4/11/14

From Jim McGuiggan... POOR GOD

POOR GOD

Poor God, the world’s too strong for him; our sins are too deeply ingrained. He’d like to make a difference—truly he would—but he’s helpless. What, with our freewill and the complex inter-dependence of human lives, he has come to a gunfight with a feather duster.

A lot of people in ancient Israel thought like that. God had some power, of course, but he simply wasn’t up to the job he had taken on—that is, to be Israel’s God and Savior. Now and then he was able to deliver them from trouble but more often than not, the gods of the Philistines, Syrians or the Assyrians, or whoever, had the beating of him because he just wasn’t strong enough. What could Israel do? Sure they had no alternative but to make alliances with the strong nations, worship their gods and sideline Yahweh. You’ll remember that Ahaz believed that the gods of the Syrians were serving them well so he called on them. 2 Kings 16:10-13 and 2 Chronicles 28:23.
When we remember that the nation was constantly defying him it’s no surprise that the prophets sometimes have him expressing his frustration (read the book of Hosea). Add to that his sense of helplessness and it’s no surprise that some thought he walked off the job in a sulk and pouting [see Jeremiah 33:23-24 and elsewhere].
But there were always men and women in the nation, prophetic and wise, who knew God better than that. Now and then they’d speak of God’s strange way of working (compare Isaiah 28:21), carrying out his purposes in ways that make no sense to the worldly wise. For example he is going to attack Jerusalem (calling it “Ariel”—“a hearth,” around a sacrificial area, strewn with the proofs of sacrifice)—Isaiah 29:1-3. He will do again what David did in earlier days—attack Jerusalem in order to put his name there. The prophet understood the meaning of the vision and didn’t construe it as divine vindictiveness but as divine earnestness as he went about the redemption of the soul of a nation.
When we oppose the world and attempt to set the prisoners free we’re not making a futile gesture and much less are we appealing for pity from a world that enslaves and crushes. We align ourselves with God and offer ourselves as the instruments of God in God’s world in light of God’s promise in and as and through Jesus. That can’t be a blunder and it can’t be an act of blind stupidity no matter how things look.
How sweet and overly pious all that can sound to some “realists” who insist that “the facts” are against us and that we’re ignoring the realities of life and the suffering of millions. But prophetic souls didn’t stand unharmed at a distance shouting explanations at the frightened protesting people in the besieged city. These faithful men and women lived with and shared the hurts and losses and fears with the rest of the nation so their speech wasn’t the speech of the unhurt; it was the speech of those with vision that while acknowledging the reality of hurt and loss put them in their place under the redemptive sovereignty of an earnest God who will bring the human story to a glorious conclusion saturated with joy and peace and adventure while filled with God-imitating righteousness.
There is more than one way of seeing things and before life is a way of doing things it is a way of seeing things.
Don’t mistake God for some other force or source and don’t mistake his incredibly complex holy purpose for some difficult newspaper crossword puzzle you can work out if you have an hour or two. There are those who because they have seen more of it than the rest of us can grasp, stand in gobsmacked awe at the vision of the immensity and complexity of the universe—from photons to constellations—and there are those who have seen glimpses of God’s majesty who stand sometimes in speechless worship of the God who has created this vast theater of his visible operation and pleasure.
         We're amazed at it all and so we should be! A psalmist said, "When I consider the heavens the work of your fingers, I'm astonished that you'd bother yourself with us humans." But it's no big thing to God though he's very pleased with what he's made. See Isaiah
 40all of it.

          D'you remember the woman who told us about the vision she had of God, this inexpressibly glorious visitor who stood before her, and left her speechless? She finally noticed something in his hand, a tiny nut looking thing, and she asked him what it was. He said, "All created thngs."

         Astonishing? I should say! But let me tell you what I think is even more astonishing. Listen to this.

In the days of Claverhouse she was standing beside her husband as they were being threatened but wouldn't back away from truth they held. A callous religious brute and bigot raised the gun and blew her husband’s head to pieces. The jeering murderer wanted to know, “And what do you think of your good man now?” As she gathered up the pieces of his head and brains in her apron she quietly but defiantly said, “I always thought much of him but I think even more of him now.” Now that's astonishing! How can God create that kind of faithno coercion, a free, glad-hearted faith in two little humans.
Let’s be careful that we don’t become so enamored with Brian Greene’s string theory of ultimate reality that we think we have found God’s personal dwelling place in some dimension under the quarks—where Jesus presently dwells with the Holy Father. For the present it's enough to say he joyfully and contentedly dwells in the hearts and lives of the faithful, contrite and gallant who are more taken by the Creator of the spellbinding than by his glorious creation.

