Verse: "For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." (Exodus 34:14)
Commentary: "Jealousy" means God's chief goal is to bring glory to His name; hence, the command to worship no other God.
Resolution: Because of the temptation to worship self, I resolve to thank God for everything.
Billy: The Early years is coming out this Fall. It looks good.
If you haven't read it, I recommend the autobiography of Billy Graham, "Just As I Am."
Here's a great article from 9Marks about discontentment with the church.
Verse: "But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked..." (Deuteronomy 32:15)
Commentary: Sometimes our prosperity leads to rebellion.
Resolution: Always be thankful for my hardships knowing that they lead me back to the sublime presence of God.
We started a new series at somanorth called "Revolution." It's based off of the revolutionary teachings of Jesus found in the Sermon on the Mount.
Randy Walters, Steve Eriksson, and I will be preaching through most of the Sermon on the Mount. We'll only be skipping the passages that I just preaching on. For instance, I spoke on lust last January so we'll skip that passage and move directly to Jesus teaching on divorce.
I hope you can make it!
What is pragmatism?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines pragmatism as "the approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of success of their practical application." In other words, if it works, then it's right.
As you can probably guess, a pragmatist is in danger of ruining their life because they base their reality on what works rather than what is true or good or right.
This is why God warns against pragmatism in the Bible.
In 2 Chroncles 28 we learn that King Ahaz has his back against a wall. So he decides to sacrifice to a false gods since they seem to have helped others. Ahaz literally says in verse 23, "Because the gods of the kings of Syria helped them, I will sacrifice to them that they may help me.”
Unfortunately, what is right must never be determined by what seems to work; Hence the rest of verse 23, "but they were the ruin of him and of all Israel."
Why am I blogging about pragmatism? It's because I hear it all of the time!
It usually sounds like this...
"I normally wouldn't have done it. But since it worked, it must have been God's will."
"I figured since it worked for
We must never determing our values by what works. Rather, we must determine our values by God's Word. Else, we will find ourselves in ruin for straying from His revealed will.
In my opinion, this is the best study Bible that has ever been published.
Here are some sample pages...
I'm finding it hard to upload my sermon manuscripts onto this blog. (Oy vey!) If your interested in hearing them, I recommend our podcast at somanorth.com.
