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Zechariah 8 - 14



Zechariah 8

The Coming Peace and Prosperity of Zion

Zechariah 8:1      And the word of the LORD of hosts came, saying, 2 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath.

Psalm 78:58 For they provoked him to anger with their high places;
they moved him to jealousy with their idols.
59  When God heard, he was full of wrath,
and he utterly rejected Israel.

Isaiah 63:4  For the day of vengeance was in my heart,
and my year of redemption had come.
5  I looked, but there was no one to help;
I was appalled, but there was no one to uphold;
so my own arm brought me salvation,
and my wrath upheld me.
6  I trampled down the peoples in my anger;
I made them drunk in my wrath,
and I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.”
ESV

3 Thus says the LORD: I have returned to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem shall be called the faithful city, and the mountain of the LORD of hosts, the holy mountain.

Zechariah 1:16 Therefore, thus says the LORD, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy; my house shall be built in it, declares the LORD of hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 30:10  “Then fear not, O Jacob my servant, declares the LORD,
nor be dismayed, O Israel;
for behold, I will save you from far away,
and your offspring from the land of their captivity.
Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease,
and none shall make him afraid.
11  For I am with you to save you,
declares the LORD;
I will make a full end of all the nations
among whom I scattered you,
but of you I will not make a full end.
I will discipline you in just measure,
and I will by no means leave you unpunished.
  ESV

4 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Old men and old women shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of great age. 5 And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in its streets. 6 Thus says the LORD of hosts: If it is marvelous in the sight of the remnant of this people in those days, should it also be marvelous in my sight, declares the LORD of hosts? 7 Thus says the LORD of hosts: Behold, I will save my people from the east country and from the west country, 8 and I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.”

  RE: Zechariah 8:7 note the following:

Psalm 107:2  Let the redeemed of the LORD say so,
whom he has redeemed from trouble
3  and gathered in from the lands,
from the east and from the west,
from the north and from the south.
  ESV

Isaiah 11:11 In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.

12  He will raise a signal for the nations
and will assemble the banished of Israel,
and gather the dispersed of Judah
from the four corners of the earth.
13  The jealousy of Ephraim shall depart,
and those who harass Judah shall be cut off;
Ephraim shall not be jealous of Judah,
and Judah shall not harass Ephraim.
14  But they shall swoop down on the shoulder of the Philistines in the west,
and together they shall plunder the people of the east.
They shall put out their hand against Edom and Moab,
and the Ammonites shall obey them.
15  And the LORD will utterly destroy
the tongue of the Sea of Egypt,
and will wave his hand over the River
with his scorching breath,
and strike it into seven channels,
and he will lead people across in sandals.
16  And there will be a highway from Assyria
for the remnant that remains of his people,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from the land of Egypt.
  ESV

9 Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Let your hands be strong, you who in these days have been hearing these words from the mouth of the prophets who were present on the day that the foundation of the house of the LORD of hosts was laid, that the temple might be built. 10 For before those days there was no wage for man or any wage for beast, neither was there any safety from the foe for him who went out or came in, for I set every man against his neighbor. 11 But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as in the former days, declares the LORD of hosts. 12 For there shall be a sowing of peace. The vine shall give its fruit, and the ground shall give its produce, and the heavens shall give their dew. And I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. 13 And as you have been a byword of cursing among the nations, O house of Judah and house of Israel, so will I save you, and you shall be a blessing. Fear not, but let your hands be strong.”

14 For thus says the LORD of hosts: “As I purposed to bring disaster to you when your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the LORD of hosts, 15 so again have I purposed in these days to bring good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; fear not. 16 These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; 17 do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD.”

18 And the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, 19 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: The fast of the fourth month and the fast of the fifth and the fast of the seventh and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah seasons of joy and gladness and cheerful feasts. Therefore love truth and peace.

20 “Thus says the LORD of hosts: Peoples shall yet come, even the inhabitants of many cities. 21 The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the LORD and to seek the LORD of hosts; I myself am going.’ 22 Many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the LORD. 23 Thus says the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’ ”

Zechariah 9

Judgment on Israel’s Enemies

Zechariah 9:1     The oracle of the word of the LORD is against the land of Hadrach

and Damascus is its resting place.
For the LORD has an eye on mankind
and on all the tribes of Israel,
2  and on Hamath also, which borders on it,
Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise.
3  Tyre has built herself a rampart
and heaped up silver like dust,
and fine gold like the mud of the streets.
4  But behold, the Lord will strip her of her possessions
and strike down her power on the sea,
and she shall be devoured by fire.

5  Ashkelon shall see it, and be afraid;
Gaza too, and shall writhe in anguish;
Ekron also, because its hopes are confounded.
The king shall perish from Gaza;
Ashkelon shall be uninhabited;
6  a mixed people shall dwell in Ashdod,
and I will cut off the pride of Philistia.
7  I will take away its blood from its mouth,
and its abominations from between its teeth;
it too shall be a remnant for our God;
it shall be like a clan in Judah,
and Ekron shall be like the Jebusites.
8  Then I will encamp at my house as a guard,
so that none shall march to and fro;
no oppressor shall again march over them,
for now I see with my own eyes.

The Coming King of Zion

9  Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king is coming to you;
righteous and having salvation is he,
humble and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
10  I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall speak peace to the nations;
his rule shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
11  As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit.
12  Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.
13  For I have bent Judah as my bow;
I have made Ephraim its arrow.
I will stir up your sons, O Zion,
against your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior’s sword.

The LORD Will Save His People

14  Then the LORD will appear over them,
and his arrow will go forth like lightning;
the Lord GOD will sound the trumpet
and will march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.
15  The LORD of hosts will protect them,
and they shall devour, and tread down the sling stones,
and they shall drink and roar as if drunk with wine,
and be full like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.

16  On that day the LORD their God will save them,
as the flock of his people;
for like the jewels of a crown
they shall shine on his land.
17  For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine the young women.


Zechariah 10

The Restoration for Judah and Israel

Zechariah 10:1      Ask rain from the LORD

in the season of the spring rain,
from the LORD who makes the storm clouds,
and he will give them showers of rain,
to everyone the vegetation in the field.
2  For the household gods utter nonsense,
and the diviners see lies;
they tell false dreams
and give empty consolation.
Therefore the people wander like sheep;
they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd.

3  “My anger is hot against the shepherds,
and I will punish the leaders;
for the LORD of hosts cares for his flock, the house of Judah,
and will make them like his majestic steed in battle.
4  From him shall come the cornerstone,
from him the tent peg,
from him the battle bow,
from him every ruler—all of them together.
5  They shall be like mighty men in battle,
trampling the foe in the mud of the streets;
they shall fight because the LORD is with them,
and they shall put to shame the riders on horses.

6  “I will strengthen the house of Judah,
and I will save the house of Joseph.
I will bring them back because I have compassion on them,
and they shall be as though I had not rejected them,
for I am the LORD their God and I will answer them.
7  Then Ephraim shall become like a mighty warrior,
and their hearts shall be glad as with wine.
Their children shall see it and be glad;
their hearts shall rejoice in the LORD.

8  “I will whistle for them and gather them in,
for I have redeemed them,
and they shall be as many as they were before.
9  Though I scattered them among the nations,
yet in far countries they shall remember me,
and with their children they shall live and return.
10  I will bring them home from the land of Egypt,
and gather them from Assyria,
and I will bring them to the land of Gilead and to Lebanon,
till there is no room for them.
11  He shall pass through the sea of troubles
and strike down the waves of the sea,
and all the depths of the Nile shall be dried up.
The pride of Assyria shall be laid low,
and the scepter of Egypt shall depart.
12  I will make them strong in the LORD,
and they shall walk in his name,”
declares the LORD.


Zechariah 11

The Flock Doomed to Slaughter

Zechariah 11:1 Open your doors, O Lebanon,
that the fire may devour your cedars!
2  Wail, O cypress, for the cedar has fallen,
for the glorious trees are ruined!
Wail, oaks of Bashan,
for the thick forest has been felled!
3  The sound of the wail of the shepherds,
for their glory is ruined!
The sound of the roar of the lions,
for the thicket of the Jordan is ruined!

4 Thus said the LORD my God: “Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. 5 Those who buy them slaughter them and go unpunished, and those who sell them say, ‘Blessed be the LORD, I have become rich,’ and their own shepherds have no pity on them. 6 For I will no longer have pity on the inhabitants of this land, declares the LORD. Behold, I will cause each of them to fall into the hand of his neighbor, and each into the hand of his king, and they shall crush the land, and I will deliver none from their hand.”

7 So I became the shepherd of the flock doomed to be slaughtered by the sheep traders. And I took two staffs, one I named Favor, the other I named Union. And I tended the sheep. 8 In one month I destroyed the three shepherds. But I became impatient with them, and they also detested me. 9 So I said, “I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die. What is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed. And let those who are left devour the flesh of one another.” 10 And I took my staff Favor, and I broke it, annulling the covenant that I had made with all the peoples. 11 So it was annulled on that day, and the sheep traders, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the LORD. 12 Then I said to them, “If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.” And they weighed out as my wages thirty pieces of silver. 13 Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the lordly price at which I was priced by them. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD, to the potter. 14 Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.

15 Then the LORD said to me, “Take once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd. 16 For behold, I am raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for those being destroyed, or seek the young or heal the maimed or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs.

17  “Woe to my worthless shepherd,
who deserts the flock!
May the sword strike his arm
and his right eye!
Let his arm be wholly withered,
his right eye utterly blinded!”


Zechariah 12

The LORD Will Give Salvation

Zechariah 12:1      The oracle of the word of the LORD concerning Israel: Thus declares the LORD, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him: 2 “Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah. 3 On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it. 4 On that day, declares the LORD, I will strike every horse with panic, and its rider with madness. But for the sake of the house of Judah I will keep my eyes open, when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. 5 Then the clans of Judah shall say to themselves, ‘The inhabitants of Jerusalem have strength through the LORD of hosts, their God.’

6 “On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves. And they shall devour to the right and to the left all the surrounding peoples, while Jerusalem shall again be inhabited in its place, in Jerusalem.

7 “And the LORD will give salvation to the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem may not surpass that of Judah. 8 On that day the LORD will protect the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them on that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the angel of the LORD, going before them. 9 And on that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.

Him Whom They Have Pierced

10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. 11 On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; 13 the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves; 14 and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

Zechariah 13

Zechariah 13:1      On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.

Idolatry Cut Off

2 “And on that day, declares the LORD of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more. And also I will remove from the land the prophets and the spirit of uncleanness. 3 And if anyone again prophesies, his father and mother who bore him will say to him, ‘You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the LORD.’ And his father and mother who bore him shall pierce him through when he prophesies.

4 “On that day every prophet will be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies. He will not put on a hairy cloak in order to deceive, 5 but he will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a worker of the soil, for a man sold me in my youth.’ 6 And if one asks him, ‘What are these wounds on your back?’ he will say, ‘The wounds I received in the house of my friends.’

The Shepherd Struck

7  “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who stands next to me,”
declares the LORD of hosts.

“Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered;
I will turn my hand against the little ones.
8  In the whole land, declares the LORD,
two thirds shall be cut off and perish,
and one third shall be left alive.
9  And I will put this third into the fire,
and refine them as one refines silver,
and test them as gold is tested.
They will call upon my name,
and I will answer them.
I will say, ‘They are my people’;
and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’ ”


Zechariah 14

The Coming Day of the LORD

Zechariah 14:1      Behold, a day is coming for the LORD, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. 2 For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. 3 Then the LORD will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. 4 On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. 5 And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.

6 On that day there shall be no light, cold, or frost. 7 And there shall be a unique day, which is known to the LORD, neither day nor night, but at evening time there shall be light.

8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter.

9 And the LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and his name one.

10 The whole land shall be turned into a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem shall remain aloft on its site from the Gate of Benjamin to the place of the former gate, to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses. 11 And it shall be inhabited, for there shall never again be a decree of utter destruction. Jerusalem shall dwell in security.

12 And this shall be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.

13 And on that day a great panic from the LORD shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of another, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other. 14 Even Judah will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance. 15 And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever beasts may be in those camps.

16 Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths. 17 And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them. 18 And if the family of Egypt does not go up and present themselves, then on them there shall be no rain; there shall be the plague with which the LORD afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths. 19 This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.

20 And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the LORD.” And the pots in the house of the LORD shall be as the bowls before the altar. 21 And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the LORD of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day.

ESV Study Bible


What I'm Reading

How Could John, a Poor, Uneducated Fisherman, Write the Gospel of John?

By J. Warner Wallace 9/29/2017

     A fellow Christian Case Maker I met at Frank Turek’s CrossExamined Academy is teaching a church group about the reliability of the New TestamentA question was raised about the Apostle John: “How could John, an uneducated fisherman, have written such a literate and theologically rich gospel account?” After all, John was just a fisherman; was he educated enough to accomplish something this sophisticated? Irenaeus, certainly thought so. This historic Bishop of Lugdunum, was the student of Polycarp and Ignatius (two men who were taught directly by the Apostle John). Irenaeus identified the Apostle John as the author of the fourth Gospel, reflecting the historic understanding of the earliest Christians. In spite of this, many skeptics are eager to dismiss the authorship of John (often in an attempt to further discredit the supernatural New Testament claims related to Jesus) by doubting John’s level of education and degree of literacy. There are, however several good reasons to resist the notion that John, the son of Zebedee, was too illiterate to have written the fourth Gospel:

     John May Have Been Educated After All | Don’t be too quick to dismiss John as uneducated. Hebrew children were required to memorize the first five books of Torah before they were twelve years old. Young students were also required to discuss these texts and write them. There is good reason to believe John and James were not exempt from this requirement. In fact, the internal evidence from the Gospel suggests John and James were more than familiar with the rabbis and Jewish teachers of their day. Take, for example, this description of Jesus’ arrest and arrival at the residence of Annas (the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest):

     John 18:15-16 | Simon Peter was following Jesus, and so was another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and entered with Jesus into the court of the high priest, but Peter was standing at the door outside. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the doorkeeper, and brought Peter in.