       In our eagerness to be scientifically up to date we’re not to buy into some “string pantheism”. If the “string” is there as the ultimate fabric of creation reality you can be sure God doesn’t live in it and even more sure that he isn’t made of string.

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.

From Kyle Butt, M.A. ... What Our “Lower Cousins” Teach Us About Infanticide

 http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=3743

What Our “Lower Cousins” Teach Us About Infanticide

by  Kyle Butt, M.A.

Journalist Jeffrey Kluger recently penned an article titled, “Scientists Discover Mother Monkeys Who Kill Their Babies.” In that piece, he reported on the work done by primatologist Laurence Culot. Culot and his team spent a considerable amount of time studying wild mustached tamarins, a type of monkey that lives in Peru (Kluger, 2011).
Culot’s research uncovered the fact that mother tamarins sometimes allow their babies to fall to their deaths from the tops of trees. In addition, mother tamarins occasionally cause the death of their offspring in a more direct way. The team reported one incident in which the mother bit her own baby’s head off and proceeded to eat its brain and upper body.
Kluger’s article focused on why tamarins would be so brutal. Several factors are thought to be responsible for a mother tamarin’s decision to kill her offspring. The article noted that if there were not enough supporting males to help the mother raise the baby, or if there were too many other babies born at the same time, a mother would often kill her own baby or allow it to die without attempting to protect it. Apparently, if it does not look like the baby has a high probability of survival, the mother will terminate its life and wait for a more opportune time to give birth. As Kluger said: “The explanation for such pitiless behavior is as cold as it is unavoidable: tamarin mothers are simply very good at balancing their genetic ledgers and know when they’re heading for a loss” (2011).
So what does such brutal animal behavior have to do with human behavior and morality? Absolutely nothing if a person understands the truth that God created all humans in His own image, and that every human child has a right to life simple because it is human (Lyons and Thompson, 2002). Unfortunately, however, that fact is not understood by many in our world today. An increasing number of people have chosen rather to believe in the false idea of atheistic evolution. If, according to the atheistic evolutionary belief, humans evolved from animals and are related to primates, then primate behavior can help us understand human behavior. If we can find a naturalistic explanation for why tamarin mothers kill their babies, then we can use that same reasoning to account for why human mothers kill their babies. As James Rachels stated:
Animal behaviour is routinely studied with an eye to acquiring information that can then be applied to humans. Psychologists who want to investigate maternal behaviour, for example...might study the behaviour of rhesus monkey mothers and infants, assuming that whatever is true of them will be true of humans—because, after all, they are so much like us (1990, p. 166, emp. added)
Kluger applied this type of reasoning to the research on tamarins:
Humans recoil at such stark genetic number crunching, but while infanticide among our species is socially and criminally proscribed, it does happen—and far too often. And when mothers are the perps, they are often facing some of the same kinds of pressures as tamarins—uncertain resources (read: money) and an absent or unreliable male (2011).
The sickening, immoral connections Kluger makes between murderous tamarin mothers and humans is all too clear. If tamarins murder their babies because they don’t have the resources to raise them, and humans are related to tamarins, then it is “natural” for human mothers to kill their babies as well. Kluger attempted to soften the implications of his statement by saying that humans have options that “tamarins don’t” and “nothing excuses willful neglect, never mind murder.” His attempt failed, however, in light of his concluding statement: “We may be the highest primates, but we remain members of that sometimes brutish club, and our lower cousins still do have plenty to teach us” (2011, emp. added). What, pray tell, are our alleged “lower cousins,” the mustached tamarins, teaching us? They are teaching us that if you convince humans that they are nothing more than animals, they will act like nothing more than animals.

REFERENCES

Kluger, Jeffrey (2011), “Scientists Discover Mother Monkeys Who Kill Their Babies,” Time, http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110615/hl_time/08599207678600/print.
Lyons, Eric and Bert Thompson (2002), “In the Image and Likeness of God: Part 1,” Reason & Revelation, 22[3]:17-23, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=11&article=149.
Rachels, James (1990), Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press).

