Regeneration

The message of the gospel is simple enough for little children to understand, but the heart of man is corrupt and will not absorb the things of God.  A person may sit in church for forty years and hear the gospel time and again until he can recite it by rote, yet never comprehend or trust.  Such is the depth of our depravity.

Such people sit there weekly in your church and in mine.  Merely brushing shoulders with us doesn’t do anything for them.  You can take a corpse to a crowded ballpark, but he won’t watch the game.  Unless the Spirit grants resurrection, the dead remain dead.  The only hope of any person, regardless of his church or family background, is that the Spirit of God will call him savingly unto Christ.  

Excerpt from an article by Pastor Tom Chantry

http://chantrynotes.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/calvinism-and-the-presumed-gospel/

The Choice of Words

OK, so why do we insist on changing the words to old hymns?  I mean, what is the point of changing some of the words in our classic songs?  Is it because we’re more intelligent or poetic than the author?  Because we know the intent of the use of our word versus the word choice of the one who wrote the song?

One Sunday the choice for the opening hymn in church was “Holy, Holy, Holy” by Reginald Heber (1783-1826).  According to Wikipedia, “Reginald Heber was an English clergyman, traveler, man of letters and hymn-writer who, after working as a country parson for 16 years, served as the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta until his sudden death at the age of 42.” He was also an admirer of John Newton and William Cowper and wrote 57 hymns himself.  He was, one would presume, a man who chose his words carefully.  So when he writes the stanza,

“Holy, Holy, Holy! Tho’ the darkness hide Thee. 

Tho’ the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see.”

Did he not purposely choose each of those words for a reason?  Most poets are careful about words.

This is a hymn I have been familiar with and sung as a child many years prior to my conversion. Why would anyone change the term “sinful man” to “sinfulness” as was done in The Christian Life Hymnal (Hendrickson Publisher, Inc. c.2006) ?  What is the purpose?  I admit I’m stymied.  Are those who arbitrarily change the wording of our Hymns feel the same responsibility to change the text of our Bibles as well?

I believe the term “sinfulness” as used in the Christian Life Hymnal to be ambiguous and relates to no one in particular whereas “sinful man” as originally written by Heber is a pointed reference to personal sin.   

Perhaps the “word changers” feel threatened by too personal an application?

How We Come To Be In This Mess.

In ancient Israel, when the nation had turned from God and from his truth and commands as given in Scripture, the prophet Jeremiah cried out that there was death in the city.  He was speaking not only of physical death in Jerusalem but also a wider death.  Because Jewish society of that day had turned away from what God had given them in the Scripture, there was death in the polis, that is, death in the total culture and the total society….

Humanists have been determined to beat to death the knowledge of God and the knowledge that God has not been silent, but has spoken in the Bible and through Christ – and they have been determined to do this even though the death of values has come with the death of that knowledge.

We see two effects of our loss of meaning and values.  The first is degeneracy….The marks of ancient Rome scar us: degeneracy, decadence, depravity, a love of violence for violence’s sake.  The situation is plain.  If we look, we see it.  If we see it, we are concerned.

But we must notice that there is a second result of modern man’s loss of meaning and values which is more ominous, and which many people do not see.  This second result is that the elite will exist.  Society cannot stand chaos.  Some group or some person will fill the vacuum.  An elite will offer us arbitrary absolutes, and who will stand in its way?

Will the silent majority (which at one time we hear so much about ) help?  The so-called silent majority was, and is, divided into a minority and a majority.  The minority are either Christians who have a real basis for values or those who at least have a memory of the days when the values were real.  The majority are left with only their two poor values of personal peace and affluence.

With such values, will men stand for their liberties?  Will they not give up their liberties step by step, inch by inch, as long as their own personal peace and prosperity is sustained and not challenged, as long as the goods are delivered?  ….Much of the church is no help here either, because for so long a large section of the church has only been teaching a relativistic humanism using religious terminology.

I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old, will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened.  And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things.   Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals – and truth – but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence.  They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794 in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire said that the following five attributes marked Rome at its end:  first, a mounting love of show and luxury (that is, affluence); second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor (this could be among countries in the family of nations as well as in a single nation); third, an obsession with sex; fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; fifth, an increased desire to live off the state.  It all sounds so familiar.  …….we are back in Rome.

(Excerpted from How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by Francis A. Schaeffer, Published by Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976. Chapter 11, Our Society – pgs. 226- 227)

We're In the Army Now.

