Recently, a second video has come out in which a higher-up from Planned Parenthood negotiates compensation for aborted “fetal tissue” (intact vital organs of aborted babies!). It is both nauseating and abominable; and not surprisingly, it’s making the headlines. One can only hope that such shock therapy will finally wake up the sleeping if not comatose conscience of our land. Yet, if it doesn’t, it will only demonstrate that the irreclaimable reprobation of Ms. Gatter is more representative of the typical American. Oh God, for the sake of the precious little ones, let it not be!
Blushing malfunction?
“Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the LORD” (Jer. 6:15).
The body has many natural response mechanisms. When we are exposed to the stimulus of humor, we laugh. To pain, we cry. And to shame, to blushing. Blushing is a natural response to the sense of shame we feel when eyes are on us, and we don’t look good!
God designed this mechanism. And yet modern America has lost the ability to blush. Things that were once shameful, like indecent clothing, viewing pornography, premarital sex, and “shacking up,” are now ho-hum. In fact, some of the things we should be blushing over we not only accept, but we validate and celebrate. The magazine covers we pass at the store keep pushing the envelope, venturing into newer and bolder frontiers of confusion. Those who shield their gaze are either prudes or “haters.” (Someone needs to blush.) We parade our nakedness, even our shameful misdeeds and confusion before the world, and we cover each other by our shared applause and affirmations.
If only our problem was a wardrobe malfunction, something superficial. Easy to fix. And if only it were a blushing malfunction – the result of some imbalanced chemicals in the brain. Then we could take a pill and make it all go away. No, our problem is a soul malfunction. We are incurably wrong in the soul. Having crossed the line, tasted the forbidden fruit, we now try to cope with an angry God short of surrender. We run, sew fig cleaves, and try to hide our nakedness. We pass the blame. We justify ourselves. But God sees through.
O that we would humble ourselves, and see our shame. Our soul shame. And having seen this, that we would blush, that we would cry, that we would come to the cross and find the only relief for shame and guilt in the blood of the Crucified.
Why you desperately need Holy Scripture
You desperately need Holy Scripture. Yes, you need it much more than you think.
Now, you don’t need Holy Scripture to improve your self-image. (It doesn’t attempt to do that anyway; it is quite the equal opportunity offender.) You don’t need it to make friends and influence people. Jesus was no motivational speaker and didn’t put much stock in popular thought. You certainly don’t need it to entertain you. You’ve got satellite T.V. You’ve got social media. You’re well connected. No, the Bible is quite dispensable when it comes to this short-sighted, consumerist litmus test for relevance.
Ah, but once we factor in what we need the most, that is, salvation from an offended God, then the importance of Holy Scripture is magnified. So magnified that it dwarfs everything else.
You are a sinner. So am I. Not by our own self-flattering and comparative measurements, to be sure. But according to the standards of God, sin is sin. Full stop. And “the wages of sin is death.”
We turn in vain to nature for help. Nature can tell volumes. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handywork.” “For the invisible things of [God] from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that [men and women] are without excuse.” But that’s the kicker. When we, a guilty, ungodly race, seek to get information on how to approach God, all we find is how good, how pure, how holy, and how inflexibly righteous God is. And by contrast, how dirty and defiled we are. “And if thou shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?” God is a “consuming fire” and we are dry stubble. Nature can only echo the voice of our conscience, that we have trespassed the divine law. And we are under God’s wrath. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”
How, then, can we escape His unsparing Day of Judgment? How can we pacify our consciences? How can we once again walk with God in the cool of the day, as friends – as it once was and ought to have been?
Deus dixit. God spoke! And the word He spoke was of mercy and grace. He has “spoken comfortably to His people,” proclaiming pardon, freedom, and liberation through His Son.
“Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leaven men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church …” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.1)
The ineffable patience of God
So, although in God there can be no suffering, and patience
has its name apatiendo, from suffering, yet a patient God we not only faithfully believe, but also wholesomely confess. But the patience of God, of what kind and how great it is, His, Whom we say to be impassible, yet not impatient, nay even most patient, in words to unfold this who can be able? Ineffable is therefore that patience, as is His jealousy, as His wrath and whatever there is like to these. For if we conceive of these as they be in us, in Him are there none. We, namely, can feel none of these without molestation: but be it far from us to surmise that the impassible nature of God is liable to any molestation. But like as He is jealous without any darkening of spirit, angry without any perturbation, pitiful without any pain, repents Him without any wrongness in Him to be set right; so is He patient without anything of passion.
-Augustine
The miracle of (and threat against) life
Here is a beautiful video representing the miraculous formation of human life from conception. Right now, such precious lives hang in the balance. For years, the majority of our nation has turned the other way, pretending that abortion is merely a clinical procedure, that a fetus magically becomes a baby when it is wanted, yet reverts to a subhuman mass of tissue when it is not. Because of this, such hidden scenes of tender majesty are cut short in the butchery of abortion. (For those with cast iron stomachs, one can easily find videos online to confirm.)
