My internet connection has been "intermittent". Meaning that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
My cable television is working ok, but comcast is telling me that I need new wiring outside my house - hopefully that will happen today. In the meantime, if this is one of the three or four minute blocks...that's why I've been mostly silent (I pre-posted a couple of things last weekend)
The “religion of peace and tolerance” is at it again...this is not strictly a post about the persecuted church, as we know it today. But, "the day will come..."
Sheik Abu Saqer, leader of Gaza’s Jihadia Salafiya Islamic outreach movement, which seeks to make secular Muslims more religious, called the pope a “puppet” for “that crusader George Bush.”
Muslims around the world are “protesting” the pope’s quotation of Byzantine emperor Manuel Il Paleologus, who wrote, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The pope explained that the intent of the quote was to call for a dialogue on the role of religions in modern life.
Saqer said the only Christian-Muslim dialogue that is acceptable is one in which “all religions agree to convert to Islam."
Followers of Islam – in protest to being labeled a religion of violence – have killed a nun, churches have been attacked in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – a group calling themselves the “Lions of Monotheism” claim responsibility for the church attackes, saying the violence is in response to the pope (calling Islam a religion of violence – do you all see the irony here?)
We have been warned:
“The day will soon come when the green flag of the La Illah Illah Allah (there is no god but Allah) and Muhammad Rasul Allah (Muhammad is the prophet of Allah) will be raised upon the Vatican and all around the world and on the fortresses of those who want to destroy Islam, because they know that this religion obliges them to face the truth that Islam is Allah’s favorite religion. And until they join Islam, hell is their last station.” – Abu Saqer
I lost a stick of butter this week…not much, but even if I lost “only” a stick of butter each week, over the course of a year, that’s thirteen pounds. Of course, I could be doing a lot better at one of the fruits of the spirit: self-control.
Yesterday at the Weight Watchers meeting, somebody said, “Persistence, not perfection.” I'll try to remember that; I'll also remember that when I drop an egg, I don't throw up my hands and say, "darn, the whole dozen's ruined!". In the same way, if I slip up during the day, the whole day is not ruined.
I got an e-mail from a person on a recipe list that I’m on. Her signature line is: “Today I shall…try to bear in mind the many great kindnesses that God has done for me, and ignore the relatively insignificant displeasures in my life.” In the classroom I just left, I worked with a great man. He said, "God's been so good to me, how can I have a bad day?"
This morning’s sermon was on 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. We know the middle part of this passage addresses the ritual (and other) immorality in Corinth. But the part that stuck out for me this morning (with my one lonely stick of butter on my mind) was that Paul didn’t start out talking about sex.
"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything.” Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food"--and God will destroy both one and the other. Last week, too many times, I was mastered by food. It was either “I want sweet” or “I want salty”. Too much of this, too much of that. Not enough of the good stuff.
This passage winds up with “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” Yes, we relate that passage to the middle part of the text…but it’s all part of the same text. Why do we not pay attention to the first part? Is it because we tend to give a “sin pass” to certain sins (gluttony)?
What I want to keep in front of me this week is this question: Is it glorifying to God to have food (or anything else) in control of my body?
This week I resolve that “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything.”
This is the "kick off" for Reformed theology's "TULIP"
Short rundown -
What is the history of this doctrine? Let's go back...way back.
In the early part of the Fifth Century a man named Pelagius showed up in Rome. He was from Briton, possibly Ireland. He may have been a monk, but we don't know for sure. What we do have evidence of is his teachings.
The heresy known as "Pelagianism" is essentially free-will taken to the extreme.
The basics are:
Pelagianism denies original sin and because we are not tainted with sin, we each have a choice of whether to sin or not. If we keep the "Law", we have not need of Christ's sacrifice.
Enter Augustine:
Augustine's (...) said that mankind is a massa peccati, a "mess of sin," incapable of raising itself from spiritual death. For Augustine man can no more move or incline himself to God than an empty glass can fill itself. For Augustine the initial work of divine grace by which the soul is liberated from the bondage of sin is sovereign and operative. To be sure we cooperate with this grace, but only after the initial divine work of liberation.
