon? Have you ever been to the Capitol? Can you walk through that building and leave believing that our forefathers intended that God not be recognized in public and political life?
Today’s atheists and advocates of separation of Church and State are revisionists of history, they have had to lie about and distort history to accomplish what they have in our day. But try as they may, there is the Creator in the Declaration and our three-fold American rights are inexorably linked to Him.
Atheists love to be logical so let’s be logical. Our fathers have declared that our rights are from the Creator, no Creator, no rights. Let the teeth gnashing begin.
Posted by admin on December 30, 2011
Acts 5:29 “But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.”
As of New Year’s Day 2012, same sex civil unions with the permission of the State of Delaware become possible. We are quite aware of the rejoicing that will take place as many declare that the state has given them this long awaited legal privilege. Governor Markell has spoken, speaking of the law he said…
“…it serves the greater good to speak out and oppose bias, prejudice or outdated laws that ‘lessen any one of us.’”
It appears that being judgmental isn’t wrong for some people. Apparently it isn’t wrong to call people who hold the Bible as the Word of God, “biased”, “prejudiced” and “outdated”. Sorry, a slight digression, back to the matter.
The State of Delaware has granted permission for people of the same sex to join together in union and has made a moral declaration that this union ‘serves the greater good”. But we have a dilemma, God has said otherwise. God has not permitted such unions but forbidden them, He has not called them good but sinful:
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Posted by admin on December 23, 2011
This past week the world seemed to rejoice as two females kissed each other in the traditional “first kiss” as one sailor chosen by raffle is selected to greet and kiss a loved one first upon arriving in port. It would seem that our President, his administration and the armed services would have us believe that the embrace of these two females is the moral equivalent of the long famous sailor and nurse kiss which took place on V-J Day in 1945.
If you doubt there was anything intentional here, the media and those in the LGBT community are touting this as “The kiss heard round the world”. World, here is the message: America is shedding the shackles of its Christian, moral foundings and we have finally seen the light. We have made a discovery (what it is, I don’t know) that proves that all our former laws against sodomy were wrong. Not only this, but we are correcting virtually every nation before us in every age that condemned this behavior. They have all been wrong for thousands of years and America under the Obama administration is setting humanity right.
President Obama is determined to have sodomy acknowledged as the moral equivalent of the God ordained male-female relationship. We recently learned that the Obama administration will use U.S foreign aid as leverage against countries that outlaw homosexual behavior. If you take a moral stand against this behavior forbidden by God, that condemns itself with disease and death and would lead to extinction if we all embraced it, the U.S. government will not give you financial aid. Truly we are governed by sons of darkness.
The world holds two photos before us, a man and woman on the left and two women on the right and insists that they are moral equivalents but are they? Let’s see…
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Posted by admin on December 19, 2011
Proverbs 27:23 “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.”
After coming home last night from evening service and a full day of instructing others in the Word and things of God, I read my devotional for the evening. Some sobering moments as I felt reminded by God that those who call others to examine themselves must be careful to do the same. Is all well between God and you? By His standards? Take some moments now to look to Him, confess any sin you are conscious of and seek His grace to remain on the narrow way. May God give us His grace and keep us in His grace that we will be able to stand before the Son of Man on that last and Great Day:
Luke 21:34-36 ” But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
“Every wise merchant will occasionally hold a stock-taking, when he will cast up his accounts, examine what he has on hand, and ascertain decisively whether his trade is prosperous or declining. Every man who is wise in the kingdom of heaven, will cry, “Search me, O God, and try me”; and he will frequently set apart special seasons for self-examination, to discover whether things are right between God and his soul.
The God whom we worship is a great heart-searcher; and of old His servants knew Him as “the Lord which searches the heart and tries the reins of the children of men.” Let me stir you up in his name to make diligent search and solemn trial of your state, lest you come short of the promised rest. That which every wise man does, that which God himself does with us all, I exhort you to do with yourself this evening.
Let the oldest saint look well to the fundamentals of his piety, for grey heads may cover black hearts: and let not the young professor despise the word of warning, for the greenness of youth may be joined to the rottenness of hypocrisy. Every now and then a cedar falls into our midst. The enemy still continues to sow tares among the wheat.
It is not my aim to introduce doubts and fears into your mind; no, verily, but I shall hope the rather that the rough wind of self-examination may help to drive them away. It is not security, but carnal security, which we would kill; not confidence, but fleshly confidence, which we would overthrow; not peace, but false peace, which we would destroy. By the precious blood of Christ, which was not shed to make you a hypocrite, but that sincere souls might show forth his praise, I beseech you, search and look, lest at the last it be said of you, “Mene, Mene, Tekel: thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”
(Charles Spurgeon: Morning and Evening December 18 evening reading)
Posted by admin on December 15, 2011
Acts 21:8-14 “On the next day we left and came to Caesarea, and entering the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, we stayed with him. Now this man had four virgin daughters who were prophetesses. As we were staying there for some days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands, and said, “This is what the Holy Spirit says: ‘In this way the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’”
When we had heard this, we as well as the local residents began begging him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” And since he would not be persuaded, we fell silent, remarking, “The will of the Lord be done!””
As I walked into Kmart yesterday there was a woman at the Salvation Army kettle ringing a bell and singing Christmas hymns beautifully. “That’s nice” I thought. On my way out this same woman was on her cell phone and I could not help hearing her talk as I walked by making mention of the sermon she had preached the Sunday before.
Many might take the passage at the head of this post as a justification for a woman to preach I mean the passage tells us that Philip the Evangelist had four daughters who were prophetesses…
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Posted by admin on December 14, 2011
John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
“The plain meaning of these words is, that our divine Savior really took human nature upon Him, in order to save sinners. He really became a man like ourselves in all things, sin only excepted. Like ourselves, he was born of a woman, though born in a miraculous manner. Like ourselves, he grew from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to man’s estate, both in wisdom and in stature (Luke 2:52). Like ourselves he hungered, thirsted, ate, drank, slept, was wearied, felt pain, wept, rejoiced, marveled, and was moved to anger and to compassion. Having become flesh, and taken a body, He prayed, read the Scriptures, suffered being tempted, and submitted His human will to the will of God the Father. And finally, in the same body, He really suffered and shed his blood, really died, was really buried, really rose again and really ascended up into heaven. And yet all this time He was God as well as man!
Nowhere, perhaps, shall we find a more wise and judicious statement than in the second article of the Church of England. ‘The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin of her substance: so that two whole and perfect natures, were joined together in one Person, that is to say, the Godhead and the manhood were joined together in one person, never to be never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very man.’” (J.C. Ryle from: Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of John)
Posted by admin on December 13, 2011
Philippians 2:5-11 “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
While the great majority of people will say they believe in Jesus, I wonder how many know the Jesus of Scripture? I fear that many have based their understanding of Jesus on what they have been told by a Discovery Channel documentary or from a Newsweek or Time cover story about Jesus in which often liberal theologians and educational experts gather together to define Jesus from a darkened understanding and unbelieving heart.
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