It’s election time and with it comes the invasion of the abortion defenders.  The death crowd continues to promote their version of justifiable homicide in the name of freedom of choice despite the fact that a developing baby in a mother’s womb has its own DNA and blood-type. So the unborn is not a ‘part of her body’ he/she is a separate human being altogether.

Personally, if a candidate for any office, let alone the Presidency, cannot even tell me when life begins and they actually live in 2008 with our incredible advancements in biological science, then they either have a mental deficiency or they are wickedly blind. And if they can advocate the destruction, murder, and cutting up of innocent, defenseless, babies in their mother’s wombs as a good and right thing?  I pity the unrepentant before God.  Why aren’t the rights of the young humans not even considered? And why the double-standard ? Pray against evil.

The following interview is with Gianna Jessen. She is an abortion survivor. Listen to the clip. May those who support the slaughter of the innocent repent.

This clip is both hillarious and pathetic at the same time. In our culture today being certain is the new arrogant, and when it comes to origins and meaning in our lives, one finds perhaps the most absurd explanations being touted as truth.  One such absurdity is the notion that we have just made up this life and its intentions and that all is for nothing, particularly since we are merely floating remnants of chance and probability.

This clip is a great example of what one ends up with when they deny the obvious - that we were created in the image of God and that history does indeed have a purpose and end - the glorification of God.

Enjoy.

As many of you know we had to evacuate because of the Big Swede.  While it was not as terrible as predicted it certainly was nothing to mess around with so we left.

You can catch up on the chronicle of our journey at :  www.evacublog.wordpress.com

SDG

You know the lady who has her hair facto-baked at the ‘beauty parlor’ rather than getting her hair done at the salon?  It seems as though some ladies keep up with the times and others get stuck in a decade.  Some senior women, for example, end up with cute bob hair cuts while others look as though somewhere around 1963, they simply stopped caring about their appearance.  The same can be said about clothing as well.

Some people, as they age, actually stay up with the current looks and trends while others quit at some point and never move forward.  I don’t know when this happens to them or if they ever realize that one cannot be trend-less or unfashionable since everything is a certain type of style, but at some moment appearances became second-fiddle.  Did they stop dressing in the current fashions once they found a spouse and got off the attracting-a-mate field? Have they simply never considered how they look to others because somehow that’s been written off as irrelevant?  When did they freeze themselves like a stencil?  I’m sure the reasons and circumstances vary, but I do know that many churches seem to be just like these out-of-steppers.

Their buildings are remnants to days gone by and their smelly and overly worn pew cushions are their beehive hairdos towering over the people week after week. In other circles, some respond to modernism by creating a home church model that seeks to simplify and redirect. Resistance to change is common and while parts of the church-at-large seem to have followed nothing but trend and common opinion, others seem to be stuck in a century.  Facto-baked church services that smell of high medieval ritual and droning pulpits where no electronic gadget may dwell at times attempt to convince the Power-Pointers that they’ve got it all wrong while the “our-pastor-is-way-hip” crowd can wax poetic that their orators use wifi and Hawaiian shirts to convey relevant messages. Neither approach makes sense to me. Nor does the home church model solve all modern problems.

Tradition, in and of itself, is neither good nor bad and no one escapes it; so to trash tradition just because it is ‘old’ is to be knee-jerked and foolish.  To think that home model church fellowships are the panacea is to be misled as well.  Certainly the facto-baked woman can be just as congenial and truthful and relevant as the lady with the mod hair and surely the fashionable speaker could be laying out more biblical errors than a Benny Hinn interview during a TBN telethon.  The packaging doesn’t always reveal the content.

In the same way, changing in order to stay up with the times is neither a compromise nor an acceptance of error.  Change is inevitable and I think in many ways it shows that you are not living in isolation.  I believe that there is a sense in which refusing to update the sanctuary’s carpeting communicates a certain communal apathy.  Where is it that we get the idea that being conscious of the times in which we live is somehow a bad thing?  Perhaps it stems from a wrong connection between those who claim to be ‘hip’ and their usual decline in doctrinal integrity.  I argue that it is possible and preferable to have both an unwavering commitment to timeless truth and a real sense of contemporary understandings.

