5/27/13

From Gary... Flowers for Dorothy

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My sister-in-law, Dorothy is still recovering from a devastating stroke.  She has been "down" and just plain worried about the future.  Yesterday, after morning church services, we visited her and it was obvious to me that she had been crying.  We talked for a long time and went outside and sat in the Gazebo, which perked her up some.  Still, I think she was feeling "down" when we left (but not as bad).  I know that when I feel "down", that the best thing for me to do is to remember the Scriptures, and the Psalm below is one of my favorites...
Psalm 1



 1 Blessed is the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stand on the path of sinners,
nor sit in the seat of scoffers;


  2 but his delight is in Yahweh’s law.
On his law he meditates day and night.


  3 He will be like a tree planted by the streams of water,
that produces its fruit in its season,
whose leaf also does not wither.
Whatever he does shall prosper.


  4 The wicked are not so,
but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.


  5 Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.


  6 For Yahweh knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked shall perish.


Today, my Linda suggested we take her some of the flowers that she is growing, in hopes that it will cheer her up.  So, we went outside and took some pictures of the most likely candidates.  They may or may not do the trick, but I know that if those who love God will pray for her, that is better than any flower that ever grew.  Most of you have never met Dorothy, but I assure you that she is a kind and generous person; worthy of every second you might spend in prayer to God on her behalf.  Please do this as a favor to me; I promise I will not forget it!!!!


PS. Linda probably will not visit her until this afternoon, so if you send me your favorite picks (by number) it will help her make the best choices!!!

From Jim McGuiggan... Sense or Nonsense?


Sense or Nonsense?

Is God revealed in the stars? Yes. And birds and flowers, and fields of golden wheat; in little children? Is he revealed in a cancer patient, skeletal and complaining? In a beautiful girl? A handsome young man with a giant IQ? Yes. Is he revealed in a little child, twisted and drooling, brain-damaged and IQless? Hmmm.
Years ago I met a mother who learned, before the birth, that her baby was badly hurt. Would she want an abortion? No, she didn't want to abort the baby. When I met her, that child Jerry was twenty-nine years old and weighed about 70 pounds of twisted limbs. He grinned widely at any movement and when he was touched; and he laughed out loud when he heard the trash collectors outside his window. It was one of his real pleasures, his mother told us. Her days were taken up mostly with caring for her child who would never improve.
But she could have aborted the baby and spent all her time in other ways; ways demonstrably profitable. Shaping a healthy child perhaps who could shape and change the world. Yes. That "makes sense" to me.
But making sense might not be the main thing.
I don't say that making sense is nonsense; I'm just saying that the gospel didn't come to us in a "making sense" way. For starters, the signs were all wrong (the alleged Messiah didn't impress, didn't raise an army, and didn't obliterate Rome). And it made no sense! You really get to know God through a single historical event? A young man streaked with spit and sweat and blood dying in the dark? You reason from that to eternal truths about God?
No, you don't "reason from that" to eternal truths about God. You believe what the Spirit of God reveals in, through and about the event. You can never get to God by rational theorems and you can't rationally deduce truths about God reconciling the world to himself in and through the young man dying on the cross.
The cross of Christ doesn't require us to destroy our brains. In fact, the cross provokes us to set our brain-power and logic to work and shows that brain-power and logic can't arrive at the cross. Brainy, shrewd, religious and political thinkers looked the Lord of glory up and down, studied him intensely, and then promptly nailed him to a stake. They didn't see him as the Lord of glory and they didn't know that their killing him was the supreme moment of glory-filled revelation as well as the supreme lunacy of a world gone mad.
The young man on the cross might have lived a long life and taught in Rome and Athens; might have started hundreds of schools and changed the world in significant ways. That "makes sense" to me. And Jerry's mother could have acted sensibly.
Yes, but would it have been cross-like? If common-sense is the final and only arbiter by which we construe life and the world, and react to it, there would be billions of abortions. There would be billions of "crosses". Common sense would create a world after its own image--a world covered with "common sense" crosses. But there couldn't have been the cross of Christ and there couldn't be even one cross like his.
Whatever else you make of abortions, no one pretends that it's the same thing that Jerry's mother chose. And it's only within the Christian Story with its own grammar and way of construing things that the cross of Christ makes sense. Without the input of the Spirit, it remains opaque, lightless. Even with the Spirit's help the cross goes deeper than our hearts and minds can fathom.
The event itself must be the source that generates and controls all our thinking about the event. It is never to be used to approve of our already existing proposals and agendas. What we can come to without the cross-event is not distinctively Christian even if it is correct.
Jesus Christ was put to grief by his Father! It was God who delivered Jesus to death by his determining counsel and foreknowledge. So the cross was God's idea!
But Jesus Christ was put to grief by his fellow-humans. He bore the sinful hatred and cruel self-serving in his body up on to the stake. He was both the object of human evil and the death of it; he was the means by which God reconciled wicked humanity to himself. In the cross sin plunges to its lowest low and climbs to its pinnacle of arrogant self-assertion.
You can't, without revelation by the Spirit of God, come to such a faith. Rational thinking, the use of logic, empirical testing, the reading of signs or the reading of tea-leaves, stars or tarot cards--none of this can arrive at the wondrous gospel of reconciliation. Even with the Spirit there's much that's mystery. Without him there's only barren, sterile "common sense".

