In this sermon from Philippians 2:9, Pooyan considers the greatness, glory, and absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. While people make costly mistakes every day—failed exams, engineering errors, lost projects—there is no tragedy greater than underestimating Jesus Christ.
Christ is the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Lord of all—and every knee will bow before Him.
The question is not if you will bow, but when.
Source: The Greatness of Christ: His Humiliation, Exaltation, and Your Soul
Matthew Henry’s “Method For Prayer”
For God’s gracious owning of him in his undertaking, and in the carrying of it out.
I bless you that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself, not counting their trespasses against them, and that you have entrusted to your people the message of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:19(ESV)
That you have yourself made him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples; Isaiah 55:4(ESV) that he was consecrated and sealed, John 6:27(ESV) and sent into the world; John 10:36(ESV) and that the Father who sent him did not leave him alone, for he always did the things that are pleasing to him. John 8:29(ESV)
Glory be to God in the highest, for in and through Jesus Christ there is on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. Luke 2:14(ESV)
In this the love of God was made manifest, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that all who are his might live through him. 1 John 4:9(ESV)
I thank you that you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. John 17:2(ESV)
Psalm 1 In these lessons we see that our growth in holiness is dependent upon our being grounded in the Word of God, which points us to the Lord Jesus Christ as the only source of salvation and sanctification.
Theme
Christ Our Example
It is appropriate that one of our series on the great chapters of the Bible should be the first psalm, because this psalm sets before us the doctrine of the two ways and encourages us to walk in the way of the godly. Psalm 1 is also important because it points us to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Before the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, there was an evangelist named Joseph Flax who had an opportunity to speak to a gathering of men containing both Jews and Arabs. He did so on the basis of this psalm, first reading it and then beginning the discussion by asking a question. He asked, “It is most obvious that these opening verbs are in the past tense. [They have a present sense and are translated as present in English, but they are actually past tense.] Who is the man about whom the psalmist is writing?” There was a great pause.
“Is that man perhaps Abraham, the father of the faithful?” he asked.
An aged Jewish gentleman in the back of the group stood up and replied, “No, it could not have been Abraham, because Abraham listened to evil counsel, the counsel of his own heart, on the occasion when he lied about his wife. It couldn’t be Abraham.”
Flax said, “That is correct. Then who could it be? Could this perhaps be Moses, the giver of the Law?”
Another gentleman stood up and said, “No, it was not Moses, because Moses was a murderer. He killed an Egyptian and hid his body in the sand.”
“Quite correct,” said the evangelist. “It wasn’t Moses. Perhaps then it was David. Maybe the psalmist is writing about himself.”
“No,” said another gentleman, “it wasn’t David, because David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband Uriah killed in order to cover up the adultery. It wasn’t David.”
“Well then,” asked Mr. Flax, “about whom is the psalmist writing?”
At this point one of the men said, “I am not sure of this, and I am not ready to answer along these lines, but I have a little book here that I’ve been reading. It’s called the New Testament, and from what I read here about an outstanding man, I would be inclined to say that the man about whom the psalmist is writing is Jesus of Nazareth. He did not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers.”
At this point another man added, “Well, I have never been bold enough to say this before, but I am convinced that this is so and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. I place my trust in Him.”
When we examine this psalm (and even more importantly, when we examine ourselves in the light of this psalm) it is evident: 1) that none of us has lived in this way; and 2) that only Jesus Christ has. Therefore, if we would be like the man who does not sit in the seat of the scornful but who meditates on the law and thus prospers in all he does, we must be helped by Jesus Christ, who is the only one who has ever done those things perfectly. That is to say, we must be followers of Christ.
This is a brilliantly written psalm. In the New International Version there is a break in the middle between the first section, which speaks of a godly man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked (vv. 1–3) and the second section, which speaks about the wicked (vv. 4–6). But the psalm is written in such a way that what the psalmist has to say about each overlaps. When he writes about the godly, the man who does not do this or that, at the same time he is describing the course of the wicked. In the same way, later on when he speaks about the wicked (that he “will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous”) he is also, by contrast, speaking of the godly man, who will stand in the judgment and in the assembly of God’s people.
Study Questions
Application
Application: Make it a goal this week to memorize Psalm 1.
For Further Study: To learn more about the Bible’s teaching on the two ways, download for free and listen to James Boice’s message, “Two Ways Only.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
https://www.thinkandactbiblically.org/monday-christ-our-example/
I have recently become involved in student ministry as a Family Life Pastor over the last few months. As a trained academic with a PhD in Apologetics, I wondered how much of my training I would really be able to use in this capacity. Would students care about apologetics? Would they even need it? What I quickly learned is that apologetics can and really should have a major role in student ministry.
As someone that had mainly been involved with college students for the past decade plus, I was shocked at some of the questions that I received within weeks at the new ministry. One student said she had seen someone on TikTok claim that the New Testament was untrustworthy. Others asked about things like, Can I believe the Bible? Why is the Bible important? How do I even know that God exists? These are students between 12-18 years old. However, because of the wide impact of social media and the internet, they had been exposed to ideas that previous generations had not been hit with until much later in life.
Another thing that quickly came to my attention was the fragile state of many students’ faith and their confusion about their own identity. This is not limited to my own youth group; these questions and struggles are common throughout this age. Students have questions about why they should trust a Bible that attacks things like transgenderism or homosexuality. Why should they trust the Bible over other ancient texts, or even why should they trust any religious system at all? Gone are the days in America or the West at large where parents and pastors can take for granted that their kids will be predisposed to accept Christianity over other religious systems or secularism in general. This really hits home for students that have friends or family members that are a part of the LGBT movement. They struggle with saying the Bible is correct and their friend or family member is wrong. The days of saying, “Well, the Bible says so,” and expecting that to be an adequate answer to questions is long gone.
