Tag Archives: Genesis

Laughter

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What makes you laugh?  While on the surface the answer seems obvious, the science of laughter is actually quite complex.  Certainly humor can trigger laughter, but so can nervousness or simply the laughter of others.  The area of the brain that controls laughter also controls breathing and many of our involuntary control mechanisms.

We often laugh in response to things that don’t fit with what we think should happen.  Our experience often functions as a predictive grid for anticipating what will happen in any given situation.  When we expect one thing and then something else happens — when our scripts are broken in a non-threatening way, laughter is a common response.

Sarah had heard God’s word of promise, regarding a son, for a quarter of a century. But her experience did not seem to square with God’s promises.   All of a sudden, when all possibility of fulfillment through her own womb or that of another is past, angelic messengers arrive with a precipitous birth announcement.  What is her response?  Laughter.

Join us this Lord’s Day, September 17, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine Genesis 18:1-16 and consider how God graciously confronts us when are struggling with unbelief and with the apparent disconnects between God’s Word and our expectations.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Signage

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Effective signage is an art, but by observing most road signs, it is apparently a lost art.  An effective sign is readable from a distance, clear but concise, and accurately represents the destination to which it points.  Effective signs give comfort to the pilgrim on his journey, assuring him both of the reality of the destination and confidence that he is on the right path.  Confusing or obsolete signs, however, cause confusion, anxiety, and circuitous routes to various dead ends.

No pilgrimage has more need of effective signage than the journey of faith.  Perhaps as a child you learned the Bible verse, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)   The Bible encourages us in our faith journey, instructing us

 “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16

Like Jesus’ disciple Thomas, however, we are apt to cry out, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”  Jesus’ answer to him was “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  Yet, the Lord knows that we need effective signage to follow the One who is The Way.  He graciously gives signs and seals of His grace to comfort and assure us on our journey.   Some Christians call these signs and seals, sacraments and others refer to them as ordinances.

Though in different times, God has given different signs, the path and the destination remain unchanged.  For this reason it is important for us to understand the meaning of older signs in order to follow the newer signs that God has given.   The Old Testament sign of circumcision is one of these signs that was “obsolete and passing away” in the New Testament.  Yet both the Old Testament and the New Testament use it to direct us to critical and timeless realities of our faith.   For this reason it is important to understand why God posted this covenant sign and what sign replaces it today.

Join us this Lord’s Day, September 10, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine Genesis 17 and consider God’s institution of the sign and seal of circumcision to direct, strengthen and affirm faith in Christ.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Contentment or Complacency?

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The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines complacency as “self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.”  On the surface it is easy to confuse complacency with contentment in our spiritual lives.   We are encouraged in Philippians 4:12-13 to learn contentment, not based on our circumstances, but on Christ’s sufficiency.  Yet, Psalm 36:1-2 warns us that it is those out of fellowship with the Lord who never have concern about their spiritual growth or condition.

Even mighty men of faith struggle to distinguish contentment from complacency in their spiritual lives.  John Calvin comments regarding Abraham in Genesis 17:1.

“The want of offspring had previously excited him to constant prayers and sighings; for the promise of God was so fixed in his mind, that he was ardently carried forward to seek its fulfillment. And now, falsely supposing that he had obtained his wish, he is led away by the presence of his son according to the flesh, from the expectation of a spiritual seed.”

Had Abraham become content with what God had not promised and so become complacent in his faith?  How often is this a struggle for us?

Join us this Lord’s Day, September 3, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine Genesis 17 and consider God’s grace kindness toward us, even when our faith is languid and complacent.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Waiting

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The Battle of Bunker Hill was a sobering moment in our history.   Though technically a British victory, it came at a high cost.  The untested Colonial militia held off the frontal onslaught of Howe’s British seasoned regulars and made them pay dearly before the defender’s lines splintered and broke.  Legend attributes the order, “don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes,” to one of the Colonial officers.  Painfully aware of their low ammunition and lack of bayonets, the colonists calmly awaited the shock of battle, drawing the British into to close combat before firing.  Can you imagine the intensity of that moment?  How hard it is to wait.  We prefer to engage our battles at a comfortable distance.

