“Now what did I come for?”  How many times each day to you say this?   You are working in one room and remember something you need.  By the time you get where you were headed, you forget why you came.   Granted, it becomes harder to remember as we age, but the truth is that our minds are just too crowded.  We live in the information age.   We are exposed to more new information in a single day, than Eighteenth-century scholar and pastor, Jonathan Edwards encountered in his entire life.

All that data is hard to hold on to.  Scientists tell us our brains retain every scrap of experience our senses ever encounter.  The unfolding folds of our gray matter have more storage capacity than the world’s largest super-computer.   So, if true, why is it so hard to remember simple things?  And why do memories change and diminish when conditioned by experiences and perspectives gained since those memories were made?

A strong memory is more about strategy than capacity.   Information technologists recognize this in regard to data storage and retrieval.  The capacity of a database is not as significant as its indexing strategy.  Unless you can accurately and rapidly retrieve information, it is immaterial how much you can store.   When it comes to human memory many experts advocate building a “memory palace” where you can categorize and store memories in a visual structure created within your mind.   The ritual of walking through the “memory palace” proves to be a highly effective strategy for remembering.

But the use of rituals to aid in remembrance is not the innovation of contemporary pop psychologists.   It was instituted by God immediately after the fall.   Man made sacrifices to remember the cost of sin and the only means of escaping it.   As history progressed toward the cross, God added ‘religion’ to the ‘spirituality’ of the Covenant of Grace.   The ritual of the tabernacle and later the temple enabled the people to remember what God had done to deliver them from sin and sorrow, what he does, and what he was going to do finally and fully in Christ.   

The rituals and ‘means of grace’ he appointed are vital to faith and life.  They activate and improve our spiritual memory.  Help us keep proper perspective.  This is why the statement “I’m spiritual, but not religious” is untenable.  Spirituality without ‘religion’ will always become cognitively impaired as it forgets that I am not god and my feelings and opinions not ultimate truth.   God graciously gives us the means of remembrance.

On the eve of God’s great deliverance of his Old Testament people from Egypt, he paused the action and gave instructions about a meal of remembrance.   This celebration was to be a lasting ordinance to remind us that He alone is the God who delivers.   And in the same way, on the eve of God’s complete and final act of deliverance in the Cross, Jesus appointed a feast of remembrance.  “Remember,” he said.   And this remembrance is more than thought.  It is action through which we declare to succeeding generations the mighty saving works of our God.   Without these ‘means of grace’ we will forget.

The biblical book of Judges illustrates this. “Every man did what was right in his own eyes”  because they forgot.   Judges 2:8-12 is one of the saddest passages in all Scripture. And the rest of the weirdness of Judges is the fruit of this spiritual amnesia.

And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger.

Judges 2:8-12

Exodus 12 describes God’s preparation of the people for the greatest story of deliverance the ancient world would ever see.   A story that melted the hearts of their enemies.  A story known far and wide.   But before the final plague, God prepared the people, giving them rituals for remembrance.  Join us as we consider the Passover in Exodus 12 and the importance of remembrance.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Everyone has one – the one person in your life who must always have the last word.  Whatever your great exploits, they have climbed higher, caught more, gone faster.   No story is complete until they have added the exclamation point of their own last word.   Though perhaps otherwise unremarkable, they are grand-masters of one-upsmanship.  Yet their quest for notoriety has gained only infamy.  

No one likes a know-it-all.  No one enjoys the one-upsmans’ self-agrandizing sagas.  Far from inviting admiration, the know-it-all only invites scorn.   We all have this person in our lives.  You are not that person are you?  Let this be a lesson.  Don’t seek the last word.  Learn the art of humility.  As Solomon wisely cautioned. 

Let another praise you, and not your own mouth;
    a stranger, and not your own lips. Proverbs 27:2

You never know as much as you think.  You are not the smartest or most accomplished person in every gathering.   Praise others and you will be thought praiseworthy.  Learn to exalt others and you will be exalted.   Let another speak the last word.  Exercise restraint against the temptation to focus the lens on yourself.   Discipline in this area helps us to remember that God always has the last word.  

