“How important are traditions observed by other Christians?”
One Sunday afternoon in my early teens I was craving a snack. That posed a problem: my father did not permit us to go to the stores on Sunday.
“Dad,” I said, “why can’t we go to the store on Sunday?”
“Because Sunday is a day of rest,” he replied.
“That was the Sabbath,” I responded, “and we are not under law, we are under grace.”
Guess what. I got to go to the store.
“Are you a Christian?”
That’s not me asking. That’s renowned Bible teacher John MacArthur. He’s suggesting we all need to do a little self-examination to see if we are “in the faith”. And he thinks scripture supports the practice.
Hmm. I’m wondering if that might not make for a large number of miserable, panicky Christians questioning their salvation for no good reason.
Description is not the same as prescription. Or, to put it less technically, Old Testament historical passages are a questionable source of moral guidance for Christians.
We have noted previously that the book of Hosea goes back and forth between the historical account of Hosea’s marriage and the lessons God was drawing out of that relationship for Israel and, to a lesser extent, Judah. Hosea’s adulterous wife Gomer represented the idolatrous northern kingdom of Israel, while Hosea himself represented God.
Chapter 1 was more or less evenly split between history and prophecy. Chapter 2 was almost entirely prophetic. Chapter 3 takes us back to the historical narrative, and it is here that we have to be careful about the practical lessons we take out of the text for ourselves.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
[Editor’s note: When we were young we used to play road hockey. Now we do this. I missed out on this particular email discussion, but I thought the rest of you might enjoy it as much as I did when I woke up to find it in my inbox. And yes, I got called out for not participating, but these days I will take sleep whenever I can get it.]
Bernie: Okay, bear with me ...
I’m becoming a believer in snowblower evangelism.
I live in an area where big snowfalls happen several times a year. I mean the kind that are a meter or so (a few feet) deep, heavy and wet. If you’ve ever tried to shovel out a driveway in those conditions, you know it’s absolutely back-breaking work.
The Lord gave me a snowblower. I don’t mean he personally went down to the local John Deere store and picked it up for me, I mean that it came cheap and unexpected, as a kindness from one of the Lord’s people. I don’t deserve it, and I’m very grateful to have it.
I actually wrote this one back in November 2017, but Millennium Tower is back in the news again, so here goes ...
Apparently building your house on something quasi-rock-like won’t cut it.
San Francisco’s Millennium Tower has sunk
17 inches and tilted 14 inches to the northwest since 2006. If that
sounds like nothing, bear in mind that this is a
The problem? Not built down to bedrock.
Does that take you back 2000 years or what?
Amalek is Israel’s prototypical enemy. Or perhaps I should say “was” rather than “is”. That requires a bit of explanation ...
Israel became a nation during its period of Egyptian slavery, so we can certainly number the Egyptians among Israel’s earliest mortal antagonists. But Israel fought no battles with Egypt. At the Red Sea, no Israelite even drew his sword. Instead, God fought for his people, and the nations were awed, just as God had anticipated: “The peoples have heard; they tremble; pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed; trembling seizes the leaders of Moab; all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.”
Who is absent from this list of trembling peoples? Amalek.
“Is church membership important?”
The words “member” and “members” occur many times in the New Testament. Conceptually, church membership is a product of metaphor. The various parts of a human body — feet, hands, eyes, ears, etc. — constitute its members. In the same way, all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are members of the church, which the Bible refers to as a spiritual body.
Is that important? Absolutely. But we should be clear what that means and does not mean, since Christians often use the word “membership” in ways the Bible does not.
“Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”
There are more than 600 million blogs out there in the web, two million of which post daily. Something like 77% of internet users still read them. You may have heard that blog readership overall is dropping precipitously, but quantifying that is next to impossible since Google has a vested interest in promoting the hobby / business / passion. In 2021 in the U.S. alone, 31.7 million bloggers published roughly 7 million posts per day, 97% of whom used social media to boost their results. We are in the 3% that didn’t: I like social media just slightly less than being boiled in oil.
The book of Hosea is full of references to “days”. These are not twenty-four hour periods, but eras of varying duration notable for specific features.
In chapter 1, Hosea prophesies of a day then future and now past, when Israel’s strength would be broken in the valley of Jezreel and its people dispersed among the nations, and another, much more distant day in which Israel and Judah will finally be reunited. In chapter 2 there are the “days of the Baals”, the “days of Israel’s youth”, and the “day” when the nation came out of Egypt.
Then there are three references in the last few verses of chapter 2 to a coming era of restoration, peace, safety and blessing, characterized by righteousness, justice, love and mercy. Our English translators consistently label it “that day”, though the language used about it strongly suggests this day will be at least 1,000 years in duration. Needless to say, the events which set it apart from all other days in Israel’s history have yet to take place.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
I was just poking through the archives and realized that last year we did a post together called “Bad Reasons to be Non-Denominational”. It was all about the recent trend toward non-denominational Christian gathering that doesn’t always have a whole lot in the way of specifics and convictions.
Tom: We agreed that wasn’t our preferred way to go, IC. But now I’m wondering if you can think of any good reasons to meet together with Christians without a lot of the historical baggage that goes with a well-established, well-known bloc of believers — like, say, the Southern Baptists.
Every summer, couples line up to tie the knot.
There was a time in my life when it seemed like every summer weekend was occupied with somebody’s nuptials. Now, however, like most middle-aged men, I’m quite content to leave that to the younger set, and if I’m roped into one or two such ceremonies during a summer that’s about my limit.
We who love Christ are often preoccupied with what is immediate; that is, what we need for today, next week, month, year or during our short lifespan.
It is right that we should sense our dependence on God for all things, looking for his guidance and provision. The Lord taught his followers to pray about such matters. “Give us this day our daily bread” is an example. Ezra sensed how dangerous the journey in front of the returning exiles could be. He called upon his companions to humble themselves before God, “to seek the right way for us and our little ones”.
All such concerns are things that focus on this life and have to do with time. In contrast to eternal issues they often seem more pressing, more “immediate”.
The unjabbed stand outside and sing their own Christmas songs as
Finnish churches are now requiring the pass to enter.
Via: fb.com/hennamaria22
An online acquaintance in Finland confirms.
If 2020 was the strangest year in most of our lives to date, 2021 was more of the same: strange got stranger. Anyone who thinks he knows what’s coming in 2022 is probably wrong. Here at Coming Untrue, we are grateful to continue to experience the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in our feeble attempts to serve a Master whose yoke is easy and whose burdens are light.
All the rest is detail — as we have had occasion to remind one another all year long — though that “detail” certainly makes a lot of din and clatter around us.