     This “other disciple” is none other than John, the son of Zebedee, and he is described as someone who was well known to the high priest. In fact, he was known adequately enough to gain admission for himself and Peter. Interestingly, while Peter was here in Anna’s courtyard, he was identified by his simple Galilean accent (see Luke 22:59). No one ever identified John in this way, however. John may have been a fisherman, but this doesn’t mean he was necessarily uneducated or unsophisticated. Paul was also quick to identify himself as a tentmaker, but obviously had access to a good education.

     John May Have Employed a Scribe | But even if John was under-educated, this does not preclude the reasonable use of a scribe. An assistant of this nature (known as an “amanuensis”) was commonplace at this point in history. Paul repeatedly used a scribe to help him as he dictated his letters to the Church. Tertius helped Paul write the letter to the Romans (Romans 16:22), and Paul admitted using a scribe to help him with 1 Corinthians (1 Corinthians 16:21). If John wrote his Gospel and letters in a similar manner, it is reasonable to infer his use of a scribe. If this was the case, the degree of Greek sophistication would be attributed to the scribe rather than to John. When skeptics point to differences in the form of Greek seen in some of John’s writings (when compared with one another), they most certainly are ignoring the use of an “amanuensis”.

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James "Jim" Warner Wallace (born June 16, 1961) is an American homicide detective and Christian apologist. Wallace is a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview and an Adjunct Professor of Apologetics at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He has authored several books, including Cold-Case Christianity, God’s Crime Scene, and Forensic Faith, in which he applies principles of cold case homicide investigation to apologetic concerns such as the existence of God and the reliability of the Gospels.

The Shack — The Missing Art of Evangelical Discernment

By Albert Mohler 3/6/2017

     The theorized submission of the Trinity to a human being -- or to all human beings -- is a theological innovation of the most extreme and dangerous sort.

     The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s The Shack has now exceeded even that. The book, originally self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic.

     According to Young, the book was originally written for his own children. In essence, it can be described as a narrative theodicy — an attempt to answer the question of evil and the character of God by means of a story. In this story, the main character is grieving the brutal kidnapping and murder of his seven-year-old daughter when he receives what turns out to be a summons from God to meet him in the very shack where the man’s daughter had been murdered. In the shack, “Mack” meets the divine Trinity as “Papa,” an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and “Sarayu,” an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack, Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. “Papa” is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed.

     The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues. And the dialogues reveal a theology that is unconventional at best, and undoubtedly heretical in certain respects.

     While the literary device of an unconventional “trinity” of divine persons is itself sub-biblical and dangerous, the theological explanations are worse. “Papa” tells Mack of the time when the three persons of the Trinity “spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God.” Nowhere in the Bible is the Father or the Spirit described as taking on human existence. The Christology of the book is likewise confused. “Papa” tells Mack that, though Jesus is fully God, “he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being.” When Jesus healed the blind, “He did so only as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

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Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. serves as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary – the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world.

     Albert Mohler Books |  Go to Books Page

Is Biblical Teaching on Sex Hateful and Repressive?

By Sean McDowell 9/28/2017

     Let’s face it; we live in a world saturated with sex. Our movies, music, novels, politics, and even advertisements are dominated by sex. Essentially, the celebrated view of sex in our culture is: if it feels good, do it. According to the ideas propagated by the late Hugh Hefner, and others in the sexual revolution, anything that prevents someone from experiencing consensual sex in whatever fashion he or she desires is viewed as harmful and repressive.

     But is this narrative really true? In the updated Evidence that Demands a Verdict, my father and I lay out the positive evidence for Christianity. But first, we felt it was critical to “clear the fog” by responding to common charges such as this. So, is biblical teaching on sex hateful and repressive?

     While Christians have certainly failed at times to teach and model the biblical view of sex, it is false to assume that God hates sex. In fact, the opposite is true—God created sex and said that it was good! Proverbs 5:18-19 says to “rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.” And the Song of Solomon speaks of the power and beauty of sexual intimacy. Sex, as God designed it, is a wonderful thing. He designed it for four reasons:

     Procreation. Even though children don’t always result, sex is a baby-making act by its very nature. In Genesis 1:28, God says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” It’s worth noting that this is actually a command from God (it is also a blessing). Few complain about this command!

     Unity. One of the most powerful aspects of sex is its ability to bond people together. Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” In the act of sex, a man and woman become fully united. Sex is not merely a physical act; it involves an emotional, relational, spiritual, and even transcendent connection.

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     Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, a best-selling author of over 18 books, an internationally recognized speaker, a part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.Books By Sean McDowell

Sean McDowell Books:

Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists
A New Kind of Apologist: *Adopting Fresh Strategies *Addressing the Latest Issues *Engaging the Culture
The Beauty of Intolerance: Setting a Generation Free to Know Truth and Love
Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God's Design for Marriage (Thoughtful Response)
ETHIX: Being Bold in a Whatever World
More Than a Carpenter

What’s the Purpose of … the Church?

By Tim Challies 9/29/2017

     Whatever else we may know about Christians, we know this: Christians are supposed to go to church. Every Sunday, Christians gather together to worship God and spend time in fellowship. But do we actually know why we do this? Do we pause to consider the purpose of the local church? In this series of articles we are considering the purpose of many things we may take for granted, and so far we have looked at marriage, sex, and children. Today we are broadening our perspective from family to the church.

     It is important to note that our concern here is not the universal church, which is comprised of all Christians of all times and places. Rather, we are answering the question: What is the purpose of the local church? In other words, why do we as Christians gather together in local congregations?

     Common Views of The Church | As we consider why we gather week by week, we can quickly identify two common but unbiblical views on the purpose of the local church.

     The first is that the local church exists for evangelism. In this view, the primary purpose of the local church is to draw unchurched people to the Christian faith. Church, then, is primarily evangelistic in its purpose. This is the heart of the “seeker-sensitive church” movement that was championed by Bill Hybels and Rick Warren, with Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church serving as its primary text. Because reaching the lost is the ultimate purpose of the church, everything the church does—from preaching to worship to the design of the building—should be determined by the perceived needs or desires of the unchurched. We must do anything and everything we can to make church a place where they feel welcome and comfortable. Warren says, “Once you know your target [unbelievers], it will determine many of the components of your seeker service: music style, message topics, creative arts, and more.” This view insists that the more we learn to think like unbelievers, the better we will do in drawing them to the church and, from the church, to Jesus Christ. “It is my deep conviction,” says Warren, “that anybody can be won to Christ if you discover the key to his or her heart. … The most likely place to start is with the person’s felt needs.”

     A second common view is that the local church exists for discipleship. According to this view, the purpose of the church is to serve the needs of Christians. Many people push back against the seeker-sensitive church movement and declare, “The church exists for discipleship! It exists to serve and strengthen Christians!” They claim that instead of putting all its energy into evangelism, the church should put all its energy into discipleship. Instead of making decisions based on the preferences of unbelievers, the church should make decisions based on the preferences of Christians. In this way, building up the body of Christ becomes the ultimate purpose of the local church.

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     Tim Challies: I am a Christian, a husband to Aileen and a father to three children aged 10 to 16. I worship and serve as an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario. I am a book reviewer, co-founder of Cruciform Press.

     I began my web site in 2002 and have been writing there daily since 2003. It is my place to think out loud and in public while also sharing some of the interesting things I’ve discovered in my online travels.

     Tim Challies is founding blogger of Challies.com and a pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto. You can follow him on Twitter @Challies. He began his web site in 2002 and has been writing there daily since 2003. It is his place to think out loud and in public while also sharing some of the interesting things he discovers in his online travels.


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Praying for Our Children’s Salvation

By Joel Beeke 7/01/2014

     The salvation of our children is priceless; their spiritual needs far outweigh their physical needs. They need our prayers — our earnest prayers with hearts aflame, both for their initial repentance and coming to Christ by faith, and for their life of ongoing growth in faith. Matthew Henry rightly declared that it is of far more value for parents who die to leave behind a treasury of prayers for their children than it is to leave behind a treasury of silver and gold.

     My mother died recently. She had little to pass on to her children financially, but we do treasure the years of prayers that she and my father stored up for us. When my parents commemorated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, all five of us children decided to thank my parents for one thing they had done for us. Without prior consultation, each of us chose to thank my mother for her prayers. We all knew that over many years, she had prayed earnestly, fervently, and perseveringly for each one of us.

     We are by no means alone. At a ministers’ conference in Italy, I asked the attendees how many of them were influenced by the prayers of their mother. It seemed to me from the podium that almost everyone put up a hand.  God blesses the heartfelt prayers of parents to the spiritual and eternal well-being of their children.

     According to God’s promise (Gen. 17:7; Acts 2:39), the children of believing parents are included in the covenant of grace and must be received as members of the church by baptism. This promise is precious, and the privileges it confers on our children are great indeed. But they afford us no ground to presume that our children are regenerate and no reason to treat them as such before they come to saving faith and repentance.

(Ge 17:7)7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.   ESV

     We baptize infants based on many points, but not on account of “presumptive regeneration.” The results of this view, which says that we must assume all covenant children are regenerate unless by flagrant sin they prove otherwise, can be quite tragic. Knowledge and morality are often substituted for salvation, without Spirit-worked regeneration, conviction of sin, repentance unto life, saving faith, and the necessary fruits that accompany it (John 3:5; 16:8-11; Luke 13:1-9; John 3:16; Gal. 5:22-23). Knowing God savingly and personally is then replaced with engagement in “kingdom activities” at home, in church, at school, and in the community at large.

     As a Jew, Nicodemus was included in the covenant, received the sign of the covenant (circumcision), and was educated in the Scriptures, but Christ said to him, “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7, KJV). (Here Christ uses the plural form ye because He included all other Israelites in His blanket prescription.) Until he was born again, Nicodemus was spiritually blind to the truths of God’s kingdom (vv. 3, 10).

     Likewise, apart from a saving work of God’s grace, our children are fallen and sinful, not righteous (Pss. 51:5; 58:3). The Belgic Confession (Article 15) says, “Original sin is extended to all mankind, which is a corruption of the whole nature and a hereditary disease wherewith infants themselves are also infected, even in their mother’s womb.” To be saved by Christ, they must be “ingrafted into Him, and receive all His benefits, by a true faith”—the faith “which the Holy Ghost works by the gospel” in their hearts (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 20-21).

     The children of believers have an external holiness — a place in the visible church — but they do not share in the salvation promised in the covenant unless and until they are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. He must convert the children of Abraham in order for them to receive the blessing God promised to Abraham (Acts 3:25-26). Christian parents need to pray for the salvation of their children and call their children to trust Jesus Christ as the only Savior, for His blood alone cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

     God did indeed make a promise to Abraham that He would be a God to him, to his children, and to their children after them — to a thousand generations (Gen. 17:7; Ps. 105:8). But the Lord also said to the Jews through His prophet John the Baptist, “Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham as our father” (Matt. 3:9). To those who placed their confidence in their heritage, Jesus said, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did” (John 8:39), works that are the fruit of saving faith that show a spiritual lineage, not just a physical lineage (Rom. 4:11-12). God’s promise is made to all who, like Abraham, believe unto justification and life.

     How should we pray for the salvation of our children? Here is a prayer offered by nineteenth-century Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte: “O Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, give us a seed right with Thee! O God, give us our children. A second time, and by a far better birth, give us our children to be beside us in Thy holy covenant!”

     There is nothing automatic about salvation. There is no room for mere presumption; Christian parenting is an enterprise of faith. God’s promise gives us a solid foundation for all our prayers and for all our hopes for our children. But He also commands us to use the appointed means to obtain His good gifts. Do you pray daily for your children? Do you pray daily with your children? If not, what can you expect from the Lord? Whether they are saved or not, are you able to say, by God’s grace, that you storm the mercy seat for them with a heart aflame for their well-being and God’s glory?

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     Dr. Joel R. Beeke is president of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and pastor of Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is author of Piety: The Heartbeat of Reformed Theology.

Joel Beeke Books:

By John Walvoord (1990)

Prophecy concerning the Church at Ephesus

     Revelation 2:1–7. Beginning in chapter  2, prophetic messages are revealed to be communicated to the seven churches of Asia. These churches were specially selected for the purpose of this revelation, as there were other churches of Asia not mentioned. They were in some sort of geographical relationship but were selected to represent the spiritual condition of various local churches. Accordingly, the messages were, first of all, to each of the churches as churches. Each message, however, is also addressed to individuals, and individual promises are given to those who hear. It is also true that throughout the history of the church and every generation similar churches would emerge that could profit by heeding the exhortation given to these seven churches. Some hold that these churches also, in general, represent the history of the church — the idea that the church in Ephesus represents the apostolic church, the others the progress of the church through the centuries, and the church at Laodicea as the final church at the time of Christ’s coming. There is, however, no scriptural verification of this type of interpretation.

     In addressing the church at Ephesus, which earlier had been commended highly for its faithfulness to God, the corrective message was delivered, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (vv.  4–7 ).

     The message to the church at Ephesus was addressed “to the angel of the church in Ephesus” (v.  1 ). Though the word for angel (Gr., aggelos) is properly translated “angel,” it seems to be used here in the general sense of a messenger as it is doubtful whether God would commit the message to each of the churches to an angel. The word is sometimes used in Greek literature, as in Scripture, to refer to human messengers ( Matt. 11:10; Mark 1:2; Luke 7:24, 27; 9:52 ). The church at Ephesus, a very prominent city on the western part of the Roman province of Asia, had enjoyed the ministry of Paul for three years ( Acts 20:31 ). Timothy also had apparently served this church as pastor ( 1 Tim 1:3 ). Later, before his exile to the Isle of Patmos, the apostle John had served as one of the pastors of this church. The church, therefore, was well established in doctrine and in faith, and in this message their basic orthodoxy and Christian faith were not questioned. Christ, however, had pointed out that the ardor of the first generation of Christians no longer was there because they had left their first love. As is historically true and often painfully experienced by individual Christians, devotion to Christ often declines long before doctrinal disagreement begins. The Ephesians were guilty of a defect of the heart rather than of the mind.

     Some thirty years before, the apostle Paul had written the letter to the Ephesians and apparently had rich fellowship with them and included them in his constant prayers ( Eph. 1:15–16 ). Paul was no longer on the scene, however, and the second and third generation of Christians that had followed somehow did not have the same zeal as their forebears. Genuine love is a test of Christian fellowship in relation to God and fellow Christians and is characterized by not loving the world (cf.  1 Tim. 6:10; 1 John 2:15 ).

