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Trimming the Fat
We are at the threshold of a new year, a customary and fitting time to evaluate if we were worshipping any idols over the last twelve months that should be dethroned. Call it resolutions, call it repentance, we should examine if we are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Many new year pledges seek to unseat the gods of gluttony and lethargy. So many July garage sales will be stocked with treadmills and stationary bikes onto which so many January hopes were placed.
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Sympathy and Division
Our family advent plate was full the two weeks before Christmas so I didn’t post the last two communion meditations. Here they are, combined into one post-holiday casserole. The previous weeks we considered that God, in Christ, came and manifested. He did not wait for us to get to Him, nor did He wait for us to figure Him out. He took on flesh here among us and He revealed the One who dwells in the heavens.
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Passion and Patience
In The Pilgrim’s Progress, not long after having his burden removed, Christian arrived at the Interpreter’s house. While showing Christian around the house, Interpreter introduced him to two little brothers named Passion and Patience. Passion was all a’fuss while Patience was calm, content. Christian asked for an explanation.
Interpreter told Christian that both boys had been promised gifts by their Governor at the beginning of the next year. That was not good enough for Passion who demanded all that was coming to him now.
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The Sin of Seasonal Humbug
I hate Christmas for a different reason than I used to. I used to hate Christmas when I thought I was more of a saint. Now I hate it because I know how much more I am a sinner.
Christmas used to provide a great platform for my self-righteousness. My strong seasonal humbug spiced up my holiness. Obviously, I was so serious about Jesus that I couldn’t be dragged down into the fray of shopping and sweaters and wassail.
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What shall we call that?
The Scars on Your Forearms:
When shepherds have neglected the flock for so long, and the wolves are ravaging them, and the sheep come up with some kind of strategy to defend themselves, and the shepherds sit up on the ridge, laughing at the tactical inadequacy of what the sheep are attempting, what shall we call that?
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Merry Communion!
We are taking these four Sundays before Christmas as an opportunity for advent Lord’s Suppers. That is, we are considering how the incarnation affects our communion. Last Lord’s Day at the Table we rejoiced that God came. We can also celebrate that God, in Christ, manifested Himself.
According to John, “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18). If that’s accurate, then fellowship with Him is out of the question. But, “the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18).
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Listening to Sad Songs
Asaph wrote a sad song in Psalm 81, though not every verse sounds sorrowful. He ended by noting the kinds of things the Lord would do: “he would feed you with the finest of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you” (verse 16). The Lord provides. He also protects. “I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes” (verse 14). These sound fantastic.
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A Holiday Challenge
When we are tempted to lose heart we go back to the gospel. When we are afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down we know it is nothing new. We believe, we speak, and we know “that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us…into his presence.” This is an appropriate way to envision our future because it is based on His promise. Our future resurrection doesn’t depend on a dream, it depends on Easter.
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Why Bother?
Why bother with righteousness? Why do we desire it and why are we as believers dissatisfied without it?
Loving righteousness and sensing the lack of it is not natural, that is, the flesh isn’t motivating us. Even if we could see moral beauty, we still wouldn’t want it. We have no innate desire for or ability to do righteousness.
Wanting righteousness and mourning the lack of it doesn’t even come from Scripture.
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No Pilgrimages to Holy Places
Yesterday was the fourth Sunday before Christmas, the usual time to begin the advent countdown. It also happened to be the first day of December, so we sang a number of carols to start our recognition of the season. For our Lord’s Table meditation we considered Christ’s coming and its relation to communion, which is also the plan for the following three Lord’s Days.
How does the incarnation encourage us? First, the incarnation means that, in Christ, God came.
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When You're Jealous
One slander against the early church regarded their Lord’s Supper celebrations. Those outside the church heard words such as “love feast” (a term used in Jude 12) and figured that the Christians were doing all sorts of inappropriate things when they got together. What else do you do when you’re jealous? You make it sound as if the other person who has what you want doesn’t deserve it or isn’t using it right.
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Where Authority Belongs
It is extremely difficult not to take on the worldview of the world around us. Not only do we live in the world, we used to be of the world, and the gravitational pull of some orbits are hard to break. As Christians we are being transformed by the renewing of our minds and this is part of the reason why our worship is so important. It gets our heads out of this world.