I found this "letter from the Army" in my old files and thought I would share it (with revisions) in light of my grandson recently joining the ranks and scheduled to depart for his basic training this month.  Hope you enjoy this lighter fare. 

Dear Ma and Pa,

            I am well.  Hope you are.  I sure miss Wisconsin.  Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer that the Army beats working for old man Minch by a mile.  Tell them to join up quick before all the places are filled.  I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late.

            Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things.  No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay.  Practically nothing.  Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there’s warm water.

            Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, and such, but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food.  But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit between two city boys that live on coffee.  Their food plus yours holds you till noon, when you get fed again.  It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.

            We go on “route marches” which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us.  If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different.  A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home.  Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.  The country is nice but awful flat.  The sergeant is like a schoolteacher.  He nags some.

            The captain is like the school board.  Majors and colonels just ride around and frown.  They don’t bother you none.

            This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing.  I keep getting medals for shooting.  I don’t know why.  The bullseye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don’t move.  And it ain’t shooting at you, like the Higgett boys at home.  All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it.  You don’t even load your own cartridges.  They come in boxes.

            Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training.  You get to wrestle with them city boys.  I have to be real careful, though.  They break real easy.  It ain’t like fighting with that old bull at home.  I’m about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Barron County.  He joined up the same as me.  But I’m only 5'6" and 130 pounds and he’s 6'8" and weighs near 300 pounds dry.

            Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before others get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Gail

Distracting Issues

Carl Trueman wrote an article regarding entertainment in the church distracting Christians, and others, from seriously considering the greater issues of living and dying for Christ.  His observation relating to funerals is as follows:

“Pascal observed the problem in seventeenth-century France when he saw the obsession with entertainment as the offspring of the fallen human desire to be distracted from any thought of mortality. “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room,” he said. And: “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”

But he might well be taken aback that the churches have so enthusiastically endorsed this project of distraction and diversion. This is what much of modern worship amounts to: distraction and diversion. Praise bands and songs of triumph seem designed in form and content to distract worshipers from life’s more difficult realities.

Even funerals, the one religious context where one might have assumed the reality of death would be unavoidable, have become the context for that most ghastly and incoherent of acts: the celebration of a life now ended. The Twenty-Third Psalm and “Abide with Me” were funeral staples for many years but not so much today. References to the valley of the shadow of death and the ebbing out of life’s little day, reminders both of our mortality and of God’s faithfulness even in the darkest of times, have been replaced as funeral favorites by “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “My Way.” The trickledown economics of worship as entertainment has reached even the last rites for the departed.”

Recently, a relative of my wife and a former co-worker of mine, died.  He had only recently retired and was enjoying “the good life”.  By all appearances he was unsaved and unprepared for eternity.  After inquiring about funeral arrangements I received an email stating:

“…..family will hold a Celebration of his life on Wednesday, …….. at (a local supper club/restaurant)  from 1:00-5:00PM. All are welcome to dress casually in Hawaiian Attire and an open microphone will be available for story-telling. In lieu of flowers, Memorials in ….. name are requested for the ……. Women With Courage Foundation.”

Entertainment and distraction.  This is all the unsaved have.  Can one imagine the thief on the cross being content with the distraction of a “celebration of his life” or an “open microphone available for story-telling”?  Absurd.  He, and others surrounding him, needed to hear about the One who provides Life in spite of death.  The One who demonstrated His overcoming death by His resurrection.  The celebration of life is in the resurrection not in death.  Death is our enemy but the One who overcame death is our Friend.  Death cannot provide any hope for the future of my soul.  Christ can.

Read Carl Trueman’s article at http://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/05/tragic-worship

A Tale of Two Funerals by Gene Edward Veith

Along the theme of my last post is the following article by Gene Veith that I've been saving for the appropriate time.

A young man I knew died in a tragic traffic accident. His death was utterably sad. At his funeral, his friends were all wearing T-shirts adorned with his picture. At the front of the church were heaped up flowers, footballs, and stuffed animals. On top of his coffin was a picture from his senior prom.

The service began with a recording of his favorite song, a heavy metal power ballad. The preacher gave a eulogy, praising how the teenager was such a good friend, such a good person, recounting some of the funny things he used to say, telling about the dreams he had for his life. Everybody in the church was crying.
Then his best friend got up to say a few words. He was sobbing. He finally croaked out his good-bye, as the congregation joined his sobs. His girlfriend recited a poem she wrote about how much she loved him. Then, the boy’s grief-stricken father had to get up in front of everybody to talk about his son.

