Don't Waster Your Lawn Ornament

I saw this and could only laugh my head off. Don't waste your lawn ornament this Christmas season. Hilarious!

Page XVI

I love, love, love the way this group redoes hymns and will buy every album they ever make. I encourage you to do the same.

Psalm 104

Many times we don’t look beyond Psalm 19:1 or Romans 1:19-20 to talk about God’s great glory displayed in creation, yet the Psalms is littered with beautiful phrases and songs taking this idea into specifics. Psalm 104 is one of these. The Psalmist sings of God rising up the mountains and sinking down the valleys (v. 8) while giving a boundary to the water so that it might not cover the earth again (v. 9). Beautiful verses talk of everything from the trees God created to wild donkeys filling their thirsty mouths with water from a spring. All these ideas can be summed up in v. 24: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”

Not only does the Psalmist talk about the glory, but the proper response to the glory. He expounds in the closing verses:

“May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more! Bless the Lord, O my soul! Praise the Lord!”

A.W. Tozer for the Day

In a recent chapter I was reading out of his book "The Knowledge of the Holy", A.W. Tozer was discussing God's eternity. He beautifully was able to maneuver this topic back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Tozer explains God's eternality in such stirring quotes as "He (God) has already lived all our tomorrows as He has lived all our yesterdays". He then goes on to talk of God's eternity present in God's image within us (Gen 1:27) in the sense that "we are made for eternity as certainly as we are made for time". This is where the gospel comes to the rescue. I'll let Tozer speak for himself:

"The ancient image of God whispers within every man of everlasting hope; somewhere he will continue to exist. Still he cannot rejoice, for the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world trouble his conscience, frightening him with proofs of guilt and evidences of coming death. So is he ground between the upper millstone of hope and the nether stone of fear.
Just here the sweet relevancy of the Christian message appears. 'Jesus Christ...hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.'" (Tozer "The Knowledge of the Holy" 41-42)

A Few Things On My Mind

Here's a link to things that I have been learning and thinking about lately. This is in the place of about 5 blog posts. Sorry, school really hurts the blog time I have.

Suicide Medicine: The Gospel

In reading and talking to different pastors I’ve learned one of the most asked questions about suicide is whether those who commit suicide go to hell. Is suicide really an unforgivable sin? Let’s go where we go for all answers pertaining to life; God’s word, the Bible. There are seven recorded suicides in the Bible: Abimelech (Judges 9:52-54), Samson (Judges 16:25-30), Saul (1 Samuel 31:5), Saul’s armor-bearer (same), Ahithophel (2 Sam 17:23), Zimri (1 Kings 16:15-20), and Judas (Matthew 27:3-5). Notably, all but one of these are considered villains. Samson would be the only exception, as he killed himself along with 1,000 Philistines. Still, Samson’s life was hardly what you would call an example of godliness. If we consider suicide as murder of self, which most protestants do, we can see this is clearly forbade throughout scripture; most notably in the sixth of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:13). Besides this John Piper gives two other reasons suicide is a sin. First, “it is presumption upon God’s sovereign prerogatives to give and take life” (Piper “Funeral Meditation for A Christian who committed Suicide (1988)”); in other words, to assume that taking your own life is your decision, you are taking upon yourself authority that only belongs to God. The other reason Piper gives is that suicide is a failure to trust God and rely on him to provide for you in such an emotional time. All things that do not come from faith are sin (Romans 14:23). The first thing we can say with confidence about suicide is that it is a sin.
While suicide is a sin, we must not assume that Christians do not struggle with this sin. There are plenty of example in the Bible of godly men who find themselves begging for death. The pressures of leading God’s stubborn, chosen people finally got to Moses in Numbers 11:14-15 when he says: “I am not able to carry all this people alone; the burden is too heavy for me. If you will treat me like this, kill me at once, if I find favor in your sight, that I may not see my wretchedness”. Elijah experiences much the same thing after fleeing Queen Jezebel’s persecution in 1 Kings 19:4: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am no better than my fathers”. Still another of God’s prophets in Jonah had a similar feeling in Jonah 4:8: “When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live’”. So it is not an odd thing for God’s people to struggle with depression and even wish to die.
The temptation of suicide, then, is not immune from Christians; and we have already explored that the end of this temptation is sin. What then shall we say to the loved ones of one who has committed suicide? We give them the gospel. Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection is sufficient for all sins, including suicide. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace, as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). All of a believer's sins, whether past, present, or future, are forgiven by what Christ did on the cross: “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14-15). Romans 8:35-39 says that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord; that includes suicide. If a true believer in Christ commits suicide, while this is a grievous sin, he will be forgiven and welcomed into heaven.

These areticles by
John Piper and John MacArthur were very helpful to me in this study. I encourage you to read them.

Be Thou My Vision

Recently this hymn has pleasantly been following me around. I was having one of those chapels where I simply could not pay attention. So, to pass the time, I pulled out the hymnal and began to thumb through it. I stumbled onto "Be Thou My Vision". Reading through the hymn I realized how awesome the words are (see below for all). "Not be all else to me save that thou art"! What an amazing statement if you can truly sing it. Everything in this world is rubbish to me, save that God is. Sounds a lot like Paul doesn't it (Phil 3:8). So I left chapel humming the tune and meditating on the lyrics.
In my next class, Christianity and Western Culture, my teacher talked about how we must draw from our spiritual heritage. It was a brilliant lecture on the truth that we are preceeded by a host of men who have fought for our faith, and we would do well not to forget them and what they said. It thought of the old song I had just read in the hymnal.
Next class is intro to music. My professor enters and says "today, let's sing together". I jokingly thought to myself it would be funny if we sang Be Thou My Vision. Before my thoughts had even settled my professor told us to turn to Be Thou My Vision. We sang it, and then he proceded to tell us a little more about this hymn. The music is actually from around the year 600! It's that old, and we are still singing it today.
All this to say, this is a great hymn with challenging lyrics. I love it and it constantly challenges me. Read the lyrics and I challenge you to sing them knowing exactly what they are saying. Is all else "not" as long as God is?

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee, Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heav'ns Son!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my vision, O ruler of all.