What is true in warfare is equally true in the combat of faith.   We like to exercise our faith at a safe distance, outside of conflict and trial and uncertainty.  But faith tested is faith strengthened.   In scripture, Abram’s faith is repeatedly tested.  Through famine, through prosperity, through barrenness and through birth, God tests and grows Abram’s faith.    Waiting is one of the ways God tested Abram.  Waiting can be a severe test of our faith.  Consider how many times the scripture instruct us to wait before the Lord.  Yet we often grow impatient.  Impatience with the means or timing of God’s promises tempts us to use accelerants of our own devising.   But accelerants are explosive and deadly.

Join us this Lord’s Day, August 27, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine the testing of Abraham’s faith from Genesis 16 and consider the temptations we face when God seems silent.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Warp and Woof

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Mathematics has axioms – presuppositions, accepted without proof — which form the basis for all subsequent mathematical proofs.   Likewise, Christianity demands certain presuppositions.  As a revealed religion, Christianity’s presuppositions, its axioms, must be accepted on faith.   But this often seems to be an intellectual cop-out.

An appeal to faith in a recent conversation with a friend and skeptic brought charges of “philosophical laziness.”  “No so,” I answered, but I also had to admit that the exercise of faith is not binary. Faith is not either on or off, absolute or absent, and not black and white.   Faith has contours.  It has a warp and woof which creates contours in quality, character, and shading.  Faith has axioms, but it also demands proofs.  It has doubts but it asks questions.  It waxes and wanes, but does not fail.  It is a gift, but it must be exercised and grow directed by the Spirit through a process of sanctification.

Abraham is the paradigmatic man of faith in Scripture and Genesis 15:6 is the core profession of his faith.  But even in this passage we see the contours of Abraham’s faith as it is received and exercised.

Join us this Lord’s Day, August 20, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine the faith of Abraham from Genesis 15 and consider the contours of our own faith.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Rescue Operation

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Jesus said that He “came to seek and to save that which is lost.”   He came to proclaim liberty to the captives.  He rescues for His Father, those of his own who have been enslaved by their rebellion against God and their own self-destructive identity and choices.   As Jesus’ followers, we are to go and do likewise. What are you doing to be used by Jesus to seek and to save those in your sphere of influence who are lost?  Beware, it is a messy calling.

Abram and Lot had a complicated relationship.  It was marked by disagreement and discord.  When Abram sought to bring harmony, Lot acted self-centeredly and disrespectfully.   It would have been easy for Abram to turn Lot over to all the consequences of his actions and attitudes, but that is not what we see.  Abram is characterized by interceding for Lot, for seeking his good and God’s grace in his life.    Like his Savior, Abram is a man committed to rescuing his own from the effects of his ungodly choices.

Join us this Lord’s Day, August 13, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine the account of Abraham and Lot from Genesis 14 and consider how we are to “seek and to save that which is lost.” For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Slippery Slope

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Pragmatism is the slipperiest of slopes.  Machiavelli’s maxim, “the end justifies the means” is perhaps the quintessential expression of pragmatism.   When it comes to decision making, Christians often wrestle with call of faith to act from principle rather than pragmatism.  Pragmatism subtly mocks faith in God’s promises and precepts as either naïveté or presumption.  Or Pragmatism dismisses the promptings of the Holy Spirit as a lack of common sense or sheer imprudence.

When Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans, he conspired with his wife to follow a course of pragmatism.  Because of her great beauty and the immorality of the people they would encounter, they agreed to hazard their marriage covenant for the sake of physical safety.   But the Lord unmasked their plan and humbled Abraham before Pharaoh and the court of Egypt.  From this Abraham began to learn how to walk by faith and not by sight.  Lot, Abraham’s nephew, did not learn from observing his uncles mistake however.  By choosing the way of pragmatism, Lot led his family deeper and deeper into compromise and catastrophe and placed them firmly on a spiritually slippery slope.

Join us this Lord’s Day, August 6, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine the account of Abraham and Lot from Genesis 13 and consider how we are to “walk by faith and not by sight.”.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

In the Trenches

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The year 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I.  For most of us, WWI is a war shrouded in obscurity.  While even the most casual student of World War II can name a few pivotal battles or events only the most savvy historian can discuss WWI with any confidence.  Unlike previous wars, its battlefields were not formed around strategic landmarks so much as vast nameless labyrinths of trenches separated only by scorched earth and barbed wire.