From Mark Copeland... Three Kinds Of Faith (James 2:14-26)

                         "THE EPISTLE OF JAMES"

                      Three Kinds Of Faith (2:14-26)
                                
INTRODUCTION

1. Faith is certainly an essential element in the Christian life:
   a. Without faith, it is impossible to please God - He 11:6
   b. The Christian is saved by faith - Ep 2:8
   c. The Christian is to walk (live) by faith - 2Co 5:7
   d. Whatever we do apart from faith is described as sin - Ro 14:23

2. It is important to realize, however, that there are different kinds
   of faith, but only one that is truly "saving faith"

3. In James 2:14-26, we find James discussing the different kinds of
   faith, with an emphasis upon that faith which works to the saving of
   the soul

[Beginning with verses 14-17, we notice the first kind of faith.  We
might call this kind of faith...]

I. DEAD FAITH (14-17)

   A. THIS KIND OF FAITH...
      1. Substitutes words for deeds (consider James' example)
         a. People with this kind of faith:
            1) Know the correct vocabulary for prayer and sound doctrine
            2) Can even quote the right verses from the Bible
         b. But their "walk" does not measure up to their "talk"!
      2. Is only an INTELLECTUAL faith
         a. In one's mind, he or she knows the doctrine of salvation
         b. But they have never really submitted themselves to God and
            trusted in Jesus for salvation
         c. They know the right "words", but they do not back up their
            words with their "works"!

   B. CAN THIS KIND OF FAITH SAVE?
      1. NO!  Three times in this passage, James emphasizes that "faith
         without works is dead" - Jm 2:17,20,26
      2. Any declaration of faith that does not result in a changed life
         and good works is a false declaration:  A DEAD FAITH!
      3. Dead faith is counterfeit faith and lulls the person into a
         false confidence of eternal life

   C. DO WE HAVE THIS KIND OF FAITH?
      1. We do, if our WALK does not measure up to our TALK!
      2. We do, if our WORKS do not measure up to our WORDS!

[We need to beware of mere intellectual faith.  As Warren Wiersbe said,

   "No man can come to Christ by faith and remain the same, anymore than
   he came into contact with a 220-volt wire and remain the same."
   (compare this to 1Jn 5:12)

The next kind of faith is found discussed in verses 18-19...]

II. DEMONIC FAITH (18,19)

   A. PERHAPS TO SHOCK ANY COMPLACENT READERS, JAMES REMINDS US THAT
      EVEN "DEMONS" HAVE A KIND OF FAITH!
      1. They believe in God (no atheists or agnostics here!)
      2. They even believe in the deity of Christ - cf. Mk 3:11-12
      3. They also believe in the existence of a place of condemnation
         - cf. Lk 8:31
      4. And they believe Jesus will be the Judge! - Mt 8:28-29

   B. WHAT KIND OF FAITH DO "DEMONS" HAVE?
      1. We saw that the man with "dead faith" was "touched only in his
         intellect"
      2. The demons are "touched also in their emotions" (note that they
         "believe and tremble")
      3. This is one step above a "dead faith" - it involves both
         INTELLECT and EMOTIONS

   C. CAN THIS KIND OF FAITH SAVE?
      1. NO!  A person can be enlightened in his mind and even stirred
         in his heart and still be lost forever!
      2. True saving faith involves something more, something that can
         be seen and recognized:  a changed life! (cf. Jm 2:18)
      3. Being a Christian involves trusting Christ and living for 
         Christ!
         a. You first RECEIVE the life...
         b. Then you REVEAL the life!

   D. DO WE HAVE THIS KIND OF FAITH?
      1. We do, if we just BELIEVE the right things and FEEL the right
         things
      2. We do, if our service to God does not go beyond...
         a. Intellectually adhering to the right doctrines
         b. Emotional experiences while attending services

[Thus, James has introduced us to two kinds of faith that can NEVER 
save:  DEAD faith (involving the intellect alone), and DEMONIC faith 
(involving the intellect and the emotions, but stopping there).

He closes this section by describing in verses 20-26 the only kind of
faith that can save...]

