A meditation on Deuteronomy

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children’s children-how on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me; ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on earth, and that they may teach their children so.’” Deuteronomy 4:910

As we see in this beautiful passage of God’s word it is a command given to his gathered people he had kept to be a remnant of his Holy nation. The simple truth in this passage makes evident many things we take for granted today. In this passage there is a call to holiness for God’s people. There is a call of assurance for God’s people based on what they’ve seen the Lord do. They have visual evidence and his given promise to them, that he will keep them all the days of their lives. There is a call to make disciples and and teach generations upon generations about who their God is. The call is for the people of God to have children and teach them. In an age today where we question the truth of everything it overflows into the lives of young Christians. In my life as a 23 year old I’ve met a small handfull of Christians who even desire to have children.  So many push of this call of marriage, and children as the main means in which God makes disciples. This is a great travesty knowing that I’ve been grafter into this beautiful truth and history of our world.  Secondly in our nation we slaughter millions of babies with abortion.  A terrible travesty that even some of God’s elect have been thrown into the fire and yet even more so we don’t even give them a chance. We sit by the wayside pretending it doesn’t actually happen or rather denying the truth that they are children and replacing it with the lie of evolution. 

We’ve replaced the clear given commands God has given to his people for all of time and worship the Baal of Peor of our generation, of feminism, and self-esteem, the idea of our best self actulaized therapuetic life now. As we are called to fight when needed to fight we now replace Grace for peace, peace the means at which it costed the Son of God so that we could be made right. Why shall we not believe what was already attested to, proclaimed, and happened? Why are we letting the gods of this nation prevail against are God who is the real and only God? This verse today shows me again Christ greatness that we are adopted sons into the covenants and we can now fight with total assurance. Let us carry forward and proclaim who our God is, and obey his statutes.

For quality amusement,

Watch this video from Flight of the Conchords,

Living Honestly

Hebrews 3:7-18 “Therefore, as the Holy Spirity says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ Take care brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfullness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” (ESV)

This passage in Hebrews  is written to Christians who were in a time of trial. The letter is reminding them that they can find all sufficiency in Christ. This passage in Chapter 3 is the start of the qualification of Jesus being the great and better Moses. The people in the wilderness walked with Moses out of Egypt and consistently would go astray. They wouldn’t just become lost due to error, but would intentionally rebel. It pains me to not see many exhortations in the Church today, like this one. The problem we all have in us is sinful hearts, and our hearts were the reason Jesus had to die. The acknowledgement of suffering should be familiar with us as a body in the Church. It makes me weary and nervous to see Christians who aren’t suffering but rather are living, “their best life now.” I typically am a man who is depressed by nature, I look around and even before I was a Christian saw the brokenness of the world. I knew of the terrible evil that existed, but opted out to blame it on everyone else.

One area as Christians and part of cultivation that needs to happen is living honestly and openly about our sin. It is no surprise nor total shock when we come to find out about our sin. The exhortation in verses 7-8 sum it up, “Today, if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” We have to be listening for the Holy Spirit’s voice telling us what we need to do. The way we come to resist the hardening of our hearts is the one anothering that goes on within the body. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called, ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (verse 13) It should be our understanding that each of us may have fallen today, and that we need restored in order to restore the fellowship we have with Christ. This should be a sobering, and heart breaking truth. If we don’t have this mindset we should ask God to change it and lift the scales of our eyes. It will lead to a “pessimistic,” or “depressing” period but ultimately will produce life and conquer death and lead to joy. Psalm 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” If we never come to have this attitude, and working of the Holy Spirit, then we are either faking it or relying on some other idol to act as our functional saviour.

Romans 5:3-5 “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

As God’s chosen people we hope and rely on this promise of the Holy Spirit given to us. If we have looked soberly to make sure of our calling and election we know that we can rest and find rest in our great God. We know that Jesus is the great and better Moses and conquerer, and our King. So if we live honestly and deal with our sin, knowing Jesus is King and Lord of our lives we will not only produce fruit that leads to life, but will share with the world the one thing that can help their souls. This is my hope and prayer.

Return to blogging.

Now that I am at a place spiritually where being fed will depend more on individual exertion, I plan to start blogging more and more.  I don’t know if anyone reads my blog, but hopefully it will be encouraging and edifying for someone.  New blog post to come out this week.