For example, one can find great ways to teach the much neglected stories of church history by using flash animations and other visual aids. The two do not have to fight each other; they should be used as compliments.  It is a shame to see so many doctrinally sound fellowships not worrying about understanding the need to communicate differently to a fast paced techno-culture that is being raised on sound bytes and the Internet.  The same can be said of worship music when we speak of contemporary worship songs or the introduction of modern instrumentation or the non-use of pews in favor of movable chairs.  Speaking of such things in certain circles has become almost tantamount to treason.  This should not be so; after all, we know that the apostle Paul had neither a piano for worship or a Trinity hymnal and most certainly did not preach from a Puritan-styled pulpit in a suit and tie.

The Emerging Church movement has appealed to many as an attempted rescue from the extreme of cold and dead orthodoxy that has kept itself stuck in a form of historical idolatry making it culturally unconscious. The trouble with the movement (among other things) is that it has overcorrected itself; tossing out the very basics of the faith for an equally horrendous pragmatism. In an attempt to be more relational and accessible to the modern believer the movement has shredded the rich history of confessional faith and substituted it for a synthetic Christ who looks more like he came from a therapy session than from heaven’s realm.  Again, both extremes should be ignored.

The accurate place of church practice is that it be both bathed in unchanging truth by maintaining the primacy of the Word of God in all that it does and equally aware of the time in which it functions; not being trapped into thinking it can practice 16^th century religion in a 2008 world.  To be sure, there will be some practices that will crossover as they remain timeless in and of themselves, however, to unnecessarily pit good tradition against modern practice is to miss the mark entirely.  I pray that we can seek to recognize, enjoy, and learn from our great heritage as the church universal throughout all centuries while at the same time purpose to live out our current faith practices both under the guidance of Scriptural principle and prescription and the sense of contemporary consideration.  Soli Deo Gloria!

So I’m not Jesus but sometimes people expect me to be.  Yet, I can’t use that as an excuse to settle in to the lounge of my comfortable sin.  Never again will I be faced with God’s wrath but I can’t use that as some licentious buffer.  He chastises me like a good Father would.

I’ve received every blessing in the heavenly places and have been given everything pertaining to life and godliness.  I’ve got the tools… I just need to use them properly.

I know and love the Law of God but my members stage a strike.

I repent daily, turning my back on my silliness, stupidity, and self-absorbed attempts at humility; yet I still find myself constructing religious strawmen who want to take me to lunch.  I pray the card is refused.

He is my only hope. He is my only refuge. He is my only salvation; anything else is a plastic banana hippie love parade masquerading as a self-fulfilled juggernaut of beauty.  I puke in its general direction.

Love constitutes all.  But that love is defined by God and not me.  It is a supernatural loverificness that only the regenerate can achieve and even this side of heaven it is a pale imitation.  Nonetheless I press on.

I make peace as much as possible but sometimes I feel like the ICBMs are pointed in my face.  I wonder how many of my missles are aimed wrongly.  Lord bring detente!

Peace with God in Christ is beyond all understanding.  The gospel reminds me everyday that I need Him more than He would ever need me.

The grace of God cradles my soul.  The beauty of Christ floors me.

I don’t think I fully get what it means to do all to the glory of God.

I praise Him anyway.

Lord help me in my weakness.

The following is a brief presentation of the gospel.  Much of what we hear today in modern evangelicalism is a watered down version of the truth that has been sprinkled with palatable breath mints grown in a Finney-esque hydroponic barrel.  Far too many so-called proclaimers of truth speak of God loving everyone wily-nily as if He were the headmaster of a can’t-we-all-get-along-and-agree-to-disagree love fest.

There is little talk of wrath and even fewer words about repentance and the cost of discipleship.  The great apostasy lingers before us as most who profess the Cross of Christ sound like Schullerite crystal pops snuggling up to their shiny Lakewood posts of positivism.  “Glory be to me and thee!” is their rally cry.  As the Gospel essentials are gutted and discarded thousands are led down the wrong alley that leads to an imaginary regeneration and a false salvation.

I pray that pure beauty of Christ’s work will be displayed before men clearly till the day when He is no longer defiled.  Amen.

God has said we must turn and believe

The Gospel is a divine command from God to all men that they must turn away from their sin and put their trust in Christ for there is coming a day whereby all men will be judged by Him according to how they have lived their lives.

“Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent.” -Acts 17:30

Everyone is corrupted and guilty before God

No one will escape being judged by God at the final examination when they die and go before Him.  Everyone will be held to the same standards and requirements as given to us by God in His commandments. By looking at God’s Law we see just how guilty we truly are before a holy and just God.

Consequently, no man can escape condemnation since none of us live perfectly.

