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Posts Tagged ‘God’s Sovereignty’

In Everything Give Thanks

Posted in Theology, tagged , , , on November 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God concerning you.

  • 1 Thessalonians 5:18

I’ve always been thankful for the Thanksgiving holiday.  From its Christian origin in the early history of America to its central message of giving thanks to God for his providential blessings, to the food and family, it serves as an annual and much-needed reminder to God’s people to consider the many blessings he brings to our lives and express our gratitude for them.

In thinking about my own sinful tendency to see the worst in things, I would add that setting apart a day to give thanks to God for his many blessings is of no small importance. 

The verse from 1 Thessalonians quoted above is remarkable for the extent of its application.  Paul didn’t tell the Christians in Thessalonica to give thanks in some things, or to give thanks in many things, or to give thanks when things went well for them.  He told them, “In everything give thanks,” that is, Christians are to give thanks in all circumstances.

Does anyone else find that a bit challenging and convicting? 

Giving thanks can be hard, even when things turn out as we like.  Perhaps we get caught up in the moment and forget the Lord.  Or maybe we, as did Nebuchadnezzar when overlooking the glory of Babylon, want to attribute some great achievement to our own wisdom or goodness or skill rather than to God who is the giver of all good gifts.   

But if it can be a challenge to give thanks when things go well, much more is this the case when events are not to our liking.  Whether it’s illness, or economic loss, or the suffering of some injustice, it can be hard to see the good in any of those things, let alone give thanks. 

To the natural mind, the thought of giving thanks to God for life’s disappointments and tragedies likely seems not only foolish but even madness. 

Yet the plain language of this passage is a command by the Apostle Paul to give thanks in everything, leaving nothing for which we are not to give thanks.

But how is it that Christians can make the case for giving thanks in all things without sounding like madmen? 

The key is understanding God’s sovereign purposes, both for his own glory and for the good of his people.  In Romans 8, Paul provides an explanation of his broad statement “In everything give thanks.”  There, he writes, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

Note here that while Paul speaks of “all things” working together for good, he qualifies “all things” by limiting the scope of this promise “to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” The promise of all things working together for good is true, but it applies only to those who are the called in Christ Jesus.  Those who are outside of Christ have no basis to claim this promise.  Indeed, if all things work together for good – even those things we would call disasters – for those who love God, it follows that nothing ultimately works together for good to those whose minds are enmity against God – even those things we would commonly call blessings.

Whether the events in our lives are blessings or curses depends not on the events themselves but on God who works all things according to his own purpose, for his own glory, and for the good of his people.

Commenting on 1 Thessalonians 5:18, John Calvin noted,

For this is the will of God — that is, according to Chrysostom’s opinion — that we give thanks. As for myself, I am of opinion that a more ample meaning is included under these terms — that God has such a disposition towards us in Christ, that even in our afflictions we have large occasion of thanksgiving. For what is fitter or more suitable for pacifying us, than when we learn that God embraces us in Christ so tenderly, that he turns to our advantage and welfare everything that befalls us? Let us, therefore, bear in mind, that this is a special remedy for correcting our impatience — to turn away our eyes from beholding present evils that torment us, and to direct our views to a consideration of a different nature — how God stands affected towards us in Christ.

Did you catch that?  “For what is fitter or more suitable for pacifying us, than when we learn that God embraces us in Christ so tenderly, that he turns to our advantage and welfare everything that befalls us?”

Many in our own decadent time, some of whom claim to be Christian theologians, will argue that knowledge, if indeed we are able to have knowledge at all, is of little value.  But what could be a greater practical value for dealing with the difficulties that life throws at us than understanding God’s sovereignty and his goodness to his people is such that all things without exception work to their good and not to their harm?

To such a God and Savior how can we, his people, not give thanks? 

Wishing you and your family a happy and blessed Thanksgiving Day 2021,

Steve       

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Surprised by Faith: My Testimony

Posted in Scripturalism, The Reformation, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I’m really glad I’m not one of those people,” I thought to myself. The year was, I think, 1978 and I was 12 years old and in the 6th grade.

So what was it I was glad I wasn’t? Just who were those people?

Calvinists. Yes, the dreaded Calvinists

You see, I was reading my history textbook. You know, the kind of big, thick general history textbooks we used to have. The ones that started out talking about the Sumerians and ended somewhere around WWII.

This particular textbook had managed to find room for a paragraph or two on the Protestant Reformation. Part of me is tempted to blast the textbook writers for devoting one or two lousy paragraphs to the greatest Christian movement since the days of the apostles. But when I think about it, I shouldn’t be too harsh on them. After all, at least they mentioned the Reformation. I’m not sure if textbooks today would do even that. Further, the textbook writers managed to get at least one important detail right: the importance the Calvinists laid on of the doctrine of election.

