We must admit that the true Christian is a rather strange person in the eye of the unbeliever.
I use the adjective true in regard to the Christian not only to point out the necessity for the new birth but to indicate, also, the Christian who is living according to his new birth. I speak here of a transformed life pleasing to God, for if you want to be a Christian, you must agree to a very much different life. The life of obedience to Jesus Christ means living moment by moment in the Spirit of God and it will be so different from your former life that you will often be considered strange. In fact, the life in the Spirit is such a different life that some of your former associates will probably discuss the question of whether or not you are mentally disturbed. The true Christian may seem a strange person indeed to those who make their observations only from the point of view of this present world, which is alienated from God and His gracious plan of salvation.
Consider now these glorious contradictions and you will no longer wonder why the true believer in Jesus Christ is such an amazement to this world.
The very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on this subject. For the five points, though separately stated, are inseparable. They hang together; you cannot reject one without rejecting them all, at least in the sense in which the Synod meant them. For to Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners.
Let us stand still, and admire and wonder at the love of Jesus Christ to poor sinners; that Christ should rather die for us, than for the angels. They were creatures of a more noble extract, and in all probability might have brought greater revenues of glory to God: yet that Christ should pass by those golden vessels, and make us vessels of glory,-oh, what amazing and astonishing love is this! This is the envy of devils. and the admiration of angels and saints.
The world tells us that contentment is an unattainable ideal, that there will always be things that we need to improve — our financial status, the positions we hold at our jobs, the houses we live in, and the list goes on. In other words, no human being can be content with what he has or what state he is in at any one time.
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In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, who were God’s visible people, and who lived under the means of grace; but who, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works towards them, remained (as ver. 28.) void of counsel, having no understanding in them. Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text. The expression I have chosen for my text, Their foot shall slide in due time, seems to imply the following doings, relating to the punishment and destruction to which these wicked Israelites were exposed.
Foreword: I thought I’d give a little background into how this testimony came about, because it simply demonstrates how often God works wonderfully in us and there’s only goodness when we submit to His will.
It was expected that He should come in pomp. Instead of that, He grew up as a tender plant, silently and insensibly. He had no form nor comeliness, nothing extraordinary which one might have thought to meet in an incarnate Deity. The manner of His appearing in the world had nothing of outward glory.
The empty hallway with its closed and heavy steel doors on either side have always made you uncomfortable, but as chaplain at a high-security prison where inmates headed for execution as punishment for the heinous crimes they have committed are held, you know it’s your duty to minister to those 24 hours away from death.
There are many who don’t believe that December 25 is the day on which Christ Jesus was born more than 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, Israel.
Six years ago on this date, September 11, more than 3,000 people lost their lives in a matter of minutes as two commercial jet airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
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