“…No one is good except God alone.” - Luke 18:19

Everyone is spiritually dead and helpless except the God-Man Jesus

Ever since Adam willfully violated one simple command we have been separated from God and are born spiritually dead and morally bankrupt.  And since God requires righteous perfection, a morally corrupted sinner who is incapable of pleasing God cannot of himself remove his own penalty. Only someone perfect can do that.

“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” - 1Corinthians 15:22

Faith in Christ alone saves us from His wrath

Therefore, we must put our trust in the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, fully divine, and was also truly a man who lived perfectly while on the earth.  And as a result of His deity and his spotless humanity, Christ, and Christ alone, is uniquely qualified to be our substitute.

“…how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” - Hebrews 9:14

Christ was punished in our place

In order to save His people from destruction, Christ was punished in our place by being crucified at Calvary.  He allowed Himself to be tortured and killed as a payment for man’s sin.  He was completely innocent, guilty of nothing, but loved humanity in such a tremendous way that He was willing to suffer the wrath of God while he hung upon the cross.

“…while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” - Romans 5:6-8

Christ completed His work of redemption

He paid the penalty and price for our sins so that we may, at the time of judgment, be able to escape the punishment that we deserve.  He died so that we could live forever. He laid down His life so that we could be free from eternal death and punishment.

And since perfection has already been offered and accepted by God through the obedient work of Christ as a sacrifice and payment for our sins, there is nothing more that we must do other than to believe and accept what has been completed.

“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” - Romans 10:9-10

We must believe that He justifies through faith

While the Law condemns all men, the work of Christ frees us from condemnation for through Christ our sins are forgiven.  It is Christ alone who justifies the ungodly. We must put our faith in Him.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” - Ephesians 2:8-10

The Resurrection proves the Gospel

And to prove that His message was truly from God and not a human concoction or counterfeit, Christ performed many miracles, signs and wonders culminating with His resurrection on the third day after His death where He appeared to hundreds of people.  Christ’s resurrection authenticated His power and victory over death.  Christ is risen from the dead and one day all of those who believe in Him will also be resurrected to live forever in perfect communion and fellowship with God and His people.

“For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him.” - 1Thessalonians 5:9-10

All of our being has been affected by sin.  My biological and spiritual sister Carla has Friedreich’s Ataxia (a neuromuscular genetic disorder) and whenever I see her I’m reminded of two clear things: the corruptive power of sin’s reign in our bodies and the redemptive power of Christ’s gospel.  As she struggles to live with her disability it is easy to see a visual reminder of our corrupted physicality yet we don’t always get the same ‘visual’ when it comes to the noetic effects of our sinful condition.

Our perception is constantly clouded by our imperfections and it isn’t always easy to clean our own visors.  Added to that is the fact that our lenses are colored by personal bias, past wrongs,  distrust, festering wounds, habitual anger, malice, and half-hearted versions of spastic love. The result is that this side of heaven we will continually find ourselves wrestling with seeing correctly through the windows we create.  No greater difficulty do we find in this life than when we enter into relationships.  Life would be great if we could only just be alone; or if everyone else would simply do what it is that we say, act as we would like them to, do so when we say it, and ignore our double-faced requirements. The mercy-for-me-but-unmoving-justice-for-you billboard is too easily erected in front of our throne.

As Wayne Mack once put so rightly, it is our task in this life to first SEE things biblically through the lens of faith and revealed truth and then to secondarily, REACT and RESPOND biblically to that correct understanding of life and events.  Easier said then done, yes I know; but that does not excuse us from fighting towards that goal.  It is the pursuit of living out the redeemed life before God and man where the Spirit’s perfection is made known in our weakness. Thank God for His sufficient grace.

And so it is good to remember that we live with planks and splattered bugs covering our view.  Humility understands this. Our comprehension and perceptions are quite often the victim of multiple onion layers that in and of themselves are thin, but when added one on top the other become a teary mess.  And once we begin to see one another through a tainted and skewed goggle, correcting our image of the other party is almost never easy since colored lenses tend to create self-fulfilled personality prophecy.  Once I think you are selfish and only want corn to eat, any movement towards a stalk, the can, the grocery, the aisle, or the field MUST be a movement towards corn since it certainly can’t be that you needed milk.  Once we allow our glasses to go gray all we see is gray and once we have grayed glasses we begin to judge the heart.