Apologetics can become a major tool in the toolbox to counter this change in the culture and student ministry. Explaining to students why we can trust the Bible and why it is the Word of God can go a long way in giving the Bible the credibility they need to challenge the objections of their friends. Apologetics can explain how and why these students were created, that they were created in the image of God, and that God loves them and cares for them. This gives them a renewed sense of purpose in their lives, something that the secular world has tried to eliminate through things like nihilism and evolutionary theory. Indeed, don’t think your students are ever too young to learn some basic apologetic arguments and defenses of their faith. The odds are, they are already struggling with many of these issues in their own lives, even if they don’t know how to ask the right questions or where to look for the right answers. The time is now!
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist’ [FOUR unique curriculum levels for 2nd grade through to adult] by Frank Turek
Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)
Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl (Book)
Daniel Sloan is an Assistant Professor at Liberty University. He was mentored by the late Dr. Ed Hindson. After Dr. Hindson’s untimely passing, Dr. Sloan was allowed to teach some of Dr. Hindson’s classes. In addition to his teaching duties, Dr. Sloan serves as an Associate Pastor at Safe Harbor Community Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Daniel graduated with his PhD in Theology and Apologetics from Liberty University. His research and expertise is in Old Testament studies. He and his wife, Natalie, live in Lynchburg, Virginia. Along with his extensive knowledge of the Bible, Daniel is an avid sports fan.
Originally posted at: https://bit.ly/487YFzi
The post The Role of Apologetics in Student Ministry appeared first on CrossExamined.
Navigating the complexities of family gatherings, especially during holidays like Thanksgiving, can be challenging yet deeply rewarding.
Thanksgiving was one of our favorite holidays. Waking up, we could smell the turkey baking in the oven, the sound of Thanksgiving parades on the television, and could feel the anticipation of everyone gathering around a large table, our plates filled with favorite dishes that we only get once a year.
Growing up in a large family with several siblings was wonderful. Core memories were established with the hustle and bustle of holidays, rich with laughter, play, energizing conversations, and fun. There is nothing like family, especially around the holiday season.
However, as we all grew up and our individual families expanded, with more family members being added to the mix, bringing different backgrounds, communication styles, and personalities, it sometimes introduced a bit of tension and challenge to the Thanksgiving holiday environment.
Recognizing that the holidays can be stressful and family relationships challenging, we know that combining the two can be even more difficult. But Psalm 133:1 tells us, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” God created family and knew that we would sometimes struggle to maintain unified relationships, so we need to turn to Him for guidance on how to live as one.
One of the first things we can do to encourage unity in our families is to pray.
There are several areas of prayer to consider when praying for unity over our families during the Thanksgiving season. We can pray for:
U – Understanding
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” – Ephesians 4:2
Pray that God would soften the hearts of family members from all generations, creating a fertile environment that welcomes connection. To understand, you must listen, not just to hear, but to learn. Take the time to learn things about each other that you didn’t know before. Listen to the stories they tell and ask questions about their lives so that you can truly begin to understand them.
Father God, we ask that you would create in us a clean heart, one that is open to your correction and clean from anything that would hinder us from accepting others. You are gentle, patient, and humble, and we strive to embody these same qualities in our interactions with others. Please give us patience and wisdom as we interact with those who may be challenging. Give us love for one another and help us to be a good example of the change in me. Please help us to understand. Amen.
N – Nurture
“Encourage one another and build each other up.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:11
To nurture is to encourage and build one another up. Strive to be patient and kind, thinking about others more than yourself. Find common ground and pray that we can begin to see others through God’s eyes. Be quick to provide honest compliments and accolades on things done well. Extend grace when mistakes are made and look for the positive strengths in each person.
Father God, encourage us so that we can inspire others. Fill us up so that we can give naturally out of the overflow of our own hearts. Heal wounds that haven’t been healed and soften places that have grown hard and bitter. Please help us to build each other up, both the young children in our families and the elders we learn from. We want to strengthen the next generation in their faith and be gracious to those who walked their faith journey out in front of us. Please help us to nurture others. Amen.
I – Interaction
“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” – Proverbs 16:24
To encourage unity is to be aware of the power of your words. Our interaction with one another is based on communication – both verbal and nonverbal. Our goal should be to use our words and gestures to build one another up, but to do so, we must let our words and gestures be positive. Use your words to bring encouragement, healing, and joy to those around you, even when faced with challenges.
Father God, remind us that our words are powerful. When others challenge us, help us to step back and respond as Jesus did. Let every word be uplifting, bringing glory to You. Help our verbal and nonverbal communication reflect our life of faith. We want our words to be healing, bringing our family members together, not tearing them apart. Let us not use our words to belittle others to build ourselves up. Give us wisdom in helping to diffuse challenges that may arise. We give these things to you because you are able. Help our interaction to be pleasing to You. Amen.
T – Trust
Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. Matthew 5:37
Sometimes, when trust has been broken, it can destroy a relationship for generations to come. Jesus taught us that giving your word is vital in building trust, and anything more than that is from the evil one. Trust must be earned, but you can start the process of earning trust by being honest and transparent. Stay away from gossip and treat others as you would want to be treated. Don’t let the wounds of the past ruin the unity of the family.
Father God, help us first to trust you. We know that you have placed every person in their rightful place as members of our family, and we trust that you know best. Help us behave in a trustworthy way so that we can be the example we need to be. Break down any barriers that have been placed between relationships and have caused distance and pain in the past. Create an atmosphere of safety, free from judgment and gossip, so that trust can be established and grow. We know that you are capable; please give us wisdom in this area, as it can be challenging at times. Please help us to trust and to be trustworthy. Amen.
