∞
Spilling the Beans onto Someone Else's Lap
It is possible to concede sin but not confess it. Or, to put it another way, a man may acknowledge what he did without acknowledging that it was his fault that he did it.
In the second year of Saul’s reign as Israel’s king, he and his small army went to Gilgal to fight the Philistines. Saul was supposed to wait there for Samuel seven days, the appointed time for Samuel to come and offer sacrifices.
∞
The Fountainhead of Antithesis
Across the front of many communion tables is the phrase, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Jesus told His disciples on the night of His betrayal to keep eating the bread and drinking the cup as a memorial until He comes.
The fall of man in Genesis 3 provides the first backdrop and the fountainhead of antithesis for remembering what Christ did in His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. To compare and contrast is a profitable mental appetizer to the meal.
∞
Passing Our Lusts Through Spell-Check
We are all amateur philologists. Philology is the study of language, and we use language to talk about everything. We type, text, speak, sing, and scratch out our words. Words are the materials that shape our relationships and responsibilities.
There are many weird and wonderful aspects of our relationship with words. One of those is how we relate to the Dictionary. Some days we submit to it. We know a word but cannot recall exactly how to spell it.
∞
It's a Big Estate
Because Adam sinned we are all born guilty. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers for question 17, Adam’s “fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.” Every man didn’t eat the forbidden fruit but, because our representative did it, all mankind is guilty in him. “One trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Romans 5:18). “[B]y the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19). The sin of one became the sin of all.
∞
Ad Nauseum Wholus Foodus
What we eat matters. God made us to eat. All sorts of bodily systems, some obvious and some more obvious when things aren’t working properly, are given by God for us to bite, taste, swallow, digest, use, and compost food.
Eating is routine and what we eat identifies us. We know it ad nauseum wholus foodus in our current context. Organic used to mean that you ate something derived from living matter, not that that’s what made your life matter.
∞
More Fruitful Than Treebeard
I gave the following address at our year-end assembly last Friday.
If you’ve read The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, you no doubt remember Treebeard. He’s a great character, helpful, slow to decide and to speak and to move, but full of conviction. He also offered tasty things to drink to guests. I’m sure his beard was quite a beauty (it was part of his name after all) and have tried to model my beard accordingly.
∞
Forty-one in Forty-one
Here are lessons I’ve learned or reasons that I’ve got for giving thanks. Also, although I did recently turn 41, I don’t have a 41 point list. Instead, in the spirit of having recently read 1984 which was written in 1948, here are 14 things, numbered but not ordered by importance.
Learned: Line diagramming is great for meditating on God’s Word. It’s my favorite observation tool to beat the meaning out of a passage.
∞
Before or After?
Most of us are familiar with Paul’s warning about eating the bread and drinking the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner. Unworthy eaters “will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27). So a person should “examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (verse 28).
Some Christians with sinful attitudes towards another person, let’s say toward their spouse, do not eat or drink at the communion table.
∞
Inching up the Triangle
I’ve heard it described before that marriage is like a triangle with God at the summit. As the husband and wife get closer to God they necessarily get closer to each other. I like the illustration well enough. It is true that the man and the woman have their own, personal relationship to God, a relationship that in many cases existed before the wedding and one that can provide support during marriage.
∞
An Interrogative Shovel
I value the Why? question. I think I’ve mostly lost the smart-alecky junior high attitude underneath the asking, but I still appreciate and utilize the interrogative shovel to dig for idealogical treasure.
The reason why God created the universe and the reason why God created marriage between one man and one woman and the reason why Christ came and died and rose again and the reason why we make disciples and the reason why every disciple belongs to the Church is the same reason.
∞
Indeed a Political Act
A happy marriage is a political act. (Note: the adjective is key in the previous sentence.) George Orwell meant as much in his dystopian novel, 1984. The totalitarian State prohibited–to the degree that they could–passionate marriages and sexual pleasure. Orwell’s main characters couldn’t vote for change but they could defy Big Brother by their adultery.
Their motivation, however, was strictly rebellion. Just do what you’re not allowed do to to stick it to the Man.
∞
Two Adams
There are two Adams that we need to know about. The first is Adam from Eden, the first man on earth, husband, father, gardener, and eater of forbidden fruit. The second Adam is Jesus, the eternally-beggoten Son of God the Father, carpenter, prophet, and sinless sacrifice. He is called Adam because He, too, stands at the headwaters of a people. Paul compares and contrasts the two in 1 Corinthians 15.
∞
An Act of Life
To riff off Chesterton, a man cannot draw a triangle with four sides no matter how resourceful a geometry teacher. A man cannot sketch a giraffe with a short neck no matter how creative his imagination. A man cannot write iambic pentameter with six feet and only four stressed syllables no matter how free a poet he fancies himself.
