Tag: Love

Morning Musing: Malachi 2:10

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It’s vacation week! Blogs will keep appearing this week, but the audio recordings may not. Things will be back up and running like normal starting next week.

“Don’t all of us have one Father? Didn’t one God create us? Why then do we act treacherously against one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (CSB – Read the chapter)

As the prophet Malachi was offering various warnings to the people of Israel to get back on track with God, he took a minute to remind them of who they were. He reminded them of the common heritage they all shared. Although this reminder wasn’t aimed at us, the spirit behind it is still very much relevant today. It is relevant for our nation. It is relevant for the church. Let’s talk about why this morning.

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Morning Musing: Malachi 1:2a

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“I have loved you,” says the Lord. (CBS – Read the chapter)

The history of Israel is one of the all-time epic stories of human history. Starting through the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it wound its way through 400 hundred years of captivity in Egypt. Moses led the people to freedom and Joshua to inhabit the land God had sworn to Abraham to give his descendants. From there, things were generally rocky. They were on again, off again with God, but He never wavered in His faithfulness to them. Even when He finally had to call a national “time out” because they had drifted so far afield, He was still faithful to them there, and brought them home again to rebuild what had been lost. You perhaps already knew much of that. So why tell it again? Because of what Malachi says here.

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Morning Musing: Genesis 3:21

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“The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter) 

This is one of my favorite verses in this whole story. This verse seems like almost an afterthought when you first read it, but I think a good argument can be made that it reveals more important information about God’s character than anything else in this section. Let’s talk about why. 

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 7:2 (one more time)

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“But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

This past Friday we started talking about sex. So far we have concluded two things. The first is that this is something we should be talking about. As followers of Jesus and given the state of our culture, we’ve got to be having a positive and productive conversation about how we should approach this touchy subject. The second thing was this: Sex is good and we should be enjoying it…but only in its proper context. It is a gift from God and like any other gift from God, if we use it as He intended, we will enjoy its rich fruits to their absolute fullest. The last question we asked was what we should be doing about this. Let’s talk about that now.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 John 4:20

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“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter) 

So, the first time we looked at this verse, we established the rather uncomfortable truth that we either love or hate the people around us. If we are not committed to intentionally moving them in the direction of Jesus, we hate them. It may not be an intense, emotional, passionate hatred the way we might normally think of when we hear the word, but throughout the Scriptures the word “hatred” often means to merely reject. Even without the emotion, if we reject the people whom God has accepted, we have a problem. What John says next makes all of this even more uncomfortable. 

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