+2010%5BBook+Cover%5D.jpg)
First-- Psalm 78, The Holy Bible
O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old--what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, His power, and the wonders He has done.
He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which He commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.
Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget His deeds but would keep His commands.
They would not be like their forefathers-- a stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not faithful to Him.
The men of Ephraim, though armed with bows, turned back on the day of attle; they did not keep God's covenant and refused to live by His law.
They forgot what He had done, the wonders He had shown them.
He did miracles in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the region of Zoan.
He divided the sea and led them through; He made the water stand firm like a wall.
He guided them with the cloud by day and with light from the fire all night.
He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas; He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers.
But they continued to sin against Him, rebelling in the desert against the Most High.
They willfully put God to the test by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying, "Can God spread a table in the desert?
When He struck the rock, water gushed out, and streams flowed abundantly.
But can He also give us food?
Can He supply meat for His people?
When the LORD heard them, He was very angry; His fire broke out against Jacob, and His wrath rose against Israel, for they did not believe in God or trust in His deliverance.
Yet He gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens; He rained down manna for the people to eat, He gave them the grain of heaven.
Men ate the bread of angels; He sent them all the food they could eat.
He let loose the east wind form the heavens and led forth the south wind by His poer.
He rained meat down on them like dust, flying birds like sand on the seashore.
He made them come down inside their camp, all around their tents.
They ate till they had more than enough, for He had given them what they craved.
But before they turned from the food they craved, even while it was still in their mouths, God's anger rose against them; He put to death the sturdiest among them, cutting down the young men of Israel.
In spite of all this, they kept on sinning; in spite of His wonders, they did not believe.
So He ended their days in futility and their years in terror.
Whenever God slew them, they would seek Him; they eagerly turned to Him again.
They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.
But then they would flatter Him with their mouths, lying to Him with their tongues; their hearts were not loyal to Him, they were not faithful to His covenant.
Yet He was merciful; He forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them.
Time after time He restrained His anger and did not stir up His full wrath.
He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.
How often they rebelled against Him in the desert and grieved Him in the wasteland.
Again and again they put God to the test; they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
They did not remember His power--the day He redeemed them from the oppressor, the day He displayed His miraculous signs in Egypt, His wonders in the region of Zion.
He turned their rivers to blood, they could not drink from their streams.
He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them.
He gave their crops to the grasshopper, their produce to the locust.
He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet.
He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightening.
He unleashed against them His hot anger, His wrath, indignation and hostility-- a band of destroying angels.
He prepared a path for His anger; He did not spare them from death but gave them over to the plague.
He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham.
But He brought His people out like a flock; He led them like sheep through the desert.
He guided them safely, so they were unafraid; but the sea engulfed their enemies.
Thus He brought them to the border of His holy land, to the hill country His right hand had taken.
He drove out nations before them and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance; He settled the tribes of Israel in their homes.
/
Next,
GOVERNANCE BY THE BOOK
"Prone to wander, Lord I feel it...." is a phrase found in the hymn, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." "Prone to wander from the God I love," is a key problem confronting the church in the 21st century--a problem threatening to cripple Christians who wish to be "salt" and "light" in the governance of our nation. In this era of eclecticism where even much of the institution of the Church wavers in its allegiance to the inerrancy of Holy Scripture, discomfort is at its highest with exposure to the Holy Bible. The Holy Bible is the dividing line for our nation, and the dividing line for the institutional mechanisms of the Church.
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him (Paul). Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is thay you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. ---Acts 17:18-23, Holy Bible
The above statement from Acts reflects the type of conversation that must be addressed to the "modern" Church, especiallly inlight of more recent clergical events. The Mars Hill setting is no longer limited to presumed pagan environments, but rather must be made within the confines of current Christian institutions. Why?
It is because of absorption of eclectic ideas and ideals that are in direct contradiction to the written word of God. Because of the blatant acceptance of non-biblical notions, ideas upon which programs and proclivities rest these days, conviction is highest with the reading of the Holy Bible. Therefore, the Holy Bible is at the foundational root of controversy concerning charges of exclusivity by calling our attention to:
---God the Father who is alive and providentially active in the affairs of men
---God the Son who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and who has authority over heaven and earth
---God the Holy Spirit who points to Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God while serving as comforter, counselor, and convictor of sin
---The human dilemma of sin and death
---The person and character of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the only solution to that human dilemma
Even our terminology convicts. The word, "Universe" means one word. This term is appropriate because the Bible says, God spoke the world into existence. Further, it states in John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God." God also says, "My word will not return to me void." The implications are profound.
