Beautiful things can be deadly.   Sensory appeal is often a trap designed to catch and kill.  The most poisonous frogs are the most colorful.  The prettiest mushrooms are the deadliest.   The anglerfish draws prey to its luminescent lure in the darkest depths of the sea.   And there are carnivorous plants that attract prey through sight and smell.

Botanists have categorized over 630 species of carnivorous plants.   Through color, smell, and visual features, these plants attract, trap and digest insects and animals to supply the nutrients they need.  Larger varieties are capable of digesting reptiles and small mammals. While others specialize in single-celled organisms.  Aquatic varieties eat crustaceans, mosquito larvae and small fish.

Among the most beautiful varieties are Sundews.   Sundews are “flypaper” plants that trap prey in sticky hairs on their leaves.  Long tentacles protrude from their leaves, each with a sticky gland at the tip which produce droplets of nectar. These droplets look like dew, glistening in the sun.  The nectar attracts prey, powerful adhesive traps it, and enzymes digest it. Once an insect becomes stuck, nearby tentacles coil around the insect and smother it.  Sundews kill their victims in 15 minutes, but digest them over weeks.  Interestingly, the plant’s deadly secretions are harmless to the assassin bug, which hides on the plant to prey on the helpless victims.  Sundews are indeed beautiful plants, but their beauty is intended to kill.

Beauty is often deadly.   And not just for insects.  Things that appeal to our senses and appetites may kill us as well.  Solomon surrounded himself with beautiful things, but both in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, he noted their deceptive nature.   In Proverbs, he remarked, “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain.”    And in Ecclesiastes, he opined, “’Come now, I will test you with pleasure, enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity.”  

Solomon even personified Folly as a seductive woman.

The woman Folly is loud;
    she is seductive and knows nothing.
She sits at the door of her house;
    she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
calling to those who pass by,
    who are going straight on their way,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
    And to him who lacks sense she says,
“Stolen water is sweet,
    and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
But he does not know that the dead are there,
    that her guests are in the depths of Sheol. 

Proverbs 9:13-18

Our fairy tales have taught us that beauty often conceals a beast.   Revelation 17 gives us a vivid picture of this truth.  The seductive appeal of worldliness to supply meaning, fulfillment and safety, is a deadly ruse.   Revelation 17 begins a new division within John’s visions.  A division which emphasizes the distinction between the deadly deceptive charms of the world, pictured as a luxuriant but violent prostitute, and the enduring, life-giving beauty of Christ’s church, pictured as a radiant bride.  

In a world where Christ promises persecution while conformity to the world promises peace, it is easy to lose sight of this distinction between harlot and bride.   But the Lord unveils for John, and for us, a clear revelation of the deadly beast that lies in wait beneath great worldly allure.  Join us this week as we examine Revelation 17 and consider the seductive allure of seeking meaning, fulfillment, or safety from the things of this world.

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. 

Nana’s house was a full of curiosities for a ten-year old boy.  The old pump organ, with its myriad of stops and swirling barstool seat entertained for hours.    The “old trunk” with a torn Confederate $100 bill, my great-grandfather’s powder-horn, and Uncle Charles’ well-worn army helmet conjured tales of bygone adventure.   Pictures of pagodas and of Mt. Fuji, sent from Uncle Tommy while in the service in Japan, were windows into a faraway world.   And her bolt action .22 rifle and her snuff cans lent an aura toughness to Nana that awed a young grandson.  

But most memorable was her Jello-O.    We never ate a meal at Nana’s without Jell-O.   Lime was my favorite.   And the Jello-O was always crowned with homemade whipped cream – a remarkable touch in a day when Cool Whip ruled the dessert scene.  Nana’s Jell-O was stiff, like what you find at the Chinese Buffet.  So stiff it would stop a bullet.  No worries about it melting.   No problems cornering it with your spoon.  You could carve it into any and it would hold fast.   My mother complained that it was too hard, that Nana used too little water, and did not follow the recipe.   But we loved it.    I still like my Jell-O this way.   Hardened Jell-O is the best.

But some things are not meant to be hardened.   If our internal organs harden, we have cirrhosis – a dangerous, and ultimately deadly condition.    If our attitudes or affections become hardened, we become bitter and alienated from everyone who tries to love us.   Of course, it is easy to become jaded, to harden our hearts against all the people and circumstances that disappoint us, reject us, and make life difficult.   But we are not meant for cirrhosis in our bodies, our heart, or our spirit.