III. DYNAMIC FAITH (20-26)

   A. WHAT KIND OF FAITH IS THIS?
      1. We know from other passages that such faith is based upon the
         Word of God - cf. Ro 10:17
      2. Dynamic faith involves the WHOLE MAN
         a. DEAD faith touches only the intellect
         b. DEMONIC faith involves both the mind and the emotions
         c. DYNAMIC faith involves the intellect, the emotions, AND the
            WILL!
            1) The MIND understands the truth
            2) The HEART desires and rejoices in the truth
            3) The WILL acts upon the truth
      3. True, saving faith, then, LEADS TO ACTION
         a. It is not intellectual contemplation
         b. It is not emotionalism
         c. It is that which leads to obedience in doing good works

   B. TO ILLUSTRATE, JAMES REFERS TO TWO WELL-KNOW PERSONS IN THE
      BIBLE:  ABRAHAM & RAHAB
      1. You could not find two more different persons!
         a. Abraham was the father of the Jews; Rahab was a Gentile!
         b. Abraham was a godly man; Rahab had been a sinful woman, a
            harlot!
         c. Abraham was the friend of God; Rahab had belonged to the
            enemies of God!
      2. What did they have in common?  Both exercised saving faith in
         God!
         a. Abraham demonstrated his saving faith by his works - 20-24
         b. Rahab demonstrated her saving faith by her works - 25-26
      3. We learn from this passage that:
         a. Faith without works is a DEAD faith - 20,26
         b. That "faith only" (the only time this phrase is found in the
            Scriptures) cannot justify one - 24
         c. That PERFECT faith necessitates works - 22

CONCLUSION

1. It is important that each professing Christian examine his or her own
   heart and life, and make sure that they possess true saving faith,
   which is a dynamic faith

2. Satan is the great deceiver; one of his devices is imitation
   a. If he can convince a person that counterfeit faith is true
      faith...
   b. ...then he has that person in his power!

3. Here are some questions we can ask ourselves as we examine our faith:
   
   Was there a time when I honestly realized I was a sinner and admitted
   this to myself and to God?

   Was there a time when my heart stirred me to flee from the wrath to
   come?  Have I ever been seriously worked up over my sins?

   Do I truly understand the gospel, that Christ died for MY sins and
   then rose again?  Do I understand and confess that I cannot save
   myself?

   Did I sincerely repent of my sins, making the decision to turn from
   them?  Do I now hate sin and fear God?  Or do I secretly love sin
   and want to enjoy it?

   Have I trusted Christ and Him alone for my salvation by responding
   to the commands He has given?  Have I confessed my faith in Christ
   and then been baptized for the remission of my sins as He and His
   apostles commanded?

   Has there been a change in my life?  Do I maintain good works, or
   are my good works occasional and weak?  Do I seek to grow in the
   things of the Lord?  Can others tell that I have been with Jesus?

   Do I have a desire to share Christ with others?  Or am I ashamed
   of Him?

   Do I enjoy the fellowship of God's people?  Is worship a delight to
   me?

   Am I ready for the Lord's return?  Or will I be ashamed when He
   comes for me?

4. To be sure, not every Christian has the same degree of faith; those
   who have had more time to grow should be stronger in faith

5. But for the most part, the spiritual inventory can assist a person
   in determining his or her true standing before God

May our prayer be similar to that of the Psalmist's:

             "Search me, O God, and know my heart;
                try me and know my anxieties;
             "And see if there is any wicked way in me,
                and lead me in the way everlasting."

                                              -- Psalms 139:23-24

Note:  Much of the material for this outline was adapted heavily
from The Bible Exposition Commentary, Volume 2, by Warren W. Wiersbe,
pages 353-357.

Executable Outlines, Copyright © Mark A. Copeland, 2011

From Gary.... I have...


I was reminded today of the true value of things as compared to the joy of love. Don't get me wrong- I enjoy having possessions, but after looking at this picture, suddenly I once again became aware of the importance of love in life.  As far as money goes, here are a couple of passages from the New Testament...

1 Timothy, Chapter 6
  6  But godliness with contentment is great gain.  7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we certainly can’t carry anything out.  8 But having food and clothing, we will be content with that.  9 But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 

Hebrews, Chapter 13
 5  Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have, for he has said, “I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any way forsake you.”  6 So that with good courage we say, 
“The Lord is my helper. I will not fear.
What can man do to me?”

No matter how little you may have in this world, if you are loved- then you are rich beyond compare!!!!