Conflict in the trenches is close combat with a mortal enemy.  And it is warfare waged in obscurity.   So it is with spiritual warfare in our lives.   The glorious calling to Christ is so often immediately followed by times of testing.   This was true of the Lord, himself.  In the gospel of Mark we read that moments following His baptism,

“The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  And he was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan.”  Mark 1:12-13

As his followers we are instructed that “as you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith.”  Our faith is not an event or mere declaration, it is a gift that grows through following Christ in testing and in trials.  Much of the life of faith is lived in the trenches.  It includes failure and forgiveness, vigilance and victory, perseverance and peace.

The Bible is not a sanitized book of mythologized heroes.  It’s most faithful men are sinners who are reconciled to God and with their loved ones only through the gospel.  We see their failures and their brokenness in living color, but we also see the kindness of God which leads them to repentance.  We see their faith grow large, but only in the trenches.

Abraham is a good example of this.   In Genesis 12, God graciously calls Abraham and promises to bless him and be with him.   Abraham obeys God’s call and establishes faith and worship as a pattern in his family’s life, yet before the chapter is exhausted, he cowers before a petty tyrant and swaps his beloved wife with a pagan to save his own skin.    Though God graciously thwarts Abraham’s faithless act, can you imagine how this might plague his relationship with Sarah and seem to jeopardize God’s means of blessing the families of the earth?   Yet this is not what we find.   Sin is not the last word.  God’s promises have not failed.  Though Abraham behaves faithlessly in this situation, God remains faithful to hold him in grace and grows him in his faith.  The scripture paints a vivid picture of Abraham’s walk with God, yes sometimes on the high places, but often in the trenches.

Join us this Lord’s Day, July 30, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine this troubling account of Abraham and Sarah from Genesis 12:10-20 and consider God grows our faith in the trenches.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Ad Fontes

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Ad Fontes, “to the fountains,” was the motto of the Christian Humanists, whose discovery of the preaching of the early church fathers sparked the Reformation with its emphasis on “sola fide” or salvation “by faith alone.”  The gospel was unshackled from legalistic tradition and extrabiblical rites as men went back to the fountains of God’s Word and gospel preaching to proclaim a salvation that was utterly gracious and a faith that was the free gift of God.

But as soon as we say salvation is by faith alone, some will ask,  where does this faith come from?   In the Bible, the Old Testament patriarch Abraham is held up as the paradigmatic man of faith.   From where did his faith spring?   Was it a moral code?  An inherent goodness?  Some intrinsic spark in his heart fanned into flame by piety?

We meet Abraham in Genesis 11, the youngest son in a family of moon worshipers.  God had not spoken to men for hundreds of years.  But suddenly God breaks his silence and speaks to Abraham, renewing His covenant with him.   God called upon Abraham, before Abraham called upon God.  God chose Abraham, not the other way around.  The Bible calls this “election”  — a precious doctrine which frightens many, but is inescapably pervasive in the Scriptures.

Join us this Lord’s Day, July 23, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine God’s call to Abraham from Genesis 11:26-12:9 and the doctrine of election that forms the spring from which faith flows.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.

Sidetracked

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What does it take to get you sidetracked from your calling?  Roadblocks, distractions, sloth, competing desires, discouragement or even perhaps a rebellious attitude?  It can be difficult to avoid being sidetracked, especially in our spiritual lives.  In Christianity, the word discipleship is rooted in discipline, which is what is indispensable in following Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 4:7-8,

…train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

No one has a more vested interested in seeing you sidetracked in your spiritual life than the enemy of your soul, the Devil.  He comes often with distraction after distraction, often presenting them in a way that makes them seem to be noble or praiseworthy activities.  You get so busy with these respectable activities that you forget the discipline of following Christ.   Such is the picture painted in the story of the Tower of Babel.   Portrayed as a symbol of unity, the Tower was really a monument to rebellion against God’s prescribed will.

Join us this Lord’s Day, July 16, for worship at Pottsville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as we examine the remarkable story of the Tower of Babel and consider the dangers of being sidetracked from our commission to fill the earth and replenish it with the message of the gospel.  For directions click here. We look forward to seeing you.