Morning Musing: Hebrews 12:14

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“Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness  — without it no one will see the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been in mid-thought only to say something that triggers another thought, but this new thought is so overwhelming that you have to stop and address it? As we get into the last major teaching section of Hebrews before the author’s lightning round big finish, that’s exactly what seems to happen. This thought of his is something that’s gotten into my own head and heart and I can’t stop thinking about it. Let’s talk this morning about his thought and why it matters so much.

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Digging in Deeper: Hebrews 12:11-13

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“No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Do you know why most people don’t exercise the way they should? Because they don’t want to. I rushed that, didn’t I? You were getting all of your excuses ready to start listing off in defense of your lack of exercise, and I cut your short. But the truth is, at the end of the day, we don’t exercise as much as we should (and I’ll let you define “should” in a way that makes you comfortable) because there are other things we’d rather do more. We have time for all of the things we most want to do. Period. Of course, the reason we don’t want to exercise as much as we want to do other things is because exercising is hard. We don’t like doing hard things. But sometimes, hard things that hurt us in the moment help us in the long run. This is an important thing to keep in mind in the next part of Hebrews 12 here. Let’s take a look at this together.

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Morning Musing: Hebrews 12:9-10

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“Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but he does it for our benefit, so that we can share his holiness.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What is wrong with us? That’s a nice, big question to start off the day. It’s also a question with a list of potential answers that would need a whole series of books to answer in a manner that is even remotely adequate. Still, there are perhaps a few things we could point to as particularly acute problems whose effects can be traced to a fairly wide swath of our culture’s current list of troubles. One of these is a lack of committed, involved fathers. Fatherlessness is a terrible blight on our society. It lies at the root of just nearly every social malady sociologists measure. With all of the language and illustrations of God using fatherhood as their starting point we find in the Scriptures, our culture’s lack of fathers also makes passages like this one harder for many folks to understand and appreciate than perhaps they should be. Let’s dig in a bit this morning and see if we can make some sense of what the author of Hebrews is saying here.

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Morning Musing: Matthew 6:1

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“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father in heaven.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

This past Friday we talked about righteousness. I shared some of the thoughts I had first shared with our Bible study group here a couple of days before. The conclusion then was that righteousness is a status that is given to us by Christ when we place our faith in Him. We cannot achieve it on our own, and there is nothing we can do toward that end – and especially no religious deeds – that will change that. Well, if religious deeds can’t move us in the direction of righteousness, why bother doing them? More than that, why bother with religion in the first place? Who needs the Christian religion or any other religion when what we really need is just a relationship with Jesus? This morning, let me share a few more thoughts on the purpose and value of religion in light of the truth about righteousness.

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Digging in Deeper: Matthew 6:1

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“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father in heaven.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

For the last several weeks, I have been working through the Gospel of Matthew with our Wednesday night Bible study group. It has been an absolute delight taking our time examining the story of Jesus as told by the converted tax collector. In particular, for the last few weeks we have been wading through the Sermon on the Mount. In the second part of Jesus’ most famous sermon, He talks about giving, praying, and fasting. And if you’re not paying close attention, it seems like those three things are really the focus of His comments. But they aren’t. Instead, Jesus is using those three things to talk about something that afflicts all of us. As we wrapped up our look at this section this past Wednesday night, I spent some time unpacking His larger (and more significant) point here. This morning, I’d like to share with you some thoughts on what Jesus had to say about self-righteousness.

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