Calvin on kneeling in prayer:
“For whereas it is said that we must worship the only one God, it is not only with ceremonies, as with kneeling down before him. Indeed that is requisite: for it is proper that we should honor our God both with our body and with our mind, because they be both His.” (Sermon on 1Timothy 3:14-19)
0 degrees and two feet of snow covering ground… Tons of birds feeding heavily at feeders front and back. Each day or two refilling feeders and replacing suet. Ton of woodpeckers at suet.
Suet king/queen are two pileated, the peacocks of woodpeckers and huge. Upstairs this morning, heard a huge slam into our window downstairs. Never heard that sound before and knew it was pileated hitting window. He was fine. 3 or 4 birds hit a window each day & almost never hurt. Birds are such joy to us.
God placed birds under our rule and for our joy. Preaching Genesis 1:26-28 on Saturday, September 9, 1559, Calvin said:
“Behold, I have made you lords and masters even over all of the animals. Not only will you live off the fruits of the land, but you will also rule over the birds of the air? It seems that the birds almost reach the angels. They fly up there above our heads and even rise so high that they are lifted into another world, in a manner of speaking.”
New podcast: “Putting off conflict”
All history is a history of warfare. Christians understand that history is the outworking of man’s Fall. Another fruit of the Fall is that man always tends to avoid conflict, hoping the issues will resolve themselves
Pastors and elders in the church must first be convinced that there will always be conflict in the church and that putting off entering into that conflict will make it worse. If you avoid conflict and heading off the wolves at the pass, the wolves will choose the hill, the weapons, and the time of year for the fight. Pastors and elders are responsible for anticipating the conflict. They must have a faith-filled resignation to conflict to fulfill their calling to guard the sheep.
It is a defining weakness of our generation that pastors want to focus on the positive and collect men by the positive. We talk about discipleship, building things up, and growth, then we do our utmost to blind ourselves to threats.
Good shepherds see what they see and engage.
https://share.transistor.fm/s/35974376
A general question: in the last few years, I have seen a couple of men in our local church scene asked to leave by the pastor/elders of their respective churches, because of conflict they created in their respective churches - “contumacious” is the old legal word. I imagine Reformed sessions would have no trouble in doing likewise, but am interested to know if others have seen this on their respective patches.
Our age is in full-scale rebellion against God and that rebellion is led by the Church and her preachers. As the Apostle Paul warned, we have surrounded ourselves with teachers and preachers who know better than to preach sin and repentance. We allow them to preach against the sin of Evangelicals and libs—those not present in the congregation—but not our own sin.
This despite our Lord’s command to His disciples just before His ascension:
“Then He opened their mind to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed on the basis of His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-47)
Without the proclamation of “repentance for forgiveness of sins,” there is no Apostolic preaching. No Biblical teaching or preaching. No obedience of our Lord’s direct command.
We must repent of our sin of paying our preachers to disobey our Lord. He is the Head of His Church—not our pastor or elders or us.
“Schismatic” might be more accurate. It’s striking this sin is explicitly given an objective numerical command concerning how many warnings should be given before expelling the divisive man:
“Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned” (Titus 3:10-11).
For most of my years, I hadn’t noticed this numerical limit, but when it hit me, I realized clearly our session and I had disobeyed it countless times. Divisive or factious or schismatic men are a much more destructive influence in the church than we want to admit, and we see across the New Testament how much of the Apostle Paul’s work and writing was spent disciplining such men.
Concerning contumacy, this is the word used for men who refuse to submit to their elders despite promising to do so publicly upon reception as members (in churches with proper polity). Warned and admonished over time, it comes down to such sinners being summoned to the full pastors and elders board (session) for formal discipline, at which point the man refuses to appear. Thus the only thing the session can do is find him guilty of contumacy. This is the reason most church trials end with a finding and judgment of contumacy. Love,
Thanks; this does make things clear.
