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Into This World
Jesus told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world and Pilate didn’t get it. He asked Jesus if this meant that He was a king. Jesus answered:
“You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37, ESV)
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The Hardest Part
The hardest part about Christmas is not shaking off the lingering effects of tryptophan at 2 AM while shopping on Black Friday. The hardest part is not squeezing SUVs into compact parking spaces at the mall or outjoying cranky checkout clerks. The hardest part is not choosing the perfect (and budget fitting) gift for the picky person in your life. The hardest part is not securing the tree straight in the stand.
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Rabbits with Greek Names
We finish our Omnibus class discussion on The Histories: The Landmark Herodotus in the morning. The long intestines of Herodotus measure more than 700 pages followed by 21 appendices and a hundred more pages of indeces. The rabbit trails in this book get more attention than the timeline, but I don’t want to split hares. At least most of the rabbits had Greek names.
I did not read the whole thing.
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Stuck in the Driveway
We should take the Lord’s Table seriously because the Lord Himself does. He “fences” His Table, He protects it from abuse, not always at the table itself, but afterward, which does cause much effect. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. … Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
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Holding Out the Sharpie
The disciples demonstrated their ignorance when they assumed an invariable connection between the man born blind and a specific sin in John 9. Not all human pain can be interpreted as punishment for a particular sin. We, like the first disciples, need to think before we speak so knowingly about the causes of someone else’s effects.
Does that mean that no suffering can be traced to a specific sin? Obviously not.
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Minor Chord Carols
We sang “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” last Sunday morning as we prepared for communion. It is one of those fabulous minor chord carols that goes great on a cold winter night wrapped in a blanket or getting warm around a fire. It feels so good to feel so bad believing that something so good is about to break forth. This is the same sort of suspense and tension that connects with the Lord’s Table.
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Lying Stands Out
I’ve always been impressed by the trifecta of imperatives in Colossians 3:5-11. After telling the believers to set their minds on things above (3:2) and before urging them to put on a heart of kindness and love like Christ (3:12), Paul commands the Christians to 1) put to death what is earthly, 2) put away anger and inappropriate talk, and then 3), stop lying.
Killing sin is serious. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness warrant God’s wrath and must be mortified.
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The Nature of Sacrifice
In John chapter 8, Jesus addressed the Jews in Jerusalem who didn’t believe that He was God’s Son or that He had been sent by the Father and would soon to return to His Father. His proof may seem odd to us at first.
Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he….” (John 8:28, ESV)
Why is it that Jesus’ otherworldly identity would be confirmed when He was “lifted up” to die?
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Practice Proves Parentage
A son’s deeds demonstrate the son’s dad. Sons do what their dads do not only because they share the same nature, but also because they watch their father from the front row. Sons take on the mannerisms, values, habits, and sins of their dads. So we can connect sons to their fathers by their behavior.
Many sons don’t like this. Many sons see the sins, or just the shortcomings, of their dads and vow never to do the same.
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Our Own Orphan Sunday
November 4th was Orphan Sunday. We planned to have Andrew Schneidler speak about The Children’s Law Center of Washington at TEC that day until I realized that I would be out of town. I’m glad we waited. For that matter, while I’m thankful for the Christians who have coordinated a campaign to raise awareness about the global need for fathers to the fatherless, we aren’t limited to raise awareness on one Sunday only.
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Take It to Heart
God wrote through the apostle Paul, “Believe the gospel.” God wrote through the apostle James, “Prove your belief.” In chapter one of his letter, James exhorted his readers to be doers of the word and not hearers only (1:22). He addressed three doings of doers in the very next paragraph, three works to watch to discover if one’s walk is worthless or worshipful.
First, “if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless” (v.
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The Larger Conflict Arc
Last Sunday was Veterans Day in the United States. This national holiday was established by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, one year after the end of World War I (in the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month) to celebrate the soliders who served during the war.
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.
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Raking Face
I was listening to a message a few days ago that dealt with our need to repent from sin rather than adjust our definition of sin in order to protect our sin. I paused my run, got off the treadmill, and gathered all the kids together, along with Mo, for a confession.
I know that it’s important to show our kids how to respond, not merely tell them how. I know that yelling at them to stop yelling is an ineffective, let alone ironic, approach.
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Right Behind Isolation
One of the great virtues in Scripture is hospitality. Faithful families in the Old Testament received visitors into their homes, sometimes hosting them for days, providing for and protecting their guests. The apostle Peter urged his readers to “show hospitality to one another without grumbling” (1 Peter 4:9). Paul identified hospitality as a necessary qualification for elders in a church (1 Timothy 3:2).