     Christ urged them to repent, change their mind, concerning their relationship to God, and go back to the attitudes and works that characterized them earlier. Failure to do this would cause Him to remove their lampstand. In  Revelation 1:20, the lampstands are taken as representative of the churches and their distribution of God’s truth. The warning to the Ephesian churches that they would no longer be a lampstand for God was delivered, even though He commended them for hating the practices of the Nicolaitans (v.  6 ). It is believed that the Nicolaitans were Christians who professed faith but lived licentious lives. What is called “the practices of the Nicolaitans” in verse  6 is called “teaching of the Nicolaitans” in verse  15, a further progression and departure from God.

     As is characteristic of the admonition to the churches, appeal is directed to the individual, and the promise is given, “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (v.  7 ). Though every Christian saved by grace will have the right to eat of the tree of life, it is possible to profess Christian faith while only achieving Christian profession without reality, and such will be judged in eternity as well as in time.

The Prophecy to Smyrna

     Revelation 2:8–11. The church at Smyrna was some thirty-five miles north of Ephesus, and unlike Ephesus, which is now a deserted city, Smyrna continues to be an important port and a cosmopolitan, wealthy city. The city of Smyrna, however, was not a friendly place for the small Christian church that was located there. Those who professed Christ were opposed by ungodly Gentiles as well as Jews, referred to as “a synagogue of Satan” (v.  9), and opposed by Satan as well. Christ urges them, however, “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (v.  10 ). The fact of their present and future suffering is clearly pointed out in this Scripture. The allusion to the “ten days” has aroused various interpretations. Probably the best point of view is that it is representative of a short but intensive period of suffering. They were urged to be faithful to God, even to the point of death, and they would be given “the crown of life” (v.  10 ). In contrast to their present persecution and afflictions, in heaven they will enjoy eternal life as a crown and token of God’s blessing.

     The problem of suffering in Christian experience is treated in Scripture from various points of view. In some cases it is a discipline ( 1 Cor. 11:30–32; cf.  Heb. 12:3–13 ). Sometimes it is used as a preventative, keeping a Christian from sin ( 2 Cor. 12:7 ). Suffering obviously teaches a child of God things he could not learn any other way, and even Christ is said to have  “learned obedience from what he suffered” Heb. 5:8 ). Suffering often will bear the fruit of hope ( Rom. 5:3–5 ). By its nature, suffering also clarifies the Christian’s testimony and demonstrates the reality of his faith and commitment ( Acts 9:16 ).

     In this passage, the church at Smyrna was encouraged first not to be afraid of suffering, which was a reminder that they really did not need to be afraid as long as they were in God’s hands. Also, though they apparently did not suffer martyrdom, they should be faithful to death as may be required. The suffering of the church at Smyrna was to continue in subsequent history as illustrated in the case of Polycarp, who was bishop of the church at Smyrna and who died a martyr’s death.

     Their suffering, however, would lead to God’s recognizing them as having eternal life, and they would have the crown of life ( Rev. 2:10 ). In Scripture, other crowns are mentioned, such as the crown for faithful shepherding ( 1 Peter 5:4 ) and the crown of gold, which was an evidence of redemption ( Rev. 4:4 ). The Thessalonians were to be Paul’s crown of rejoicing ( 1 Thess. 2:19 ), and the incorruptible crown, or the crown that would not decay, would be awarded for those showing self-control in the race of life ( 1 Cor. 9:25 ). In the Christian experience, suffering comes before the crown. It is used in Scripture as God’s recognition of faithful commitment to the Lord.

     An invitation is extended also to individuals, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death”Rev. 2:11 ). Those who have eternal life do not have to fear eternal death, which will be experienced by the unsaved ( 20:6, 15 ).

The Prophecy concerning Pergamum

     Revelation 2:12–17. The church at Pergamum may be described as a church in compromise with the world. Though they had remained true to their faith in God and one of their number, Antipas, had been martyred, they were nevertheless guilty of what is referred to as “the teaching of Balaam” (v.  14 ), practicing the sins of the world, and “the teaching of the Nicolaitans” (v.  15 ), referring to their living licentiously though claiming to be Christians. The word of Christ to them was sharp and to the point: “Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (v.  16 ).

     The church at Pergamum was engulfed by a city that was largely pagan and devoted to idol worship. Pagan cults such as Athena, Asclepius, Dionysus, and Zeus had an important place in their local religious observances. The town also boasted a library of two hundred thousand volumes and was noted for its paper, and paper itself was called “pergamena.” Though the church was in an unfavorable cultural situation, they, nevertheless, were required to bear true testimony for God and were coming short.

     Christ declared that He would fight them with the sword of His mouth (v.  16 ). The sword referred to was a long sword like a spear, but it had the connotation of being a reference to the Word of God, which has a double-edged character much like a sword. This sword is mentioned seven times in the Bible ( Luke 2:35; Rev. 1:16; 2:12, 16; 6:8; 19:15, 21 ). As this sword is used referring to the sword out of the mouth of Christ ( 1:16 ), it supports the concept that the real reference here is to the Word of God in its penetrating and disciplinary character. The Word of God is a double-edged sword and on the one hand, offers promises of grace and salvation to those who put their trust in Christ, and on the other hand, promises condemnation to the unbeliever.

     The city of Pergamum was so wicked that it was referred to by Christ as “where Satan has his throne”2:13 ), fulfilled by the persecution of unbelievers in Pergamum and the custom to worship Asclepius, the serpent god. Under the evil influences of this city, it is understandable that those living there would be influenced by the teaching of Baal and the Nicolaitans, but Christ, nevertheless, judged it as evil and a basis for punishment of those in this church.

     What was true of Pergamum and their failures has been too evident in the history of the church. When the world and its system of values take over, it leaves a Christian without the clear hope of serving Christ now and the hope of Christ’s return for him.

     As in the other messages, a personal invitation is given to those who will listen: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him to receives it” (v.  17 ).

     Spiritual decisions always begin with individuals, and those in the church at Pergamum were addressed. They were promised that if they would overcome by faith, they would be given hidden manna and a new name on a white stone. The hidden manna seems to refer to a believer being nourished by Jesus as the bread from heaven, such as the Israelites benefited by eating the hidden manna in the wilderness. The sustaining grace of God is experienced by those who give their hearts to the Lord.

     The white stone is not identified by any particular jewel. Though it is not clear what the white stone represents, it has the new name of a Christian written on it and is a token of the individual believer being accepted by Christ.

The Prophecy concerning Thyatira

     Revelation 2:18–29. The charge against this church is that it tolerated apostasy. The town of Thyatira where the church was located is forty miles southeast of Pergamum, and the city was famous for the manufacture of purple dye. It is of interest that Christ selected this small church in an obscure location to represent one of the seven churches, but it clearly represented the tendency illustrated many times in the history of the church of a church departing from the faith and embracing apostasy.

     Little is mentioned about Thyatira outside the book of Revelation. The conversion of Lydia may have been the source of the evangelization of this city, as Scripture records no other evangelistic effort reaching the city. The conversion of Lydia mentions that she was from Thyatira and a seller of purple:  “One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” Acts 16:14 ).

     Though the church in Thyatira had many commendable features ( Rev. 2:19 ), Christ denounced her compromises: “Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds” (vv.  20–23 ).

     A principal criticism of the church at Thyatira was that they tolerated a woman by the name of Jezebel. This was probably not her real name, but it would remind them of the role of Jezebel in history as the wife of Ahab. She attempted to combine the worship of Israel and that of Baal, but actually desired to destroy the true worship of God. Her wickedness is recorded in the Old Testament, including having Naboth killed as in  1 Kings 21:1–16. She did what she could to kill other prophets of the Lord and wanted to kill Elijah ( 1 Kings 19:2 ), but was kept from it. In her death her body was eaten by the dogs, fulfilling the prophecy of her death ( 21:23; cf.  2 Kings 9:33–35 ).

     Appeal was made to the individual who will turn to God when Christ says, “Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come. To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations — ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’ — just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches”Rev. 2:24–29 ).

     Though it is apparent that revival of the church as a whole was unlikely, individuals in it could turn to the Lord and live for Him. God will judge those who do not but will reward those who turn to Him in faith. An unusual promise was given to the overcomer: “I will also give him the morning star” (v.  28 ). The one who overcomes will be given authority in God’s millennial kingdom when Christ will have authority to rule (cf.  Ps. 2 ).

     The authority Christ receives from the Father can be delegated to others who will reign with Him. Those who are true to Christ will also share His millennial reign. The reference to His rule in  Revelation 2:27 is one of the first reminders of the second coming of Christ to be given in the letters to the churches. The concept of “rule” has in it the thought of shepherding the Lord’s people, which includes the sheep of  Matthew 25:31–46 and the godly remnant of Israel in  Ezekiel 20:33–38. The morning star is not explained but may refer to a star that appears just before the dawn, the darkest hour of the night. Christ will be that glorious One who will return at the close of the darkness of the great tribulation. As in other churches, the appeal is to hear and respond.

The Prophecy to the Church at Sardis

     Revelation 3:1–5. At the time this letter was addressed to Sardis, the city was a prominent one and obtained its wealth from textile manufacturing, jewelry trade, and the dye industry. Generally speaking, the city was pagan with many individual mystery cults. The temple of Artemis was one of the major points of interest. Archeologists have located the remains of a Christian church building adjacent to this temple, indicating, at least in part, the witness of the church at Sardis to its generation. The city has long since lost its prominence, and today only a small village, Sart, can be found in the ancient ruins.

     The church described as spiritually dead (v.  1 ) has no commendation, and the message to the church is one of unrelieved judgment and warning to repent. Christ said, “Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you” (v.  3 ).

     Though the church as a whole could be characterized as a church without spiritual life, some individuals in the church were still attempting to serve the Lord. Christ said to them, “Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels” (vv.  4–5 ).

     When a church or a generation is labeled as apostate, as was the church at Sardis, some will be discovered in the midst of the group who are still serving the Lord. To them Christ extends assurance of their salvation and the promise that He will not blot out their name in the Book of Life. The Book of Life, later mentioned in  20:12, 15, is the record of those who have eternal life and who will spend eternity in the presence of the Savior.

     Scholars have debated what was meant by Christ’s promising not to blot out their names out of the Book of Life. Two major views have emerged. One is that the Book of Life contains the names of everyone who was given physical life in the world and their names are blotted out when they have passed the point of no return as far as salvation is concerned, usually at death. The promise, then, would be one of assurance of their eternal salvation.

     Another view, which seems more probable, is that the Book of Life contains those who have been born again and their names are entered at the time of their new birth. Though there is no record of anyone ever having his name blotted out of the book, the assurance given individuals in Sardis is one of assurance and certainty.

     In contrast to the message to the few that were saved, the church as a whole was warned that God’s judgment would fall on them at a time they did not expect. The city of Sardis had a peculiar geographic situation, and it was located on high ground surrounded by cliffs difficult to scale. Sardis tended to relax in confidence that the enemy could not reach them. However, twice in history they have experienced a sudden invasion by armies that did scale the cliffs. Their capture came suddenly and almost without warning. In a similar way, God is warning Sardis that God’s judgment may come on them, and of course, cliffs do not hinder God’s judging a wicked city.

     Whether the church as a whole heeded the message is not known, but as in the messages to the other churches, individuals were exhorted to hear: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” 3:6 ). In every situation no matter how far individuals may be from God, if the light of divine truth has penetrated at all, they sometimes bear faithful testimony in spite of their adverse circumstances. So it was to be at Sardis.

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Every Prophecy of the Bible: Clear Explanations for Uncertain Times

The Coming of the Kingdom part 40

By Dr. Andrew Woods 12/07/2015

In this series, the biblical teaching on the kingdom of God has been surveyed from  Genesis to  Revelation to demonstrate that the whole counsel of God's Word conveys the idea that the kingdom is a future reality. In addition, this series has examined the isolated New Testament texts and miscellaneous arguments that "kingdom now" theologians rely upon, and it has demonstrated how each is insufficient to convey "kingdom now" theology. As we move on to the final leg in our journey, we began noting why this trend of equating God's present work in the church with the Messianic kingdom is a matter believers should be concerned about, since this theology not only radically alters God's design for the church but is also the seedbed of many major false doctrines that have sadly entered Christ's church.

Larkin's Warnings

In the last two installments, we called attention to Alva J. McClain's warning concerning the impact of how "kingdom now" negatively impacts the church's calling, purpose, and mission. It is interesting to observe similar warnings given nearly a century ago in the writings of Clarence Larkin:

...the Church is not an "Organization" but an "Organism." Therefore it is not a "Social Club," organized and supported solely for the benefit of its members. Neither is it a "Place of Amusement" to pander to the carnal nature of man. Nor is it a "House of Merchandise" for the sale of "Indulgences," or other commodities, whereby the money of the ungodly can be secured to save the penurious church member a little self-sacrifice. Neither is it a "Reform Bureau" to save the "bodies" of men. The reformation of men is very commendable, as are all forms of "Social Service," but that is not the work or mission of the Church. The world was just as full, if not fuller, of the evils that afflict society today, in the days of Christ, but He never, nor did the Apostles, organize any reform agencies. All the great philanthropic and civilizing agencies of the world are "By-Products" of Christianity. We are told in  Acts 5:15, that the people laid their sick in the streets that the "Shadow of Peter" might fall upon them and heal them. But if Peter had spent his time "casting shadows," and neglected his Apostolic work of trying to save the "SOULS" of men, his shadow would have lost its power. Jesus knew that the source of all the evils in the world is SIN, and that the only way to eradicate sin is to Regenerate the Human Heart, and so He gave the GOSPEL, and the "Mission" of the Church is to carry this Gospel to the world. "EVANGELISM," not "Social Service," is the "Mission" of the Church.  Mark 16:15-16. The great mistake the Church has made is in appropriating to herself in this Dispensation the promises of earthly conquest and glory which belong exclusively to Israel in the "Millennial Age." As soon as the Church enters into an "Alliance with the World," and seeks the help of Parliaments, Congresses, Legislatures, Federations and Reform Societies, largely made up of ungodly men and women, she loses her spiritual power and becomes helpless as a redeeming force. [1]

Larking further notes:

...but the "Mission" of the Church is her "COMMISSON" to "Evangelize" the world.  Mark 16:15-16. Acts 1:7-8. The "Kingdom Idea" has robbed the Church of her "UPWARD LOOK," and of the "BLESSED HOPE." There cannot be any "Imminent Coming" to those who are seeking to "Set up the Kingdom." The "Kingdom Idea" has robbed the Church of the "Pilgrim" and "Martyr Spirit," and caused it to go down into Egypt for help. When the Church enters into an "Alliance with the World," and seeks the help of Parliaments, Congresses, Legislatures, Federations and Reform Societies, largely made up of ungodly men and women, she loses her "SPIRITUAL POWER" and becomes helpless as a redeeming force. The end of such an "Alliance" will be a "Religious Political Regime" that wilt-pave the way for the revelation of Satan's great "Religious Political Leader" and "Superman" — the ANTICHRIST. [2]

Here, Larkin notes at least five consequences that 'kingdom now" theology has upon Ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church. First, "kingdom now" theology causes the church to drift into a Social Gospel agenda favoring holistic redemption of societal structures in lieu of fulfilling the Great Commission. When the church becomes something that God never intended nor called her to be, she cannot expect, and in fact will be emptied of, His divine resources and empowerment. Second, viewing itself as the kingdom of God upon the earth causes the church to become at home in the world in contradistinction to the New Testament portrayal of the church as a mere pilgrim passing through both temporary and alien territory en-route to her ultimate eternal destination. Both of these points were covered in the prior installment. However, let us now take note of three equally important points that Larkin's above comments surface.