A poem, The Student Union

Clip-clop Clip-clop
Open-close Open-close
People walking, talking, a steady flow.
That distinct sound of pots and pans clanging in the background.
The priest walks by saying, “This place reminds me of an airport”
Life, vitality, study, study, eat.
So many faces drawn with a careful finger.
Sensational smiles, somber frowns, observant stares.
Like a ca-boos of an old train engine life pumps.
Chug-a-chug-a chug-a-chug-a
A building of glass, and a restaurant style bench.
Bright faces with youthful longings in their eyes.
The custodians cleaning, bare the face of failure;
They’ve seen this world.
Ambition is at the core.
I think back to when my Father created this world, the terrible darkness shortly-thereafter.
The golden glorious ray of hope when his Son saved the world.
My Father let’s us live.
Chug-a-chug-a chug-a-chug-a
God doesn’t take our lives.
Ambition is at the core.
Everyone has a purpose-a motivation.
But is it because God has saved them?
The Sons of God, the elect sit in this room.
Is it her? Is it him? The girl with the pink headband, brown hair and a distinctive patch of freckles on her nose?
Brother Paul says it’s because they suppress the truth.
He is right.
My heart grows heavy and sad, I don’t want them to die.
Jesus can save their lives.

The Lord Reigns

The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strengthat at his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. Your throne is established from of old: you are from everlasting. The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring.  Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is majesty! Your decrees are very trustworthy; holiness befits your house, O Lord, forevermore. 

 

 

A Psalm for the day.

Flight of The Concords

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The importance of words.

John 1:1-5(ESV)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

John in his gospel (good news) is referring to Jesus Christ,  the Holy anointed one who became flesh and dwelt among us so that by faith and faith alone in him we might be saved and reconciled to our creator.

Studying words, language, literature is one of my favorite things to do in this life.  I have been blessed with the ability to read and understand words.  I have been meditating lately on how important words are.  God spoke the world into existence using words. (Genesis 1)  The serpent tempted Eve and deceived her using words.  Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s word, his command which was spoken to them.  All the prophets spoke to the people of Israel using words.  Jesus was the word made flesh and is God’s word incarnate.  The Holy Spirit working as the triune Godhead inspired the written word of God to be given to us today so that we may learn about our creator, redeemer, saviour and Lord. 

I plan on teaching High School English and today in this generation words are slowly becoming obselete.  Most people speak in short words, texting, blogging, email, voicemail the expression of written language is slowly becoming outdated and undervalued.   This is not merely a proposal to save langauge but a reverent thankfulness to God’s ordained use of words.  I thank God that Jesus came as the word and died on the cross for my sins and resurrected conquering sin and death giving me new life by the free gift of grace he has given me.  Because of my disobediance to God’s word I should have endured the fiery wrath of hell, but now am saved by the perfect word Jesus Christ.  

Proverbs 2:1-5  “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”

Words are so important and they can be either words of truth or lies.  It is my privilege and duty to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ  with words.  I hope that my future as an educator will be a lifelong of sharing words and language and showing students how important words really are.

 

“But men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. A person rejects the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed’ (John 3:19-20)

After reading Tim Chester’s book Total Church I gained much insight to Apologetics. There is a chapter about apologetics in a postmodern society.  Mainly about the common issue of why using apologetics will only get us so far.  Here is a quote from Frederich Nietzsche,

“It has gradually become clear to me waht every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconcscious memoir; moreover that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy have every time constituted the real germ of life out of which the entire plant has grown.  To explain how a philosopher’s most remote metaphysical assertions have actually been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to ask oneself first: what morality does this (does he) aim at?  I accordingly do not believe a drive to knowledge to be the father of philosophy, but that another drive has, here as elsewhere, only employed knowledge (and false knowledge!) as a tool.”

‘This is a quotation from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in many ways the supreme manifestation of modernist thinking, But, as Nietzsche recognizes with characteristic honesty, all philosophy, however rational, is ultimately a justification for the way we want to live our lives.  And modern people want to live their lives without God. So they construct a world-view in which God is either marginal (deism) or non-existant (atheism).  Aldous Huxley says: I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption…The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusvely with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do.  For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation…from a certain system of morality.  We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust.  The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.” 

In this quote from Huxley and also Total Church explains this is the cry from our friends and family members who justify their sin in this postmodern world with a relative argument.  I like how well Total Church explains this fact and how the bible already covered this in Psalm 14.  Total Church writes, “This should be as no surprise to readers of the Bible.  The fool in Psalm 14 who says in his heart ‘there is no God’ is not ignorant.  They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no-one who does good’ says the Psalmist.  What prevents us from knowing God is our rebellion against him.”

 Total Church sums up their point and it is the Bibles point too, “The problem is not that we cannot know God.  The problem is that we will not know God.  It is a problem of the heart rather than the head.”

 This is really refreshing to me again to see where God in his perfect wisdom outlines why people don’t come to him and how I can help to cut away peoples lies and guide them to Jesus.  It comes down to the simple thing of confronting people with their sin and offering them Christ. 

I Heart Huckabee!

Catchy name but that which I speak of is Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.  A great quote I came across in USA Today further compelled me to align with his character, USA Today asks Huckabee, “When asked if he thought Jesus would support the death penalty, Huckabee said, “Jesus was too smart to ever run for office.”

Indeed much wisdom and great thought has come from this presidential hopeful.