Thankfully the Lord allows us to renew our minds with His truth and has given us the ability to not only see with the mind of Christ but to be able to create new gazing habits.  Mercy is made from heaven’s plant through the blood of Christ everyday.  Forgiveness is a powerful balm.  We should seek to respond slowly while striving to wipe our window clean.  It is critical to let the Word of God do its work in your heart before you even attempt to microscope your neighbor’s.  Without keeping your vision clear you’ll always find what you think you see and you’ll never be able to jump off the merry-go-round.

Satan loves the merry-go-round by the way.  He enjoys seeing dizzy and pale-faced believers ready to vomit from too many circles.  Let us then purpose to walk the gracious path laid before us by not taking into account wrongs suffered.  I pray we can learn to see past the corrosion and let our love abound so that it becomes our over-arching shield.

There is no existing list of words given to us in the Scriptures that are off limits. Instead, we are given guidelines and parameters to operate within. These guidelines are found throughout the Word and can be derived from passages such as: Prov. 10:19-21; 21:23; 25:9-11; 16:21; 22:11, Col. 3:8; 4:6, 1 Tim. 4:12, Titus 2:6-8; James 1:26; 3:3-10.

The use of language is a perfect example of divine essentials meeting cultural boundaries and personal application of principle.

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. - Ephesians 4:29

There is no denying that words have various meanings in differing contexts and social groups and points in history. This should show us that there is nothing intrinsic within a word that makes it wrong or vulgar. The contemporary use of the word and the hearer’s understanding of that word or expression are what determine its character; therefore, we cannot jump from century to century and from tribe to tribe exalting the proper use and virtue of this saying or that. We must take each verbal situation on its own merits and time.

This comes into play in the well-used Ephesians passage (Eph. 4:29) as the great apostle is concerned about not allowing our speech to become ‘rotten’ or ‘corrupted’ or ‘no longer of use or value’. The principle of this exhortation will never change, but the semantics that qualify will.

Much is said today about ‘abusive’ and ‘obscene’ illustrations being used in writings and sermons and while I agree with some of the condemnations of this approach to being ‘relative’ and ‘hip’, we must also accept and deal with the fact that the very same sermon preached in the heart of New Orleans may very well be rejected in rural Mississippi as some words and idioms that are legitimate in your town may be deemed foul, harsh, crass, and/or ‘inappropriate’ in my neighborhood. This is where the crux lies. Are we willing to be gracious to those who are speaking from a good motive but are merely ignorant of your colloquial use of a term or phrase? Would we simply throw out a preacher from England because he used a ‘bad word’ while in our church? I sure hope we are more mature than that. Sadly, though, I know many churches are not.

Like many other points in our application of biblical principle, it is our heart motives that need to be examined. And that isn’t just a matter of the heart of the one speaking; it is on both sides of this discussion/topic. If the speaker is trying to be crude, provocative, rude, and risqué and seeking to push language barriers to their extremes then he needs to examine himself and whether or not his motives are good, wise and just. Concurrently, if the hearer is not aware that not every offense taken is an offense given, and that we must not be so quick to judge hearts but rather seek clarification and understanding first, then he needs to learn more about charity and grace and be educated.

While we could compile a cultural list for ourselves of words and phrases that we should avoid or that are clearly offensive in our communities (such as the F-bomb and the like) there is simply no way to know exactly what words and phrases and expressions are going to set someone off as the examples of ‘pregnant’, ‘britches’, and ‘screwed-up life’ clearly show. Discernment and wisdom should be exercised in loving tolerance.

As for the directness of the Ephesians application, I think it is in reference to making sure our words are as Calvin put it , “the word(s) of grace, comfort, advice, and everything that aids the salvation of the soul.” as opposed to speaking in ways that merely raise up the lusts of the flesh. Keep in mind that even the most acceptable terms spoken from the wrong heart can be equally vile and corrupt. We tend to focus more on the word itself, rather than the intention of the speech. That, I think is where God wants us to focus while at the same time keeping in mind how we come across since perception creates its own form of reality.

Restraining our lips at times is wise and guarding our mouths is essential to keeping our souls from harm. We should seek to present our words as golden apples in silver settings.

We should be characterized as honeycomb-lipped speakers who words are seasoned with salt as they soothe troubled souls and heal broken bones. Those who seek pure tongues and gracious speech but who also know that rebuking times tempt us to fall so we pray for wisdom. We must be those who learn to bridle the untamable tongue which is easily set aflame with hell’s own spew and have soundness of speech that is beyond reproach so that no one will have any ammunition to bring reproach upon us.