Alliances With Non-Biblical Groups

Third, because there are not presently and numerically enough Christians necessary to establish God's kingdom upon the earth, it becomes necessary for the church to find common ground with those who do not share its biblical convictions in order to build the political coalition needed to implement a "kingdom now" social agenda. As noted above, Larkin well explains:

The great mistake the Church has made is in appropriating to herself in this Dispensation the promises of earthly conquest and glory which belong exclusively to Israel in the "Millennial Age." As soon as the Church enters into an "Alliance with the World," and seeks the help of Parliaments, Congresses, Legislatures, Federations and Reform Societies, largely made up of ungodly men and women, she loses her spiritual power and becomes helpless as a redeeming force. [3]

In the prior installment, we noted the "kingdom now" agenda behind popular pastor Rick Warren's "PEACE" plan. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that Warren has become one of the leading advocates of ecumenism in our day. Recently, the "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" mantra has been given new life by mega-church pastor and bestselling author Rick Warren. In a recent interview with Catholic News Service, he noted:

We have far more in common than what divides us. When you talk about Pentecostals, charismatics, evangelicals, fundamentalists, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, on and on and on and on. Well they would all say we believe in the trinity, we believe in the Bible, we believe in the resurrection, we believe salvation is through Jesus Christ. These are the big issues. Sometimes Protestants think that Catholics worship Mary like she's another god. But that's not exactly catholic doctrine...and people say well what are the saints all about? Why are you praying to the saints? And when you understand what they mean by what they're saying there's a whole lot more commonality. Now there are still real differences, no doubt about that. But the most important thing is if you love Jesus, we're on the same team. The unity that I think we would see realistically is not a structural unity but a unity of mission. And so, when it comes to the family we are co-workers in the field on this for the protection of what we call the sanctity of life, the sanctity of sex, and the sanctity of marriage. So there's a great commonality and there's no division on any of those three. Many times people have been beaten down for taking a Biblical stance. And they start to feel, "well maybe I'm out here all by yourself." No you're not. [4]

Has Warren forgotten that we, as Protestants, broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the days of Martin Luther and John Calvin? Why the existence of this historical rupture between Protestants and Catholics? The answer to this question lies in the fact that we as Protestants saw things in Roman Catholicism that we could not find in Scripture. There are vast and insurmountable theological divisions between Bible-believing Evangelicals and the Roman Catholic Church. The rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation involved the five "solas." "Sola" is a Latin expression meaning "alone." These five solas are Sola Fide (faith alone), Sola Gratia (grace alone), Solus Christus (Christ alone), Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), and Soli Deo Gloria (to the glory of God alone). While Protestants embrace these five theological realities or solas, Roman Catholic theology rejects them. [5] Yet, the "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" mindset erases all of those theological barriers and puts Evangelicals and Catholics on the same theological footing.

Apparently not content to build a bridge to Catholicism only, Warren also seems to be building a similar bridge into Islam. Such advocacy of interfaith cooperation across vastly divergent belief systems is revealed through many of Warren's public statements. Note Warren's words from a recent World Economic Forum panel discussion:

To my Islamic brother here from Italy, I would say I'm not really interested in inter-faith dialogue, I'm interested in inter-faith projects. We've got enough talk. So... a few weeks ago, at Georgetown University, we brought in three imams, we brought in three Catholic priests, we brought in three evangelical pastors, and we brought in three Rabbis and we said 'what can we do about AIDS?' And we started on some common ground on those issues; what can we do that we all care about? [6]

Note how Rick Warren, with Tony Blair present at this World Economic Forum panel discussion, publicly referring to an Islamic cleric as "My Islamic brother." The New Testament, on the other hand, teaches that our brothers are only those who believe in Christ and do the will of God ( Matt. 12:46-50 ). Thus, in no sense can an Islamic cleric be viewed as a brother of a born-again believer.

Matthew 12:46–50 (ESV) 46 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. 48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Continue Reading (Part 41 on Oct 1 web page)

ENDNOTES
[1] Clarence Larkin, Rightly Dividing the Word
[2] Clarence Larkin, By Clarence Larkin - Second Coming of Christ (1990-10-16) [Paperback]
[3] Larkin, Rightly Dividing the Word
[4] Matt Slick, "Rick Warren's Comments on Roman Catholicism," online:www.carm.org, accessed 20 July 2015.
[5] For more differences, see James McCarthy, The Gospel According to Rome: Comparing Catholic Tradition and the Word of God.
[6] http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nu7_rtUQiE0

     Dr. Andrew Woods Books

Note I copied this article from The Bible Prophecy Blog.

Dr. Andrew Woods Ministry Page, YouTube Channel, and Church.

The Church: Your Story

By Joe Holland 8/01/2014

     Why is this happening to me? What is my purpose in this life? If God is so powerful, then why does He allow me to be treated this way by people who are opposed to Him? Will God ever give me victory over this particular sin?

     These are the types of questions that pepper the ordinary Christian life. Christians want an explanation from God for their current suffering and a steadfast promise that their own life will turn out well. Christians know that “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28), but it is one thing to memorize it in a Scripture memory program and quite another to believe it when life punches you in the gut.

     But as all Christians discover in time, God does not always provide explanations for the suffering or the confusing events that sum up life in this broken world. And that is why the doctrine of the church is so important.

     The church is the community of the blood-bought saints, scattered across chronology, geography, and ethnicity. The church is a collection of people dearly loved by God. That means that the story of the church is a tapestry, a stained-glass window of stories. Your triumphs and failures, your sins and sanctification, are a part of the story of the local church of which you are a member. The story of your local church is just one piece of the story of the church universal, helping us see how our own tangible experience that inspires such deep questioning of God is a small part of the story of the church as a whole.

     This, then, is our touch point. So much of the ordinary Christian life starts, continues, and ends without a specific explanation from the Lord. But God has made promises as to how the story of the church will go in the world. When the Christian roots his story in his local church’s story, which is a part of the story of the universal church, he finds comfort and rich promises from the Lord.

THE CHURCH AND SPIRITUAL WARFARE

     Are you ever discouraged by the spiritual warfare that is so often a part of the ordinary Christian life? Jesus reminds us in Matthew 16:18 that He builds His church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it. Jesus builds and protects His church. The church of Jesus will win in the end. With victory secured, your spiritual skirmishes are divine mop-up missions.

THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD

     Are you ever discouraged by what the world thinks of you because of your testimony to Jesus? Do you ever wish that the gospel would be seen for what it is by all its naysayers? Because you are a part of the universal church and a local church, you can be sure that your story is careening toward a grand revelation of Jesus as King and His followers as glorious saints. Paul in Ephesians 3:10 encourages us that the manifold wisdom of God is being displayed in the church as the vanguard of that day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

THE CHURCH AND GOD’S PURPOSES

     Do you ever wish you could know for sure that you are a part of God’s unfolding plan? When Paul was converted, Jesus asked him why Paul was persecuting Him. Paul didn’t have a response because he didn’t know he was persecuting Jesus as he was persecuting the church (Acts 8:3; 9:4). Jesus so closely aligned Himself with the church that in several places in the New Testament the two — Jesus and the church — are synonymous. Simply put, God’s continuing work in the world through Jesus occurs in the church. So if you are an ordinary Christian, part of an ordinary local church, then you are a part of God’s ongoing and unfolding plan in the world.

THE CHURCH AND YOUR SIN

     Are you ever weighed down by your sin, longing for the day that you will be free from it? In Ephesians 5:27, Paul promises that one day Jesus will finish His work of perfecting His bride, the church. On that day, she will be without spot and blemish.

     Christian, you are a part of that church, so you will be a part of that spotless, beautiful bride one day. God’s work in you personally is a part of His work in your local church, which is a part of His work in His church as a whole. As you are sanctified, so the church as a whole is sanctified. And when the church is glorified in the presence of King Jesus, so will you participate in that glory.

     Your name does not appear in the pages of Scripture. But the name of God’s people, the church, does. The normal, ordinary Christian life is framed by participation in a local church and so taps into all the promises of God given to this outrageously blessed group of people.

     There is an answer to the difficult questions Christians ask. Your experiential questions find answers in the experience of the church about whom God has said much. Do you want to live a confident, ordinary Christian life that will bear extraordinary fruit for all eternity? Invest deeply as you participate in a beloved, ordinary local church.

Click here to go to source

     Rev. Joe Holland is pastor of Christ Covenant Presbyterian Church in Culpeper, Va.

Pastor, Professor, Pilgrim: An Interview with Derek Thomas

By Derek Thomas 8/01/2014

     Tabletalk: How did you become a Christian?

     Derek W.H. Thomas: I became a Christian during my first year at university. My best friend (who had recently become a Christian) sent me a copy of John Stott’s Basic Christianity (IVP Classics) in the mail. Within a few days of reading it, I prayed something akin to the sinner’s prayer and received an immediate assurance that I was a Christian.

TT: What is your role as editor-in-chief of Reformation21?

     DT: I make some behind-the-scenes contributions to the direction and content of the e-zine. Think of it like Red Adair rushing in to cap a blazing fire in a Texas oil field, and you will get a picture of what I do. The e-zine is a vehicle for expressing opinions and ideas from a highly focused team of contributors.

TT: You’ve had lengthy ministry experiences in Northern Ireland and the United States. What are the differences in ministering in these two contexts? What are the similarities?

     DT: To be more accurate, I have had ministry experiences in Northern Ireland and the Southern states of America, both of which still retain a residue of Western cultural Christianity. Both communities display what might otherwise be called “nominal” Christianity, with an acceptance of some basic ethical norms, a high regard for the institutional church, and a tolerance of conservative Christian views. Both communities display ethnic and religious tension — an “us” and a “them” with the church divided almost as much as the secular society. Ministering to received prejudices and anticipated barriers has therefore always been an issue. Uppermost, perhaps, has been the issue of the role of the church in reforming society — is the church to withdraw from these issues (as a “spiritual body”) or attempt change?

TT: Why does John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress remain valuable for believers centuries after it was written?

     DT: Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's Progress is valuable, first, as a piece of English literature written by a seventeenth-century Christian, and second, and more importantly, because it reflects in an altogether unique way the gospel from a Reformed, Calvinistic perspective. The issues of law and grace; justification and works; the nature of Christian discipleship as another; assurance; perseverance — these and much more are weaved into its captivating narrative. It is fantasy literature of sorts (strictly speaking, it is an allegory) that captures the entire range of biblical teaching on the Christian life from a Puritan, experientialist point of view. It is the best theology told in the form of a road-trip tale that ensures its readers are both carried along and informed at the same time. As an antidote to the shallow forms of Christianity that pervade our times, Bunyan’s tale of Christian’s journey (as well as Part 2—the story of Christiana and the four children) knows no equal.

TT: If you could discuss theology with any theologian from church history, who would it be and why?

     DT: That would have to be John Calvin. I spent a good part of my life reading his material for doctoral studies, and I have many things I would like to ask him, not least of which would be his opinion on which biography best captures him. A man who could write the first edition of the Institutes in his late twenties, after only being a Christian for a few years and with no seminary education, is a phenomenon in itself. Particularly, in his communication with Westphal on the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, I would want to ask him precisely what he meant when he wrote, “By the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit life is infused into us from the substance of Christ’s flesh.”

TT: How should church members pray for their pastors and elders? What specific things should they ask God to grant these leaders?

     DT: Pray for moral and spiritual perseverance to the end. There are too many casualties around for elders and pastors to hit the cruise-control button. Two particular features constantly threaten elders and pastors, and the manner in which they view their role. The first is a view that eldership is promotion to a higher office and therefore suggests authority rather than servanthood. This often loses sight of the self-denying posture that should mark all service (Phil. 2:5-9). The other issue is gifting—every-member gifting, to be precise (Eph. 4:12, translated to imply that the purpose of the unique gifts of Apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers are given in order to “equip the saints to do the work of ministry”). Too often, elders and pastors think in terms of “control” rather than “enabling,” thereby stifling vision.

TT: What challenges and opportunities have you encountered in your new position as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church?

     DT: To stand in Thornwell’s pulpit every week is both exhilarating and humbling. First Presbyterian Church is one of those historic, well-attended churches in which any pastor would dream of preaching. To be called as the senior minister is without doubt the greatest honor I have received. I had the immense pleasure of working at the church for two years when Sinclair Ferguson was the minister, and those two years were very special indeed. The challenges include the high expectation (especially in preaching) among the First Presbyterian family, as well as encountering a session that is larger than the entire membership of some churches I have been in. First Presbyterian is very much a downtown church, a few blocks away from the state capitol and the University of South Carolina. The opportunities are vast. How do we preserve our history as a church without becoming a fossil? How does one retain gospel freshness in the pulpit, especially in a congregation that expects a certain standard of homiletical skill? These are some of the challenges.

TT: What is the greatest temptation that young pastors face in gospel ministry, and how can they stand against it?