[I]t is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits.
∞
The Day of Resting Revelry
The Church changed the day of resting revelry from Saturday to Sunday as a recognition that Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week. Christ’s work did not change the duration of the work and rest cycle. We still work six and stop one. But there is a different order in the cycle. We rest first and then work.
This is a spiritual reality that our weekly cycle reminds us of.
∞
Baby Kittens Harnessed to a Bobsled
I gave the following address at our school’s fundraising dinner last Saturday night.
“Let not him who straps on his armor boast himself as he who takes it off.” This is either a proverb for soldiers or smack talk between them. It’s probably both and that’s probably why I like it so much. It’s wisdom, it’s snark, both of which a man can use on the battlefield. We could also use more sages and smart-alecks in the sphere of education, so tonight I want to tell the story surrounding this salty sound bite and then see if there is any application for us.
∞
How to Go Glutton-Free
Previously I took a crack at a predictable sin among dieters. In light of the abundance given to us by God, a certain sort of calorie counting and package reading panic belongs with, and nurtures, a discontent person. He is not thankful for the gifts or the bounty and he thinks too much about No and not enough about Yes.
I mentioned that I might chase that exhortation with one about gluttony.
∞
All That He's Provided
After God identified the man the woman as His image-bearers, He eagerly showed them all that He had made for them. All kinds of food were available to enjoy and to energize them in their work. They would constantly be recognizing God as they received all that He had given to them.
Likewise, after God identifies a believer in baptism, marking him as one who has died and risen in likeness to Christ, so God eagerly shows him all that He’s provided.
∞
That Big Piece of Leftover Cheesecake
I want to address a subject where angels fear to tread: dieting. I could give an amount of qualifiers named Legion. Gluttony is a sin out of the shrink-wrapped box; maybe I’ll try to tighten a belt around that later. I’m also aware that we should be good stewards of the temple of the Holy Spirit, that nourishment and activity are important. To be disciplined is not a sin. To diet itself is not to sin, but there is a certain sin that threatens dieters more than that big piece of leftover cheesecake in the fridge.
∞
More Than Thinking
One reason that the ordinances seem weird to us is that we have trouble believing that what we do in the body matters. There is plenty of mental and verbal pieces to our spiritual lives. We’re people who love prayer and Bible reading and singing and meditating on the law of the Lord. But while the Word explains the significance of the sacraments, the Word does not replace their blessings.
∞
Dinner and Devotions
As we think about how God wants us to honor Him in His image, the opportunities are surprisingly practical. In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul makes a series of arguments based on the fact that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” One result is that we can eat with unbelievers without worrying which gods they sacrifice to and, in our day, that applies even to the twin gods named Green and Gluten-free.
∞
Image Conscious
We live in a society that places a lot of weight on appearance. Red carpet events devote extra attention to what the stars wear and, at the other end of the spectrum, even those who don’t wear anything are trying to make a statement by how they look. As usual, it is not whether or not you’re going to present an image, but which image are you presenting?
Christians ought to be the most image conscious of all.
∞
The Stamp of an Image-Bearer
The most heady and holy contemplation a human can have is considering himself or herself to be made in the image and likeness of God. No other breathing, let alone lifeless, creature in the universe bears this almost impossible weight of glory. Our existence reflects our Creator beyond His skill and power. Our existence reflects something in His nature.
How might this look day to day? What sort of celestial meditation or global enterprise or eternal longings should stamp an image-bearer of Elohim?
∞
A Resurrection Relationship
If you could have whatever you wanted, what would you want? If you could define yourself by anything, what would you want said about you? There is more than one good way to answer those questions as Christians, and certainly a variety of vain answers for unbelievers. But, at least in one place, the apostle Paul wrote that he wanted nothing more than a resurrection relationship.
He listed his religious assets early in Philippians 3, reasons he had for being confident in his flesh.
∞
Every Lesson Is a Gift
What is missing most in most education? For me, my public schooling was more like a week-old donut hole: bite-size, dry, and missing much of the context. I missed many great books, in part because I didn’t read what I was assigned and in part because significant others weren’t assigned. I missed a definition of revolution and how our war against the British wasn’t properly one. I missed logic–formal and in blue jeans.
∞
The Living and the Dead
If Christ is not risen from the dead, then we are all still in our sins. Christians believe that Christ is risen from the dead, but that does not mean that all are out of their sins. Christ is risen but not all believe in Him. Those who believe in the resurrected Savior know His justifying work. Those who do not believe in Him will know His judgement.
Christians celebrate the resurrection because judgement is over.