Y – Yielding to God’s Way
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” — Ephesians 5:21
Yielding to God’s way out of obedience is key to creating an atmosphere that glorifies the Lord. Paul teaches in the book of Ephesians that submission to one another is a way to reverence Christ. To submit is to take the mindset of humility, treating others with respect. This can be difficult in strained relationships, but it begins with one person deciding to bring unity to a family by walking in obedience to the Lord.
Father God, it is sometimes difficult to submit to one another due to wounds from the past. So, first, we will submit our hearts to You because You are trustworthy. We also give you our pride, our selfish ways, and our desires. Bring them all under the submission of Christ. As we submit to you, please help us to submit to others in our family. We know that Matthew 20:16 says that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and we ask that You bring this back to our remembrance, as we yield to Your way, not our own. Prompt us when we begin to get prideful and help us to be selfless in our interactions with others. This will help bring unity to our family and remind us of all that we should be grateful for. Please help us yield to your way, because in that, there will be peace and unity. Amen.
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Is this easy to do? Absolutely not. It takes one-on-one time with God, asking Him to heal what needs to be healed, giving you forgiveness where things need to be forgiven, and strength to see through His eyes and love as He loves for the good of unity in the family.
As we gather together as a family around the Thanksgiving table filled with blessings, let us set aside our differences, pride, and unforgiveness, and put on love. “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” — Colossians 3:14
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Drazen Zigic
Dr. Cindy Collier, a retired educator and psychologist of 35 years, is now the director of missions, a speaker, a women’s Bible teacher, and a writer. She has been featured on Bible Study Tools, Crosswalk, and is the author of two educational books: The Special Educator’s Toolkit and The Data Collection Toolkit. She is a survivor of an abusive marriage controlled by addiction, pornography, and mental illness. Cindy is using her testimony and sharing the testimonies of other women to glorify God on her website: CindyCollier.org and her social media sites.
Originally published November 18, 2025.
https://www.crosswalk.com/family/parenting/a-thanksgiving-prayer-for-family-unity.html
The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 is the most well-known prayer in human history — but that familiarity can work against us. By assuming we already know what it means, we miss the depth and power Jesus intended.
Understanding Jesus’ prayer in its original context changes things. After years of study, teaching, and leading trips to the Bible lands, we’ve developed a simple yet powerful framework at Walking The Text called the six “Lenses of Context” that help us see the Bible as it was meant to be understood. Each lens offers a fresh perspective to sharpen our vision.
By context, we mean all of the details Biblical writers didn’t include because they assumed their readers already knew: history, culture, geography, language, literary design, and visual settings of these places.
As you explore each lens, you’ll begin to see that this ancient prayer is so much more than a mantra to recite, but an invitation to join Jesus in his mission of bringing heaven here.
The Lord’s Prayer begins with the words, “Our Father.” For us, these are familiar words — even comforting, depending on your relationship with your own father. But in the first century AD, calling God Father was bold, even dangerous. That’s because in the Roman Empire, Caesar claimed the title pater patriae — “father of the country.” To call God Father was a way of saying Caesar isn’t ultimate. God is.
One of the ways Rome’s Caesar acted like a father was through the Annona, a daily grain allowance provided for citizens in Rome. The only problem was that Rome didn’t grow enough grain for itself. It filled its storehouses by stripping grain from the lands it conquered — especially Egypt and Judea. Caesar fed some of “his children” by taking from others. Jesus, by contrast, taught his followers to pray to a Father whose kingdom doesn’t exploit, but provides.
In the Roman world, dependence on Caesar meant living under his thumb. The daily grain allowance was a constant reminder of who held power. But Jesus redefines dependence — not as a tool of control, but as a pathway to freedom. To pray for daily bread is to trust a Father whose generosity doesn’t exploit but sustains.
For Jesus’ audience, bread was survival. Most lived day to day, working for a wage that could buy just enough food for the family. That’s the radical trust Jesus was inviting when he told his followers to ask God for daily bread.
Instead of hustling to secure more and more, the Lord’s Prayer calls us back to the basics: Today, Father, give me what I need today. It’s a posture of trust that reshapes our striving, softens our fear, and frees us from confusing provision with control.
Whenever we step into a culture radically different from our own, we feel the shock. Reading the Bible is the same kind of cross-cultural experience. For those of us shaped by the modern Western world, entering the world of Scripture means learning to see through very different eyes.
In Jesus’ day, Jewish sages and rabbis gathered disciples who longed to imitate them in every way. About two centuries before Jesus, a rabbi named Yose ben Yoezer captured this spirit when he wrote:
“Let your house be a meeting-place for the sages (rabbis);
sit in the dust of their feet;
and drink in their words with thirst.”
(Mishnah Avot 1:4)
A rabbi walking the roads of Galilee would kick up dust as he traveled. To be covered in that dust was a badge of honor — proof you were following closely. That’s why, in Luke 11, one of Jesus’ disciples asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” He wasn’t saying, “Give us tips for making prayer more personal.” He was saying, “Teach us to pray the way you pray. Give us your words.”
In our world, we often assume prayer is only authentic if it’s spontaneous. But in the Jewish world, prayer was authentic when it aligned your heart with God’s. Prayer wasn’t about pouring out your feelings; it was about being so deeply shaped by God’s words that you learned to feel what they expressed.
That’s the gift of the Lord’s Prayer. When Jesus said, “Pray like this,” he was inviting his disciples to walk in his dust — to let his prayer shape their own, and to live as he lived, in alignment with the words he gave them to pray.
“Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them” (Matthew 5:1-2, NIV).
Geography isn’t background detail — it often explains why the story happens at all. By delivering his message on a mountain, Matthew wants us to hear echoes of Moses on Mt. Sinai. After rescuing his people from Egypt, God brought them to Sinai where Moses gave them God’s commandments — His principles for living. Then God planted Israel in Canaan, what biblical geographers call “the land between.” Situated at the crossroads of the ancient world, it was the place where the great empires of Africa, Asia, and Europe converged. It linked trade routes, bridged seas, and funneled cultures into constant contact.
It’s as if God said, “I want you here, where the world passes through. Be my living message — so that when people encounter you, it will be as if they are encountering me.”
Just as Moses gave Israel God’s covenant law, Jesus was now giving his disciples a vision of what life in God’s kingdom looks like through his Sermon on the Mount. And he did it in Galilee — a place buzzing with crossroads energy, at the intersection of three different political districts. Around the Sea of Galilee, you could find Torah-keepers, Roman loyalists, political zealots, and pagan influences — all colliding in one small region.
And right there, in the middle of all those competing voices, Jesus trained his disciples for life in the kingdom not by arming them with arguments for every debate, but by anchoring them in the truth with words to steady their hearts: Our Father in the heavens, holy be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done. It’s a lifeline — rooting us in God’s story and training us to live faithfully no matter what cultural crosscurrents we face today.
Words matter. The Bible wasn’t written in English. The Old Testament came to us in Hebrew (with parts of Ezra and Daniel in Aramaic), and the New Testament in Greek. That’s why we have so many translations — because no single English word can always capture the full depth of the original language.
But sometimes the difference isn’t in a word, but in the grammar. For example, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he didn’t say “My Father” or “Give me this day my daily bread.” He said:
Our Father.
Give us.
Forgive us.
Deliver us.
The entire prayer is in the plural because faith isn’t a solo project. It’s a communal way of life. But that doesn’t come naturally to those of us who live in Western cultures that prize individualism and self-reliance.
Jesus teaches us to pray in the plural daily so that we remember there’s no such thing as following Jesus on your own. This prayer re-centers us in community — reminding us that our story is tied to the flourishing of others.
Biblical authors often communicated powerful messages not just with the words they used, but with how those words were arranged. Understanding the literary context of a passage — things like genre, design, who, what, when, and where — can unlock profound insights.
In Western culture, we tend to save the best for last — the grand finale at a fireworks show or the final scene of a movie. But the Bible often does the opposite, placing the most important material at the center like a literary sandwich. And that’s exactly what Matthew does with the Sermon on the Mount.
The Sermon itself is arranged into three broad sections: an introduction (Matthew 5:1-16), a body (Matthew 5:17-7:12), and a conclusion (Matthew 7:13-29). Zoom in closer, and you’ll see that the body also divides into three parts: righteousness toward Torah (Matthew 5:17-48), righteousness toward God (Matthew 6:1-18), and righteousness in everyday living (Matthew 6:19-7:12). Then zoom in even closer, and the section on righteousness toward God divides again into three practices: giving (Matthew 6:1-4), prayer (Matthew 6:5-15), and fasting (Matthew 6:16-18).
And right at the center of the center of the center — what do we find? The Lord’s Prayer.
Matthew is doing everything in his written power to shout: “Look here! This is the heart and soul of it all!” Zoom in one final time, and at the very center of the Lord’s Prayer itself we find the heartbeat of it all: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
That’s not just literary design. If we’re honest, most of us place ourselves in the center and push God to the edges. We end up chasing what’s trivial and neglecting what’s eternal. Matthew’s structure reminds us there is a center, and it’s not us. It’s God’s kingdom breaking into the world.
Jesus, the master teacher, knew the power of visuals. He constantly used imagery to anchor truth in the hearts of his listeners.
And when it comes to the Lord’s Prayer, the setting matters. Picture yourself standing on that hillside above the Sea of Galilee. To one side lay the kingdom of Herod Antipas, with its wealth and politics. To another, the territory of Herod Philip, a hotbed of armed resistance. Across the lake, the Decapolis shouted Rome’s power and pagan worldview. Everywhere you looked there were competing thrones, rival kingdoms, and clashing values.
And it’s here — at the crossroads of empire — that Jesus gave his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. Not a set of political strategies or cultural coping techniques, but words to steady their hearts.
Think about that. In a landscape surrounded by kingdoms, Jesus points to another kingdom altogether. His prayer becomes a compass — not directing us toward fear, compromise, or retaliation, but toward trust in God’s reign breaking into the world.
We need that compass, too. Our lives are just as crowded with rival kingdoms: the kingdom of consumerism, always telling us we need more; the kingdom of achievement, whispering we’ll never measure up; the kingdom of partisanship, demanding that we pick a side. In the swirl of voices, it’s easy to feel pulled in every direction, wondering who really sits on the throne. But Jesus teaches us to pray differently. Your kingdom come is a declaration of trust: God, I choose Your reign above the false thrones around me.
When you grasp its depth and breadth, you’ll see why the Lord’s Prayer is the single most important passage in the Bible for understanding who God is, why Jesus came, and what we’re doing here on earth. It’s a condensed summary of Jesus’ entire life and ministry. If you want to understand Jesus — if you want to share in the kind and quality of life he lived — understand his prayer.
What’s more, the Lord’s Prayer encapsulates the story of the Bible. When you understand this prayer, not only does it unleash the power of Scripture, but it unlocks you — revealing your purpose on earth and your role in God’s mission. Pondering and praying this prayer is the most important practice a follower of Jesus can do every day!
When we uncover the world behind the prayer, we’ll recover the power within it.
