Tag: Idol
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Know Yourself. Know Your Idol.
The two latest tragedies that are in front of me are the school shooting in Texas, and the abuse scandal unraveling in another Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. Both are incredibly painful. They should be. They are another example of how humanity has fallen and how determined, it seems, humanity is to stay mired…
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Finer or Better Things
Psalm 92:1–4, 12–15; 2 Kings 14:1–14; Mark 4:1–20 Every generation is in danger of not being as faithful as the one(s) that preceded it. There is, of course, the huge possibility that “this” generation (whichever generation “this” is) will restart a journey of renewed faithfulness. The church in the US—and so-called Christian Culture—is experiencing a…
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Roads of Dust
Psalm 135; Isaiah 26:1–15; Mark 12:18–27 As one of the wealthy nations in the world, passages like this in Isaiah should cause us to reflect. Will all our stuff be crushed to dust and be walked upon by the poor? If you’re reading this, you may well say, “I am poor.” Truly a lot of…
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Seeing Well
We often will look back on our decisions as if we could have fixed them, or even with the assumption that we are wiser now than we were then. “Hindsight is 20/20,” is a pithy saying, but even our hindsight may only be slightly better than our foresight.
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Things Change
Exodus 20:1–6; Numbers 21:4–9; 2 Kings 18:1–4 The Ten Commandments has been a political and religious hot potato for years. There are a number of times various parties have used the Ten Commandments to score political points. There have been those that state that the Ten Commandments are what the Constitution is based on. Some…
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Stirring
Isaiah 43:8–13; Romans 11:13–29 What or who are you fighting for? If you are not fighting for God, then are you fighting for an idol? Often Christians dismiss the Israelites of the Old Testament as the clueless. They were the people that didn’t get it. This view seems to be reinforced by Jesus’ words, yet…
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Internal Sweep
Judges 17:1–13; 1 Samuel 8:1–9; Ezekiel 14:1–11 Judges 17:6 sums up the problem, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.” Not that long ago, the US would use the term “wild west.” Depending on the historian, the “wild west” lasted around 10-40 years. On the other…