     DT: To think too highly of themselves. The ministry is a place of enormous temptation to pride. It doesn’t make any difference as to the style of church (historic or hipster-urban church plant)—young ministers often stand in a place where words and opinions sway the hearts and affections of people. This can make the most stable person giddy. Paul knew this issue when he warned Timothy about elders: “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim. 3:6). How can one avoid issues of spiritual pride in a culture of entitlement? I am tempted to say, “Marry a girl who loves you enough to be honest enough to tell you what you need to hear,” but if current Facebook entries by pastors’ wives are to be believed, this may not be the solution. But accountability is paramount — whether with a good friend, or something more formally established with or by the session.

TT: If a man told you that he feels called to ministry and he asked you how he should pursue this calling, what would you tell him?

     DT: I find today that many young men feel called to “ministry” but not to a traditional view of a “minister.” This issue needs to be addressed carefully. Assuming the call is to preaching and pastoring, I would tell him that the subjective call is one thing and the objective another. He needs to go to the church with this sense of call. Depending upon the ecclesiology, he should go to the pastor(s), who in turn will ensure that the elders endorse this call. There is a view that the seminary will sort out candidates and reveal who is and who is not called. This is a false belief. Usually, I tell a young man to find an opportunity to speak (a Bible study, perhaps) and then ask him to record it and evaluate it so that we can talk about it later.

TT: You’ve written extensively on the book of Job. What are three lessons that Christians should learn from this book of Scripture?

     DT: God is the architect of bad things as well as good things. God has a wonderful plan for my life, and it may be one that hurts. We have no right or entitlement to understanding why trials come our way. God is incomprehensible, although we can know Him in part, and we must learn to live in submission to the superior knowledge of God, trusting Him at every turn. Also, that some counseling methods are inept. Job’s friends talked a great deal, and though what they said was often true, the context was entirely misunderstood and therefore the counsel utterly irrelevant or wrong.

Click here to go to source

     Derek W.H. Thomas is senior minister at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, S.C., and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta. He is also editorial director of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and editor of its e-zine, Reformation21. Dr. Thomas is originally from Wales, and he holds a PhD from the University of Wales.

Derek Thomas Books:

Read The Psalms In "1" Year

Psalm 106

Give Thanks to the LORD, for He Is Good
106

40 Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people,
and he abhorred his heritage;
41 he gave them into the hand of the nations,
so that those who hated them ruled over them.
42 Their enemies oppressed them,
and they were brought into subjection under their power.
43 Many times he delivered them,
but they were rebellious in their purposes
and were brought low through their iniquity.

44 Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
45 For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
46 He caused them to be pitied
by all those who held them captive.

47 Save us, O LORD our God,
and gather us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
and glory in your praise.

48 Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting!
And let all the people say, “Amen!”
Praise the LORD!

ESV Study Bible

The Continual Burnt Offering (1 Corinthians 12:12)

By H.A. Ironside - 1941

September 30
1 Corinthians 12:12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit.    ESV

     The unity of the body is not merely a doctrinal tenet, it is a blessed and precious reality. Through the baptism of the Holy Spirit all believers are united to the risen Lord, the church’s Head in Heaven, and to one another. This is an indissoluble relationship, and because of it, “the members should have the same care for one another” (1 Corinthians 12:25), rejoicing when a member is honored, feeling for one who suffers, and standing loyally by those who have to endure persecution. This is what it means to hold the truth of the one body. Some acknowledge it as an article of faith but show little or no concern for their fellow-members and the trying experiences many of them are called to pass through.

1 Corinthians 12:25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.   ESV

Oh, how we thirst the chains to burst
That weight our spirits downward;
And there to flow, in love’s full glow,
With hearts like Thine surrounded!
No more to view Thy chosen few
In selfish strife divided,
But drink in peace the living grace
That gave them hearts united!
Lord, haste that day of cloudless ray,
That prospect bright, unfailing;
Where God shall shine in light divine,
In glory never fading.
--- F. Whitfield

The Continual Burnt Offering: Daily Meditations on the Word of God


  • God Shows Up for You
  • Christian Mission
  • Gospel Diagnostician

#1 Tim Muehlhoff  Biola University

 

#2 Greg Ganssle   Biola University

 

#3 Greg Ganssle   Biola University

 


     Devotionals, notes, poetry and more

UCB The Word For Today
     God is real!
     (Sept 30)    Bob Gass

     ‘The LORD is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?’

(Ps 27:1) The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? ESV

     What hope or help does the atheist or agnostic have? None! Writer and editorialist W.O. Saunders said in American Magazine: ‘I’d like to introduce you to one of the loneliest and unhappiest individuals on earth…the man who doesn’t believe in God. I can introduce you to such a man because I myself am one, and in introducing myself you shall have an introduction to the agnostic or sceptic in your own neighbourhood, for he is everywhere in the land. You’ll be surprised to know that the agnostic envies your faith in God, your settled belief in a heaven after life, and your blessed assurance that you’ll meet with your loved ones in an afterlife where there’ll be neither sadness nor pain. He’d give anything to be able to embrace that faith and be comforted by it, but for him there is only the grave and the persistence of matter. After the grave all he can see is the disintegration of the protoplasm and psychoplasm of which my body and personality are composed, but in this materialist view, I find neither ecstasy nor happiness…He may put on a brave front but he isn’t happy…He sometimes yearns for a staff on which to lean. He, too, carries a cross. For him, this earth is but a tricky raft adrift in the unfathomable waters of eternity with no horizon in sight. His heart aches for every precious life upon the raft - drifting, drifting, drifting, whither no one knows. But when you put your trust in Christ, you can say with confidence, “The LORD is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?”’

Is 56-58
Col 4

UCB The Word For Today

American Minute
     by Bill Federer

     Seven times he came to America, preaching across the Colonies, sometimes to crowds of over 30,000 people. This Great Awakening spread like fire. Benjamin Franklin not only attended his meetings and printed his RS Thomas, but built an auditorium for him to speak in, afterwards donating it as the first building of the University of Pennsylvania. Who was he: George Whitefield, who died this day, September 30, 1770. Of Whitefield’s preaching, Franklin wrote: “It was wonderful to see… one could not walk thro’ the town in an Evening without hearing Psalms sung in different families of every street.”

American Minute
The Soul of Prayer
     by P.T. Forsyth, (1848-1921)


     Common prayer is not necessarily public. To recite the Litany on a sick-bed is common prayer. Christ felt the danger of common prayer as public prayer (Matt. vi. 5, 6). And this is specially so when the public prayer is “extempore.” To keep that real calls for an amount of private prayer which perhaps is not for every one. “Extempore” prayers are apt to be private prayers in public, like the Pharisee’s in the temple, with too much idiosynerasy for public use; or else they lose the spontaneity of private prayer, and turn as formal as a liturgy can be, though in another (and perhaps deadlier) way. The prayers of the same man inevitably fall more or less into the same forms and phrases. But private prayer may be more common in its note than public prayer should be private in its tone. Our private prayer should be common in spirit. We are doing in the act what many are doing. In the retired place we include in sympathy and intercession a world of other men which we exclude in fact. The world of men disappears from around us but not from within. We are not indifferent to its weal or woe in our seclusion. In the act of praying for ourselves we pray for others, for no temptation befalls us but what is common to man; and in praying for others we pray with them. We pray for their prays and the success of their prayers. It is an act of union. We can thus be united even with churches that refuse to pray or unite with us.

     Moreover, it is common prayer, however solitary, that prevails most, as being most in tune with the great first goal of God’s grace—the community. So this union in prayer gives to prayer an ethical note of great power and value. If we really pray with others, it must clear, and consolidate, and exalt our moral relations with them everywhere. Could we best the man with whom and for whom we really pray? There is a great democratic note in common prayer which is also true prayer. “Eloquence and ardour have not done so much for Christ’s cause as the humble virtues, the united activity, and the patient prayers of thousands of faithful people whose names are quite unknown.” And we are united thus not only to the living but to the long dead. “He who prays is nearer Christ than even the apostles were,” certainly than the apostles before the Cross and Resurrection.

     We have been warned by a man of genius that the bane of so much religion is that it clings to God with its weakness and not with its strength. This is very true of that supreme act of religion of which our critics know least—of the act of prayer. So many of us pray because we are driven by need rather than kindled by grace. Our prayer is a cry rather than a hymn. It is a quest rather than a tryst. it trembles more than it triumphs. It asks for strength rather than exerts it. How different was the prayer of Christ! All the divine power of the Eternal Son went to it. It was the supreme form taken by His Sonship in its experience and action. Nothing is more striking in Christ’s life than His combination of selflessness and power. His consciousness of power was equal to anything, and egoism never entered Him. His prayer was accordingly. It was the exercise of His unique power rather than of His extreme need. It came from His uplifting and not His despair. It was less His duty than His joy. It was more full of God’s gift of grace than of man’s poverty of faith, of a holy love than of a seeking heart. In His prayer He poured out neither His wish nor His longing merely, but His will. And He knew He was heard always. He knew it with such power and certainty that He could distribute His value, bless with His overflow, and promise His disciples they would be heard in His name. It was by His prayer that He countered and foiled the godless power in the world, the kingdom of the devil. “Satan hath desired to have thee—but I have prayer for thee.” His prayer means so much for the weak because it arose out of this strength and its exercise. It was chiefly in His prayer that He was the Messiah, and the Revealer and Wielder of the power and kingship of God. His power with God was so great that it made His disciples feel it could only be the power of God; He prayer in the Eternal Spirit whereby He offered Himself to God. And it was so great because it was spent on God alone. So true is it that the kingdom of God comes not with observation, that the greatest things Christ did for it were done in the night and not in the day; His prayers meant more than His miracles. And His great triumph was when there were none to see, as they all forsook Him and fled. He was mightest in His action for men not when He was acting on men but on God. He felt the dangers of the publicity where His work lay, and He knew that they were only to be met in secrecy. He did most for His public in entire solitude; there He put forth all His power. His nights were not always the rest of weakness from the day before, but often the storing of strength for the day to come. Prayer (if we let Christ teach us of it) is mightiest in the mightiest. It is the ether round the throne of the Most High. Its power answers to the omnipotence of grace. And those who feel they owe everything to God’s grace need have no difficulty about the range of prayer. They may pray for everything.

     A word, as I close this chapter, to the sufferers. We pray for the removal of pain, pray passionately, and then with exhaustion, sick from hope deferred and prayer’s failure. But there is a higher prayer than that. It is a greater thing to pray for pain’s conversion than for its removal. It is more of grace to pray that God would make a sacrament of it. The sacrament of pain! That we partake not simply, nor perhaps chiefly, when we say, or try to say, with resignation, “Thy will be done.” It is not always easy for the sufferer, if he remain clear-eyed to see that it is God’s will. It may have been caused by an evil mind, or a light fool, or some stupid greed. But, now it is there, a certain treatment of it is God’s will; and that is to capture and exploit it for Him. It is to make it serve the soul and glorify God. It is to consecrate its elements and make it sacramental. It is to convert it into prayer.


--- Forsyth, P. T. (1848-1921).

The Soul of Prayer
Lean Into God
     Compilation by RickAdams7


The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion
because if a mother can kill her own child,
what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me?
There is nothing between.
--- Mother Teresa


Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.
--- Isaac Bashevis Singer


If we walk in the Spirit daily, surrendered to His power, we have the right to expect anything we need to hear from God.
--- Charles Stanley     How to Listen to God


The road of denial leads to the precipice of destruction
--- John Bunyan

... from here, there and everywhere

History of the Destruction of Jerusalem
     Thanks to Meir Yona

     CHAPTER 7.

     How One Of The Towers Erected By The Romans Fell Down Of Its Own Accord; And How The Romans After Great Slaughter Had Been Made Got Possession Of The First Wall. How Also Titus Made His Assaults Upon The Second Wall; As Also Concerning Longinus The Roman, And Castor The Jew.

     1. Now, on the next night, a surprising disturbance fell upon the Romans; for whereas Titus had given orders for the erection of three towers of fifty cubits high, that by setting men upon them at every bank, he might from thence drive those away who were upon the wall, it so happened that one of these towers fell down about midnight; and as its fall made a very great noise, fear fell upon the army, and they, supposing that the enemy was coming to attack them, ran all to their arms. Whereupon a disturbance and a tumult arose among the legions, and as nobody could tell what had happened, they went on after a disconsolate manner; and seeing no enemy appear, they were afraid one of another, and every one demanded of his neighbor the watchword with great earnestness, as though the Jews had invaded their camp. And now were they like people under a panic fear, till Titus was informed of what had happened, and gave orders that all should be acquainted with it; and then, though with some difficulty, they got clear of the disturbance they had been under.

     2. Now these towers were very troublesome to the Jews, who otherwise opposed the Romans very courageously; for they shot at them out of their lighter engines from those towers, as they did also by those that threw darts, and the archers, and those that flung stones. For neither could the Jews reach those that were over them, by reason of their height; and it was not practicable to take them, nor to overturn them, they were so heavy, nor to set them on fire, because they were covered with plates of iron. So they retired out of the reach of the darts, and did no longer endeavor to hinder the impression of their rams, which, by continually beating upon the wall, did gradually prevail against it; so that the wall already gave way to the Nico, for by that name did the Jews themselves call the greatest of their engines, because it conquered all things. And now they were for a long while grown weary of fighting, and of keeping guards, and were retired to lodge in the night time at a distance from the wall. It was on other accounts also thought by them to be superfluous to guard the wall, there being besides that two other fortifications still remaining, and they being slothful, and their counsels having been ill concerted on all occasions; so a great many grew lazy and retired. Then the Romans mounted the breach, where Nico had made one, and all the Jews left the guarding that wall, and retreated to the second wall; so those that had gotten over that wall opened the gates, and received all the army within it. And thus did the Romans get possession of this first wall, on the fifteenth day of the siege, which was the seventh day of the month Artemisius, [Jyar,] when they demolished a great part of it, as well as they did of the northern parts of the city, which had been demolished also by Cestius formerly.

