Song of the Drunkards

JESUS FACED A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF OPPOSITION FOR HIS HARD WORDS AND UNFLINCHING DEVOTION TO YAHWEH. NO SURPRISE THEN IF WE FIND OUR NAME FESTOONED IN BARROOM BALLADS (CF. PS 69:12).

Remember!

October 12, 2012 in Bible - OT - Ecclesiastes, Church History, Meditations, Sanctification

Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NKJV)
1 Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, Before the difficult days come, And the years draw near when you say, “I have no pleasure in them”:

We Christians are called to be a people anchored and rooted in the past. We are not to be consumed by the present, by the worries of today, the fears or luxuries before us, but are to call to mind the promises that God has made to our fathers and the deeds and wonderful works that He has done. We are to be saturated with a sense of history, of tradition. After all the book in which God has chosen to reveal Himself is a book stuffed with history, with stories of men, women, and children who feared and served God.

So listen to the words of the book, the commands to remember:

“Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place.” (Ex 13:3)

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8)

“And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lordyour God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm…” (Deut 5:15)

“And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness…” (Deut 8:2)

““And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth….” (Deut 8:18)

“Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness…” (Deut 9:7a)

“Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the way when you came out of Egypt!” (Deut 24:9)

“Remember Lot’s wife.” (Luke 17:32)

Remember, remember, remember! We are to be a people of remembrance. For remember (!) that when our Lord Jesus instituted the Eucharist, he commanded us, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

Our worship and our lives need to reflect this sense of grounding in the past. As James Smith writes in his book Desiring the Kingdom, “there is a deep sense in which the church is a people called to resist the presentism embedded in the tyranny of the contemporary. We are called to be a people of memory, who are shaped by a tradition that is millennia older than the last Billboard chart.”

But often we forget. Like our fathers we wander astray; we forget God’s goodness. We forget God’s promises. We forget the ways in which He has delivered in the past and so we are incapable of trusting him in the present.

“Thus the children of Israel did not remember the Lordtheir God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side;” (Judges 8:34)

“They did not rememberHis power: The day when He redeemed them from the enemy,” (Psalm 78:42)

“… you have forgotten the God of your salvation, And have not been mindful of the Rock of your stronghold…” (Isaiah 17:10)

And this is where we are as a nation. We have forgotten God, failed to remember the wonders that God has wrought in the earth. We are consumed with the present; overwhelmed with the hip; distracted by the contemporary. And what of you? Have you been captured by the spirit of the age or are you remembering God? Let us kneel and confess that we have often forgotten God.

My Church and I

October 10, 2012 in Ecclesiology

I visited my parents the other day and noticed an old display card in one of their rooms bearing the title, “My Church and I” by John Bunyan Smith, D.D. Curious I decided to read – and I was so struck by Dr. Smith’s words that I took a snapshot of the thing. Unfortunately my snapshot didn’t turn out too well – but I’ve transcribed what Dr. Smith had to say about the church here:

My church is the place where the Word of God is preached, the power of God is felt, the Spirit of God is manifested, the Love of God is revealed, and the unity of God is perceived.

It is the home of my soul, the altar of my devotion, the hearth of my faith, the center of my affections, and the foretaste of heaven.

I have united with it in solemn covenant, pledging myself to attend its services, to pray for its members, to give to its support, and to obey its laws.

It claims the first place in my heart, the highest place in my mind, the principal place in my activities, and its unity, peace and progress concern my life in this world and that which is to come.

I owe it my zeal, my benevolence and my prayers. When I neglect its services, I injure its good name, I lessen its power, I discourage its members, and I chill my own soul.

I have solemnly promised in the sight of God and men to advance its interests by my faithful attendance, by reading the Holy Bible, by never neglecting its ordinances, by contributing to its support, by meeting with my fellow members, by watching over their welfare, and by joining with them in prayer and praise and service; and that promise I this day renew, before God my Father, Christ my Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit my Sanctifier.

Frank and Deuce

October 1, 2012 in Bible - OT - Proverbs, Meditations, Sanctification

Proverbs 18:13, 17
13 He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him.
17 The first one to plead his cause seems right, Until his neighbor comes and examines him.

Frank and Deuce were neighbors and as they were both fairly young men just setting out in life neither had a family. But being ranchers they worked hard – sunup to sundown on their respective properties. And they often helped one another – sometimes one pair of hands just wasn’t enough.

One day another neighbor, Dolosus by name, who owned a large spread immediately south of Frank and Deuce paid Frank a visit.

“Howdy, Frank,” Dolosus greeted and then asked with a hint of concern in his voice, “Is everything ok down here on your ranch?”

“Why yes, thank you, everything seems to be just fine. Why do you ask?”

“Oh it’s probably nothing,” Dolosus assured him good-naturedly.

“What’s probably nothing?” asked Frank getting a bit concerned.

“Well Deuce mentioned to me today at the store that he was tired of sharing the creek with you and was planning to stop it up with a dam and make a pond.”

“What?!” Frank demanded. “He’d never do such a thing!”

“Well,” said Dolosus with a sympathetic look, “I’m sorry to say that I saw him purchasing the supplies today – posts, supports,… Go see for yourself – I think you’ll see him putting the posts in now.”

And sure enough, when Frank climbed the bank to where he could see Deuce’s ranch there was Deuce putting posts in the ground right near the creek. Frank got so mad, steaming and stewing on Deuce’s audacity, that he grabbed his shotgun out of the house and marched out across the field, making a beeline for Deuce.

Deuce was so busy working on the fence that he never noticed Frank’s approach. Imagine the way he jumped when Frank yelled at him from just a few feet away, “You lousy neighbor!” Deuce had just enough time to whirl around and see the shotgun aimed his way before Frank pulled the trigger and shot him dead.

With grim satisfaction Frank looked at Deuce’s dead body sprawled on the ground. And it was then that he noticed the barbed wire that lay beside Deuce’s corpse – and then that he became aware of the awful truth: Deuce wasn’t making a dam but building the barbed wire fence the two of them had discussed only last week.

At that moment the Sheriff happened to arrive – it seems Dolosus had notified him there might be some trouble. The Sheriff clapped Frank in irons and led him off to be hanged. Dolosus smiled grimly as Frank passed by and couldn’t wait for the auctioneer to put the two men’s farms up for sale – he had always thought they’d make a nice addition to his own spread.

Solomon tells us that he who listens to only one side of the story rarely gets the whole story. And the problem arises when we make conclusions based on only one side of the story. Satan delights to stir up trouble – for his own advantage, of course. And one of the ways he succeeds is by convincing us to act on inadequate information. So let us kneel and confess that we have often proven as foolish as Frank.