No one likes a know-it-all.  But what if the know-it-all in your life really did know it all.  What if He knew how everything would turn out.  One who not only knew the future, but determined it.  One who knew you better than you knew yourself.  Who knew how to love you and knew what you loved better than yourself.   One who knew exactly what trials and triumphs were best for you.   One who, despite knowing your heart, your failings, your rejections, still loved you better than you loved yourself?  Would you give that know-it-all the last word?  Would you prefer that know-it-all’s last word to your own? 

Pharaoh was a know-it-all.  He always got the last word.   But when he tried to have the last word with Moses the Lord had one more word for him.   And it was a terrible word.

Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’ And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’Exodus 11:4-8

Nine times Pharaoh said no.   But God would force his hand with the worst plague imaginable.   Pharaoh’s own son would die.   And the Egyptian god of death and dying, Osiris, could not stop it.   God would have the last word – a word of judgement.  But it did not have to be.   For in God’s judgement was also a word of grace.

What about you?  When the Lord speaks the best, last word, the word of grace, will you let that be the last word?  Or must you speak the last word yourself, following your own plans according to the stubbornness of your heart.   Even in His wrath against pharaoh, his gods, and his people, the Lord remembered mercy.  

What is the last word in your life?   What last word will define life now and forever?   Join us as we examine God’s last word to Pharaoh from Exodus 11 and consider the importance of giving God’s word the last word in our lives.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Everything changes in the dark.   What is familiar and comforting in daytime, becomes sinister and disquieting in the dark of night.   Our closet is filled with looming, threatening forms.   And the area under our beds, which houses nostalgia by day, becomes a haunt for all manner of unimaginably malevolent beasts at night.    Even as an adult, I still sleep with my hands under my body.  A holdover from my childhood when I feared any uncovered hand drifting to the edge of the bed would be met by a slimy, cold, deadly grasp.

Darkness brings fear, uncertainty, complication.   It is hard to function in the dark.   You realize this on your first camping trip.  Without a flashlight or headlamp, movement is difficult.  Nothing is where you remember it being.  The simple becomes complicated.   And every squirrel sounds like Bigfoot.   We are all scared of the dark.   It is a fear we never outgrow.

The language of our distress makes this clear.   A trying time is “dark night of the soul.”  Depression is a “black hole.”  Death is the “valley of the shadow of death.”  Quite literally the phrase translated, “shadow of death” in the Bible means “deepest darkness.”   A darkness like that of a cave.  A darkness so thick that nothing can be seen.  A darkness in which you can only grope your way around.  A darkness than can be felt.   Felt in the deep places of your heart, mind, and soul.

 The phrase “deepest darkness” in scripture often describes fear, oppression, and judgment for sin.   Hell is described as “outer darkness.”  When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, Jesus compared sin to darkness and salvation to light.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3:19-21

And speaking in the Temple, Jesus declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 

And elsewhere we read.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 

1 John 1:5-7

It is not insignificant that the first element of creation is light.   Darkness speaks of chaos, destruction, judgment, death.   It was the terror of the ancient world.  Ancient men did not have the benefit of artificial light.   They did not rejoice at the absence of ‘light pollution.’  They dreaded darkness.   All their pagan fears were vested in darkness.  And their relief and hope was founded upon the rising sun.  And this is reflected in their pantheism.

The greatest, most powerful, of Egypt’s gods was the Sun god, Amon-Ra.  Every morning the priests would gather by the river and sing hymns of praise to Amon-Ra and his supposed incarnate son, the reigning Pharaoh.  They would declare that no one in creation compares to Amon-Ra.

Until the day when Lord God Almighty extinguished the sunlight of Egypt in the nineth plague and brought the three days of utter darkness.   A darkness the Bible describes as a ‘deepest darkness’ – a darkness that could be felt.   A darkness of judgement against Amon-Ra.  And against his incarnate son, the Pharaoh.   The darkness of judgement came upon all who were not the Lord’s people.   A darkness every Egyptian felt.  But a darkness which no Israelite experienced.