©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, the abiding word.com.

From Mark Copeland... The Cup And The Baptism


                          "THE GOSPEL OF MARK"

                   The Cup And The Baptism (10:35-40)

INTRODUCTION

1. On the way to Jerusalem shortly before His arrest, Jesus received an
   unusual request...
   a. From James and John, together with their mother - Mk 10:35; Mt 20:20
   b. For Jesus to do whatever they ask! - Mk 10:35
   c. In particular, the honor of sitting by Him in His glory (kingdom)
      - Mk 10:36-37; Mt 20:21

2. Jesus' response was two-fold...
   a. First, about drinking His cup and being baptized with His baptism
      - Mk 10:38-39
   b. Second, their request was not His to grant, but His Father's - 
      Mk 10:40; Mt 20:23

[In this study we shall focus on the cup and the baptism to which Jesus
referred, which is generally understood to be the cup or baptism...]

I. OF SUFFERING

   A. EXPLAINED...
      1. To drink a cup
         a. Metaphorically, to get one's fill
         b. Either of good (Ps 23:5) or of ill (Ps 75:7-8)
         c. Jesus' cup was one of suffering - cf. Mk 14:36; Jn 18:11
      2. To be baptized
         a. Figuratively, to be overwhelmed
         b. In this case, with calamity - cf. Ps 69:2,15
         c. Jesus' baptism was one of  suffering - cf. Lk 12:50
      3. Compare the NLT:  "...Are you able to drink from the bitter cup
         of suffering I am about to drink? Are you able to be baptized
         with the baptism of suffering I must be baptized with?"
      -- The cup and the baptism refers to suffering Jesus and His
         disciples would experience

   B. EXPERIENCED...
      1. By the apostles
         a. Foretold by Jesus - Mk 10:39; Jn 15:20-21
         b. Experienced by James (martyrdom) - Ac 12:2
         c. Experienced by John (exile) - Re 1:9
         d. Experienced by the apostles in general - 1Co 4:9-13
         e. Experienced by the apostle Paul in particular - 2Co 11:23-28
      2. By disciples today
         a. Many believers in Christ continue to suffer much
            1) In Muslim and Hindu nations
            2) In communist nations like China and North Korea
         b. In the USA and other western countries there are forms of
            suffering
            1) Christians and their faith are often ridiculed
            2) Many are rejected by co-workers, neighbors, friends, even
               family
      -- We ourselves may one day have to receive the cup and the
         baptism of suffering

[Having considered how cup and baptism are used in our text to refer to
suffering, perhaps it would be appropriate to consider how they are also
used in a different context.  There is the cup and baptism...]

II. OF BLESSING

   A. THE CUP OF BLESSING...
      1. There is a cup which we bless - 1Co 10:16
      2. The fruit of the vine in the Lord's Supper - 1Co 11:23-29
      3. Which represents Jesus' blood of the new covenant - 1Co 11:25;
         Mt 26:27-28
      4. Which we drink in memory of Him, proclaiming His death - 1Co 11:25-26
      5. Thus participating in the blood of Christ - 1Co 10:16
      -- The cup we bless, is a blessing for those who partake!

   B. THE BAPTISM OF BLESSING...
      1. There is a baptism commanded for all by Christ - Mt 28:19; Mk 16:15-16
      2. For the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit - Ac 2:38-39
      3. Where penitent believers are commanded to be immersed in water
         - Ac 8:35-38; 10:47-48
      4. Where sins are washed away as we appeal to the Lord - Ac 22:16;
         1Pe 3:21
      5. Where we are buried into Christ's death, raised to newness of
         life - Ro 6:3-7
      6. Where we put on Christ, becoming children of God through faith
         - Ga 3:26-27
      7. Where we undergo the working of God and the Holy Spirit - 
         Col 2:12-13; Tit 3:4-7
      -- This baptism is a blessing for all who submit in faith and
         repentance!

CONCLUSION

1. Jesus foretold that James and John would...
   a. Drink the cup of suffering
   b. Be baptized with the baptism of suffering

2. But suffering did not happen before they...
   a. Experienced the baptism of blessing in being saved
   b. Partook weekly of the cup of blessing in remaining saved

To prepare ourselves for whatever cup or baptism of suffering we might
experience for Christ...

   * Let us be sure that we have submitted to the baptism of blessing
     in faith and repentance!

   * Let us be sure that we drink the cup of blessing weekly as
     faithfully as we can!



Executable Outlines, Copyright © Mark A. Copeland, 2011

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