That, my friend is the task; may He bring us all we need to accomplish it. Amen.

Our Marine friend and fellow saint-soldier Major Brian Hormberg celebrated his retirement from the military this weekend.  It was a great time of fellowship and focus.  Times like these draw our attention to the significance of the dedication of our armed forces and to the great need we have of them.  In a longstanding time of homeland peace and insta-baked socialistic news media it is easy to take them for granted.

It was a sobering time to think about their family’s sacrifice during times of high anxiety and long tours of duty.  It was a perfect time to reflect upon the many soldier and militaristic analogies of the Scriptures from the well-known armor of God in Ephesians chapter six to the thirty thousand fallen Israeli foot soldiers found dead at the hands of the Philistines.

Below you’ll find my invocation from the ceremony. I pray it will be edifying as it was for me to write it.

We thank Brian for his service to our country and we thank God for bringing both he and Angela into our fellowship.  Semper fidelis.

Gracious, heavenly and eternal Father in heaven,
God of all Creation and author of our salvation in Christ,

It is with grateful and humble hearts that we come before
You today to recognize and celebrate our friend Brian’s
retirement from twenty years of military service.

We are thankful Lord, for your sustaining grace and for
Your providential protection in his life and for the recent
gift to him of his new bride, Angela.

We thank you for Brian’s dedication to serving our nation
in discipline and sacrifice and in honor and duty, and
we especially thank you Father, for his calling into
the Body of Christ.

We pray that you would bless him as he moves into this
new stage of life. And as he moves through new territory,
we ask that you would grant to him Lord, the wisdom,
courage, strength, and love that he will need as
a faithful soldier in the eternal ranks of the Beloved.

May he proceed through the days you have numbered for
him with vigor and decisiveness for the cross of Christ as
you carry him on through the rigors and the joys of
this temporary stay.

Fixate his eyes upon heaven Father.

Blessed be your Holy name forever. Amen.

From a cinematic standpoint NCFOM is a brilliantly filmed and well-told story about what happens to people when trouble comes to an already troubled town. This film reminds me on an artistic level of Lost in Translation, the wonderful Coppola tale of relational emptiness and satisfaction found in the same space at the same time. And like LIT, NCFOM promises to be hated. Hated because, unlike the spoon-fed drive-thru movies that most feed on, this film requires paying attention and neither film ends smoothly in tidy zip-loc bags.

As I watched this latest Cohen brothers offering, I was immediately brought into a theological festival where accurate observations of human depravity danced around the stage but never actually performed the right ballet. Evil is the theme of this film, but also how we deal with it. The personification of all that we fear and all that we cannot escape is Anton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem. Wickedness is always with us and we always seem to see it worse in others, yet it lingers around the shadows we ourselves cast like ready-to-eat chocolates that we know will rot our teeth. Eating them is no problem, but not being tempted to taste them is the battle. In discussing the observance of this fight Sheriffs Roscoe and Ed Tom Bell relate their sense of hopelessness:

Roscoe: “It’s all about the money… the money and the drugs… it’s just… beyond everything. What’s it mean? What’s it leading to? Ya know, if you’da told me twenty years ago that I’d see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat out wouldn’t of believed it.

Bell: “Signs and wonders. But I think once you stop hearin’ “sir” and “maam” the rest is soon to follow.

Roscoe: “It’s the tide. It’s the dismal tide. It is not the one thing.

Bell: “Not the one thing. I used to think I could at least some way put things right. I don’t feel that way no more.”

Indeed, we can’t ‘put things right‘ for only God the final Judge can and will do that. Like Dawkins’ lemmings the characters pirouette right past the obvious and revealed showing once again man’s inability to see clearly until his scales have been removed. The film’s inability to ascend to the Truth while dancing on the self-evident is just like those who see plainly the evidence for Intelligent Design and yet choose to paint for us the impersonal fate and determined chance found in a coin flip rather than believing in the God who is there.

In another scene we do see a sobering moment of reflection when Sheriff Bell is confronted about his decision to retire from law enforcement:

Bell: “… I always thought when I got older God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn’t. I don’t blame him. If I was him I’d have the same opinion about me that He does.

Ellis: “You don’t know what He thinks.”

Bell: “Yes I do.”

Yes, we do. We have God’s Word to inform us so we are not left without knowledge. Our ills are not temporally set they are eternally decreed and the One who can release us and free us from destruction and death and deception and misery is the only One who is good. Pray for the salvation of our souls.