We are all afraid of the dark, but the plague darkness was a foretaste of hell and of judgement against the gods of Egypt, its king and its people.   It was terrifying beyond imagination.   It immobilized the nation.   And brought Pharaoh to the very brink of obedience.   But only to the brink.  Even in the face of grave judgement, Pharaoh’s heart is hard.  

What about you?  How much judgment must God bring to your life before you will turn to Him?   How long will you love darkness?  And refuse to come to the ‘light of the world?’  Join us as we examine Exodus 10:21-29 to consider the plague of darkness and its warnings for us.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Men are just not wired for it.  The ‘subtlety’ sequence is clearly missing from the male genome. And lacking subtlety is the ultimate mantrap.  She asks “What do you think of my haircut?” Or “Which of these paint colors do you think will look best?”  The novice blithely assumes only facts are involved, that analysis is the path to success, that these questions are as contextless as “What is the square root of 256?”   And the mantrap of subtlety is sprung.  

The ladies in our lives are fluent in subtlety.  Like a spawning salmon, capable of discerning the chemical signature of their birth-ponds to parts per billion, women get subtlety.  They read all the signals men miss.  They understand emotional contexts men don’t even know exist.  They know that effective communication is not through words alone.

Men often struggle with subtlety in communication.  Perhaps you’ve seen the YouTube video that parodies this through a mythical product called the “Manslater” which claims to use “emotion and female logic deciphering technology” to bridge the subtlety gap.  But there is one area of subtlety in which man, and in fact, mankind, excels.  And that is with respect to our sin.

The Bible records for us that Satan is the most subtle of all the creatures the Lord God created.   He weaves fact and fiction into a tapestry of sin that makes the hideous appear radiant and the malignant seem beneficent.   He gives the shine and luster to our sin.  He calls it empowerment.  He appeals to our pride as he leads us not to become uber-menschen, but slaves. 

Satan, Abaddon, Apollyon, The Accuser is the King of Rebels, the destroyer.   He does not seek your allegiance or your love, only your complicity.   He does not want your worship.  He wants only your death.  And by making you complicit in his rebellion, he thinks he can weaponize the justice of God.   He is subtle.  He sells his deception well.   And has taught us his craft when it comes to holding on to our sin in the face of both God’s justice and God’s grace.

Pharaoh is a perfect example of this.  Egypt is in ruins.  The plagues ravaged the land, the animals, and the people of Egypt.  The gods of Egypt are silent.  And all that gave Egypt her strength was shattered.   Yet, when the last hailstone melted, the heart of Pharaoh did not.   He reneged on his promise, and held on to his slaves and his sin.  And now Moses and Aaron have appeared again before him.   In a bold move, Pharaoh’s servants said to him, “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the Lord their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?”

Often men just will not see where their sin has taken them.  They refuse to see that their lives have been ruined by it.  That it cannot be weathered.   Pharaoh is in no position to bargain, yet he attempts to bargain with God.  He places demands, stipulations, conditional asterisks and double daggers on his obedience to the Lord of heaven and earth.  He drives out those bring God’s word of grace.  Then even when suffering the righteous judgement of God in the plague of locusts, he offers only a self-serving repentance and fails to comprehend that much more than Egypt has been ruined by his sin. 

What about you?  Are you as subtle as Satan when it comes to clinging to your sin?   Have you justified it?  Blamed others for it?  Despised any who lovingly point it out?   Rejected the Word of grace that calls you to repentance?    Pharaoh loved his sin.   It brought unparalleled destruction to his life, to all he loved, to all he stood for.  Yet he would not let it go.   Join us as we examine Exodus 10:1-20 as we consider the plague of locusts and see how Pharaoh’s response warns us of the grave dangers of subtly clinging to our sin.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

One of the places where human depravity is more clearly displayed than rush hour traffic, may be a child’s birthday party.   These gatherings, designed to celebrate a child’s special day, can easily turn into self-fests, with every attendee assuming that he, himself, is the reason for the season.   Meanwhile parents visit with one another in relative oblivion, until little Johnny Schmidt goes too far.