It was the doctrine of election that offended me. It struck me as insufferable arrogant. To me, it sounded as if the Calvinists thought they were God’s chosen people because they were innately better than everyone else. Of course, that’s not what Calvinists taught then or teach now. But that was my assumption. Calvinists believed then and believe now that no one is worthy of God’s grace. That’s why it’s called grace! If sinners were in some way worthy of God’s grace, then grace would no longer be grace.

But I didn’t understand that then and wouldn’t until many years later.

I was a church kid growing up. Looking back on it, I believed many true things about God, but I didn’t know the Gospel of Justification by Faith (Belief) Alone.

One of the points I was confused on, and it’s a very common point of confusion in American evangelicalism, is the relationship between regeneration and faith.

In my 12-year-old self’s understanding, I thought that I first had to believe before I could be regenerated.

I’ll come back to this thought later, but for now, let’s leave it at that.

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So Shall I be Saved from Mine Enemies: God Alone Is Our Sure Defense against Tyranny

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2021| 2 Comments »

Ohio senatorial candidate J.D. Vance shared tweeted out this screen shot from a recent NBC News broadcast. It would seem that if you question the liberty destroying Covid protocols demanded by the Democrats or think the 2020 presidential election was stolen, the Department of Homeland Security thinks you just may be a terror threat.

I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

  • Psalm 18:3

“America is under sustained attack,” wrote Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar in a recent tweet.

In what way? you may ask. 

The Rep. Gosar went on to site a few examples.  “America is under sustained attack on its sovereignty with open borders, against its culture by race hustlers, against our public fisc [fisc meaning state treasury], and against our political/medical dissidents with a capricious legal system.”

The Congressman is right on all counts. 

Worth noting is that Rep. Gosar’s tweet was in response to a tweet by Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who had tweeted out “The Republican Party stands with the people of Cuba fighting for freedom!” 

Rep. Gosar finished his tweet writing, “For the love of everything holy Cuba can wait.  Help America First.

Again, Paul Gosar is right on target. 

The Democrats have openly become the party of treason and tyranny, while the Republicans uselessly tweet out about the goings on in other countries while ignoring the fire in our own house.

To borrow a turn of phrase from Isaiah, our cites are burned with fire (Antifa and BLM riots) while strangers devour our land before our face (Biden’s treasonous open borders polity, what some migrants call “la invitación”), yet all the Republican leadership can do is tweet out about demonstrations in Cuba.  Apart from a few individuals – Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Thomas Massie, the afore mentioned Rep. Paul Gosar and some others – very few Republicans have taken any kind of public stand against the deliberate destruction of the United States of America by the treasonous, lying, illegitimate Biden regime, the Democratic Party, and Deep State technocrats such as the Jesuit Anthony Fauci. 

America is under sustained attack to a degree and in a way that I personally have never witnessed.  And I’d be less than honest with you were I to say that I’ve been unfazed by it.  I’ve found myself alternately furious, despairing, and even scared.

In mid-August 2021, Americans are faced, not only with some of the items already mentioned, but by vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, renewed mask requirements and possible lockdowns, not to mention a War On Domestic Terror which is threatening to criminalize political opinions at odds with the ruling elite’s preferred narrative. 

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Tough Times Call for Faithful Men: Ebed-Melech and the Rescue of Jeremiah

Posted in Theology, tagged , , , , , on November 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Ebed-Melech resuces Jeremiah, Jan Luyken (1649-1712), 1712.

“For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword; but your life shall be as a prize to you, because you have put your trust in Me,” says the LORD.

  • Jeremiah 39:18

Jerusalem was in trouble.  The powerful Babylonian army that had been besieging the city had temporarily left to fight the Egyptians but would soon return with a vengeance.  Many false prophets (false teachers) had been telling the people that Jerusalem would be spared, but Jeremiah knew better and was not afraid to say so.

This made the prophet a very unpopular fellow, especially with the ruling class. 

“Do not deceive yourselves, saying, ‘The Chaldeans will surely depart from us,’ for they will not depart.  For though you had defeated the whole army of the Chaldeans who fight against you, and there remained only wounded men among them, they would rise up, every man in his tent, and burn the city with fire.” Such was a typical rebuke Jeremiah would deliver to those optimists in Jerusalem who thought that somehow everything was going to work out just fine in the end. 

Perhaps even more disturbing, at least from the perspective of the ruling class, was that Jeremiah was telling the people of Jerusalem to defect to the Babylonians, the very nation then destroying the land of Judah.  “Now you shall say to this people, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.  He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be as a prize to him.  For I have set My face against this city for adversity and not for good,” says the LORD.  “It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.”’

Indeed, it was suspicion that Jeremiah himself was defecting to the Babylonians that landed him in prison.  And now that Jeremiah was in prison, his enemies in king Zedekiah’s court decided to move in for the kill.

In Jeremiah 38 we read, “Now Shephatiah the son of Mattan, Gedeliah the son of Pashhur, Jucal the son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur the son of Malchiah heard the words that Jeremiah had spoken to all the people, saying, “Thus says the LORD: He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence: but he who goes over to the Chaldeans shall live; his life shall be as a prize to him, and he shall live.’ Thus says the LORD:  ‘This city shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylon’s army, which shall take it.’” 