Spiritual cirrhosis – bitterness against God and unrepentance for our sin — is the deadliest form of hardening.  Its effects go far beyond poisoned relationships or a terminal diagnosis.   It is a hardening with eternal consequences.    From beginning to end, the Bible reveals God as a God of mercy and forgiveness.  He provided an escape from the gravity of sin and death, through faith in the finished work of Christ.   Christ paid what we could not, so that we might have what only He deserved.   It is that simple.  Yet many would rather be the Captain of their Doomed Fate than trust Jesus.

I have always been amazed at the story of the serpent in the wilderness in Numbers 21.   The Israelite refugees are attacked by deadly serpents in the desert.   God provides a strange and gracious anti-venom.   He told Moses to fashion a serpent and put it on a pole.  Anyone who looked at the serpent would be spared.   Yet many died.  Why?  Because they simply were too hardened to look in faith to a serpent on a pole.    How much more deadly to be so hardened by life, so rebellious against God, so enslaved to a fallen world, that you will not simply look to the “Son of Man, lifted up” on the cross?

Often men think of confession and repentance as unpleasant and punitive.   But through these means is found grace and mercy.   After all, it is “the kindness of God that leads to repentance.”   But refusing God’s grace is both the result and agent of a hardening heart and an unrepentant spirit.   Revelation 16 is a shocking passage.   In this, the final cycle of seven judgments, the bowls of wrath are poured out.   They are not revealing, nor announcing, they are enacting God’s righteous judgment against those who have repeatedly refused God’s lavish grace.   But even in these judgements, there seems to be a call to turn back.  

Revelation 16 reminds men of the completeness, the inescapability, the eternality of God’s wrath against unatoned sin.    Yet it reveals something even more dreadful.   Those hardened against grace, are hardened even more in judgement.   As bowls are emptied, men experiencing God’s righteous judgement express no sorrow, no remorse, no repentance.   The penitent thief, standing under judgement declared, “do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation, and we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward for our deeds.”   But men experiencing the bowls of God’s wrath “cursed the name of God, did not repent and give him glory.”   They were hardened.  Hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  Hardened because they saw only a God of wrath and fury, not the God of grace and mercy. 

What about you? Has disappointment with life, or perhaps with God himself, hardened you?   Can you feel yourself growing more and more this way?  Is hardening in your mind, attitude, and relationships metastasizing into your spiritual life as well?    Is God only a God of wrath and fury to you, or do you know him as a God of grace and mercy?  Join us this week as we examine Revelation 16 and consider its warning against “spiritual cirrhosis.”

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. 

“What did I miss?”   We scarcely need ask this anymore.   Modern life comes with a pause button.   In a digital world can put all our stories on hold while we attend to the tyranny of the urgent.    But ‘back in the day,’ you only had one shot to catch the latest episode of your favorite story.   If you missed it, you missed it.  

Such was my lament over Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.   It aired only once a year – the first Sunday of December at 8 pm.    There were no video tapes, no streaming video, no second chances.  If you missed it, you missed it.   And while my father was not completely opposed to me watching it on a Sunday evening, the problem was – we were never home.   Sunday evening was a time for “Training Union” (i.e. discipleship) and evening worship.   The service ended at 7:00 pm, the church was 32 minutes from home. 

Allowing for modest post worship conversation, getting home in time was always technically doable, but we never made it.   Invariably, my father would have deacon’s meeting, or a visitor would appear and my parents would engage in lengthy ‘get-to-know-you’ conversation. Of course, my parents had chosen the ‘better things.’  Looking back, the claymation of Rudolf was sub-par, the story’s ideology reprehensible, and the once-venerable Santa recast as a selfish, unrepentant bigot.   But at the time, watching Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman were required to fulfill all righteousness at the festive season.   I was an adult before I saw the opening sequences.   

Perhaps, in retrospect, it is better that I missed Rudolf and got to see my father’s service and hospitality!   Sometimes it is better to miss something than make it.    Robert Corrigan of Clam Point, Massachusetts discovered this when he overslept and missed his flight to LA.   He arrived at the departure gate just as his plane was pushing back.   An hour later, he was still at the airport, waiting for a standby flight, when he saw the news that his flight, United #175, had crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.  Missing that flight saved his life. 