Then you hear it. “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!  You tell little birthday Bobby you are sorry.”  Called from parental lethargy, Mrs. Schmidt arises, grasps John Jacob by the ear and marches him to the emotional remains of birthday Bobby and repeats the command.  “Say it!  Say your sorry! Say it now!” She bellows.

John Jacob barely opens his mouth and barely disturbs the air with his virtually inaudible, “Sor-ry.”  And everyone who observes this farce thinks the same thing.  The thought bubble above everyone’s head screams, “No You’re Not! You’re not one bit sorry!”  Everyone knows that John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt is anything but sorry.  Birthday Bobby knows it.  Mrs. Schmidt knows it.  And John Jacob smiles inwardly.  The use of a magic word has relieved him of all consequence.  Nothing has changed.  Bobby is still an emotional wreck, the party has been ruined, contrary to her self-deception, Mrs. Schmidt has not actually parented her son.  All that was broken is still broken.   But John Jacob has been released from trouble.  Or has he?

This is what most people think repentance looks like – like John Jacob using magical religious words, smooth words to remove consequence and relieve himself of obligation for his sin against God and others.  We mumble a half-hearted prayer, say “sorry” in liturgical dressing and, voila, everything is fixed.  Or is it?   We are so self-centered by nature that we can never escape the gravity of self-love in order to truly repent under our own power.   Repentance demands sorrow for how our sins affected others, not just how they affect us.   The Apostle Paul distinguishes between godly sorrow that rightly grieves its offense and worldly sorrow that only grieves its consequences.

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

2 Corinthians 7:10

Real repentance begins with God — with his kindness, with his grace, with the convicting work of His Holy Spirit.  Without this kind of real repentance, we live lives that are broken – broken in our relationship with God and broken in every other relationship as well.  It is not enough to say, “sorry” and think that magic words will put the world back the way it was before.  What we need is real, gracious, God-given repentance.

The seventh plague of Egypt brings new things to the table of God’s judgement against Pharaoh, the gods of Egypt and the people of Egypt.   For the first time, the plague takes human life.  Escalated from something that makes you want to die to something that actually makes you die this plague begins the final cycle of plagues which culminate in the Passover.   But there is something else new.

Pharaoh says something he never had to say and probably never said – “I was wrong.”  We read in Exodus 9, “Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.” Has Pharaoh’s hard heart softened?  Is he repentant?   On the surface it seems so.   But while his words say one thing, his life and commitments say something else.   Repentance is more than saying, ‘sorry’ when things get out of hand.   Join us as we examine Exodus 9:13-35 to consider what true repentance is and what it is not.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Anyone who has experienced chronic illness, or the lingering effects of illness such as ‘long Covid’, knows that the path of diagnosis is a long and winding and uncertain road.  Those who travel this road feel the weight of the phrase, ‘practicing medicine.’ 

Indeed, we are blessed to live in an age of unprecedented medical understanding.   We routinely treat conditions that would have killed our great grandparents.   Our medical technology is like science fiction to our elders.  We decoded our genome.   We ‘edit’ our DNA with Crisper.   We perform delicate surgical procedures with robotic assistance.   We have medicinal therapies that have eradicated diseases which plagued mankind for millennia.   Yet there is still so much we do not know.  

The human body remains a vast mystery.   Many common terminal conditions are uncurable and untreatable.   Years ago, my wife and I faced a series of devastating losses in childbearing.   One of the more experienced OBs that cared for us noted that our losses appeared ‘idiopathic.’   “What does that mean?” I asked.   He responded, “it is a clinical way of saying, we just don’t know.”   And the Lord reminded us that only He opens and closes the womb.  

Much of our illness is idiopathic.   We don’t know what it is, where it came from, or what to do about it.  Sometimes doctors can help.  But often we feel like the woman in Luke 8:43 who had “spent all her living on physicians, [yet] she could not be healed by anyone.”   The best doctors are still only ‘practicing medicine.’   Only the Creator is sovereign over the human body and the human condition. As one pastor said, “medicine is a great tool but a terrible deity.”  