Hospitality includes welcoming, receiving, hosting, and providing for guests.
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Our Last Names
Many men have made the following observation: we–the people–always get the candidates that we deserve. That perspective is put forward by both unbelieving and believing political pundits. For Christians, the conversation relates to our worship and how our worship relates to our culture.
The biblical principle is that we reap what we sow. The candidates on our ballots are the cream of the crop, so to speak, the fruit of a culture.
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An Accountability Table
The Lord’s Table is a table of community accountability. By God’s grace, our local church has not yet needed to remove anyone from fellowship due to church discipline. He has guarded our flock from gross, ongoing, unrepentant sinners. We have been able to enjoy the sweetness of communion without too much sadness.
This is fellowship worth preserving, worth protecting, and that means that not everyone is invited. In particular, when professing brothers refuse to repent from their sin after they have been personally, lovingly, and repeatedly pursued, they may be formally uninvited from participation.
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Four Bases
I started reading The Odyssey last week. This is yet another book I’m sure I was assigned and am even more sure I ignored. Like Roy Hobbs said to Harriet (sports star serial-killer) Bird, “The only Homer I know has four bases.” While the poem hasn’t “knocked the cover off the ball” for me yet, I’ve still got a couple thousand more lines to swing at.
The part of the story that provoked this post finds our hero, Odysseus, stranded on the island of the Phaiakians trying to get back to his wife, Penelope.
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God Never Wants to Say No
I don’t always want to forgive someone who has sinned against me, at least not immediately. I know the verses about God forgiving us as we forgive others. I know the parable about how my offenses against God are far greater than any offense against me and that, if He forgives me, then I certainly should forgive a lesser offender. I know a lot of biblical truths about forgiveness and yet that doesn’t always translate into my obedient, ready response of forgiveness.
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His Kids' Table
We’ve all been to family events where the table wasn’t big enough to fit everyone. When I was younger, I remember throwing a fit (on more than one occasion) at being relegated to the “kids’ table.” Looking back, I think that the kernel of my desire to be included was good. What I failed to grasp is that was being included.
My parents could have left me at home, could have left me in the car, could have left me in the kitchen doing dishes.
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Guilty of All
The apostle James explained our comprehensive accountability to God in his letter.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. (James 2:10).
Of course this affects our confession of sin since, even if we’re doing every other part of the law but we find one sin, then we must admit complete guilt. If a man dies of a heart attack, it doesn’t mean he died in every way he possibly could.
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A Real Mess
Soldiers gather to eat in mess halls or mess tents. In this setting, the word “mess” does not refer to clutter or disarray, though it may eventually look that way. Mess comes from an old French word, mes, meaning “portion of food” or “meal.” The French word comes from the Latin participle missum meaning “something put on the table.” “Mess” eventually appeared in English during the 13th century identified with “liquid or cooked dishes, like soup or porridge.
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Ready to Run
The author of Hebrews urged his readers to join him and “run with endurance the race that is set before us.” While our leg of the race is ahead of us, we know what sort of race it is by looking behind us. The “great cloud of witnesses” are done with their runs, runs that included conquering kingdoms, enforcing justice, escaping the sword’s edge, and putting armies to flight. Others had less visibly successful runs, being tortured, mocked, imprisoned, stoned, sawn in two, and other afflictions.
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A Glorious Certainty
Nothing is more certain in a Christian’s life than change into Christlikeness because He loves us. It doesn’t always feel like it. Sanctification is a dig-your-fingernails-into-the-rock-and-hang-on climb, but it is guaranteed. Christ purchased our passage from justification through to glorification. Paul stirred the Colossians with the purpose of Christ’s work:
He [Christ] has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.
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Joy That Cannot Be Lost
Jim Elliot famously journaled, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” There is much wisdom about forsaking temporal things for eternal things in Elliot’s quote. I think the same truth applies to forsaking sinful things for righteous things: “He is no fool who repents from what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
When we choose sin we choose a fool’s paradise.
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A Great Misunderstanding
God is not against a certain sort of misunderstanding. When the Lord delivered Israel out of Egyptian bondage, He instituted an annual feast for them to remember what He did. It was called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or the Passover Feast, a commemmoration that the death angel passed over the Hebrew families on his way to kill all the firstborn from Pharaoh’s house to the farm.
A common concern with religous externals is that, after a while, someone new will come along who won’t know what all the ceremony is for.