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Gratitude Divas
The hardest part about Thanksgiving is actually being thankful. It is much easier to imagine ourselves being thankful than it is to be thankful. When we imagine sitting down to dinner on Thursday, we imagine that everyone got a good night of sleep, that everyone is getting along, that everyone fully appreciates all the work that everyone else is doing, and that the turkey is hot and moist and done just when Martha Stewart promised.
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For the Last Time
The Lord’s Table will be sweeter the last time we taste it than it was the first time. The apostle John recorded the Lord’s rebuke to the Ephesian church that they had lost their first love. But he didn’t want them to go back to the limitations of love’s beginnings, he wanted them to go back to the intensity of what was fresh.
Each week we discover fresh reasons to love.
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East and Not-East
As Christians we know that we are in the world but not of it. Navigating this relationship requires more than quoting a great verse, it requires applying great wisdom. How do we know when we are appropriately in while also not being inappropriately of? How do we live here without living like here?
We can’t address every particular right now, but we can say that worldliness is a sin that should be addressed.
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Burnout Preventative
Regarding John 15:16,
that the greater part of teachers either languish through indolence, or utterly give way through despair, arises from nothing else than that they are sluggish in the duty of prayer.
—John Calvin, Commentary on John, 122
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Chasing with A Bigger Rake
Paul quotes Isaiah 64:4 in 1 Corinthians 2:9. “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” Paul uses Isaiah to point to the work of God’s Spirit who teaches us and helps us to understand all the things that are freely given us by God (1 Corinthians 2:12).
We enjoy a variety of endowments freely given us by God, but near the roots of His grace is our justification by faith.
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Fostering Awareness
Last Sunday was Orphan Sunday. It’s not a holiday, though many churches observe it in the United States and in other countries. For that matter, November is National Adoption Month, at least here in the States. In both cases, the point is to make special effort to heighten awareness of year-round needs throughout the world.
As a church we support Andrew Schneidler and the Children’s Law Center of Washington. He is a lawyer helping make permanency possible for families that don’t have financial resources.
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All God's Fullness
What is the single most important thing you can do to grow into God’s image? Do you remember when the apostle Paul wrote about believers being “filled with all the fullness of God”? Is that even allowable? It’s an inspired description, so it must be. But how does that happen? What is the process? We’re naturally too weak to do it on our own, therefore Paul prayed for the Ephesian believers that they:
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Surprised by Sin
Even though we do the same thing around the same time in our service every Sunday morning, those who benefit most from our time of confession are probably those who are most surprised. I’m not talking about visitors. In one sense those of us who participate regularly should be more surprised each successive week that we have more sin to confess.
We are Calvinists so we have a hold on the petal of total depravity, even the one-pointers.
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A Long Thank You Note
What would our lives be like without the gospel? Only those who believe the gospel could come close to answering the question because those without the gospel live as self-deceiving slaves to darkness. They don’t know what they’re missing. Believing the gospel puts us in a better position to try not to miss all that it gives us.
Without the gospel we would be “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).
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Catching the Right Bus
At our Life to Life leaders’ meeting last Wednesday we discussed how discussions are going at our different Life to Life groups. In order to know how they are going it’s necessary to know where they are supposed to be going, and that leads me to make a couple comments.
The goal of Life to Life groups is not transparency, though we cannot get to the goal without it. What is “transparency”?
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Fruit by Derivative
Is it necessary for Christians to bear fruit? Are we required to love God and others, obey God, have joy in God, and witness for God? Yes, we are required, but we are not capable, not on our own. This is why the good news really is so good.
God does not get glory simply because He talks about transforming us and certainly not because He talks about us transforming ourselves.
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We've Got a Long Way to Go
I have never met a runner convinced that he would race faster if only he could carry a heavier bag. Runners run better by dropping weight, not by picking it up, just as a Trans Am loaded down with a year’s worth of college accumulation doesn’t get better gas mileage. Switching illustration fields, rose bushes never trimmed never bloom as much as they could.
Often we ignore these realities in our souls.
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Cooked and Consumed
I don’t remember where I read it recently1, but someone described the scene at the temple in a way I hadn’t considered before. There was an almost constant killing of sacrificial animals. More than any other color, red must have stained the mental image for any onlooker. There was blood dripping from tables, blood sprinkled on the altar, blood spotting the priests’ garments and fingers and knives.
That’s what the scene looked like, but how did it smell?