If “God says something” to you and it turns out to be false, it wasn’t God saying something to you. And next time you “hear” that “voice” don’t listen. Now, to avoid confusion or unnecessary offense let me give you a brief example. If “God tells you” who is going to be the next P.O.T.U.S. and as it turns out, your guess isn’t correct, God didn’t really tell you who is going to be the next president.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
Psalm 16:2 - “I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from You.’”
Ecclesiastes 7:20 - “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.”
Romans 7:18, 24-25 - “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Luke 18:19 - “And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.’”
The Earth has seen everything from men, women, and children being murdered, raped, and enslaved to undeserved thieves being received into paradise. It has seen the greatest injustice to the smallest kindness. It takes in; it remembers. It is as a canvas laid out flat with the doings of humanity painted on it clearly for God to see. The blood of the innocent soaks deep in it’s soil and the voice of the oppressed soars high in it’s atmosphere. To say this simply, what is done (or not done) in this world will not be forgotten. I am not talking about when we get together to remember 9/11 or when we speak of the atrocities of the Holocaust. I am talking about justice, the real kind, that will be experienced at our bodies end. We will all stand before the great Judge. The Lord is God, and He will be the one we answer to in the end. But until that day, we must know how to take all of this in, how to react and how not to react.
In saying that, let me note the Scriptures that I started with. “I have no good apart from You.” - Psalm 16:2, “No one is good except God alone.” - Luke 18:19. This is something we can easily forget. We look at the thief and forget that apart from the Lord he cannot be good. We want him to receive his rightful punishment, and then we want him to learn from his mistakes and act like a moral human being, all the while forgetting the root of the matter, his non-goodness, our non-goodness. So what is the solution to this problem? Should we teach him to help the elderly woman across the street, and not take her purse? Yes, but don’t get the cart before the horse. This would be a worthless thing to teach him if we did not first show him the way to his redemption, the way to the cross and resurrection of the man, Jesus Christ. “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! - Romans 7:18, 24-25. Paul could not even do what is right, for apart from Jesus Christ our Lord the things we do that seem right are not. Our good works are not good works when they are done outside of Jesus Christ, our life, whom apart from we are dead. Let us continue to show the sinner the only way to Life and Goodness.
Through this the Gospel will spread like a stone growing into a mountain that fills the whole earth. (Daniel 2:35). On the way will still be injustice and grief; there must be. “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Ecclesiastes 7:20. Not even the righteous in Christ Jesus, who are all perfect in Him, will act perfect, and of course not the world, but we as Christians can look forward to the day when wrongs will be made right and what was done in the dark will be brought to the light. Things will be brought into focus and all will be made beautiful. Justice will be served to the slave’s cruel master, and the unborn child’s murderer, them that did not cast their sin upon Jesus Christ, taking the judgement themselves. We, the murderers, thieves, adulterers, liars, and rebellious that have and will cast our sins upon Jesus and take part in Him, have already been judged two-thousand years ago at the cross and raised to new life in Jesus Christ through His resurrection. Amen
Read this carefully, and I would appreciate your feedback. Please let me know if you agree or if and where you have quibbles. Here it is:
Apart from the work of Christ you are completely helpless to save yourself.
Christ came to save the world and accomplished that when He rose from the grave.
This means, if you will have Him, He is yours. And further, if He has you, you will belong to Him eternally.
So?
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while now—thought perhaps it was a bit grating. But alas, I don’t care, to loosely echo Jefferson, a little ruckus now and then is a good thing. Let’s get things rolling with a quote something like this:
“A convenience store approach to birth control is this generation’s bitch goddess of infertility.” – Douglas Wilson
I agree with this. To reference the, as they say, pop-culture, my wife and I applaud the enormous Duggar family for their stance on birth control and we appreciate their belief about children all the more. No one is going to be able to coolshame us into changing our minds. If this sounds like we hate our generation’s “bitch goddess of infertility”—good. We do. If you don’t like this—we’re fine with that. If you think this makes us crazy—call us crazy. But as the saying goes, what’s in a name? We love children because God loves children; we’ll be happy with as many or few as He’ll bless us with whenever He sees fit. In other words, we’re not fans of condoms or the like.