God's Word is Truth. Knowledge of Truth brings freedom. And, Truth is a person. His name is Jesus Chrirst. Uncompromisingly, it is Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Who said in Revelation 21:6,
...It is done. I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost form the spring of water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral; those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars---their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.
The opportunity to be save is inclusive for Christ died for the whole world. However, to be outside the Truth, to be outside the saving provision offered through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, is to be damned. This is the message God conveys to humanity through His written word, the Holy Bible. Wandering from God's Word is an abominable practice, a wanton abandonment that is often bred of political expediency.
How are we, the Church, prone to wander? We are prone to wander in our quest for user-friendly, socially sensitive answers that render us "ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth." 2 Timothy 3:7. We are prone to wander in our willingness to entertain myth and vain diversions. Acquiescing to a subtle drift from God, we are prone to wander as we deviated from God's standard of truth, the Holy Bible.
Wandering has consequences. Reason suffers.
In an effort to get rid of First Cause, which is God, all attempts at causal reasoning suffer. And, even among the so-called "learned" where the preoccupation with limiting conversation to the ideas of men is most obvious, the simplist of attempts at right communication become fundamentally flawed. I speak about this problem at length and what to do about it in my book, Acknowledging God in the Decisions of State, but to capsulize my message, my ultimate point is this:
Since action should be explanation driven, only one of two possible scenerios occurs as a consequence of senseless, non-recognition of God,outcomes that are presented as adverse outcomes encountered throughout biblical accounts of distance from God. The problem emerges as either (1) flawed explanation yielding flawed action, flawed in the since of having either partial elements of truth, incomplete, appearing to be held together correctly, but posessing significant gaps in understanding which compromises the ability to arrive at problem solution; or, (2)correct explanation offered in a vacuum such that its implementation can not be achieved because the parts that would do the implementation lack cohering truth.
You see, the dynamic of the problem is this, Saints.
The Holy Bible says that Jesus Christ holds the whole universe together.
He (Jesus is the image of the invisible God, thefirst born over all Creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisble, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. ---Colosians 1:15-17, the Holy Bible.
To reject Him is to reject cohering Truth.
Today, of society faces extreme deprivation of Truth. Consequently, there is not only a loss of depth, a superficiality associated with our God-given lives, but there is also a rejection of the idea that there has ever been such a thing as "absolute" truth. This cancerous thought has led many "Christian" institutions to speak lightly of the gospel, as if it were a relic of the past, prefering to speak of the gospel as "a good way to get to God" rather than as the only way to God.
Those who are committed to read the Holy Bible and follow the commands found therein know a powerful bit of information. "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible." Hebrews 11:3, Holy Bible.
But, we must be on guard. We must not forget to test all spirits. Testing is needed because there is more than one spirit. Not all that is spritual is of God. Indeed, 1 John 4 states,
"Dear friends, do not believe every sprit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the World. This how you can recognize the Sprit of God: Every spirit that says that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world."
Saints, the testing of spirits is done on the basis of the written word of God, the Holy Bible. And, you test your understanding of scripture with scripture. The entire Bible speaks of Jesus Christ. To pick and choose form passages for pruposes of deciding which parts are true and which are not is not only a blasphemous activity, it is terrbly dangerous and is indeed the very seedbed of apostasy.
Jude chapter 1 beginning with verse 3 reads,
"Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was one for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny the only Lord God, our Lord Jesus Christ."
Saints, in the Old Testament, the presence of wandering is depicted as a judgment from God. Wandering still is. It is a permitted judgment against our increased tolerance for that which is intolerable from God's perspective. The consequence of such wandering manifests itself in the form of instability, incoherence, inattentiveness---symptoms writ large as we diverge from the biblically prescribed task of securing justice, loving mercy, and walking in humility with God. It is as if we become derailed from our spiritual train of thought because we shift our gaze. Our focus that was once on Christ blurs as we immerse ourselves in secular modes of thought that so frequently accompany the academic road to vocation.
May God call us afresh to Himself.
And may we, as His people, respond affirmatively to His call.
In Christ Jesus (Yeshua Ha Mashiach)
--Livvy McDonald:)<><
9th of Adar, 5772
My Postscript Selection
Posts