From the creators of the global television series The Sacred Thread comes a transformative exploration of how the Lord’s Prayer unlocks the power of God to guide, heal, and renew our lives and the world around us.
Bringing Heaven Here: How The Lord’s Prayer Can Change Your Life and Our World will unveil the hidden truths and untapped power of the world’s most famous prayer — and show how it applies to your life today. Discover how to stay rooted in Him, embrace the purpose He has for you, and let the Lord’s Prayer guide you into a life of true transformation.
The post How to Pray the Lord’s Prayer: 6 Context Lenses to Understand Jesus’ Words appeared first on Bible Gateway News & Knowledge.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
verses 1–5
It is a striking fact about the one hundredth psalm that it is the only one in the Psalter explicitly identified as “a psalm for giving thanks.” This does not mean that this is the only psalm of the 150 in the Psalter that is to be used to give thanks, of course. Expressions of thanks and exhortations to give thanks occur many places in the psalms, and there are other psalms of specific thanksgiving besides this one. Psalm 107 is one. It has been called “The Pilgrims’ Psalm” because it was cherished by our Puritan forebears as an appropriate and moving description of their experiences in coming to the New World. It describes their deliverance from homeless wanderings, imprisonment, and persecutions, which they endured in Europe before coming to America, and then their perils at sea, starvation, and the deaths of family and friends, which they experienced once they had departed. It concludes,
Whoever is wise, let him heed these things
and consider the great love of the LORD (v. 43).
The pilgrims undoubtedly read this psalm with tears both of sorrow and joy on the first Thanksgiving.
Also, Psalm 118 uses the word thanks more than any other psalm, beginning and ending with the challenge:
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever (vv. 1, 29).
Yet Psalm 100 is the only psalm that is explicitly identified as “a psalm for giving thanks.” And what a psalm it is! It is the very quintessence of thanksgiving. Christians have clearly felt this throughout many generations of church history, because numerous poets have rendered it in verse and it has been sung to several well-known tunes. We know Psalm 100 significantly as “Old Hundredth.” The words are by William Kethe (1561), and the tune is by Louis Bourgeois from the Genevan Psalter.
All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with fear, his praise forthtell,
Come ye before him and rejoice.
Isaac Watts also wrote a hymn based on Psalm 100. It begins,
Before Jehovah’s awful throne,
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;
Know that the Lord is God alone,
He can create, and he destroy.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, declared, “Nothing can be more sublime this side of heaven than the singing of this noble Psalm by a vast congregation.”
The psalm is not hard to analyze. It contains seven great imperatives, plus two explanations of why we should give thanks, the first halfway through the psalm and the other at the end. Psalm 100 contains: (1) a statement of how to give thanks, (2) an explanation of why God’s people must give thanks, (3) an invitation to give thanks, and (4) a final great expression of praise or thanksgiving.
Three Ways to Give Thanks
Occasionally, when someone has done something special for us, we find ourselves asking, “What can I do for so-and-so to show my appreciation?” It is a valid question and not always an easy one to answer. But think: If it is hard to know how to show appreciation to another human being, how much more difficult must it be to show appreciation to God? How should we show appreciation to God? We cannot thank God by giving him something. He needs nothing from us. What can we do? The opening verses suggest three things.
Why We Must Give God Thanks
The fourth imperative in this psalm is “know” (v. 3). It is very important, which is why I have set it apart to mark a second section. By including this word the psalm tells us that our thanksgiving to God must be intelligent; we must know whom we are thanking. The Athenian Greeks had been worshiping “an unknown God.” But when Paul stood on Mars hill to address them, he said, “What you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). We cannot rightly thank or worship a God who is unknown to us.
So we ask, What is it about God we should know? Verse 3 gives two answers: (1) He is our Creator, and (2) he is our Redeemer. The words are:
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
The first thing we should notice about this verse is the connection between knowing God as Creator and knowing ourselves as his creatures. This is the point John Calvin made in the opening chapter of his Institutes of the Christian Religion when he pointed out that the natural result of knowing God is to know ourselves, and that the only way we really know ourselves is by knowing God. Knowing God and knowing ourselves always go together.
But there are two specifics:
If there is no other reason why we must be thankful to God it is because he has both made us and redeemed us. No one should be more thankful to God than the sheep who are cared for by the Good Shepherd.
The second thing we need to notice about this verse is the implication of the words “h.… made us.” If it is really God who has made us, not ourselves, and if we are his because he made us, then we are his to do with as seems best to him.
Has he given us days of unusual prosperity? If so, it has pleased him to do it; we must be thankful to him for being the good and generous God he is. Has he given us days of troublesome trials or sorrow? If this is the case, we must thank him for that, knowing that he is wise and gracious even in allowing such hard times. The apostle Paul said, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:11–13). Paul was in prison when he wrote that, but the letter in which it occurs, the letter to the Philippians, is overflowing with thanksgiving.
There is one more important point in this verse, in the phrase “we are his.” Regardless of what may happen to us, we are still his. Troubles inevitably will come. But it is no matter. We are his.
Sickness may come. We are his.
We may lose a job. We are his.
Suppose death should come into our immediately family. We are still his, and we will always be his. God the Father said,
Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you (Heb. 13:5).
Likewise, Jesus said, “Surely I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20). The apostle Paul said he was convinced that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).
An Invitation to Thank God
The third part of the psalm is an invitation to thank God, and once again there are three strong imperatives: “enter,” “give thanks,” and “praise.” Earlier I emphasized that our thanks to God should be expressed by what we do for others. But when we get to verse 4 the emphasis is clearly upon the gathering of God’s people to the temple to thank and praise God together. This is not just a way of saying that it is good to go to church, though that is true enough. It teaches that there is a special aspect of thanksgiving that involves the whole people of God together and not just the private prayers of individuals.