     3. And now Titus pitched his camp within the city, at that place which was called "the Camp of the Assyrians," having seized upon all that lay as far as Cedron, but took care to be out of the reach of the Jews' darts. He then presently began his attacks, upon which the Jews divided themselves into several bodies, and courageously defended that wall; while John and his faction did it from the tower of Antonia, and from the northern cloister of the temple, and fought the Romans before the monuments of king Alexander; and Sireoh's army also took for their share the spot of ground that was near John's monument, and fortified it as far as to that gate where water was brought in to the tower Hippicus. However, the Jews made violent sallies, and that frequently also, and in bodies together out of the gates, and there fought the Romans; and when they were pursued all together to the wall, they were beaten in those fights, as wanting the skill of the Romans. But when they fought them from the walls, they were too hard for them; the Romans being encouraged by their power, joined to their skill, as were the Jews by their boldness, which was nourished by the fear they were in, and that hardiness which is natural to our nation under calamities; they were also encouraged still by the hope of deliverance, as were the Romans by their hopes of subduing them in a little time. Nor did either side grow weary; but attacks and rightings upon the wall, and perpetual sallies out in bodies, were there all the day long; nor were there any sort of warlike engagements that were not then put in use. And the night itself had much ado to part them, when they began to fight in the Morning; nay, the night itself was passed without sleep on both sides, and was more uneasy than the day to them, while the one was afraid lest the wall should be taken, and the other lest the Jews should make sallies upon their camps; both sides also lay in their armor during the night time, and thereby were ready at the first appearance of light to go to the battle. Now among the Jews the ambition was who should undergo the first dangers, and thereby gratify their commanders. Above all, they had a great veneration and dread of Simon; and to that degree was he regarded by every one of those that were under him, that at his command they were very ready to kill themselves with their own hands. What made the Romans so courageous was their usual custom of conquering and disuse of being defeated, their constant wars, and perpetual warlike exercises, and the grandeur of their dominion; and what was now their chief encouragement—Titus who was present every where with them all; for it appeared a terrible thing to grow weary while Caesar was there, and fought bravely as well as they did, and was himself at once an eye-witness of such as behaved themselves valiantly, and he who was to reward them also. It was, besides, esteemed an advantage at present to have any one's valor known by Caesar; on which account many of them appeared to have more alacrity than strength to answer it. And now, as the Jews were about this time standing in array before the wall, and that in a strong body, and while both parties were throwing their darts at each other, Longinus, one of the equestrian order, leaped out of the army of the Romans, and leaped into the very midst of the army of the Jews; and as they dispersed themselves upon the attack, he slew two of their men of the greatest courage; one of them he struck in his mouth as he was coming to meet him, the other was slain by him by that very dart which he drew out of the body of the other, with which he ran this man through his side as he was running away from him; and when he had done this, he first of all ran out of the midst of his enemies to his own side. So this man signalized himself for his valor, and many there were who were ambitious of gaining the like reputation. And now the Jews were unconcerned at what they suffered themselves from the Romans, and were only solicitous about what mischief they could do them; and death itself seemed a small matter to them, if at the same time they could but kill any one of their enemies. But Titus took care to secure his own soldiers from harm, as well as to have them overcome their enemies. He also said that inconsiderate violence was madness, and that this alone was the true courage that was joined with good conduct. He therefore commanded his men to take care, when they fought their enemies, that they received no harm from them at the same time, and thereby show themselves to be truly valiant men.

     4. And now Titus brought one of his engines to the middle tower of the north part of the wall, in which a certain crafty Jew, whose name was Castor, lay in ambush, with ten others like himself, the rest being fled away by reason of the archers. These men lay still for a while, as in great fear, under their breastplates; but when the tower was shaken, they arose, and Castor did then stretch out his hand, as a petitioner, and called for Caesar, and by his voice moved his compassion, and begged of him to have mercy upon them; and Titus, in the innocency of his heart, believing him to be in earnest, and hoping that the Jews did now repent, stopped the working of the battering ram, and forbade them to shoot at the petitioners, and bid Castor say what he had a mind to say to him. He said that he would come down, if he would give him his right hand for his security. To which Titus replied, that he was well pleased with such his agreeable conduct, and would be well pleased if all the Jews would be of his mind, and that he was ready to give the like security to the city. Now five of the ten dissembled with him, and pretended to beg for mercy, while the rest cried out aloud that they would never be slaves to the Romans, while it was in their power to die in a state of freedom. Now while these men were quarrelling for a long while, the attack was delayed; Castor also sent to Simon, and told him that they might take some time for consultation about what was to be done, because he would elude the power of the Romans for a considerable time. And at the same time that he sent thus to him, he appeared openly to exhort those that were obstinate to accept of Titus's hand for their security; but they seemed very angry at it, and brandished their naked swords upon the breast-works, and struck themselves upon their breast, and fell down as if they had been slain. Hereupon Titus, and those with him, were amazed at the courage of the men; and as they were not able to see exactly what was done, they admired at their great fortitude, and pitied their calamity. During this interval, a certain person shot a dart at Castor, and wounded him in his nose; whereupon he presently pulled out the dart, and showed it to Titus, and complained that this was unfair treatment; so Caesar reproved him that shot the dart, and sent Josephus, who then stood by him, to give his right hand to Castor. But Josephus said that he would not go to him, because these pretended petitioners meant nothing that was good; he also restrained those friends of his who were zealous to go to him. But still there was one Eneas, a deserter, who said he would go to him. Castor also called to them, that somebody should come and receive the money which he had with him; this made Eneas the more earnestly to run to him with his bosom open. Then did Castor take up a great stone, and threw it at him, which missed him, because he guarded himself against it; but still it wounded another soldier that was coming to him. When Caesar understood that this was a delusion, he perceived that mercy in war is a pernicious thing, because such cunning tricks have less place under the exercise of greater severity. So he caused the engine to work more strongly than before, on account of his anger at the deceit put upon him. But Castor and his companions set the tower on fire when it began to give way, and leaped through the flame into a hidden vault that was under it, which made the Romans further suppose that they were men of great courage, as having cast themselves into the fire.

          The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem, by Flavius Josephus Translator: William Whiston

The War of the Jews: The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem (complete edition, 7 books)
Proverbs 25:28
     by D.H. Stern

28     Like a city breached, without walls,
     is a person who lacks self-control.


Complete Jewish Bible : An English Version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and B'Rit Hadashah (New Testament)
Glimpsing the Triune God
     From Simply Christian - N.T. Wright

     How, then, can we summarize the Christian understanding of God? What does it mean, theologically speaking, to learn to stare at the sun?

     God is the creator and lover of the world. Jesus spoke of God as “the Father who sent me,” indicating that, as he says elsewhere, “anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” ( John 14:9). Look hard at Jesus, especially as he goes to his death, and you will discover more about God than you could ever have guessed from studying the infinite shining heavens or the moral law within your own conscience. God is the one who satisfies the passion for justice, the longing for spirituality, the hunger for relationship, the yearning for beauty.

     And God, the true God, is the God we see in Jesus of Nazareth, Israel’s Messiah, the world’s true Lord. The earliest Christians spoke of God and Jesus in the same breath and, so to speak, on the same side of the equation. When Paul quoted the most famous slogan of Jewish monotheism (“Hear, O Israel; YHWH our God, YHWH is One”), he explained “the Lord”—that is, YHWH—in terms of Jesus, and “God” in terms of “the Father”: “For us,” he wrote, “there is one God (the Father, from whom are all things and we to him), and one Lord ( Jesus the Messiah, through whom are all things and we through him)” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Even earlier, he had written that if you want to know who the real God is, as opposed to the non-gods of paganism, you must think in terms of the God who, to fulfill his age-old plan to rescue the world, sent first his Son and then the Spirit of his Son (Galatians 4:4–7).

     The church’s official “doctrine of the Trinity” wasn’t fully formulated until three or four centuries after the time of Paul. Yet when the later theologians eventually worked it all through, it turned out to consist, in effect, of detailed footnotes to Paul, John, Hebrews, and the other New Testament books, with explanations designed to help later generations grasp what was already there in principle in the earliest writings.

     But it would be a mistake to give the impression that the Christian doctrine of God is a matter of clever intellectual word games or mind games. For Christians it’s always a love game: God’s love for the world calling out an answering love from us, enabling us to discover that God not only happens to love us (as though this was simply one aspect of his character) but that he is love itself. That’s what many theological traditions have explored as the very heart of God’s own being, the love which passes continually between Father, Son, and Spirit. Indeed, some have suggested that one way of understanding the Spirit is to see the Spirit as the personal love which the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father. In that understanding, we are invited to share in this inner and loving life of God, by having the Spirit live within us. Some of the most evocative names and descriptions of God in the New Testament are ways of drawing us in to this inner life. “The one who searches the hearts,” writes Paul, “knows what the Spirit is thinking, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people according to God’s will” (Romans 8:27). “The heart-searcher”—there’s a divine name to ponder.

     And it’s all because of Jesus. Once we glimpse the doctrine—or the fact!—of the Trinity, we dare not slide back into a generalized sense of a religion paying distant homage to a god who (though somewhat more complicated than we had previously realized) is merely a quasi-personal source of general benevolence. Christian faith is much more hard-edged, more craggy, than that. Jesus exploded into the life of ancient Israel—the life of the whole world, in fact—not as a teacher of timeless truths, nor as a great moral example, but as the one through whose life, death, and resurrection God’s rescue operation was put into effect, and the cosmos turned its great corner at last. All worldviews are challenged to the core by this claim. When they in turn challenge Christianity, it stands up remarkably well. It is because of Jesus that Christians claim they know who the creator God of the world really is. It is because he, a human being, is now with the Father in the dimension we call “heaven” that Christians came so quickly to speak of God as both Father and Son. It is because he remains as yet in heaven while we are on earth (though the Spirit makes him present to us) that Christians came to speak of the Spirit, too, as a distinct member of the divine Trinity. It is all because of Jesus that we speak of God the way we do.

     And it is all because of Jesus that we find ourselves called to live the way we do. More particularly, it is through Jesus that we are summoned to become more truly human, to reflect the image of God into the world.


Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
My Utmost For The Highest
     A Daily Devotional by Oswald Chambers


                The commission of the call

     Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake. --- Col. 1:24.

     We make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we get right with God He brushes all these aside, and rivets us with a pain that is terrific to one thing we never dreamed of, and for one radiant, flashing moment we see what He is after, and we say—“Here am I, send me.”

     This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never makes us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

     I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine would have been remarkably bitter. To be a sacramental personality means that the elements of the natural life are presenced by God as they are broken providentially in His service. We have to be adjusted to God before we can be broken bread in His hands. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

My Utmost for His Highest
No, Senor
     the Poetry of RS Thomas


                No, Senor

We were out in the hard country.
  The railroads kept crossing our path,
  Signed with important names,
  Salamanca to Madrid.
  Malaga to Barcelona.
  Sometimes an express went by,
  Tubular in the newest fashion;
  The faces were a blurred frieze,
  A hundred or so city people
  Digesting their latest meal,
  Over coffee, over a cigarette,
  Discussing the news from Viet Nam,
  Fondling imaginary wounds
  Of the last war, honoring themselves
  In the country to which they belonged
  By proxy. Their landscape slipped by
  On a spool. We saw the asses
  Hobbling upon the road
  To the village, no Don Quixote
  Upon their backs, but all the burden
  Of a poor land, the weeds and grasses
  Of the mesa. The men walked
  Beside them; there was no sound
  But the hoarse music of the bells.

Selected poems, 1946-1968
The Tree
     Eugene Peterson

Jesse’s roots, composted with carcasses
    Of dove and lamb,
      parchments of ox and goat,
  Centuries of dried up prayers and bloody
  Sacrifice, now bear me Gospel fruit.

David’s branch, fed on kosher soil,
  Blossoms a messianic flower, and then
  Ripens into a kingdom crop, conserving
  The fragrance and warmth of spring
    for winter use.

Holy Spirit, shake our family tree;
  Release your ripened fruit
    to our outstretched arms.

I’d like to see my children sink their teeth
  Into promised land pomegranates

And Canaan grapes, bushel gifts of God,
  While I skip a grace rope to a Christ tune.

The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction
The Candle
     Eugene Peterson

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light:
Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined.
---
Isaiah 9:2.

Uncandled menorahs
     and oilless lamps abandoned
  By foolish virgins too much in a hurry to wait
  And tend the light are clues
     to the failed watch,
  The missed arrival,
     the midnight might-have-been.

Wick and beeswax make a guttering protest,
  Fragile, defiant flame against demonic
  Terrors that gust, invisible and nameless,
  Out of galactic ungodded emptiness.

Then deep in the blackness
     fires nursed by wise
Believers surprise with shining
     all groping derelicts

Bruised and stumbling in a world benighted.
  The sudden blazing backlights
     each head with a nimbus.

Shafts of storm-filtered sun
     search and destroy
  The Stygian desolation:
     I see. I see.

The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction
Searching For Meaning In Midrash
     IS THERE STILL MIDRASH TODAY?


     If we define Midrash as “homiletic or legal interpretations of the Bible,” that is, interpretive readings of sacred text, then the process of Midrash certainly continues today—in two formats. There are contemporary commentaries written on the Bible, often reflecting the needs and interests of the day. And secular culture commonly adapts religious themes for artistic purposes.

     As an example of the first, the “rabbi’s sermon” given in the modern synagogue is often a Midrash-like exposition on the week’s Torah reading; by attempting to relate Torah to life today, the sermon is the example par excellence of contemporary Midrash. It is not uncommon for a contemporary rabbi to hold an ancient midrashic text in one hand, and a news clipping from the daily paper in the other, as he or she tries to make sense out of the present by searching for meaning in the past.

     Works like Ellen Frankel’s The Five Books of Miriam are another prime example. This is a collection of modern midrashic statements put into the mouths of women to answer the question “What did women then, and what do women now, make of the events in this chapter?” Here is one such selection from The Five Books of Miriam:

     OUR DAUGHTERS ASK: Why does Jethro advise Moses to appoint only men to help him share the onerous burden of leadership? As it is written: “SEEK OUT CAPABLE MEN WHO FEAR GOD, TRUSTWORTHY MEN WHO SPURN ILL-GOTTEN GAIN” (
Exodus 18:21). We can’t believe that there weren’t capable, God-fearing women among the people.

     THE SAGES IN OUR OWN TIME ANSWER: We must be careful not to judge Jethro by the standards of twentieth-century Western democracy. After all, in his time and place, women generally did not occupy such leadership roles.