We may have good doctors, but there is only one Great Physician.   Our lives are in His hands alone.   In sickness we should find good doctors.  But to find complete healing, we must go to the Great Physician.   While many illnesses are not “a sickness unto death,” there is one malady which is.   A malady which kills body and soul.  An affliction we call sin.  The ultimate pandemic for which everyone tests positive.  It brings sorrow, malady, and death.   And for this sickness unto death there is no balm of Gilead, save one – faith in the finished and sufficient work of Christ on our behalf.

In Exodus 9 we read about the first plague which arises from human sickness.   The sixth plague comes unannounced.   No warning is given.   Moses and Aaron appear before Pharaoh and his magicians and with soot from the brick kilns initiate a devastating pandemic with symptoms of both cutaneous anthrax and small pox except with ‘gain of function.’   The magician-priests, from the cult of Egypt’s healing gods cannot even heal themselves.  They flee to their sick beds.   No Egyptian escapes, yet all who shelter under God’s grace are untouched.

This plague is an intensification of God’s judgement against Pharaoh, his gods, and his people.   Previous plagues were outside the body.   External afflictions that could be swatted, avoided, blamed.   But this plague is within its victims.   And so, it is an apt picture of sin.  It comes with a circumstance, but it is not outside of us.   We cannot blame Adam, or our parents, or our wicked culture.    It is ours.   We must bear it.   We must own it.  Oh! That someone else could bear it.   Take it away.   Give us relief, healing.

If you feel the weight of this here is good news.   Jesus Christ came into the world to,

“to proclaim good news to the poor.
    … to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19

“to save sinners of whom [you and I] are the foremost.” 1 Timothy 1:16

And elsewhere we read.

Surely he has borne our griefs
    and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
    smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
    and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:4-6

Sin is a plague, a pandemic of biblical proportions.  There is no prophylaxis, no vaccine, no PPE, no social distancing for it.  But there is a cure! Join us as we examine Exodus 9:8-12 and consider the sixth plague and the much worse plague that it pictures and hear of a cure that is 100% effective.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Discrimination is an ugly word.  It reeks of bigotry, racism, prejudice, unfairness.   It harkens to a time when people were judged not by the “content of their character, but the color of their skin.”  A time when human worth was assessed by standards other than those revealed by the Creator.  Discrimination despises the diversity God has imprinted on his created order. It defines truth, beauty, and value according to the eye of the beholder and not God’s revealed will.  In my youth, many wore discrimination as a badge of distinction, but now it is a Scarlet Letter. 

But the word, discrimination, does not always have a negative connotation.   For example, a food critic discriminates.   Her discriminating palate sifts subtle flavors and textures according to dozens of categories.   A good food critic can tell you where the ingredients were grown, simply from a discriminating palate.   Even if you do not possess ‘super-tasters’ you also discriminate.  Hot, cold, sweet, savory, you have your own categories of preference. 

Every time we make a choice, we discriminate.   Not every act of discrimination is wrong.   So long as we are exercising our freedom to choose in a way consistent with God’s revealed character and will, all is well.  But when we make discriminations that disregard his design, his will, his nature the Bible calls this sin.   Discrimination becomes sin when we place our will, our opinions, our preferences above those of God.   In our own autonomy, discrimination becomes bigotry, racism, prejudice, and unfairness.

And we all want fairness, right!   At least for ourselves.  We want more good than we deserve.  And nothing bad we don’t deserve.  That, we think, is the calculus of fairness.  And when life assigns more bad than good, we think it unfair.  But is fairness all it is cracked up to be?  

The God of the Bible is described as one who elects, predestines, and ordains all things whatsoever come to pass.   Skeptics hail this as unfair, imperious, and tyrannical.   But would they prefer a world of fairness, perfect justice?   The Bible warns us what that would look like.  Perfect justice requires a perfect judge.  And the only viable candidate is a Holy God.  One like the God described in the Bible.  In a world of his perfect justice, all could be condemned.   In a world of uniform fairness, our just desserts would be dreadful.  

