Confirming the Obvious

One of my greatest sources of amazement in life is watching people “discover” truth that they could have known for themselves much earlier if they had simply been willing to listen to someone who knows better.  For instance, if you do a google search for the exact phrase “men and women are different,” you will be surprised at the results.  I am not sure why this should be such an amazing discovery or why cataloging the differences is so important, but it appears that a lot of people have consumed a lot of time to discover that it is in fact the case.

I bring this up because one of the groups of people most prone to this in my experience are those who ignore God’s wisdom in favor of their own only to discover that God actually knows what He is talking about in that crazy book of His also known as the Bible.  Latest case in point that I have run across is  atheists who are demonstrating that people are made for community.  I will admit that it may have been lost on them why churches really exist in the first place because not many churches are doing very well at community lately.  The simple truth is that God designed us for community with Himself and each other.

Reason Number One for Lost Liberty

There are so many, but it has to be chiefly because no one does what they are supposed to do in our government.  If you haven’t seen this yet, then you should check it out here. (source is CNSNews.com)

It is a short clip that I couldn’t get to embed here, but here is what he says:

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

How can they vote on anything in good conscience without knowing what it says?  That is their only responsibility in reality.  They are the lawmakers and should actually know what they are passing.  I already mentioned the bill that didn’t exist in its final form when they passed it a few weeks ago.  Clearly, the Congress is completely broken at this point.

Sunday Morning 7/19/09

We had some technical difficulties with the recording this week.  The batteries in the recorder conked out before the sermon was over and I didn’t want to post a piece of a sermon.  Sorry to all of those who came by to listen.  I promise to get back on track.  We have revival services this coming week with a guest preacher so I probably won’t post audio next week either.  Look for us to return the first week of August with more sermon audio.  God bless.

Understanding Liberty

I find that atheists are prone to any number of astounding contradictions in their thinking.  They manage to hold most of these logical inconsistencies with great stubbornness.  The ones that still give me great amusement however, are the folks like those at the Freedom From Religion Foundation.  Their motto, “Protecting the constitutional principle of the separation of state and church” is the first sign of a lack understanding.  There is no constitutional principle of separation of church and state.  Go ahead and look for it.  Do a word search on the Constitution and the word separation never appears.  How then is it held as a constitutional principle you might ask?  Good question indeed and I will enlighten you where the phrase gets its origin.

It’s Just a Piece of Paper

It seems almost silly to even need to talk about it.  This is a document that every single American citizen can lay a hand on and in fact must be able to produce if they want to do anything legitimately in our country like get a driver’s license, get a passport, get a social security card and so forth.  I am referring to a birth certificate.  If it is such a simple piece of paper, why is it that our president still is unwilling to show his?  Today, a breaking story shows that it may be a problem indeed.  After multiple lawsuits have failed to make any progress toward just getting the document in the open, this one has hit an unusual point:

Sunday Morning 7/12/09

My apologies to those who regularly come by to listen to the sermon.  This week’s sermon audio is unavailable because I completely forgot to take my recorder to church.  My apologies to you and many more apologies to my wife who was keeping a couple of our kids home because they didn’t feel good and wanted to hear it as well.

May God richly bless you this week.

Why touch the untouchables when you can eliminate them?

This kind of stuff is really disturbing.  The story is now making the rounds regarding Justice Ginsburg’s recent statements about abortion.  If you haven’t heard about it yet, let me fill you in on the part that has everyone talking:

Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae – in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong. (emphasis added)

There is no way to get around what she is saying.  In fact, people who understand the history of the abortion debate cannot miss the parallel with Ginsburg’s comments and those of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger:

Exposition of Isaiah 66:15-24

Here is the paper that I completed for my book study of Isaiah.  The paper scored well, but there are a couple of things that I could have written better.  Overall, I am pretty pleased with the effort and the grade.  Feel free to read if you like and make comments.  I am attaching it as a PDF document so that it is easier for most people to read.  Jeff’s Exposition Paper Isaiah 66

Real Freedom

Sunday was one of those times when my sermon got turned upside down the night before.  I was all set to continue preaching through the Sermon on the Mount when God spun me around.  It had a lot to do with the weekend and the festivities, because God was working on my heart throughout the weekend.  I will confess to getting pretty cynical lately.  I have a stack of news stories that are nearly depressing that I have waited to unload in a post here, but I am going to take a different tack with this I think.  It has to do with Peter’s words in 1 Peter 2:16, “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.”  This was a reminder that I sorely needed.  Our physical freedom has dwindled away in this country.  We have taken the privileges and gifts of freedom that were given to us by those who came before and frittered them away.  But Peter wrote these words originally to people who lived under a maniacal emperor and far less physical freedom than we have today.  Our freedom isn’t based on government and it isn’t dependant on government; our freedom comes in Christ alone.

This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t pay attention to what is going on in this country and the way our freedoms are being frittered away.  I think it is still important to speak up and defend the freedom that many fought so hard to give us before it is gone completely.  So in that vein, with the understanding above, I submit several stories for your perusal.

Sunday Morning 7/5/09

Today’s sermon was pretty emotional for me.  The first part has some dead spots for this reason, although I edited most of it out.  The sermon is a departure from studying the Sermon on the Mount and instead focuses on true freedom with 1 Peter 2 as the background text.  Notes are below.  You can either click play here to listen or follow this link for the podcast version that you can listen to or download to take with you as you go.  May God richly bless you this week and may you live truly free.

Living Free

Sermon Notes for 7/5/09 (1 Peter 2:13-25)

1. Called to live free

   1. Government’s power comes from God (Romans 13:1-7; John 19:7-11)

   2. We are to live as free men and women – v. 16

      1. This has nothing to do with our circumstances

      2. Living free (Galatians 5:1, 13-15)

   3. Honoring people and fearing God – v. 17

      1. The word translated honor both times is the same word

      2. The word for love is agape

      3. Fearing God – Matthew 10:26-31

2. Life isn’t fair – v. 18-20

   1. Peter addresses getting what we don’t deserve

   2. Living graciously

3. Protesting innocence – v. 21-25

   1. Christ is the standard

      1. He never sinned – v. 22

      2. He entrusted Himself to a higher judge – John 19:7-11

      3. He did it all for you – v. 24