Mohler on Hobby Lobby and Religious Liberty

Dr. Albert Mohler provides solid commentary on today’s Supreme Court decision:

Some Supreme Court decisions are considered landmarks, even as they are handed down. Today’sHobby Lobby decision ranks among those. Just consider the fact that had the Court ruled otherwise, religious liberty in America would have taken a very direct hit from which it may well have never recovered. The public debate revealed all over again the fact that we are in a great and enduring battle for religious liberty, for the sanctity of human life, and for an entire range of concerns that are central to biblical conviction. Today’s decision does not settle those issues, but it does represent a much-needed defense of our nation’s cherished “first freedom.”

Mohler talks about the deep divide on our nation’s highest court over the issue of religious liberty.  Read “The Hobby Lobby Decision: A Big Win for Religious Liberty.”

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A system or a Savior?

“Christianity is not merely a “theological system” — but a person.

It is not only a redemption — but a Redeemer.

What a difference between casting ourselves upon a system, however beautiful — and upon a tender, loving, compassionate Savior!

What a difference between a system of divine principles — and a throbbing bosom on which we may lean, and feel every burden lightened, every pressure relieved, every sorrow softened!

This is what man needs. This is what he will need above everything, when the hour of sorrow, or the hour of death, draws near. Oh, what are systems then, however beautiful — in comparison with the calm consciousness that the arm of Omnipotent Love is thrown around us!

Theological systems are all but as the small dust of the balance — the foam, the dust, the shadow, the air!

“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear — but now my eye sees You!” Job 42:5

~ Frederick Whitfield

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Why worry when you can rejoice?

Randy Alcorn:

“Some believers become obsessed with everything that’s wrong with the world. We are continually bombarded by “news” (sometimes more sensational than informative) that dwells on the sufferings, tragedies and crises of life. It is easy for this unceasing avalanche of “bad news” to bury the Good News.

I do not favor living in a cave, denying suffering and trying to be “blissfully ignorant” of the world’s woes. Rather, Paul said, we are to focus our thoughts on the true eternal realities God affirms, that better empower us to rejoice.”

Randy shares 5 Reasons to Rejoice, Not Worry.  This was so helpful to me. I would encourage you, if you struggle with worry even a little bit (and who doesn’t) to spend 5 minutes of your day to learn these five reasons to rejoice!

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Two Kindle deals today!

One Perfect Life by John MacArthur is only $2.99 today.  This is a harmony of the Gospels–taking the events of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and putting them in the order that they occurred.  This book retails for $30 in print (full retail).

And Randy Alcorn’s well-written book on  Heaven is only $0.99 today!  This is a 560 page book that is one of the best contemporary books on this theme and will make you long for heaven while you are living on this earth!

Did you know you don’t need a Kindle device to read Kindle books? You can do it on your computer as well. Check it out (free!) right here.

 

 

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Encourage someone in your church this week

Here are five ways you can encourage someone in your church this week:

1–Point out how you see God working in their lives :  Look for ways in which you see their character, their responses, their words, their affection for God changing and growing!

2—Tell them you are praying for them and do that:  Pray for a few of your fellow believers in the church this week.  Pray through your church directory on a consistent basis! And then let others know with just a short word, “I prayed for you this week!”

3 —Point out ways that they encourage you: they may have encouraged you by their faithfulness in service, a small act of kindness, an insight they shared, a lesson they taught, or a way in which they served the body

4—Share one encouraging Scripture with them or even read a portion of God’s Word together with them:  This is such a simple way to encourage someone, but it is a powerful way!  As you read God’s Word look for verses that encourage and strengthen your faith, love, and obedience. Meditate on them and pray them for others or read them with others.

5—Remind them God is for them and will always be faithful to them.  “If God is for us, who can be against us!”   “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32, ESV)

Here’s one more passage to encourage you all today:   “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14–16, ESV)

Now, who will encourage you today?  This week?  Plan for it!  Pray about it!  And go and encourage someone!

 

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How could God command genocide in the Bible?

