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The Gluten of Your Family
One of the reasons God gives us fathers is so that we can learn what is good, including what is good to eat. It’s not that God expects every father to be a nutritionist, but He does provide father’s with the opportunity to be examples. Father’s will inescapably teach their children about eating, the question is what lesson they will teach.
What is a balanced meal? Who says what is “balanced” and based on what (verse)?
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A Season to Be Made More Sturdy
We believe that by the power of the Holy Spirit God’s Son became incarnate from the virgin Mary. We believe that He is now recognized in two natures, truly God and truly man, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. There is no one like Him.
We confess that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3). Not only so, we remember that Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3).
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The Goat that Went Away
A scapegoat is a powerful symbol.
In the Bible it comes from Leviticus 16. On the day of atonement the Lord told Aaron to take “two goats and set them before the LORD at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for [the scapegoat],” at least that’s how the King James Version and the New American Standard Bible translate it.
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The Spirit of AntiChristmas
Christmas is seven days closer than it was last Lord’s Day. I don’t really care if your shopping is done, or close, or not. I do care if your soul, and body, are in harmony.
We believe that God, in Christ, came in the flesh. This has been debated since Jesus’ birth, and it was an issue the apostles addressed unequivocally even in the first century.
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.
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Sing It for Yourself
You might need this today. In the spirit of colossians3:16ing, here’s Psalm 94:19 (NASB):
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me,
Your consolations delight my soul. “Anxious thoughts” translates the Hebrew word sarappim which could be defined as “the processing of information which causes distress and anxiety in one’s mind and heart” (Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semitic Domains: Hebrew (Old Testament). Synonyms abound here: disquieting thoughts, anxious doubts, fear, angst, worries, stress, unease, internal reactions to an upcoming event or an uncertain outcome.
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To Judge or Not To Judge
In chapter 4 of 1 Corinthians Paul told the believers that he didn’t judge himself (4:3). In chapter 11 he told them to “examine” themselves, and that “if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged” (11:28, 31). Well, to judge or not to judge, which is it?
The two passages address different problems. In chapter 4 the issue concerned the faithfulness of a preacher, in chapter 11 the issue concurred the worthiness of a communion participant.
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Twenty-Four Whole Days
One of the most important jobs of a pastor is to tell the flock things that they already know. He must remind them of God’s truths regularly. A disciple is a learner, and sometimes we need to learn things again, to learn afresh. Equipping the saints for the work of ministry means furnishing them with staple/basic supplies, not just surprises.
It is also true that we cannot be reminded about everything always.
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The Lesser of All Things
It is quite a thing for Paul to say that “all things” are ours (1 Corinthians 3:21, 22). It is quite a thing for the psalmist to say, “When my anxious thoughts are many, how Your comforts cheer my soul” (Psalm 94:19). What happens when we consider all the comforts God has given to us in Christ?
Consider these four questions in Romans 8.
If God is for us, who can be against us?
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More Hope for Fools
It’s one thing to live with zero desire to be respected and it’s another thing to live dishonorably and demand to be respected. Some people are hard to steer, others are hard to motivate, and still others are both yet they love to give advice.
The common denominator, and it is the lowest one, is of persons who are deceiving themselves. They think they are wise, but they may be the only ones who don’t know the truth.
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Thanksgiving and Pumpkin Whoopie Pies
I have more things to be thankful for than I realize. But I know I am #blessed, and it can’t hurt to count some of them.
I am thankful for my wife’s perseverance through daily pain that most people don’t realize. Mo takes pain medication so that she can get up to serve those around her not so that she can sit down and rest a few points lower on the pain scale.
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Without the Stickers
This is a week to kick up your #blessed game a couple turkey legs.
All lawful feasts are Christian feasts. That’s because unbelievers always feast for wrong or at best deficient reasons. They feast because they like food, which is fine, but Who made them to like food and Who provided it for them? They feast because they like family, or they like the nostalgic idea of family, but how can they know what a family is for?
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Against Raising Our Kids to Be Pornographers and Prostitutes
When I first started to think that God was calling me to be a pastor I was still in high school. And I did not want to be a youth pastor. One reason for that was because it seemed, based on my friendship with my youth pastor at the time, that the person who got to talk to the parents of the youth had a more strategic position.
My exhortation to confession today is loosely connected to the sermon text about how our work will be revealed (1 Corinthians 3:10-15 which is aimed at church leaders), and more specifically directed to parents of our junior high and high school and college age young people based on some things I’ve observed about our kids.
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Hold It Together
I had a particularly good time reading my Bible and praying this morning, and saw some really interesting things in Hebrews 12. In particular, the word “weary” which the author uses a couple times (verses 3 and 5), is an emphatic form of λύω which is the Greek word used in the beginning verb paradigms. For Greek students it’s sort of funny because it doesn’t seem as if you see λύω very often in actual New Testament sentences.
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We Love His Handouts
November is National Adoption Month and last Sunday was Orphan Sunday.
Adoption has been national news the last couple weeks, though, because the draft of the national budget proposed cutting what is called the Adoption Tax Credit. Since 1997 it’s been Federal law that qualified expenses in the adoption process up to a certain amount could be reimbursed by the government as a tax credit, which is even “better” than a tax deduction.
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“A pastor who feels competent in himself to produce eternal fruit—which is the only kind that matters—knows neither God nor himself. A pastor who does not know the rhythm of desperation and deliverance must have his sights set only on what man can achieve.” –JohnPiper
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Give Me a Break
We are a people who love breaks. We love lunch break, coffee break, Christmas break, summer break. We want others to give us a break. Maybe the most masterful ad campaign of the modern era is “You deserve a break today.”
We live in a time when we can take breaks and (because enough other people haven’t) expect that there will still be food at the store in the wintertime. God has blessed our economy enough that we don’t feel the squeeze too badly, and we can relax more often with less consequences than our grandparents could.
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Meat to Live Out
I noticed some discussion online this past week about frequency of observing communion. One of the arguments pastors make against doing communion weekly is that it will become old. A good response is that those same pastors don’t have the same feeling about the weekly offering, or the sermon. And Ha. And ouch.
In the world God made we need food on a regular basis. Food helps us grow. So Peter said that the word grows us up in our salvation (1 Peter 2:2) and Paul knew that some needed milk and others solid food (1 Corinthians 3:2).
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Your Neighbor’s Slop
It is a universal law that all men seek their own advantage. It is obvious by reflecting on one’s own motives, it is obvious by looking at one’s neighbors and at the history of humanity. It is an inescapable reality that parents know, that philosophers and policy makers write about, and that advertisers depend on. Every human being thinks about himself or herself first.
The question is not if this is true, the question is if this is good.
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A Spirit of Fermentation
One of the most most cutting conflicts among the Reformers concerned the nature of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 500 years later it seems strange that they had such contention over communion. Didn’t they have an obvious and shared and bigger enemy in the Catholic Church—which taught that Jesus was being re-crucified every time the priest prayed over the elements? The Reformers all knew that was blasphemy. How come they had such a difficult time coming together at the Table of fellowship?
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The “Institutes” Twice a Year
Wisdom is as wisdom gets along with other people. It’s more often phrased, “wisdom is as wisdom does,” but the right sort of wisdom does right in relationship.
The apostle Paul referred to two types of wisdom: the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God. Man’s wisdom always tries to exalt man for his wisdom. God, in His wisdom, sent His Son to take the form of a man and die on the cross in the place of men who were trying to exalt themselves for their wisdom.