Augustine did not deny that fallen man still has a will and that the will is capable of making choices (...) The state of original sin leaves us in the wretched condition of being unable to refrain from sinning. We still are able to choose what we desire, but our desires remain chained by our evil impulses. He argued that the freedom that remains in the will always leads to sin. Thus in the flesh we are free only to sin, a hollow freedom indeed (...) Therefore we are not only partly dependent upon grace for our conversion but totally dependent upon grace. (from Leadership U)
We have a will, but is it truly "free", if the only thing that we can must choose to sin?
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Thank you, Phil.
95%
and 9/10 and 10/10 on the lab quizzes.
(This is written Wednesday night - Thursday I'll be working part of the day, then driving north to Edmore to my brother's mother-in-law's funeral visitation...and then driving back in time for my 5:45 class)
A quote from Martin Luther
God works by contraries so that a man feels himself lost in the very moment when he is on the verge of being saved. When God is about to justify a man, He damns him. Whom He would make alive, He must first kill...Man must first cry out that there is no health in him...when a man believes himself to be utterly lost, light breaks. Peace comes in the Word of God through faith.
I wrote this on a napkin at a restaurant (Harry's Hofbrau) - copied from "Modern Reformation" back in August.
Talked to my dad tonight and Mom is tired and sore, but doing well.
On a different note, my brother's mother-in-law passes away yesterday. I do not believe that she was a Christian.
My other post on sacrifice today was on the scapegoat. This story also uses "scapegoat"
(ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: I may be breaking copywrite here - I couldn't cut and paste the article, but this paragraph is at the top:
You are free to disseminate the following news. We request that you reference ICC (International Christian Concern) and include our web address (www.persecution.org).
They are referenced and included.
(September 21, 2006) The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) has just become informed that three Christian men facing the death penalty in Indonesia have been executed by firing squad. The men were executed just after midnight on Friday, September 22, 2006, Indonesia time.
...entire Christian villages were attacked with government munitions and burned down using Indonesian government fuel tanks. Christian adults and children were beheaded. The Muslim community initiated the attacks and there was every indication that local Muslim government leaders were involved. Why were no Muslims ever charged in any of the attacks?
"The men were sacrificed as scape-goats so that the Indonesian government could wash their hands and walk away from the Poso conflict of 1998 to 2003..." stated Jeremy Sewall of ICC.
(these 3 Christian men were the only men charged in five years)
When I think of "sacrifice" - the first sacrifice that comes to my mind is the sacrifice of my Saviour. The story of the scapegoat is such a beatiful "looking forward" to Christ. Too many times we read the New Testament through the eyes of the Old Testament; today I read the Old Testament with eyes fixed on Christ.
The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt, 1854. Hunt had this framed in a picture with the quotations "Surely he hath borne our Griefs and carried our Sorrows; Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of GOD and afflicted." (Isaiah 53:4) and "And the Goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a Land not inhabited." (Leviticus 16:22)
The only time this word "azazel" is used in the Bible is in reference to the "Day of Atonement"
Aaron was to take two goats and cast lots over them - one of the goats would be for the sacrifice, the other would be for "Azazel" (KJV translates "azazel" as scapegoat; the word has two roots ez [she-goat, goat, kid] and azal [to go away, evaporated, gone])
Before anything - Aaron was to sacrifice a bull as a sin offering for himself and to make atonement for himself and his household...
Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil
Aaron was to do with the first goat as he had done with the bull - the blood of the sacrifice was to be sprinkled on the mercy seat.
And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself
Many people have never read this story - we know the word "scapegoat" but don't really know how Biblical it is.
The people of Israel were sinners (aren't we all?). On their Day of Atonement, all of their sins were placed on the scapegoat and sent away.
How does this relate to us?
As Christians, our day of atonement came on the day Christ died on the cross. On our Day of Atonement, all of our sins were laid upon the Lamb of God.
Romans 3:25
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.
Just as Aaron laid the sins of Israel on the scapegoat, so God laid on Christ the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:6) Christ his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24), just as the goat bore all of Israel's iniquity on itself.
The goat went out into the wilderness. The Hebrew word is midbar {mid-bawr'} and means (among other things) "uninhabited land" - a place where nobody was. Psalm 103:12 tells us that "as far as the east is from the west,so far does he remove our transgressions from us. That's a long way. Not only that, but our sins are gone out from us, Jeremiah tells us that (under the New Covenant) God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more.
Our sin is GONE and God will remember it NO MORE!
The carnival theme is "the Beauty of Sacrifice" - how beautiful is "NO MORE"?