Tag: Righteousness

Morning Musing: Romans 10:4

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“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes…” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It’s hard to know what something is unless you know what it’s for. But if you get what it is for wrong, you’ll get what it is wrong too. Perhaps the best illustration of this comes from Scuttle the seagull in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. When Ariel brings him a fork, he identifies it as a “dinglehopper,” used by humans for doing their hair. Among followers of Jesus there is an occasionally robust debate about the purpose of the Law of Moses in light of Christ and His ministry. Paul gives us an important clue here. Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Genesis 3:8-10

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“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. So the Lord God called out to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It’s always interesting to see which things capture the cultural imagination and which don’t. Sometimes something will happen that seems like it should be shocking only for it not to move the cultural needle at all. Other times, something that feels like it shouldn’t gain any attention because the culture has moved on from it suddenly grabs everyone’s attention for a few days and absolutely will not let go. This second sort of thing happened a few days ago. The chatter about it has finally died down a bit, but for a few days there it was intense. And comical. Let’s chat for a few minutes today about Coldplay concerts and unfaithful spouses.

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Digging in Deeper: Proverbs 22:3

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“A sensible person sees danger and takes cover, but the inexperienced keep going and are punished.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever wanted something really badly, but couldn’t seem to get there for some reason? Maybe you didn’t have the resources to achieve it. Perhaps there was something physical holding you back. It could be that culture simply wasn’t allowing for it. Whatever the reason, you were feeling denied something you really wanted or even felt like should be yours by right. What did you do then? Did you give up and go in another direction, or did you keep right on going, pressing on until you got it no matter what the cost happened to be? The newest Marvel offering from Disney+ is about just such a character. She couldn’t get what she wanted on her own, so she just kept pushing until she got it. And that’s the problem. Let’s talk today about Ironheart.

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Morning Musing: 1 Corinthians 10:13

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“No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Day three of camp was all about living a holy life. If we are going to go higher in our relationship with God, we are going to have to come to look more like Him. This means growing in holiness. God is holy. If we worship Him, if we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we will come to reflect His holiness in and through our own lives. That’s natural for someone who is in Christ. What’s unnatural for a Jesus follower is sin. And yet sin keeps getting in our way. As a result, in worship tonight we talked about one of the vehicles sin uses for that: temptation. Let’s dive in a bit deeper.

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Digging in Deeper: Romans 12:19

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“Friends, do not avenge yourselves; instead, leave room for God’s wrath, because it is written, ‘Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in the day of the dystopian future story. Not all that long ago, historically speaking, this wasn’t the case. There was a time when a popular view on the return of Christ described in Revelation was post-millennialism, which held that the world was just going to keep getting better (because we made it that way) until Jesus returned to reward us for all our good work. Then the 20th century happened. After two world wars and an ensuing half century of chaos mostly released on the world by the ideas of Darwin, Freud, and Marx, we gave up on a hopeful future, and our thinking turned dark. The Last of Us on HBO, is a great example of this. With the second season now behind us, let’s talk about how it was, and why the Gospel is better.

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