Musk just announced Tesla is done with making cars to sell to owners. Cars as a commodity are dying. From MS to Apple to Tesla, everything is becoming service and subscription. Elektrek comments:
“This is Musk joining the popular ‘as a service’ trend of the elite, who don’t want people to own anything and instead have them ‘subscribe’ to as many things as possible. It’s a depressing future. RIP Tesla the automaker. You didn’t have to die.”
If souls have never heard a pastor preach sin and repentance, they’ll have no idea what it even sounds like. They’ll be sure their pastor does it b/c they like their pastor.
To help w/this, read Calvin’s sermons. Read this prayer typical of every prayer at the end every sermon Calvin preached. Imagine this prayer after sermon in your church this coming Sunday:
CLOSING PRAYER: Now let us bow before our gracious God’s majesty in acknowledgment of all our faults, praying that he will make us sense them in such a way that we will be so displeased with them that with true sorrow we will ask God to cleanse us of them. And let us compare the good things we have received from him in our first creation with the things we have in our time so that we may be admonished to walk in fear and humility and not exalt ourselves. Nevertheless, realizing how obligated we are to him and how great our ingratitude is when we fail miserably in our duty, let us truly grieve and lament our offences so that we condemn them, and so that we will be cleansed before him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And may it please him so to repair his image in us that we will seek only to cling to him, and may everything the devil contrives always fail to separate us or turn us from him. And may he grant that grace not only to us, but to all peoples.
Older pastors who taught me The kindness of the Lord (27): the counsel of older pastors - Warhorn Media
If a Christian man never stops complaining about libs and government and immigrants, it’s because he thinks his real problems are libs and government and immigrants.
Such a man is unconcerned about his own sin. Everyone else needs to repent.
Out of his heart his mouth speaks.
States like MN trying to nullify ICE’s enforcement of federal immigration laws bear no resemblance to states nullifying the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Illegal immigrants aren’t slaves.
It was Christians who rescued babies exposed on Roman Empire’s hillsides and ran Underground Railroad. It is not Christians who scream expletives at ICE law enforcement officers.
When parishioners would tell me how awful their doc was, I’d remind them every job has its challenges and failures, and think abt how often their mechanic fails.
The point?
We should not be surprised when law enforcement officers fail. Or pastors. Catastrophically.
They must be accountable for their failures, of course.
But standards of perfection for others and not ourselves are unjust. “All of us often go wrong,” although few of us go wrong with a gun in our hand or standing behind a pulpit.
Every last man hanging with Epstein knew precisely who he was. That they hung with him and sought his attention and favors tells us precisely who they are.
Christian, hate those who hate God.
It struck me recently when reading Matthew 6 that Jesus gave us “non-empty phrases” in the Lord’s Prayer, i.e. what is essential to pray. Asking for forgiveness of sins is essential to prayer, as is forgiving others. He even emphasises this in vv14-15.
So how on earth do we forget that this is, as you say Tim, necessary to the Christian life? In preaching and in everything?
We don’t forget, methinks. We don’t want to obey. First of 95 Theses.
Now here’s a hero for your sons to look up to. His name is Austin Appelbee and he swam four hours to rescue his mother and two younger sibs. No news story commented on his forearm crutches. Well done, son!
The BBC article I read said that he was using the crutches because of how sore his legs were after it all. I wondered if he did all of this with a disability. What a man!
Nice catch! Thanks.
Software engineer wrote abt AI’s incredible speed and efficiency at coding, then said it doesn’t make him expendable at all. Now he’s even more important because all that code needs careful review and editing.
Got me thinking abt death of MSM. It’s because they never stopped lying, decade after decade. So who’s responsible?
Most would say the journalists who do the writing, but I say it’s the editors. They were paid to protect their profession from hacks and liars, but they refused to do so. Naturally, journalists did what they wanted and the Fourth Estate is dead.
AI code and journalists need editors. When editors are lazy bums who never say “no” to the code or the article, we’re in trouble.
