Time off.

I am away on a speech tournament in Ohio for the weekend. See you next week!

Hear His Word, and Tremble

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good, He's the King, I tell you."

This familiar scene from Lewis' Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe reminds of our often silly or ignorant assumptions about God. The Word of God is dangerous and the life of the Christian is not safe. Nor indeed should be expect otherwise. Psalm 29:9 says, "The voice of the Lord twists the oals and strips the forest bare." God's Word moves the hurricanes and casts down lightning bolts, hardens the hearts of kings and pierces the hearts of sinners. At his Word, we should tremble.

Jeremiah says, "You words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart.."(Jeremiah 15:16) And yet Jeremiah became the picture of what happened to Judah and to those who do not heed his Word- destruction and despair. The Word of God is an awesome, consuming fire that sinful men should fear.

And yet, there is much hope for the Christian, because God promises that he will look upon the man "who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." (Isaiah 66:2) God promises that he will not destroy those who hope in Him and whose faith proclaims his excellencies. But his word is still true and active and piercing. And as sinners, we still experience the refining and pain of God's probing into our hearts, or at least, we should. Let us not fear his Word and therefore keep our safe distance, but let us delve deeper and let it renew and sanctify us, though it hurts and grieves us. For the Christian, there is great joy in being made more like Christ and all the burning and cutting serves us in removing that filth that poisons us.

Many a pharoah and Belshazzar heard God's Word and balked in prideful disbelief. Let us not be counted among those whom Mrs. Beaver calls silly, but let us approach his Word with a contrite heart "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith- that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:17-19)

I love this poem so much, because although we are expected to suffer as Christians, we have hope and there is a purpose to it, whether God is rooting out our sin or whether we are being tried in our faith:

I stood a mendicant of God before his royal throne
And begged Him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out his hand, but as I would depart
I cried, "But, Lord, this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange and hurtful gift, which though hast given me."
He said, "My child, I give good gifts and gave my best to thee."
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed, I learned to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

~Martha Snell Nicholson

Deo Gratias.

Why don't YOU sin?

I am in a Bible Study at Dr. Burke's and we are reading William Gurnall's The Christian in Complete Armour. You've got to love those Puritans. It's good stuff on Ephesians 6 and combatting sin. Anyway, in one of the chapters, Gurnall makes the statement: "Others wrestle with sin, but they do not hate it, and therefore they are favourable to it, and seek not the life of sin as their deadly enemy."

Think about some of the sins with which you continually struggle. Do you truly hate them? Do you sin for what it is- a lie about the sufficiency and love of God and as offensive to him? I find that often I refrain from sin simply because I know in my head that it isn't right or because I want to hold up my reputation with other people. Other times, we don't sin because it isn't convenient or we just don't find it in our particular taste or interest. But sin is more than breaking a rule, it is an attitude about God. Gurnall strikes a very human chord, because if we still find pleasure in sin, then we are still subject to it and we are not letting Christ win the victory over that sin in our lives. We must view sin with hatred and replace the pleasure of sin with the vastly infinite pleasure of knowing and loving and being loved by God, our Creator and Savior. If we don't see what the life of sin is, namely as our own moral independence decrying the overflowing nature of Christ the image of God, then we struggle in vain. Once we view sin as our "deadly enemy," then we can begin its mortification in our lives. Our fight with sin can neither be passive nor complacent.

So why don't you sin?

Some regimes never change...

"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple." -Isaiah 6:1

Isaiah 6 marks the call of Isaiah as a prophet. It also marks an unsteady period in Judah's history. King Uzziah had just died and the people were frantic, because they were left without a strong leader and faced threats from Assyria, and even Israel and Syria. But though the king died, what did Isaiah see sitting on a throne? None other than Yahweh, the Lord. The message is quite remarkable, and I may add relevant, for us today as it was back then: the Lord still reigns. He is the king who is seated on the throne and builds up and puts down rulers. There is comfort in that, especially on this day in American history.

The Psalmist reminds us, "Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. " (Psalm 146:3) Augustine faced a similar experience when the Roman empire fell. Some Christians at that time despaired the fall of the empire, holding to a "Rome" theology that elevated the empire to undue admiration. Augustine wrote in response to this thinking the City of God, in which he sets for a different way of looking at history. Sure, God raised up the Roman Empire and sure, Christianity flourished by the blessings of Roman roads, etc. BUT Rome was not God's chosen people, nor the means by which God would bless the nations. Christianity, by God's faithfulness and promises, has surived and will survive many regime changes, and the rise and fall of many nations.

God intends to bless the nations, not through a country, but through his chosen and holy people, the church. It is important on this election day not to put undue weight or worry upon the fate of America and to take comfort in God's promise that HE is seated on the throne. The church will survive, even if America does not. America is not God's chosen people, and though she may be a blessing indeed to the church, she must not be loved too much. We should pray for our nation and take our responsibility as citizens seriously, but our hearts should be committed to loving the church and participating in advancing God's kingdom through the church to the nations.

Our God reigns.