Blog Entry

January 3, 2019

Today’s Blog Entry

1. Quotables

2. News

3. God and the Presidents

4. Today’s Verses

5. Message: A Good Conversation

6. Message: To Be Satisfied By Repentance

Quotables

- An atheist father was trying to explain to his son that there was no such thing as God. “But dad,” asked the boy, “how do you know?”

“You’ll just have to take it on faith,” said the father.

(Sally Quinn/Washington Post)

- "He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will revolutionize the world." (Benjamin Franklin)

- "We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever." (Isaac Newton)

News

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu: 'Ancient Prophesies Are Being Realized'

CBN News: “In a heartfelt Christmas Day address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his gratitude to Christians around the world, and in the US in particular, for their strong support of the Jewish state.

"We're united in a shared destiny. I want to thank you for all your support," he said in the pre-recorded video message.

The Israeli leader went on to point out that believers are living in a time when biblical prophecies are unfolding at lightning speed.” Read the complete news story at CBN News.

God and the Presidents

“It seems to me perfectly plain that the authority of law, the right to equality, liberty and property, under American institutions, have for their foundation reverence for God. If we could imagine that to be swept away, these institutions of our American government could not long survive.....By maintaining a society to promote reverence for the Holy Name you are performing both a pious and a patriotic service.” - President Calvin Coolidge

Today’s Verses

- "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” (Psalm 55:22)

- "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." (Psalm 90:12)

Message: A Good Conversation

"Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom." (James 3:13)

So what is being said here? Is James saying that we are to converse about our works with meekness of wisdom? Wouldn’t that sort of be like bragging, to talk about ourselves and how holy we are?

Sometimes the Bible, in this case the King James Version (KJV), can be a little confusing. The KJV was written in 1611. The English language was in the midst of transition. Some words, like the word “conversation” used here, no longer mean what they did when first written.

Nowhere in the Bible does the word “conversation” have anything to do with talking or conversing. It is almost always a reference to a person’s character or how someone lives their life. With that in mind the meaning and context of the verse from James changes dramatically. Instead of the verse being about talking of our good works, the verse is saying that a wise man, full of the knowledge of good and meekness will show these things by the way he lives his life. The God within becomes revealed without by our manner in life, not by the words we speak.

The verse before it supports this would it says, “Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.” (James 3:12)

“Let him shew out of a good conversation” is just another way of saying, “faith without works is dead”

We show who we are by the way we act and carry our self in life. If we have faith and belief in God it will be revealed in what we do.

Bill Hitchcock

Message: To Be Satisfied By Repentance

“Now the last and sometimes hardest to be satisfied by repentance, are our minds; and our minds we have then satisfied, when the conscience is of guilty become clear. For as long as we are in ourselves privy to our own most heinous crimes, but without sense of God’s mercy and grace towards us, unless the heart be either brutish for want of knowledge, or altogether hardened by wilful atheism, the remorse of sin is in it as the deadly sting of a serpent.”

(Richard Hooker/Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity/ Book VI. Ch. vi. 14.)

When our spirit is quickened and our eyes opened to the Lord, the Bible becomes as a mirror. It reflects back who we really are. The vision of our self for the first time illuminated by Divine light can be quite disturbing. You know how disturbing it can be to see and hear a recording of yourself. Usually, the first response is, “Do I really look and sound like that?”

The short and truthful answer is yes, yes you do look and sound like that. And no, the camera does not add 10-15 pounds to your appearance.

The shock of seeing our self on video is but a scratch on the surface of reality compared to seeing our true self after God’s quickening. Being “privy to our own most heinous crimes” can be Hell on earth. This is, at least in my opinion, it is why people deny Christ and refuse repentance. Why put yourself through all of this? It is much easier and far more comfortable to avoid God and religion. Even better, for total comfort and self-justification, either create your own version of religion or as Hooker says above, “hardened by willful [sic] atheism”.

But be warned, "Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompence." (Job 15:31).

1. Our first challenge as a human being is to decide whether or not we are going to deal in and accept the truth. Jesus Christ is the truth. If we plan on living in Him, by Him and through Him then we are going to have to accept the truth, no matter if it’s pretty or ugly. One of the first truth’s we are going to have to confront and reckon with is our sin. This is where the sheep get culled out from the goats.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7-9)

2. The burden of revealed sin. To know the truth of self, to discover the sin within, both sins of the past and of active, present sin and not confront, confess and give them to Christ, is a torture too great for any man.

David in his instructive 32nd Psalm describes what it was like for him when he did not repent and confess his sins to God. “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah” (Psalm 32:3-4)

3. The challenge for the Christian is repentance. Most Christians understand that confessing we are sinners and accepting Christ as our Savior are essential parts in becoming a Christian. And yes, confessing to God that we are a sinner is repenting. But most Christians seem to believe that making that onetime blanket confession about our past is all there is to repentance. It’s a core belief of the “Once saved, Always Saved” believers.

Repentance is a daily practice. Why? Well, because if anything we sin daily and have need of repentance daily. And as we grow as a Christian, in faith, and in Christ, our eyes open up to more of the reality around us and our active role it. Christian growth means increased vision, acuity and understanding. What we didn’t recognize as sin in the past becomes most obvious to us as we continue our walk of faith with Jesus. Resentment, envy, and anger are good examples of sins, often reflexive and involuntary, that we discover only through growth and repentance.

Repenting would be Hell on earth if we didn’t have, as Hooker put it a “sense of God’s mercy and grace towards us”. The following can be difficult to accept and believe.

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2)

“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

Repentance is not a one and done proposition. It is an ongoing process. It is forward motion and not a destination. Well, it’s not a destination in that we will never “arrive” while here on earth. After all, we are only travelers and sojourners on this planet. Repenting is reaching forth to Christ, constantly marching onward.

“Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14).

To press towards the high calling of Christ requires repentance.

Bill Hitchcock