How long will we speak for our wallets? For our private interests? For our unbridled appetites? How long will we vote for what is superficial, doubtful, or secondary at best, and support what is altogether unthinkable?
God help our land. And God help those precious lives waiting for us self-absorbed Americans to give them a voice.
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Listen to a message on the plight of the unborn. Or, download here.
Habla por los silenciosos
Tu fuiste un milagro. Ellos tambien.
Diez dias despues de la concepcion, el cuerpo de tu madre empezo a cambiar. Para ti. Pasando once días mas, tu corazon estaba latiendo y bombeando sangre. Con un tipo de sangre distinto de el de tu madre.
“Tu me hiciste en el vientre de mi madre.”
A seis y media semanas, tenias brotes de dientes. En dos mas, estuvieron presentes todos los sistemas de tu cuerpo. Podias chupar tu pulgar. Por diez semanas podias entrecerrar tus ojitos, tragar, y mover la lengua. Tus dedos podian agarrar. No habias nacido. Pero estabas ahi. Muy humano y muy vivo.
“Te alabare; porque formidables, maravillosas son tus obras; Estoy maravillado.”
Por tu tercer mes, estabas respirando liquido. Pronto respirarias aire! Para ese tiempo tenias uñas. A la decimosexta semana, tenias pestañas. Para el cuarto mes despues de la concepcion, tenias huellas digitales desarrolladas, y tus papilas gustativas estaban funcionales. Eras una maravilla en construccion, aunque ocultado en un velo de carne.
“No fue encubierto de ti mi cuerpo, bien que en oculto fui formado, y entretejido en lo mas profundo de la tierra.”
Y asi creciste. Te durmiste, despertaste — y durmiste de nuevo. Te dio hipo. Bailaste. Hasta soñaste. Podias estar feliz y hasta sentir molesto. Padre y Madre no te podian ver. Hermano y hermana no podian hechar un vistazo. Pero no te vio alguien alli?
“Mi embrion vieron tus ojos, y en tu libro estaban escritas todas aquellas cosas que fueron luego formadas, sin faltar una de ellas.”
Y asi creciste. Hasta que comenzaron las contracciones. Involuntariamente, pero por diseño. Planeado por Dios. Un Dios bueno, un Dios todopoderoso y sabio, para mostrar su mano de obra al mundo.
“Cuan preciosos me son, oh Dios, tus pensamientos! Cuan grande es la suma de ellos!”
Dios te hizo. Y les hizo a ellos. Pero tu viviste. Tu vida fue salvada. Otros viven, pero sus preciosas vidas estan amenazadas. No son una “eleccion,” son una vida—una vida humana, es mas. Estan ahi donde nosotros una ves estuvimos.
Debemos protegerlos. Debemos hablar y no guardar silencio. Porque aun no pueden hablar por si mismos.
“Abre tu boca por el mudo en el juicio de todos los desvalidos.”
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Llame si necesita ayuda o consejo: 401-528-7613.
Shocking divorce statistics
Society is imploding. And marriage is ground zero. O God, spare us, and grant us repentance and reconciliation!
The blessed God
I recently preached on the words of Christ to His faithful servants on the last day, “Enter into the joy of thy Lord.” This text, among other things, opens up a window into the joy, the happiness, or what some biblical texts speak of as the “blessedness of God” (Rom. 9:5, 1 Tim. 1:11, 6:15). It is the joy of the Lord.
God is the self-sufficient One, who enjoys true happiness in and of Himself. One Swiss Reformed theologian, Benedict Pictet (1655-1724) said of God, “Who would not call God happy, who is in need of nothing, finds comfort in himself, and possesses all things; is free from all evil and filled with all good?”
When Christ speaks to the believer on the last day and ushers him with open arms into “the joy of the Lord,” He is welcoming that believer into the full participation of God’s happiness – at least as far as a creature can possibly sustain in the narrow limits of his being. What a grand thought. God wants to share His joy!
Are you, friend, truly happy? Can you be happy without the blessed God? Come to Him, then, through Christ – through whom He lavishly pours out joy “unspeakable and full of glory.”
Are we born as blank slates?
Here’s a report on an interesting scientific study that confirms what the Bible tells us after all. Our Creator has designed us with an innate sense of morality.
The Spirit & the Bride
For where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth. Those, therefore, who do not partake of Him, are neither nourished into life from the mother’s breasts, nor do they enjoy that most limpid fountain which issues from the body of Christ; but they dig for themselves broken cisterns out of earthly trenches, and drink putrid water out of the mire, fleeing from the faith of the Church lest they be convicted; and rejecting the Spirit, that they may not be instructed.
-Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 202)
The Reformed Parish 