This is a question that I have been asked a couple of times in my life.  As we were reading Deuteronomy 7 today, a few other people mentioned that they had either been asked the question by others or pondered how to answer such a question as they read this passage.  In this chapter God tells Israel to kill seven different people groups when they enter the Promised Land.  They are to utterly devote them to destruction.  God addresses this total annihilation warfare again in Deuteronomy 20 and then in the book of Joshua where they actually carry out his instructions.

So how can we reconcile this seemingly act of genocide or ethnic cleansing with the character of God?

Justin Taylor answers this question well in this article.  And Answers in Genesis offers another helpful response to this question. I’d encourage you to take the time to read these because if you haven’t been asked already, you may one day be queried.  It’s best to be prepared beforehand.

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Accessible Christian books at decent prices!

There are some great books on sale at Amazon Kindle store right now!  Most of these are half off what you pay for a hard copy of the book.  And keep this in mind:  Kindle Did you know you don’t need a Kindle device to read Kindle books? You can do it on your computer as well. Check it out (free!) right here

I have no idea how long these specials will last so scoop up a book or two today!

The MacArthur Daily Bible by (I think you can figure out who wrote this) $5

Guiltless Living by Ginger Hubbard  $4

Active Spirituality  by Brian Hedges  $4

What Do You Think of Me? by Ed Welch  $3

Telling the Truth by D. A. Carson $3.79

A Place of Healing by Joni Eareckson Tada (free)

The Gospel According to Jesus   $6 by MacArthur

Twelve Unlikely Heroes $6 by MacArthur

The Grand Weaver $5 by Ravi Zacharias

Walking from East to West  by Ravi Zacharias$6

Who Made God?  by Ravi Zacharias $5

Disciplines of a Godly Man   by Kent Hughes $8

Disciplines of a Godly Woman by Barbara Hughes $8

Also there are some great buys at Ligonier $5 Friday deals!  Good only today!

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Congregational worship: its basis and its purpose!

We tend to think wrongly about worship!  First, we tend to think that “worship” and “fellowship” are different.  We tend to compartmentalize the Christian life,  thinking that “worship” is what happens when we sing together at church (forgetting the reading the Word and hearing the Word as well as  prayer is worship).  We think that “worship” is what happens during the service while “fellowship” is what happens after the service is over.

Secondly, our culture has trumpeted “individualism” and that “life is all about me” so we tend to carry that over to the church. We think (sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously) that a worship style must suit our taste or that worship must be catered to newcomers. Because of the impact of our culture we think that worship is individualistic. “If I don’t get something out of worship” there must be something wrong with the worship leader or the pastor,” is how we think.

David Wells helps us to think much more biblically about these two issues.  Read, think, and let it affect the way you view this Sunday.

Our koinonia, our fellowship, arises from the fact that we are “one” in Christ. We are not “one” in the sense that we do the same work, have the same interests, share the same musical tastes, have the same disposition, speak the same language, live in the same culture, belong to the same ethnic group, are part of the same generation, or have the same network of friends. We are one in Christ. The common grounding that we have is in this divine work, this antecedent grace, this uniting bond by the Spirit, in the Son, and before the Father. This is why we are summoned into church to express our common praise and adoration. We have received and believed the same gospel. We share the same faith. We worship before the same triune God. We belong in the same universal church. We may not use the same language in our praise, but we praise the same triune God. We come to worship from different places in our life, with different challenges, but we come to be instructed by the same Word of God. All of this is symbolically represented as we gather to share in the same Lord’s Supper. It is these truths that give our worship its content.

Here, in this one word, we have captured both the vertical dimension of our worship and the horizontal. Worship is centrally about bringing our praise and adoration to God— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And yet it is the gathered church, in a specific location, that does this. We also speak to one another as we worship God. We join our voices as we sing and hear each other sing. We participate together in the praise, confess our sins together, and with one voice join in the prayer that is offered publicly. That prayer is not an individual’s prayer that the rest of the congregation overhears. It is the congregation’s prayer, voiced by an individual on its behalf. We hear in each other’s presence the words of assurance. We listen together to the exposition of God’s Word, and together we receive the benediction. Today, though, the prospect of this wonderful, intergenerational, multiethnic experience, the experience of the one people of God, has fallen before so many cultural impulses.