As if all of this emotion were not wrenching enough, the funeral director next played a video, showing highlights of the boy’s life — his baby pictures, playing with his friends, enjoying Christmas with his family, waving at the camera.

There was not a dry eye in the house. People said what a beautiful funeral it was.

Another funeral I attended was of another young person who died a tragic death, one that was even more senseless and horrible. She had been raped and murdered by a serial killer. (I was one of the elders on duty. My job was to keep the news media away from the family.)

At this funeral, the congregation sang old hymns. They were in a minor key, but the lyrics centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The grievers joined together in a responsive reading of the Word of God.

The pastor, garbed in black, read more texts from the Bible. Instead of a eulogy, the pastor recited the facts of the girl’s life, emphasizing her baptism, her catechesis, her confession of faith. He described how she joined the church, her confirmation, and her regular reception of the Lord’s Supper.

The pastor, preaching from the Bible, gave a sermon on our travails in this wicked world, on how the Son of God entered our sinful condition, how in His sacrifice and His promises, we have a sure and certain hope that this poor child has entered into everlasting joy. The justice of God will be manifest, and so will His mercy, and He will wipe away every tear.

We sang some more hymns. The mood was sad and somber, but the Word of God that permeated the whole service was like a lifeline. Or, rather, like a strong arm supporting us in our grief. Yes, we cried, but the funeral gave us strength.

Our culture does not know how to handle death. We insulate ourselves from it. The dying pass away out of sight.

We are terrified of death. And so we sentimentalize it.

The contemporary funeral deals with grief by indulging it, even feeding it. A successful funeral — with its heart-wrenching personal testimonials, its parade of mourners pouring out their anguish, the emotional manipulation of the congregation — works by creating an emotional catharsis. The upsurge of feeling can indeed feel cleansing. As at the ending of a tragedy, the emotions are purged. The bereaved feel drained. The aftermath, in Milton’s words, is “calm of mind, all passions spent.” The grievers really do feel better. But how different is a traditional Christian funeral.

In a Christian service of the burial of the dead, the mourner’s grief is fully acknowledged and shared. But it is channeled into contemplation and prayer. The grievers are given not catharsis but consolation.

That consolation is not to be found in how good of a guy the dear departed was. Even Christian funerals sometimes miss this point.

My former pastor refused to deliver eulogies. It is not fitting, he would say, nor is it comforting, to dwell at a funeral on the dead person’s good works. When we die, we dare not stand before God claiming how good we are. So that must not be the emphasis at a funeral.

The dead person’s only hope is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the only hope of the grievers at the funeral, who, having been forced to confront the reality of death, tend to be uniquely receptive to spiritual truth.

My pastor would deflect attention from the person who died to the Person who died and rose again. He would preach Jesus — the cross, the atonement, the imputation of His righteousness, the resurrection — as the victor over death, hell, and the grave.

He would not preach this into a vacuum, but into the hearts of the grieving family and friends. He would connect Christ’s resurrection to the resurrection of their loved one and to theirs.

We did not leave this funeral drained, but comforted. He moved us from desolation to faith. We still hurt, but we were given hope, not in ourselves — at a funeral we experience as at no other time our frailty and helplessness — but in Someone stronger at a time when we need strength.

Posted on May 30, 2013 at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2013/05/two-kinds-of-funerals

Death of a Loved One

A Lady was buried today.  Not just any Lady but a special friend of my children and grandchildren.  She was a twelve year old Basset hound – the family pet and was much loved.  They wanted to bury her next to where the childhood St Bernard of my children was interred many years ago.  A fitting tribute to both dogs.  Side by side as testimonies to pets who were greatly loved and appeared to love (in dog fashion) in return.

As my grandson was digging the grave and later helped in making a monument board I had the opportunity to remind him of the author of death – sin.  Because of Adam’s sin physical death entered into the human equation. The Bible tells us, and human experience verifies, that death is inevitable for all – including the flora and fauna of this earth.  We may not be able to escape physical death but it will not be permanent.  Though the wages of sin is death in this life the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord in the life beyond this one. (Romans 6:23).  Death for the believer is a passing from this existence into the next reality.  Contrary to modern skeptics death for the unregenerate unbeliever is an eternity in Hell (Revelation 20).

In the past I have pondered (my favored pastime) if our family pets and other animals will be with us in heaven?  The Bible does not state they will and I’m content with that.  I do know however that without a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ through repentance and faith no human being will be in heaven.  Ponder that.