A self-inflated opinion of our goodness and willing ignorance of our evil deceives us into believing fairness and justice would treat us well.   But one glance into our hearts and minds reveals quite another story.   To be honest, I am thankful for discrimination.  Thankful that there is a God who discriminates.  A God who does not give me what I do deserve.  But gives me what I do not.  The biblical words for these unfair gifts are mercy and grace.   And I will take them over fairness or justice any day.

The first three plagues of Egypt affected Egyptian and Hebrew alike.   A reminder that all have sinned.   All have fallen short of the glory of God.   And that sin brings the fair judgment of God.  The Hebrews needed to understand this as well as the Egyptians.   In these plagues, God reveals that He alone is God.  In Him alone is freedom found.   Anyone who looks elsewhere will be disappointed.  

But starting with the fourth plague, we see a difference.   God sets a ‘distinction’ between Pharaoh’s people and His people.   The Hebrews are not touched by this plague, or the plagues that follow.    The ancient word translated ‘distinction’ is translated elsewhere ‘a redemption.’  God discriminates!   He has put ‘a redemption’ among his people.   Those that trust in it are sheltered.   They receive mercy and grace instead of justice and fairness.  They get what they do not deserve and not what they do.   And this discrimination brings freedom.  

God has set ‘a redemption’ in our midst as well.   God’s eternal and divine Son, took on himself our human nature and in that nature bore our sin and satisfied the God’s justice.   In Jesus, God is both just and justifier.    By this redemption, a Holy God makes a distinction between those who fall under crushing justice and those who receive live-giving mercy.  

What about you?  Have you trusted in this God who discriminates?  Who gives you what Jesus deserved and gave Jesus what you deserved?   Are you still hoping for fairness and justice, thinking a reward for your actions would be a blessing, not a curse?  No, my friend, seek mercy and grace instead through faith in Jesus Christ.   Join us this week as we examine the fifth plague, the death of the Egyptian livestock, in Exodus 9:1-7 and consider the God who mercifully discriminates.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Cheerleading is now just ‘Cheer!’   What once existed to engage crowds at sporting events has now become a sport in its own right.  It has its own venues and events.  A cross between gymnastics and dance, it exists for itself, independent of crowds or sporting events.  Any actual cheerleading is an incidental by-product.  What had been essentially concerned for others, is now merely coexistent. 

Unfortunately, many people view God’s work of redemption the same way.   As though God acts in the lives of his creatures with cold detachment.  He rights the wrongs, redeems some, judges others, but is not personally invested.  Of course, Christian doctrine declares the impassibility and immutability of God.  He never suffers nor changes.  He is not contingent on anything in creation.  He does not need anything he has made.  He is self-existent, eternal, and utterly other-than all his creatures.   The Bible declares all these things to be true. 

Yet, like many apparent conundrums in Scripture where two seemingly contradictory ideas are presented side by side as true.  The impassibility of God is declared side by side with expression after expression of God’s love, hate, grief, and delight.   In our emotional lives these experiences imply vulnerability, growth, change.  How can this be true of God? But just as God ordains all things that come to pass, yet He gives men and angels real, true free moral will, the same God who never suffers or changes is described in the language of intense emotion.   He is never cold, detached, or sociopathic.  And, if fact, emotion animates his redemptive work.   “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.”

Does God care about you?   Is he really concerned with whether you live or die?  Does it matter to him whether you are saved or damned?   Or are regeneration and faith just an incidental by-product of his purpose to reveal his glory?   The glorious truth is that God does care about you.  He is concerned with whether you live or die.  It does matter to Him whether you are saved or damned.   Grace, security, and assurance depend upon God’s unchangeableness, but they are all fueled by attributes we express in emotional terms.   Like many things in scripture these are truths to be believed, not discovered.  While hard to understand, there is no conflict.

As the plagues unfold, the first three emphasized God judgement against Pharaoh, his people, and his gods.   But with the fourth plague something remarkable is noted.   As God threatens a horrible plague of flies, he promises something new.

“But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth.

Exodus 8:22

Not only does God distinguish those he has appointed for deliverance, but he does so to reveal that He is present with them, to fight against their enemies and to combat their own sin and unbelief.   We consider many times that in Christ, God is with us.  But in the fourth plague, we see that God is for us.   His care, his deliverance, his mercy, his sovereign providence is not dispassionate, not incidental, no mere by-product of his glory.   He cares for you.   The scripture tells us.

Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? — Ezekiel 33:11

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Timothy 2:1-4

… [cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. — 1 Peter 5:7

God has concern for the life of his creatures.   He is no mere clinical observer of cosmic rats in a cosmic maze.   He loves you more than you can imagine.  His is not indifferent to you or your condition.   He sees, hears and knows.   And he desires you to turn to Him to find life.   Reconciling the free offer of the gospel with the doctrines of election and predestination is one of the secret things.  But what is revealed is that God truly loves us.

Have you learned this? Do you know God cares about you?  That he is concerned whether you live or die? And whether you are saved or perish?   Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Exodus 8:20-32 and consider that not only is God with us, but that God is for us.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

A polite person is testament to diligent mothering.   Mothers are guardians of polite behavior.  When someone is rude we think, “didn’t his mother teach him not to do that?” All the basic dictums of polite society still resonate in our mother’s voice:  “don’t slam the door, don’t chew with your mouth open, don’t interrupt, don’t stare, and don’t point at people.”

Children, especially, love to point at those who appear strange or comical.  They are given to the perspective of Lizzy Bennett’s father in Pride and Prejudice, “what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”  But pointing the finger means more than calling attention.  It implies condemnation, accusation, and judgement.   The phrase, “to point the finger” indicates guilt.  Witnesses in court are often called to “point out the accused.”  

No one wants the “finger of blame” pointed at them.  Especially if the finger is God’s.  In his classic painting, Belshazzar’s Feast, the Dutch painter, Rembrandt, captured the terror of this.  The painting graphically portrays the moment, chronicled in Daniel 5, when Belshazzar literally sees the ‘handwriting on the wall.’   At a moment of great national peril with Cyrus besieging the gates of Babylon, Belshazzar throws a great feast.  To add to the revelry, he brings out the bowls and goblets looted from the Temple in Jerusalem to use as serving pieces.   Belshazzar thought himself untouchable behind the walls of Babylon, but God had a word for him.

“Then from [the Lord’s] presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”

Daniel 5:24-28

None of us wants to hear that we have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Especially from God.   Belshazzar lifted himself up against the Lord of Heaven.  He despised God’s judgement, his holiness, his sovereignty, and his grace.  And the finger of God’s judgement was pointed at him.

The phrase, ‘the finger of god,’ was common in the ancient world for divine revelation or judgement.   We find it in the Old Testament in reference to God’s creative work in Psalm 8 and His revealing work in Exodus 31 and Deuteronomy 5.   And in the New Testament Jesus used the phrase in Luke 11.

Now he was casting out a demon that was mute. When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke, and the people marveled. But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the prince of demons,” while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven. But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebul. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. 

Luke 11:14-21

But the first occurrence of the phrase ‘the finger of God’ is on the lips of Egyptian magicians.   Without warning, the third plague of Egypt brought swarms of gnats upon man and beast.  Until  this, the magicians mimicked the plagues in microcosm.  Enough to convince the Egyptians that the plagues were not divine judgement.   But even by their secret arts they could not conjure gnats from dust.   And they declare to Pharaoh “this is the finger of God.”

But Pharaoh refused to repent.  The finger of God’s judgement was pointed squarely at him, yet he bowed up.   For once the magicians spoke truth.  But it was a hard truth to accept. And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.   He refused to relent or repent.   His only hope was the mercy of God.  Yet his heart became even harder.   What about you?  Is the finger of God pointed in your direction? 

The hard truth is that the finger of God is pointed at us all.   Acknowledge it or not, we have been weighed and found wanting.   Or as Paul put it in Romans 3:23-24, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  

The hard truth is that we all face God’s judgement.  But the happy truth is that judgement need not be the last word.  Jesus endured the judgement of God for sin on behalf of those who believe in Him.   Join us as we examine Exodus 8:16-19 and consider hard truths about God’s judgement and the happy truth that in even in wrath God has remembered mercy in the gospel.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info. Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.