This is what we should expect, of course. For when God called us to Christ he did not call us in isolation but to be his elect people together, participating in a common heritage. This means that those among whom, for whom, and with whom we should give thanks are other believers. Moreover, we should exercise responsibility toward these others by encouraging a thankful response in them toward God. I can imagine that this psalm was often used as an invitation from one Jewish worshiper to another to come to the holy city or to the temple to thank God for his benefits.
How do we thank God? One way is by inviting others to join us in the thanksgiving. We can ask others to go to church with us. I notice that the psalm begins this way: “Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth” (v. 1). It is an invitation to all the people of all the world to praise God.
The Character of God
The final verse of the psalm, like verse 3, explains why you and I should thank God. But it is not just a repetition of the first explanation. The third verse said that we should thank God because of what he has done; he has both made and remade us. That is, he is both our Creator and Redeemer. The final verse invites us to thank God because of who he is. It tells us three things about him.
Boice, J. M. (2005). Psalms 42–106: An Expositional Commentary (pp. 809–815). Baker Books.
TITLE.—A Psalm of Praise; or rather of thanksgiving. This is the only Psalm bearing this precise inscription. It is all ablaze with grateful adoration, and has for this reason been a great favourite with the people of God ever since it was written. “Let us sing the Old Hundredth” is one of the everyday expressions of the Christian church, and will be so while men exist whose hearts are loyal to the Great King. Nothing can be more sublime this side heaven than the singing of this noble Psalm by a vast congregation. Watts’ paraphrase, beginning “Before Jehovah’s awful throne,” and the Scotch “All people that on earth do dwell,” are both noble versions; and even Tate and Brady rise beyond themselves when they sing—
“With one consent let all the earth
To God their cheerful voices raise.”
In this divine lyric we sing with gladness the creating power and goodness of the Lord, even as before with trembling we adored his holiness.
Exposition
MAKE a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
2 Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
3 Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
5 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Spurgeon, C. H. (n.d.). The treasury of David: Psalms 88-110 (Vol. 4, pp. 233–238). Marshall Brothers.
I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not. (Isaiah 42:16)
Think of the infinitely glorious Jehovah acting as a Guide to the blind! What boundless condescension does this imply! A blind man cannot find a way which he does not know. Even when he knows the road, it is hard for him to traverse it; but a road which he has not known is quite out of the question for his unguided feet. Now, we are by nature blind as to the way of salvation, and yet the Lord leads us into it and brings us to Himself, and then opens our eyes. As to the future, we are all of us blind and cannot see an hour before us; but the Lord Jesus will lead us even to our journey’s end. Blessed be His name!
We cannot guess in which way deliverance can possibly come to us, but the Lord knows, and He will lead us till we shall have escaped every danger. Happy are those who place their hand in that of the great Guide and leave their way and themselves entirely with Him. He will bring them all the way; and when He has brought them home to glory and has opened their eyes to see the way by which He has led them, what a song of gratitude will they sing unto their great Benefactor! Lord, lead Thy poor blind child this day, for I know not my way!
He giveth grace unto the humble. (James 4:6)
Humble hearts seek grace, and therefore they get it. Humble hearts yield to the sweet influences of grace, and so it is bestowed on them more and more largely. Humble hearts lie in the valleys where streams of grace are flowing, and hence they drink of them. Humble hearts are grateful for grace and give the Lord the glory of it, and hence it is consistent with His honor to give it to them.
Come, dear reader, take a lowly place. Be little in thine own esteem, that the Lord may make much of thee. Perhaps the sigh breaks out, “I fear I am not humble.” It may be that this is the language of true humility. Some are proud of being humble, and this is one of the very worst sorts of pride. We are needy, helpless, undeserving, hell-deserving creatures, and if we are not humble we ought to be. Let us humble ourselves because of our sins against humility, and then the Lord will give us to taste of His favor. It is grace which makes us humble, and grace which finds in this humility an opportunity for pouring in more grace. Let us go down that we may rise. Let us be poor in spirit that God may make us rich. Let us be humble that we may not need to be humbled but may be exalted by the grace of God
A compelling call for Christians to awaken, reclaim biblical truth, and confront cultural challenges, While We Were Sleeping urges believers to engage courageously with issues shaping families, faith, and the nation’s future.
While We Were Sleeping: A Wake-up Call for All Christians is my alarm clock to announce that we have been sleeping long enough. It’s time to wake up, get up, and take a stand. To return to biblical principles and to proclaim, Enough! We are taking back what the enemy has stolen. Thank you, Daily Declaration, for allowing me to launch my new book on your platform.
The book starts with marriage, family and education, and progresses to explore the social issues seeking to shipwreck the Judeo-Christian values of our society, concluding with spiritual warfare, Islam and Israel.
The tone of my book echoes that of Michael Yousseff’s. Here is a quote from his tome, The Hidden Enemy (2018):
As various leaders and authors in the church subtly move away from a biblical understanding of social issues, the church is being led into apostasy and error, while the nation is being led into secularism, moral relativism, and depravity.
The church has surrendered its role of influence in the public square and in the national conversation. The church has sidelined itself and made itself irrelevant at the very time that the world is in desperate need of God’s truth. (p. 145)
Similarly, my book seeks to translate Eric Metaxas’ Letter to the American Church (2022) into an Australian context. Eric introduces his book:
I have written this book because I am convinced the American Church is at an impossibly – and almost unbearably – important inflection point. The parallels to where the German Church was in the 1930s are unavoidable and grim. So the only question-and what concerns us in this slim volume – is whether we might understand those parallels and thereby avoid the fatal mistakes the German Church made during that time, and their superlatively catastrophic results. If we do not, I am convinced we will reap a whirlwind greater even than the one they did.