In verse 4 of Jeremiah chapter 38 we read, “Therefore the princes said to the king, ‘Please, let this man (Jeremiah) be put to death, for thus he weakens the hands of  the men of war who remain in this city, and the hands of all the people, by speaking such words to them.  For this man does not seek the welfare of this people, but their harm.”    

To this demand King Zedekiah replied, “Look, he is in your hand.  For the king can do nothing against you.” 

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For Jacob My Servant’s Sake

Posted in Theology, Uncategorized, tagged on October 22, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Isaiah_Spanish Square_Rome

The Prophet Isaiah, from a monument in Rome.

“How do you know when a politician’s lying,” runs the set up to an old joke. The answer? “When his lips are moving.”

Ouch.

Now granted, that’s funny joke. But it’s funny only because it highlights vast chasm most of us have seen between most political rhetoric from most political reality.

George H.W. Bush wont the 1988 presidential election in part on his famous promise, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” Not long after his election he conspired with Congress to, wait for it…raise taxes.

More recently, Barak Obama told the nation in no uncertain terms that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

And this wasn’t the only lie that was told with respect to Obama Care. After the passage of the bill, a video of Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and one of the chief architects of the Affordable (sic) Care Act, surfaced that made clear that Obama Care always was a hustle, and that those behind the bill knew it all along. Gruber’s words were, “(L)ack of transparency is a huge political advantage and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting this thing (Obamacare) to pass.”

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Collapse, Sovereignty, Salt and Light

Posted in Theology, tagged , , , , on November 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

zedekiah_is_chained_and_brought_before_nebuchadnezzar

Zedekiah is chained and brought before Nebuchadnezzar, from Petrus Comestor’s “Bible Historiale.”  

Traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, Lamentations recounts the author’s reflections on the ruins of Jerusalem in the aftermath of the city’s fall to the Babylonians.

 

When a city, when a nation, falls, it is natural for people to ask why it happened. Chapter One of Lamentations provides the following succinct summary of the sorry state of Jerusalem.

Her uncleanness is in her skirts;

She did not consider her destiny;

Therefore her collapse was awesome.

Now that’s what I call getting right to the point. Jerusalem, which was really a part standing for the whole of Judah, had become morally unclean. God sent prophets to warn the people, but they did not heed, they, they did not consider their end, therefore judgment befell them.

Now I’ve always been a history buff. And, in particular, I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of civilizational collapse. That sounds pretty depressing, I know. But I don’t say that, because I’m rooting to see a contemporary collapse myself.

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Jeremiah, the Madness of King Jehoiakim, and the Judgment of God

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , on November 13, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

jehoiakim-burns-the-scroll

Jehoiakim Burns the Scroll, Caspar Luiken 1672-1708.

What to write?  That’s the question all bloggers must face.  Sometimes the answer comes quickly.  Sometimes it doesn’t. 

With campaign season hitting its big crescendo last week, my mind’s been focused on the election. But now that it has passed, where do I go from here? There’s the series on immigration I’ve been writing. I haven’t forgotten about it. Lord willing, I plan to finish it sometime later this month. But today didn’t strike me as a day to write about immigration.

So back to the question of what to write about. Perhaps due in part to the recently concluded election, the specter of national and civilizational decline is often at the forefront of my thoughts.

Perhaps another reason for this is my Scripture reading. Recently, I’ve been focused on the prophets, Jeremiah in particular. And I never get very far in the prophets before I find myself saying “This could have been written yesterday about America!”

And it’s true, too. Edward Gibbons’ masterpiece of history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is often cited by writers who want to advance some reason or another for the obvious, ongoing collapse of Western Civilization in our own time.

But there is a far better text to use if we want to gain insight on the problems we face in 21st century America. Of course, I’m referring to the Bible. And in particular the historical books of I and II Samuel,
I and II Kings,
I and II Chronicles and the prophets. Taken together, they could almost be subtitled The Decline and Fall of the Hebrew Republic.

Samuel was the last of the judges and the anointer of the first two kings of Israel, Saul and David. It was during Samuel’s judgeship that Israel made the critical error in asking for a king (big government) in place of the limited, constitutional republic set up by God in the law of Moses.

If we were to summarize the history of Israel under the kings, we could say that the kingdom rapidly grew in power under the rule of David, hit its peak under his son Solomon, then split in two – the northern and southern kingdoms – under Solomon’s son Rehoboam. From there, the two kingdoms followed a centuries long trajectory of decline with the northern kingdom falling to Assyrian in 722 BC, and the southern kingdom to Babylon in 586 BC.

What makes the history of this decline and fall so relevant today is that the reader is not, as he is with secular history, left to decide for himself the reasons behind the disasters that befell Israel and Judah. The Word of God tells him explicitly: the people of Israel refused to heed the Lord and suffered the covenant curses pronounced in Deuteronomy 28.

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