     LILITH THE REBEL COUNTERS: But we can hold today’s Jethros in our own communities to such standards! Especially since the burdens of leadership have not gotten any lighter—and since capable, God-fearing, trustworthy women now stand ready to share them.

     The Five Books that were once attributed to Moses have now been expanded to include the insights of all of our Miriams as well.

     Midrash can be “done” by Christians, as well as by Jews, though the process would have a different name and would draw on a different set of techniques and values, since “Midrash” is a uniquely Jewish product. In
Deuteronomy, chapters 31–34
, Moses gives his final farewell to the Israelite nation. Their leader tells them that although he will die on this side of the Jordan, they will get to the land that God has promised them. God instructs Moses to go to the top of a mountain, to see the land that the Israelites will soon enter but that he will not. Moses’ final speeches are poignant and moving: The greatest leader will see his goal accomplished by others, yet he himself will not arrive there.

     Compare these chapters in Deuteronomy to the famous “I See the Promised Land” speech by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., given on April 3, 1968:

     Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

     By ending with a stirring message about seeing the Promised Land from the mountaintop, the Reverend Dr. King evoked images of Moses entering the land. This Midrash turned out to be prophetic, for King was assassinated the very next day.

     One of the oldest collections of Midrash, if not the oldest, is the Passover Haggadah. The process of Midrash on the Exodus story remains alive and well in modern haggadot. There are literally hundreds of Haggadah interpretations, each giving its own spin on the verses from Exodus—an archaeological Haggadah, a feminist version, an Israeli version that focuses on the fulfillment of God’s promise to redeem us.

     Yet, the process of interpreting the Bible and of writing Midrash, especially on the Exodus theme, goes well beyond these works. In the biblical account, we are told that Moses was placed in a basket on the Nile by his mother, that Moses’ sister watched as the daughter of Pharaoh came to bathe in the Nile and saw the basket:

     Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter: “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?” And Pharaoh’s daughter answered, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses, explaining, “I drew him out of the water.”

     Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors.
(Exodus 2:7–10)

     The Bible does not tell us how Moses finds out he is a Hebrew, only that “he went out to his kinsfolk.” The few details in the biblical story led to many midrashic interpretations, including those in the 1998 movie The Prince of Egypt. This is from the story line of The Prince of Egypt:

     That night as Moses returns to his room, he discovers that Tzipporah has escaped. Intrigued by the rebellious girl, he follows her through the Hebrew settlement of Goshen where he comes upon his true siblings, Miriam and Aaron. Believing that Moses has returned to help them, Miriam reveals to Moses the truth about his identity, that he is the son of a Hebrew slave. Shocked and dismayed, Moses refuses to believe her and flees back to the palace. That night he has a nightmare about the slaughter of the newborn Hebrews many years ago.

     The movie’s authors and producers added many details to the terse biblical narrative. They have Tzipporah, Moses’ future wife, meeting him in Egypt, where in the biblical account he meets her later, in Midian. The Bible does not tell us exactly how Moses found out he is a Hebrew, while in the movie, “Miriam reveals to Moses the truth about his identity, that he is the son of a Hebrew slave.” These are plausible answers to questions about the Exodus story. Yet, they—as well as much of the Prince of Egypt animated feature—are a Midrash, filling in the holes for those curious about what exactly took place. And if we compare Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Midrash in The Prince of Egypt to Cecil B. De Mille’s in The Ten Commandments, we have an understanding of the distinct approaches of different interpreters of the same text—one reflecting the sensibilities of America in the 1950s, the other of an American Jew at the end of the twentieth century.

     The process of Midrash can also be seen in art, music, and literature. Chagall’s paintings are often modern expressions of traditional themes. The spiritual hymn “Let My People Go” took a well-known phrase from the Bible, one that Moses directed to Pharaoh, and reframed it as referring to blacks talking to Southern slave owners.

     Let’s look at a modern Midrash on Ecclesiastes, chapter 3. Here is a translation of verses 1 to 8 of that chapter:

To everything there is a season,
     And a time for every purpose under heaven:
     A time for being born and a time for dying,
     A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted;
     A time for slaying and a time for healing;
     A time for tearing down and a time for building up;
     A time for weeping and a time for laughing,
     A time for wailing and a time for dancing;
     A time for throwing stones and a time for gathering stones,
     A time for embracing and a time for shunning embraces;
     A time for seeking and a time for losing,
     A time for keeping and a time for discarding;
     A time for ripping and a time for sewing,
     A time for silence and a time for speaking;
     A time for loving and a time for hating;
     A time for war and a time for peace.

     The 1960s hit “Turn, Turn, Turn,” sung by the Byrds and written by folk singer Pete Seeger, begins as a fairly straightforward musical presentation of the Bible text.

Chorus:
     To everything, turn, turn, turn,
     There is season, turn, turn, turn,
     And a time for every purpose under heaven.

     A time to be born, a time to die,
     A time to plant, a time to reap,
     A time to kill, a time to heal,
     A time to laugh, a time to weep.
Chorus …

     And the second stanza is also faithful to the biblical text:

     A time of love, a time of hate,
     A time of war, a time of peace,
     A time you may embrace,
     A time to refrain from embracing.
Chorus …

     Seeger leaves out certain verses and rearranges the sequence, but the song retains the flow of the biblical text—until the last lines. Where Ecclesiastes ends with “A time for war, and a time for peace,” the Byrds’ hit adds a 1960s anti-war postscript to reflect the mood of the time:

     A time to gain, a time to lose,
     A time to rend, a time to sow,
     A time to love, a time to hate,
     A time of peace, I swear it’s not too late.

     The author of Ecclesiastes states that there is a time for everything in life, predetermined by a power beyond our control. Pete Seeger’s song completely changes the meaning: War and peace are in the hands of human beings; the choices that people make can change the world.

     The list goes on and on: Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah is an example of music-as-Midrash. John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers, and (more recently) Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent each took a biblical theme and wove it into a story, creating a literary Midrash of its own.

     The Rabbis took the Bible seriously, searching for new and deeper meaning from the text and for an understanding (or, better, understandings) that spoke to their day and age. The Bible is the greatest example of a classic text, one which we go back to over and over, finding new meaning and inspiration in it time and time again, generation after generation. Our attempts to understand and interpret the Bible today—be they literary (like classic midrashim), musical, or artistic—demonstrate that we, too, are trying to incorporate sacred scripture into our own lives. If, as we claimed in Part I, “What Is Midrash,” “the process of Midrash began the very first time the Torah was read,” then surely the process of Midrash continues today, as we continue to read, ponder, and gain inspiration from the TANAKH.

     The Rabbis read the Bible seriously, and they created the Midrash. If we, today, read the Bible and the Midrash seriously, we can create our own midrashim, our interpretations, not only of the Bible but also of the Midrash itself. By confronting sacred text and engaging in a struggle with it, we affirm its sanctity and relevance in our lives. We engage in Midrash with a sense of awe, with an appreciation that we stand in the presence of something sacred, something holy, something of ultimate importance.

Searching for Meaning in Midrash: Lessons for Everyday Living
Take Heart
     September 30

     I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
---
Romans 12:1. KJV

     [Paul] discourses at large on the love of God toward us and points out God’s concern for us and [his] goodness, which cannot even be traced out. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. XI: St. Chrysostom ) He next persuades those who have received the benefit to exhibit a way of life worthy of the gift. He beseeches them—not for any enjoyment he was likely to get himself but for what they would gain.

     And no wonder he beseeches when he puts God’s mercies before them. For since, he means, it is from the mercies of God you have those numberless blessings, reverence them, be moved to compassion by them, that you would show no conduct unworthy of them. I entreat you then, he means, by the very things through which you were saved to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (KJV). When he said “sacrifice,” to prevent any from thinking he bade them kill themselves, he at once added (Greek order) “living.” Then to distinguish it from the Jewish [sacrifice], he calls it “holy, acceptable unto God”—for theirs was a material one, and not very acceptable, either. So Paul also here bids us present our bodies as living sacrifices.

     And how is the body to become a sacrifice? Let your eye look on no evil thing, and it has become a sacrifice; let your tongue speak nothing filthy, and it has become an offering; let your hand do no lawless deed, and it has become a whole burnt offering. Or rather, this is not enough, but we must have good works also: let the hand give gifts for the poor, the mouth bless them that curse you, and the hearing find leisure evermore for lessons taught from Scripture.

     Let us then from our hands and feet and mouth and all other members yield a firstfruit to God. Such a sacrifice is well pleasing—as that of the Jews was even unclean. Not so ours. That presented the thing sacrificed dead; this makes the thing sacrificed to be living. For the law of this sacrifice is new, and so the sort of fire is a marvelous one. For it needs no wood under it, but our fire lives of itself and does not burn up the victim but rather makes it live. This was the sacrifice that God sought of old.
--- John Chrysostom

Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church's Great Preachers
On This Day   September 30
     The Contrarian


     The Lord has often used people in church history whom we may not have liked had we lived during their days. Jerome, for example. He possessed a brilliant mind, a sharp tongue, hot blood, and thin skin. He was a contrarian, remembered as one of the church’s most irritable scholars and among the first of the great Bible translators who have spread the Gospel abroad.

     Jerome was an Italian, born about 330, who early fell in love with women and books. After indulging in the former, he joined an ascetic group to enjoy the latter; but his sandpaper personality caused the group to disintegrate. As Jerome struggled to control his sexual energy, he began advancing the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. He believed that after Jesus’ birth, Mary continued to live a virgin’s life; and his own Herculean efforts to remain celibate led to his so exalting virginity that he considered marriage beneficial only because it brought virgins into the world.

     Perhaps the answer for him was a hermit’s life in the desert, practicing severe self-disciplines. It didn’t work. He still dreamed of Roman dancing girls. Returning to Rome, he faced the temptations head-on and avoided the dancing girls. But he didn’t avoid Paula, a young widow who became, not a sexual partner, but a lifelong soulmate. In Rome in the early 380s he discovered his life’s work. Pope Damasus suggested he prepare a new Latin version of the Gospels and Psalms. Jerome set to work on it, and for the next 22 years he labored tirelessly as a Bible translator.

     His sharp tongue made trouble in Rome, so he and Paula moved to Bethlehem in 386. Near the birthplace of Jesus, they established separate monasteries for men and women where Jerome balanced his need for companionship with a corresponding need for solitude, study, and asceticism. He poured himself into the Latin translation of the Bible, his life’s crowning achievement. He died, white-haired and wrinkled, on September 30, 420.

     With my whole heart I agree with the Law of God. But in every part of me I discover something fighting against my mind, and it makes me a prisoner of sin that controls everything I do. What a miserable person I am. Who will rescue me … ? Thank God! Jesus Christ will rescue me.
--- Romans 7:22-25a.

On This Day 365 Amazing And Inspiring Stories About Saints, Martyrs And Heroes
Morning and Evening
     Daily Readings / CHARLES H. SPURGEON

          Morning - September 30

     “Sing forth the honour of his name, make his praise glorious.” --- Psalm 66:2.

     It is not left to our own option whether we shall praise God or not. Praise is God’s most righteous due, and every Christian, as the recipient of his grace, is bound to praise God from day to day. It is true we have no authoritative rubric for daily praise; we have no commandment prescribing certain hours of song and thanksgiving: but the law written upon the heart teaches us that it is right to praise God; and the unwritten mandate comes to us with as much force as if it had been recorded on the tables of stone, or handed to us from the top of thundering Sinai. Yes, it is the Christian’s duty to praise God. It is not only a pleasurable exercise, but it is the absolute obligation of his life. Think not ye who are always mourning, that ye are guiltless in this respect, or imagine that ye can discharge your duty to your God without songs of praise. You are bound by the bonds of his love to bless his name so long as you live, and his praise should continually be in your mouth, for you are blessed, in order that you may bless him; “this people have I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise”; and if you do not praise God, you are not bringing forth the fruit which he, as the Divine Husbandman, has a right to expect at your hands. Let not your harp then hang upon the willows, but take it down, and strive, with a grateful heart, to bring forth its loudest music. Arise and chant his praise. With every Morning’s dawn, lift up your notes of thanksgiving, and let every setting sun be followed with your song. Girdle the earth with your praises; surround it with an atmosphere of melody, and God himself will hearken from heaven and accept your music.

     “E’en so I love thee, and will love,
     And in thy praise will sing,

     Because thou art my loving God,
     And my redeeming King.”

          Evening - September 30

     “A living dog is better than a dead lion.” --- Ecclesiastes 9:4.

     Life is a precious thing, and in its humblest form it is superior to death. This truth is eminently certain in spiritual things. It is better to be the least in the kingdom of heaven than the greatest out of it. The lowest degree of grace is superior to the noblest development of unregenerate nature. Where the Holy Ghost implants divine life in the soul, there is a precious deposit which none of the refinements of education can equal. The thief on the cross excels Caesar on his throne; Lazarus among the dogs is better than Cicero among the senators; and the most unlettered Christian is in the sight of God superior to Plato. Life is the badge of nobility in the realm of spiritual things, and men without it are only coarser or finer specimens of the same lifeless material, needing to be quickened, for they are dead in trespasses and sins.

     A living, loving, Gospel sermon, however unlearned in matter and uncouth in style, is better than the finest discourse devoid of unction and power. A living dog keeps better watch than a dead lion, and is of more service to his master; and so the poorest spiritual preacher is infinitely to be preferred to the exquisite orator who has no wisdom but that of words, no energy but that of sound. The like holds good of our prayers and other religious exercises; if we are quickened in them by the Holy Spirit, they are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, though we may think them to be worthless things; while our grand performances in which our hearts were absent, like dead lions, are mere carrion in the sight of the living God. O for living groans, living sighs, living despondencies, rather than lifeless songs and dead calms. Better anything than death. The snarlings of the dog of hell will at least keep us awake, but dead faith and dead profession, what greater curses can a man have? Quicken us, quicken us, O Lord!

Morning and Evening
Amazing Grace
     September 30

          THE SPIRIT BREATHES UPON THE WORD

     William Cowper, 1731–1800

     Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. (Psalm 119:105)

     The Bible is the only book whose Author is always present when one reads it.
--- Unknown

     We can never really be exposed to the truths of God’s Word without our lives being affected. Either we become more desirous of becoming like the author of the Book, or we become increasingly hardened to its truths. It has been said that we must know the Word of God in order to know the God of the Word. However, a study of God’s Word must never stop at merely gaining biblical knowledge. It must always lead us to a more intimate relationship with God Himself.

