September 11, 2024
Leadership Notes
My younger brother was born in 1964, twenty-three years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I was eight-years-old. I don’t think I knew much, if anything, about December 7, 1941, at the time. People who weren’t even born yet when the terrorist attack happened in 2001 are now graduating college and/or entering the job market and starting families. Do they think about those events? What do they know about those events? Oh, my, how the passage of time changes things.
I remember when you came home from the grocery store with everything packed into brown paper bags. That’s all there was. But then there arose concern over all the trees cut down to make those paper bags, so, in order to save trees, what did we switch to? Right…plastic bags. Now what’s the menace? How the passage of time changes things.
What changes come to mind for you? Life has a tendency of getting away from us.
In my Sunday School class, we will be looking at Ecclesiastes this week. I love the simplicity of chapter three:
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter
under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.”
Time goes marching, and every step of the way we live within the mercy and grace of God’s sovereign will. Nothing surprises Him and nothing can separate us from the love God has for us in Jesus Christ.
One thing that will never change is the timelessness of God’s Word. Where would we be without the faithful interpretation and application of the Bible? Here’s wonderful insight from R.C. Sproul:
“If we take away the reconciling action of Christ from the New
Testament, we are left with nothing but moralisms.”
In other words, God’s Word is about saving sinners from eternal damnation. That is its primary purpose. Everything else cascades out of that…the kinds of people we are, how we live our lives, how we worship, how we help others…everything else is connected to God’s salvation history.
I recently read an article on the rise of consumer worship by pastor and author Alistair Begg. He contends that as we live through an inevitable sea of change, the one constant must be the elevated role of Scripture in our lives. He writes:
“Instead of coming into worship with the express understanding
that all of this begins with God in His glory, people come with
coffee in hand, saying, ‘Let’s see if he’s got something good for us
today.’”
“Expository preaching gives way to inspirational talks, which
gives way to therapeutic endeavors. I’m not sure that America
understands just how deep the problem is, in relationship to
Biblical illiteracy. You cannot continue to make your journey
through life without your Bible, not as a talisman, not as
something just to be revered in a corner… {but with} the Bible as
our daily source of knowledge and encounter with God.”
He concludes by reminding us that, “Congregational worship is not
just a get-together. It begins with God, not with myself in my
need.”
If you want to know more about what is prevalent in current American spiritual trends, I encourage you to Google search “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” Fascinating stuff.
For us here at Covenant Church, God’s unchanging truth will be our bulwark in always changing times.
And now, your Moment of Spurgeon:
“MAY THE SPIRIT OF GOD SHOW YOU THAT JESUS IS NOW ABLE
AND WILLING TO SAVE YOU, AND THAT ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS
TO TAKE WHAT HE HAS DONE, AND SIMPLY TRUST HIM, AND YOU
SHALL BE SAVED THIS MORNING, COMPLETELY SAVED,
PERFECTED THROUGH HIS ONE SACRIFICE.”
On these wonderfully waning warm days of summer, Much Love and
Affection,
Richard
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