The Small Branch

  121   (Biblical text in italics)   Compare this Psalm to Psalm 91 1 I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? 2 My help comes from Yahweh, Our help comes from the Lord through   His Word, His people (see Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, 2 Corinthians 1:10-11, and 1 Thessalonians 5:14), His Spirit, even His   arranging circumstances.  It does not always come in the form of a miraculous interventions.  Sometimes (often) we stay in the trial, but God gives   us what it takes to get to the other side of it.  God knows, better than we do, how these trials sanctify us and draw us closer to Him.  Who made heaven and earth.   The Lord is Creator and Sustainer (see Colossians 1:15-17) 3 He will not allow your foot to stumble; He who keeps you will not slumber.   This is unlike human guards who will fail because they must sleep. 4 Behold, He who keeps Israel Will not slumber and...

  Dealing with our sin is an important part of our walk with Christ.   We start the journey by repentance, because of the faith He has given us (there are many who debate which comes first, faith or repentance, and I’m not really qualified to join that debate other than to recommend, again, The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson).   We continue the journey by repenting as sin in our lives is revealed to us.   Today, though, I’m not really addressing dealing with our own sin.   Today, I have a lot of questions about dealing with other people’s sin. We all know that the sins of others can affect us, sometimes in very detrimental ways.  Sometimes, we are directly hurt by their sin, whether  physically, like with a drunk driver causing an accident, or emotionally, like with an adult child who chooses rebellion rather than obedience to the Lord.  Sin also has affected creation and means that we have natural disasters like hurricanes, floods,...

 Here's a question:  if you have a toddler and he is trying to climb into the fireplace while there is a fire burning in it, is it more loving to let him climb into the fire because he wants to and you want him to be happy OR is it more loving to snatch him away from it and paddle his behind so that he knows not to do that again?   Why do we think God should respond to us "climbing into the flames" of our sin any differently?   And why do we respond to others' sin by excusing it, claiming that we are being loving?  Be loving.  Speak truth.

 This morning I was listening to Owen Strachan speak on Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God from February's G3 conference.  I've also been reading the Old Testament (as you can see from other posts).  The two combined to get me thinking about idol worship.  If you are a student of history and of the Bible, you know that idol worship centuries ago involved sacrifices (from which everyone got their meat), temple prostitutes, human sacrifices, etc.  We always talk about how horrible idol worship was then, how pagan.  But are we really any better today?  Today, we are just as pagan, just as sin sick, just as much into idol worship as people have always been.  With the media today, we don't even look at it as a bad thing, but something to boast about endlessly.  We even worship using the same methods that the ancients did.  We have food everywhere and with everything.  We eat and drink to excess all in the name of entertainment.  ...

 When you think about a holy God, how does that affect how you see yourself?  I have been wrestling with this often lately, as we are reading a book by RC Sproul called The Holiness of God  in our women's group.  God's holiness is often overwhelming.  One reason is because it causes us to see our sin so clearly.  We see our need and our inadequacy.  Our inability to "fix" ourselves.  I have struggled a lot in the last week or so and am so aware of my inability to "fix" myself.  This morning, I was reading in the book of Luke, chapter 18.  Towards the end of the chapter, Jesus encounters a blind man while approaching Jericho.  The blind man is told that Jesus is passing by and has a simple response, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Jesus, of course, stops and heals the man, but what struck me was the man's cry.  "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"  Oh, how often I want share the same cry.  God is mer...