Revelation 15 unfolds the final chapter of the drama of redemption.  Seals have revealed God’s judgements and Trumpets have announced them.   All men deserve these judgements.   But a great and marvelous sign appears, a woman from whom would come a redeemer, a Lamb, slain, who saves and seals his own with the seal of the living God, the Holy Spirit.   Every last sealed saint is brought safely to salvation.   Despite the fury of the dragon and his beasts, nothing overcomes them.   They are the overcomers.  The final judgements of God are about to be poured out.  With them, the wrath of God is finished.  But like the Israelites of Goshen, those who belong to the Lamb miss these terrible plagues.

Revelation 15 begins with a great contrast.  The saved and sealed sing of the mercy and grace of God, even as a righteous and holy God sets the stage for His wrath to be poured out against a warned world.   Scripture says that we are all, by nature, children of wrath.   But only through faith in Christ, will we become children of the King and escape from the wrath to come.   What about you?  Are you still a child of wrath?  Are these terrible bowls in your future?  Or will you miss out – miss out on unrepentance, on wrath, on judgement, and on eternal death.    Some things are better to miss.   Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Revelation 15:1-8 and consider the great joy of missing out on the righteous and holy judgement of God.

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. 

Animals have an uncanny ability to find their way home.   Pet lore is replete with Homeward-Bound-like tales of Chance, Sassy, and Shadow overcoming perilous journeys against unbelievable odds to return to their people.   We don’t know how they do it — how they sense direction, how they navigate the way home.   Especially since we, their masters, are so easily disoriented and often profess, ‘you can’t go home again.’

The journey of the salmon is a dramatic illustration of an animal’s ability to find its home.   Salmon spawn upstream, in freshwater pools.   As they grow, they migrate to the sea.  They travel thousands of miles through open ocean to feed.    But when it is time to become parents, they travel back to the spot where they were born.  This amazing journey is much observed, but little understood.  Scientists theorize that salmon are guided by sense of direction and smell.  

As the salmon makes its initial trip to the sea, it somehow ‘records’ the chemical signatures, as well as celestial, barometric, and geomagnetic details of the waterways through which it passes.   This enables the salmon to geotag its birthplace.   Capable of discerning the chemical signature of its birth-pond to parts per billion, the salmon literally follows its nose home.

The ability of the salmon to find its way home is beyond belief, but it pales in comparison to the promise of Scripture that the Lord ‘knows his own’ (2 Timothy 2:19) and will not lose any that belong to him.   Nothing can keep him from finding us.  No one can snatch us from his hand.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus.   We know this intellectually, but it is easy to feel lost sometimes.   Our sin and circumstance often seem to obscure his love, his promises, and his mercy.    While scripture exhorts us to assurance, we all struggle to feel that our calling and election are sure.   When the day comes for us to stand before him, will He recognize us?   When the Lord comes again in glory will we be obscured among the tares?  

Any child, lost in a crowd, knows this fear.   They cry out for their parents, but the voices and bodies of the crowd swallow them up, threatening to prevent their reunion.   Have you every felt that way spiritually?  Lost and afraid you would never be found?  Fortunately, the scripture promises us that the Lord is perfectly able to find us, rescue us, and bring us to himself.  

At the beginning of Revelation 14, the true Lamb appears with those where were sealed by the living God with the Holy Spirit.  God’s own, there pictured as ‘the 144,000.’   The church militant has become the church triumphant.   In his fury, the Dragon made war against them, but there were no casualties.  Their number is not diminished.   Every one sealed is saved.  Not one is lost.   Despite the ravages of the enemy, the people of God stand victorious and sing victory songs before the throne. 

And as Revelation 14 unfolds even further, the scene moves from the first-fruits, to the finished harvest.   At the end of the age, the Lord returns in glory to collect all of his own and to carefully distinguish the wheat from the tares, the sons of light from the sons of darkness. None are confused.  None are mixed.   None end up in the wrong basket.  God loses none he purposed to save.  None are lost who trusted in grace.   But all are lost who trusted in their works or wits.   Do you have this kind of assurance?   If not, where is your hope? 

Are you trusting in God’s grace in Jesus, or in your own works or wits?  Final judgement before a Holy God is a certainty.  Scripture is unequivocal in this truth.   But it is equally adamant that “all who come to [Jesus] will never be cast out.”   Join us this Lord’s Day as we consider Revelation 14:14-20 and consider the assurance of God’s promise that he is coming again and when he does, he will take us – all of us that are his – to himself.   No child of his will be left behind.

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.