     Although William Cowper, the author of this hymn text, was regarded as one of the leading English poets of his day, he suffered periods of severe depression throughout his lifetime. Yet during times of normalcy he wrote great literary works and worked with John Newton to produce the important Olney Hymns hymnal of 1779, to which Cowper contributed 67 texts. “The Spirit Breathes Upon the Word” was from this collection.

     This hymn teaches an important truth: The same Spirit of God who authored the Bible is the One who enlightens it for our understanding and guidance—“The hand that gave it still supplies the gracious light and heat.” May we increasingly use this enlightened Word as we pursue the steps of Christ till they lead us to “brighter worlds above.”

     The Spirit breathes upon the Word, and brings the truth to sight; precepts and promises afford a sanctifying light.
     A glory gilds the sacred page, majestic like the sun: It gives a light to ev’ry age; it gives but borrows none.
     The Hand that gave it still supplies the gracious light and heat; His truths upon the nations rise; they rise but never set.
     Let everlasting thanks be Thine for such a bright display as makes a world of darkness shine with beams of heav’nly day.
     My soul rejoices to pursue the steps of Him I love, till glory breaks upon my view in brighter worlds above.


     For Today: Deuteronomy 4:2; Matthew 4:4; 24:35; 1 Timothy 3:14, 15; 2 Timothy 3:15–17; 1 Peter 2:2

     Determine to enter into a fresh study of God’s Word with the desire that the Holy Spirit will bring some new truth and insight into your daily life. Carry this musical truth with you ---

Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions
The Existence and Attributes of God
     Stephen Charnock

          DISCOURSE VII - ON GOD’S OMNIPRESENCE

     (3.) This essential presence is not by multiplication. For that which is infinite cannot multiply itself, or make itself more or greater than it was.

     (4.) This essential presence is not by extension or diffusion, as a piece of gold may be beaten out to cover a large compass of ground; no, if God should create millions of worlds he would be in them all, not by stretching out his being, but by the infiniteness of his being; not by a new growth of his being, but by the same essence he had from eternity: upon the same reasons mentioned before, his simplicity and indivisibility.

     (5.) But totally. There is no space, not the least, wherein God is not wholly, according to his essence, and wherein his whole substance doth not exist; not a part of heaven can be designed wherein the Creator is not wholly; as he is in one part of heaven, he is in every part of heaven. Some kind of resemblance we may have from the water of the sea, which fills the great space of the world, and is diffused through all; yet the essence of water is in every drop of water in the sea, as much as the whole; and the same quality of water, though it comes short in quantity; and why shall we not allow God a nobler way of presence without diffusion, as is in that? or take this resemblance; since God likens himself to light in the Scripture, “he covereth himself with light.” A crystal globe hung up in the air hath light all about it, all within it, every part is pierced by it, wherever you see the crystal you see the light; the light in one part of the crystal cannot be distinguished from the light in the other part; and the whole essence of light is in every part; and shall not God be as much present with his creatures, as one creature can be with another? God is totally everywhere by his own simple substance.

     Prop. IV. God is present beyond the world. He is within and above all places, though places should be infinite in number; as he was before and beyond all time, so he is above and beyond all place; being from eternity before any real time, he must also be without as well as within any real space; if God were only confined to the world, he would be no more infinite in his essence than the world is in quantity; as a moment cannot be conceived from eternity, wherein God was not in being, so a space cannot be conceived in the mind of man, wherein God is not present; he is not contained in the world nor in the heavens (1 Kings 8:27). “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee.” Solomon wonders that God should appoint a temple to be erected to him upon the earth, when he is not contained in the vast circuit of the heavens; his essence is not straitened in the limits of any created work; he is not contained in the heavens, i. e. in the manner that he is there; but he is there in his essence, and therefore cannot be contained there in his essence. If it should be meant only of his power and providence, it would conclude also for his essence; if his power and providence were infinite, his essence must be so too; for the infiniteness of his essence is the ground of the infiniteness of his power. It can never enter into any thought, that a finite essence can have an infinite power, and that an infinite power can be without an infinite essence; it cannot be meant of his providence, as if Solomon should say, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thy providence; for naming the heaven of heavens, that which encircles and bounds the other parts of the world, he could not suppose a providence to be exercised where there was no object to exercise it about; as no creature is mentioned to be beyond the uttermost heaven, which he calls here the heaven of heavens: besides, to understand it of his providence, doth not consist with Solomon’s admiration: he wonders that God, that hath so immense an essence, should dwell in a temple made with hands; he could not so much wonder at his providence in those things that immediately concern his worship. Solomon plainly asserts this of God, That he was so far from being bounded within the rich wall of the temple, which with so much cost he had framed for the glory of his name, that the richer palace of the heaven of heavens could not contain him; it is true, it could not contain his power and wisdom, because his wisdom could contrive other kind of worlds, and his power erect them. But doth the meaning of that wise king reach no farther than this? Will the power and wisdom of God reside on the earth? He was too wise to ask such a question, since every object that his eyes met with in the world resolved him, that the wisdom and power of God dwelt upon the earth, and glittered in everything he had created; and reason would assure him that the power that had framed this world, was able to frame any more; but Solomon, considering the immensity of God’s essence, wonders that God should order a house to be built for him, as if he wanted roofs and coverings, and habitation, as bodily creatures do. Will God indeed dwell in a temple, who hath an essence so immense as not to be contained in the heaven of heavens? It is not the heaven of heavens that can contain him, his substance. Here he asserts the immensity of his essence, and his presence not only in the heaven, but beyond the heavens; he that is not contained in the heavens, as a man is in a chamber, is without, and above, and beyond the heavens; it is not said, they do not contain him, but it is impossible they should contain him; they cannot contain him. It is impossible, then, but that he should be above them; he that is without the compass of the world, is not bounded by the limits of the world, as his power is not limited by the things he hath made, but can create innumerable worlds, so can his essence be in innumerable spaces; for as he hath power enough to make more worlds, so he hath essence enough to fill them, and therefore cannot be confined to what he hath already created; innumerable worlds cannot be a sufficient place to contain God; he can only be a sufficient place to himself; He that was before the world, and place, and all things, was to himself a world, a place, and everything: He is really out of the world in himself, as he was in himself before the creation of the world: as because God was before the foundation of the world, we conclude his eternity; so because he is without the bounds of the world, we conclude his immensity, and from thence his omnipresence. The world cannot be said to contain him, since it was created by him; it cannot contain him now, who was contained by nothing before the world was: as there was no place to contain him before the world was, there can be no lace to contain him since the world was. God might create more words, circular and round as this, and those could not be so contiguous, but some spaces would be left between; as, take three round balls, lay them as close as you can to one another, there will be some spaces between; none would say but God would be in these spaces, as well as in the world he had created, though there were nothing real and positive in those spaces: why should we then exclude God from those imag’~nary spaces without the world? God might also create many worlds, and separate them by distances, that they might not touch one another, but be at a great distance from one another; and would not God fill them as well as he doth this? if so, he must also fill the spaces between them; for if he were in all those worlds, and not in the spaces between those worlds, his essence would be divided; there would be gaps in it, his essence would be cut into parts, and the distance between every part of his essence, would be as great as the space between each world. The essence of God may be conceived then well enough to be in all those infinite spaces where he can erect new worlds. I shall give one place more to prove both these propositions, viz. that God is essentially in every part of the world, and essentially above ours without the world (Isa. 66:1): “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.” He is essentially in every part of the world; he is in heaven and earth at the same time, as a man is upon his throne and his footstool. God describes himself in a human shape, accommodated to our capacity; as if he had his head in heaven, and his feet on earth. Doth not his essence then, fill all intermediate spaces between heaven and earth? As when the head of a man is in the upper part of a room, and his feet upon the floor, his body fills up the space between the head and his feet: this is meant of the essence of God; it is a similitude drawn from kings sitting upon the throne, and not their power and authority, but the feet of their persons are supported by the footstool; so here it is not meant only of the perfections of God, but the essence of God. Besides, God seems to tax them with an erroneous conceit they had, as though his essence were in the temple, and not in any part of the world; therefore God makes an opposition between heaven and earth, and the temple: “Where is the house that you built unto me? and where is the place of my rest?” Had he understood it only of his providence, it had not been anything against their mistake; for they granted his providence to be not only in the temple, but in all parts of the world. “Where is the house that you build to me;” to Me, not to my power or providence, but think to include Me within those walls. Again, it shows God to be above the heavens, if the heavens be his throne; he sits upon them, and is above them, as kings are above the thrones on which they sit. So it cannot be meant of his providence, because no creature being without the sphere of the heavens, there is nothing of the power and the providence of God visible there, for there is nothing for him to employ his providence about; for providence supposeth a creature in actual being; it must be therefore meant of his essence, which is above the world and in the world. And the like ptoof you may see (Job 11:7, 8), “It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know? the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.” Where he intends the unsearchableness of God’s wisdom, but proves it by the infiniteness of his essence, (Heb.) “he is the height of the heavens,” he is the top of all the heavens; so that, when you have begun at the lowest part, and traced him through all the creatures, you will find his essence filling all the creatures, to be at the top of the world, and infinitely beyond it.

     Prop. V. This is the property of God, incommunicable to any creature. As no creature can be eternal and immutable, so no creature can be immense, because it cannot be infinite; nothing can be of an infinite nature, and therefore nothing of an immense presence but God. It cannot be communicated to the human nature of Christ, though in union with the Divine; some indeed argue, that Christ in regard of his human nature is everywhere, because he sits at the right hand of God, and the right hand of God is everywhere. His sitting at the right hand of God signifies his exaltation, and cannot with any reason, be extended to such a kind of arguing. “The hearts of kings are in the hand of God;” are the hearts of kings everywhere, because God’s hand is everywhere? The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God; is the soul, therefore, of every righteous man everywhere in the world? The right hand of God is from eternity; is the humanity of Christ, therefore, from eternity, because it sits at the right hand of God? The right hand of God made the world; did the humanity of Christ, therefore, make heaven and earth? the humanity of Christ must then be confounded with his divinity; be the same with it, not united to it. All creatures are distinct from their Creator, and cannot inherit the properties essential to his nature, as eternity, immensity, immutability, omnipresence, omniscience; no angel, no soul, no creature can be in all paces at once; before they can be so they must be immense, and so must cease to be creatures, and commence God; this is impossible.

The Existence and Attributes of God

There is a fountain filled with blood
     William Cowper 1731-1800

  The following is based on    Zechariah 13:1

There is a fountain fill'd with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains:

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he,
Wash'd all my sins away:

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransom'd church of God
Be saved, to sin no more:

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die:

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing Thy power to save:
When this poor lisping stammering tongue,
Lies silent in the grave.

Lord, I believe thou hast prepared
(Unworthy though I be)
For me a blood-bought free reward,
A golden harp for me.

'Tis strung, and tuned, for endless years,
And form'd by power divine
To sound in God the Father's ears
No other name but thine.

From "The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper, Esq: Including the Hymns and Translations from Madame Guion, Milton, Etc., and Adam; a Sacred Drama; from the Italian of Gio. Battista Andreini, with a Memoir of the Author" Published on 12-31-1843

  The 2015 version    ISBN-13: 978-1340148867

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The Day of the Lord
Paul LeBoutillier





Zechariah 7-8
Blessings in the days to come
Paul LeBoutillier




Paul LeBoutillier

Zechariah 8-14
     Brett Meador | Athey Creek

Brett Meador | Athey Creek


Zechariah 9:9
The Purpose of Prophecy
s1-377


01-06-2008



Zechariah 8-9
m1-389


01-09-2008


Zech 9:9
Attributes Of Jesus
s2-390


May 21, 2022



Zech 8-9
m2-398


May 25, 2022


Zech 12:1-3
Jerusalem, A Cup Of Trembling
s2-391


05-28-2022



Zech 10
m2-399


June 1, 2022


Zech 12:1-3
Jerusalem, A Cup Of Trembling 2
s2-392


06-04-2022



Zech 11
m2-400


June 8, 2022


Zech 13:1
The Fountain Is Open
s2-393


06-11-2022



Zechariah 12-13
m2-401


June 15, 2022


Zech 14 -
Day Of The Lord
s2-394


06-18-2022

     ==============================
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Zechariah 12:1-13:9

Salvation of Israel
John MacArthur





Jesus is the Son of God

Albert Mohler, Jr.






Hearing and Discerning God's Voice

Chad Miller





Ovid

David Nystrom






Being a Witness

Barry H. Corey





Reaching the Unreached

Mike Broyles






The Connected Life

Todd Hall





Overview: Zechariah

The Bible Project






Zech 6:1-8

God Is In Control
Andy Woods


01-12-2022


Zech 6:9-15

The Priest King
Andy Woods


01-19-2022



Zech 7:1-14

Empty Ritual
Andy Woods





Zech 7:11-14

Divine Discipline
Andy Woods






Zech 8:1-18

Worldwide Regathering
Andy Woods





Zech 8:16-23

Jerusalem's Preeminence
Andy Woods






Zech 9:1-9

Stumbling Over Christ
Andy Woods





Zech 9:9-10

Stumbling Over Christ, pt. 2
Andy Woods


03-02-2022



Zech 9:11-17

The Covenant
Andy Woods


02-23-2022


Zech 9:14-17

Hanukkah Victory
Andy Woods


03-02-2022



Zech 10:1-12

Doctrines of Demons
Andy Woods


03-30-2022


Zech 10:4-12

Remembrance
Andy Woods


04-06-2022



Zech 11:1-11

The Doomed Flock
Andy Woods


04-13-2022


Zech 11:14-17

Israel's Anti Christ
Andy Woods


04-20-2022



Zech 12:1-9

Insanity Of The Nations
Andy Woods


04-13-2022


Zech 12:4-9

Sola Deo Gloria
Andy Woods


05-04-2022



Zech 12:10-14

The Spirit's Work
Andy Woods


05-11-2022


Zech 13:1-9

Living Waters
Andy Woods


05-18-2022



Zech 13:6-9

Restoration
Andy Woods


09-07-2022


Zech 14:1-7

Behold The King
Andy Woods


09-14-2022