While We Were Sleeping is designed for Christians, church leaders and congregations alike. However, while directed to a Christian audience, it is also accessible to anyone anxious about the state of the world and concerned for the future of their children and grandchildren.
Each chapter is introduced by a personal testimony from an individual engaged with or experienced in the topic. I then introduce a range of perspectives to give us language for debate, and each chapter concludes with a section entitled, What Does God Say?
I want you to be encouraged by this selection of quotes from six of the fifteen chapters. While addressing dire situations, they offer hope — there is still time.
Arguably, Lyle Shelton was Australia’s loudest advocate for the preservation of marriage as God intended against the drive for same-sex marriage. One of the fallouts from the loss of this fight has been falling marriage rates and birth rates.
We need people to get married! I would encourage young people to not worry about whether they can afford a house, or whether they have the right furniture, just get married and enjoy being poor together. Have fun! You will be more prosperous in the long term, don’t let economics stop you getting married. Marry young and stay faithful to the one person. Marriage is not try-before-you-buy, it’s not till we fall out of love, it’s in sickness and in health.
— Lyle Shelton, National Director of the Family First Party
Lindsey has mounted a grassroots campaign against screen addiction, particularly as it impacts the very young. She has taken on a school principal and an education minister to try to stem the spread of screen time in schools.
Talking about the connection between screen addiction and porn; I know that schools are one of the first places kids see pornography, and it’s usually by Year 4, either on the devices brought in from home or on the devices that the school provides, and schools fail to install effective filters, or the kids learn how to get around them. Then peer pressure forces each other to look at it.
— Lyndsey Fuchs, mother of three boys and one girl
The scourge of transgenderism that has devastated families and inflicted irreversibly harm on so many young people, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent, has been opposed by Kirralie Smith, who is still fighting in the courts for the right to acknowledge biological facts.
The church has to get back to the truth. I hear, heartbreakingly, so many testimonies from people in churches saying their pastors won’t talk about it and all they say is that we have to ‘love’ these people. Some have allowed transgender-identified men into their female toilets, they don’t challenge, they simply say we have to accept them. But this does not set these people free. It doesn’t bring healing; it doesn’t bring wholeness.
— Kirralie Smith, national spokeswoman for Binary
In the last year or so, abortion-up-to-birth has seen many outraged. But abortion at any stage of pregnancy is murder. Jodie Pickard has devoted her life’s work to enrolling churches as Houses of Refuge, places of refuge and safety for anyone dealing with an unplanned/crisis pregnancy.
I started going to our abortion clinic and offering help. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. Less than a year later (in 2020), the South Australian Parliament legislated a 150-metre exclusion zone, which outlawed any communication related to abortion around a facility that performs them. It also prohibited praying. What has become of our nation when praying is made illegal?
— Jodie Pickard, Founding Director of Love Australia, a leading pro-life organisation
I would argue that John Anderson is one of the few remaining statesmen here in Australia. After a stellar career in federal parliament, his podcasts now reach millions across the globe. His argument is that Christians have left the public square of politics, but it is not too late to get back in the fight.
We have taken God out of our society and culture, and government has become our god. And this ultimately disappoints us as it’s only human government. Pride gets in the way. Gamesmanship is now played by so many people in public life that it threatens the very fabric of our society. There are honourable exceptions.
I would say to Christians, ‘Wake up, get behind people who are seeking to serve and are not seeking to be served. You’ve got a responsibility, they need you, so they can be strengthened and emboldened to carry on the battle.’
— John Anderson, six years as Leader of the National Party and Deputy Prime Minister
My own friend and pastor from my English days, Gordon Hickson, has led a remarkable campaign to see 30 million Muslims saved. This chapter, perhaps more than any other, shook my foundations. I now see the Islamic world in a new light.
God said to me very clearly, ‘Face the facts, don’t fuel the fear, find a friend.’ If we do those three things, we will find Muslims coming through to Christ. It’s love that never fails. Love has to work with faith, and faith comes through hearing God in prayer.
— Ps Gordon Hickson, co-founder of the ministry of Mahabba Network
So much of our western Christianity seems to routinely acknowledge the world is getting darker by the hour, but fails to call out the specifics with the warranted gravitas or to encourage and equip their people to take a personal stand against the tide of evil; or how, corporately, the church might take back the land that the enemy has stolen (1 Samuel 30:8). Let’s not be caught sleeping when the Master calls (Matthew 25:1-13).
___
Image courtesy of Adobe.
The post While We Were Sleeping: A Wake-up Call for All Christians appeared first on The Daily Declaration.
Maybe this question echoes faintly in the back of your mind. Perhaps it slips in unnoticed as sorrow fills your heart and quickly becomes something to dwell on. Even if this question has never consumed you, my guess is that you’ve asked it before. It’s a functional rite of passage for those interested in apologetics or taught in the school of suffering. Maybe you haven’t asked it out loud, but you’ve likely felt the tension of this question: Why do bad things happen to good people?
“No one is good but God.” Perhaps you can even hear that answer. It’s how we tend to respond to this question, isn’t it? We point to Jesus, the perfect God-man who died for our sins, reiterating that there are no good people and that all of us deserve the judgment of God.
And this is correct. Paul tells us in Romans 3 that no one is righteous. Everyone has sinned. Sin incurs the wrath of God, and if everyone has sinned, then we all deserve the judgment of God.
People die because of sin. Judgment happens because of evil. Bad things happen because God is just.
