Morning Musings: Hosea 12:8

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“Ephraim has said, ‘Ah, but I am rich; I have found wealth for myself; in all my labors they cannot find in me iniquity of sin.'”  (ESV)

There is a great temptation in being wealthy (and if you are reading this on a computer or smart device you are fabulously wealthy compared to the rest of the world) to place our trust in our wealth instead of in God.  There is a great temptation to believe that if we have enough money, we can generally be protected from whatever life may throw at us.  This is a false belief.  It will invariably lead to a great fall.  Our only real hope is to trust in God.  Everything else is transitory and will eventually fail us.  He alone will stand firm.

Digging in Deeper: Romans 9:14-21

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“What shall we say them?  Is there injustice on God’s part?  By no means!  For he says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’  So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.  For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’  So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.  You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault?  For who can resist his will?’  But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?  Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’  Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?”  (ESV)

This is tough stuff for modern ears.  After explaining that the designation “Israel” was always intended to be one about God’s choosing folks to be a part of His promise to bless the world rather than simply a genetic line, Paul anticipates a challenge: It’s unjust of God to choose some and not others; to invest all this time in our descendants and then open the doors to just anybody.  Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Romans 9:13

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“As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.'”  (ESV)

This verse has given interpreters and readers a lot of trouble over the centuries.  The biggest reason for this is that somewhere along the line the basic understanding of the ideas of love and hate changed to be in line with how we think about them today.  We most often think of love and hate as emotions.  In the Scriptures, though, they are both decisions of the will that have less to do with how someone is feeling about the object of the decision than about their intentions toward them.  More specifically, to love someone throughout the Scriptures is to choose them.  To hate someone is to not choose them.  The reasons for these choices may be many, but it is choice, not emotion, that is the basic idea.  Read the rest…

Here We Are…Now What?

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This past Sunday was my first sermon at FBC Oakboro.  We talked about the church and how it was designed to work from the beginning.  Here’s the audio and the transcript.

This day has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?  But I am glad it is finally here.  When Robbie first reached out to us by email over six months ago, while Lisa and I were prepared to go where and when God called us, moving honestly wasn’t something that really was on our radar.  We had been at Central for nearly nine years and had seen the church community there really hit its stride over the past 2-3 years.  The community was seeing sweet fruit coming to bear from the work we had done together and leaving just wasn’t something we were chomping at the bit to do.  And yet we felt drawn to say, “Yeah, sure; let’s have a conversation,” because who knows what God had planned. Read the rest…