Tag Quotes

God is Jealous: Spurgeon

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Today’s post comes from Charles Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening” devotional.  The September 12 (morning) entry was based on part of Nahum 1:2 – “God is jealous”.

Read the entire entry below:

Your Lord is very jealous of your love, O believer. Did He choose you? He cannot bear that you should choose another. Did He buy you with His own blood? He cannot endure that you should think that you are your own, or that you belong to this world. He loved you with such a love that He would not stop in heaven without you; He would sooner die than you should perish, and He cannot endure that anything should stand between your heart’s love and Himself. He is very jealous of your trust. He will not permit you to trust in an arm of flesh. He cannot bear that you should hew out broken cisterns, when the overflowing fountain is always free to you. When we lean upon Him, He is glad, but when we transfer our dependence to another, when we rely upon our own wisdom, or the wisdom of a friend—worst of all, when we trust in any works of our own, He is displeased, and will chasten us that He may bring us to Himself. He is also very jealous of our company. There should be no one with whom we converse so much as with Jesus. To abide in Him only, this is true love; but to commune with the world, to find sufficient solace in our carnal comforts, to prefer even the society of our fellow Christians to secret intercourse with Him, this is grievous to our jealous Lord. He would fain have us abide in Him, and enjoy constant fellowship with Himself; and many of the trials which He sends us are for the purpose of weaning our hearts from the creature, and fixing them more closely upon Himself. Let this jealousy which would keep us near to Christ be also a comfort to us, for if He loves us so much as to care thus about our love we may be sure that He will suffer nothing to harm us, and will protect us from all our enemies. Oh that we may have grace this day to keep our hearts in sacred chastity for our Beloved alone, with sacred jealousy shutting our eyes to all the fascinations of the world!

Social Media is Full of Absurdities

Todd R 1 Comment

Social media is a great place to share short bursts of pontification, whether in memes, quips, quotes, or what have you.  Sometimes a little more research may do some good, though.  Several times recently I’ve seen the quote below shared by people protesting what they see as people in power playing loose with information to pompously push pernicious policies that are precariously close to imperious:

“Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire

Since this quote was often posted by Christians, they might be appalled by the context of the quote:

“Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God‐given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God‐given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.”

On the positive side, “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”[1]  Being a Christian requires holding on tight to things that seem absurdities to the world, but it also means we have the “God-given sense of justice” that requires we show mercy to those whose absurdities are different from our own.

If I post anything that seems absurd, please let me know, mercifully… ( I think Abraham Lincoln said something similar on his website)

[1] 1 Corinthians 1:25

Is Freedom Good? A Quint of Quotes

Todd R 1 Comment

Fellow travelers,

Here is another “Quint of Quotes” from my collection.  Five somewhat related quotes, but not exactly in agreement.  Hope you find them interesting and thought-provoking.

“To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose” – G.K. Chesterton

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.” – William Allen White

“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” – Edmund Burke, Irish statesman

“Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering” – Ivan, in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Bible: A Quint of Quotes

Todd R 2 Comments

Dear fellow travelers,

Here is another “Quint of Quotes” from my collection, on the theme of the Bible.  I hope you find these five sayings interesting and thought-provoking.  What quotes about the Bible do you like?

Image by u_zscsfn7pja from Pixabay

“This book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book.” – D.L. Moody wrote this in the front of his Bible

“If people treated other books the way they treat the Bible, they would never learn anything.” – Warren Wiersbe

“Do I feed on the Word? That Word would be no food for me unless the Lord made it food for my soul, and helped me to feed upon it. Do I live on the manna which comes down from heaven?” – C.H. Spurgeon

“The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is by the New revealed.” – Saint Augustine

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Consecrate Yourselves (aka Don’t Do It for Johnny)

Todd R 2 Comments

Have you ever used the phrase “Do it for Johnny”?  When I was about 10, I yelled this slogan in a soccer game, after one of our best players (named Johnny) left the game with an injury, not even knowing where the line came from.  Only recently I found out the line is from the movie version of The Outsiders, based on the book by S.E. Hinton.  As the character Dallas, Matt Dillon’s delivery of the line (9 second clip below) is classic and everyone should give it a try at least once.  I’ll wait if you want to do it now.

Now let’s return to the scene of yesterday’s post, where Joshua was about to lead Israel over the Jordan.  Imagine someone in the crowd yelling “let’s do it for Moses!”  In The Outsiders, Dallas was rallying his troops to action against a rival gang, who had killed Johnny, so maybe remembering that Moses didn’t make it would inspire Israel?  Sadly, that would be completely missing the point.

Knowing why has to do with knowing why Moses wasn’t there.  While leading Israel, he decided out of frustration to add his own input to God’s easy instructions.  The story is from Numbers 20, where Israel was in the wilderness, but there was no water (that they knew of).  Moses and Aaron, responding to the ongoing grumbling of the people, went to God asking for a solution.  God responded not with anger or judgement, but with a provision for His people.  Moses was told: “Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and Aaron your brother, and tell the rock before their eyes to yield its water. So you shall bring water out of the rock for them and give drink to the congregation and their cattle.”[1]  What Moses actually did was to say “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?”  Then “Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice, and water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their livestock.”[2]  Therefore, God told Moses he would die before Israel made it to the promised land “because you rebelled against my word in the wilderness of Zin when the congregation quarreled, failing to uphold me as holy at the waters before their eyes.”[3]

Why exactly Moses actions deserved such a harsh rebuke is debated, but it’s clear that Moses mixed what he wanted with what God told him to do, and therefore tried to take glory that belonged to God for himself.  Moses led God’s people for a time, but their success was from God.  Moses learned, and we learn through him, that honoring God first, above all others, is necessary to receive God’s promises.  No honor for God; no promised land.

In Joshua 3:5, Joshua tells the people before miraculously crossing the Jordan to “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.”  He was not telling them to consecrate themselves to Joshua as Moses’ replacement leader.  The point wasn’t to transfer loyalty from Moses to Joshua, but the point was to eliminate all loyalty other than to God.  Israel wasn’t supposed to consecrate itself to Moses, then when he was gone, consecrate itself to Joshua.  Israel needed to focus on glorifying God alone and eliminate any other motives from their hearts.  The first time Israel tried to enter the promised land, mixed motives resulted in 40 years wandering the wilderness.

So, whatever your preferred slogan, whether it’s: “Do it for Johnny”, “Do it for [insert any leader]” or “Let’s go [fill in the blank],”[4] it will be replaced with only one in eternity, where God will welcome His people from all tribes and nations:

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
            who was and is and is to come!” – Revelation 4:8

Therefore, “Consecrate yourselves” because although none of us will achieve perfection this side of paradise, Jesus declared in Matthew 10:33 that “whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Crossing the Jordan was hard, and sometimes life is hard on purpose.
Sometimes if we want to cross a river, God wants to teach us first how to trust Him and Him alone.

Soli Deo Gloria

[1] Numbers 20:8-9
[2] Numbers 20:11-12
[3] Numbers 27:14
[4] Yes, dear Americans, I’m including that sarcastic slogan in this too.