Wells, David F. (2014-01-31). God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (Kindle Locations 3264-3280). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

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Coming to Worship as Called Out Ones

As you prepare for congregational worship this Sunday, please keep this in mind. Let in form your perspective on worship!

“Those who come to worship in a local church are not simply a voluntary association of people. A church is neither a club nor an organization. It has an organizational aspect to it, but it is fundamentally much more than an organization. It is a called-out people. And the worship itself is not simply a get-together, a gathering where people can express themselves. It is not simply what we like. It is not like going to a concert. There is a purpose, a different purpose, for the church’s gathering. It is to give glory to God, to be renewed in his presence, to be instructed, to remember Christ’s death, and to remember again our place among the people of God. This purpose should shape everything that happens both in the service of worship and in the worshipers. “

Wells, David F. (2014-01-31). God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (Kindle Locations 3167-3173). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

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The price of replacing God

David Wells, a theologian who is adept at applying Scripture to culture, always makes me think. I just finished his most recent book and am now working my way through it again going over the highlights of it.  He makes the observation early in his book that as Christians we are not to be conformed to this world. This is a very difficult task, harder at times than we think, because we are so easily influenced by our culture.  He makes the point that our culture gets in the way of our knowledge of God so often.  The prevailing view of God today is that He is out there. . .somewhere. . . maybe. . .But we aren’t really sure if he intervenes and if he really cares about how we live.  We think of God today as a our cheerleader, as an absentee landlord, or as a therapist more than we think of God as revealed in Holy Scripture.  Our view of god is distorted.

Wells talks about the “American Paradox”: never before have we had so much but never before have we had so little.  We have high self-esteem,  but the self is empty. We have lots of outward happiness, but we have little internal happiness. We have lots of friends on Facebook, but yet we are lonely.

Wells also explains how we have “exited the older moral world in which God was transcendent and holy, and we have entered a new psychological world in which is is only immanent and only loving.”  We have also no longer think in terms of humanity and virtue; rather we have substituted the self and our own perspective on right and wrong. “Out of this has come what Philip Rieff has called “psychological man.” This is the person who is stripped of all reference points outside of him or herself. There is no moral world, no ultimate rights and wrongs, and no one to whom he or she is accountable. This person’s own interior reality is all that counts, and it is untouched by any obligation to community, or understanding from the past, or even by the intrusions of God from the outside.” [Wells, David F. (2014-01-31). God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (Kindle Locations 407-410). Crossway. Kindle Edition. ].  We do think in term of community, but in terms of self.

Here is Well’s summary of where we are heading in this culture where we have replaced the God of Holy Scripture for the God of our culture:

“The external God has now disappeared and has been replaced by the internal God. Transcendence has been swallowed up by immanence. God is to be found only within the self. And once that happened, the boundary between right and wrong— at least as we had thought about these things— went down like a row of falling skittles. Evil and redemption came to be seen as the two sides of the same coin, not the two alternatives in  life.

The truth is that all of life is being reconceived and reimagined. However, this attempted rebuilding of ourselves and our society on different foundations is leading us, if I may be so bold, into a dead end. The truth is that we are not doing very well. When God— the external God— dies, then the self immediately moves in to fill the vacuum. But then something strange happens. The self also dies. And with it goes meaning and reality. When these things go, anything is possible. Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, does not seem so far off into the future after   all.

We know ourselves now to be on a fast-moving train hurtling down the tracks, and it is absurd to think that by leaning over the side and digging our heels into the ground we could have the slightest effect on the train’s velocity. People sense this. Many do. There is panic in the culture because we know our era is ending. Our horror movies are not just stories. They are a kind of mirror of ourselves. They surface the inchoate sense that we have, the sense of dread, the sense that all is not right in our world, that out there is a lurking menace whom we cannot see. We intuitively feel that a terrifying calamity looms over us, but we just do not quite understand what this is or even where it   is.”

Wells, David F. (2014-01-31). God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (Kindle Locations 493-505). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

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