And yet, even as I affirm this answer in its entirety, two passages in the Bible have reshaped how I view this question.
The Mystery of Justice
The first passage is Genesis 18. In this passage, God promises to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. Abraham, knowing that his nephew Lot lives in Sodom, intercedes with God.
“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” he opens (18:23).
What could perhaps be taken as innocent curiosity soon begins to show its true colors: “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” (18:24).
Abraham believes that the entire city of wickedness should be spared on account of a few righteous. His question borders on assuming the answer: “Of course God would spare the whole city on behalf of the righteous.” The next verse tells us why.
Abraham continues in 18:25, “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
Abraham isn’t accusing God of being unjust. He’s saying that because God is just, he can’t wipe away the righteous with the wicked. It would be unjust to do so, and this is why Abraham seemingly assumes the answer in his question. But, of course, Abraham is merely a man, and we see examples throughout Scripture of people who have skewed perspectives.
Yet, I don’t think Abraham has a skewed perspective here. For one, far from rebuking Abraham for his strong words, God promises that he will not destroy the whole city if he finds fifty righteous, seemingly indicating his agreement with Abraham (18:26). Additionally, Lot—whom Peter calls righteous (2 Pet. 2:7)—is indeed saved by God from the destruction of Sodom. Finally, Abraham never repents, nor does the narrative ever seem to critique Abraham’s words. By all accounts, Abraham’s words seem to be true: the righteous should not be punished alongside the wicked.
The passage leaves Abraham ignorant of the outcome. God’s departing promise is that he will not destroy the city if ten righteous people are present in it. The next time we see Abraham is in Genesis 19:27, where he goes up the mountain to speak with God and watches smoke rise from the ashes of Sodom. We have no record in Scripture of him meeting Lot again, no promise from God that Lot would be spared. Amid the mystery, Abraham is left with his faith in a just God. Abraham may not know that Lot survived. He may not know why God chose to destroy the city even with Lot there. But he does know that God is just and faithful, even when it seems like bad things might happen to good people.
The Mystery of Death
The second passage that speaks to this question is Ecclesiastes 8:14, where Solomon writes, “There is an enigma[1] that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is enigma.”
The context reveals that Solomon is speaking of death. Here, like Abraham, Solomon wrestles with the mystery of the death of the righteous. How can this happen? How can the wicked survive in all their sin while the righteous die what seems to be the sinner’s death, despite their righteousness? How can bad things happen to righteous people?
Solomon doesn’t give us answers. Quite the opposite, in fact. He tells us that regardless of how hard we try, we will not find out all that God is doing in the world (8:17). We know he is still talking about the death of the righteous because he returns to this subject in 9:2, telling us again that “the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil,” that is, death. He doubles down, saying, “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all” (9:3).
Solomon, writing inspired words of Scripture, tells us that the same death happening to both the righteous and the wicked is not only mysterious, but evil.
Assurance Greater Than Answers
When people come to us with questions of theodicy, seeking to understand how a good God could allow bad things to happen to people he saved, we can tend to be dismissive. We rightly cast focus onto Christ who, though innocent, suffered on our behalf, all the while unintentionally dodging the very question Scripture itself asks.
But when we come to Scripture with this question, it doesn’t blink. “You are asking the right question,” comes the reply from its pages. It gives us some answers—enabling salvation, producing holiness, refining faith—but much is left a mystery. It is a mystery why God causes bad and good to fall both on the righteous and unrighteous, but it is not a mystery that God does it.
Perhaps that’s scary for you. You know God as a comforter, not a pain-giver, and the thought of him knowingly causing bad things to happen is uncomfortable. But to you, my friend, I say this: God is a good God. He is sovereign and in control, and that’s a very good thing. We don’t always know why God brings bad upon the good, but we know that he is always just, and he will ultimately more than make up for anything we’ve lost or any pain we’ve felt.
This makes all the difference.
So often when bad things happen, we turn to Scripture with our questions. We want answers, but instead we find promises. Promises of eternal life, of pain becoming a thing of the past, of wrongs made right, and of justice that will be done. And this means that even in the enigma of pain and suffering, even in the mystery of bad things happening to righteous people, we don’t have to fear.
You don’t always know what God is doing in your life. But he does. So you can trust him.
[1] I understand the Hebrew term hebel, often translated “vanity,” to refer more accurately to “mystery.” See Jason S. DeRouchie, “Shepherding Wind and One Wise Shepherd: Grasping for Breath in Ecclesiastes,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15.3 (2011): 4–25.
Trials must be met with faith in the sovereign and good God, resulting in the Christian’s growth in endurance, perseverance, or spiritual “stick-to-it-ness.” Temptations, on the other hand, require the Christian to resist wicked desires, not shift blame to others, and be aware of the disastrous path to which giving in to temptation leads. James writes,
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:13–15)
James begins his archetypal passage on temptation by warning against blame shifting. In affirming the sovereignty of God, one must never then make the erroneous theological deduction of attributing wickedness to God. Although God rules over all, he does so in such a way that he can never be blamed for evil. It is impossible to determine if James is aware of people among his addressees who were guilty of blaming God for their temptations or if James just anticipates the problem. Perhaps he explores the theoretical possibility so that he could remind his readers of the character of God. Indeed, reflecting on the character of God provides a theological antigen to temptation. James declares that God is not tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone (James 1:13). Though writing an occasional letter, here James comes close to “theology proper” in his assertion of God’s inability to be tempted to sin and his concomitant inability to induce others to sin. A thoughtful Christian may pause to ask how Jesus, the God-man, relates to this verse. One must remember that Jesus had (and has!) two natures, one divine and one human. When the New Testament authors speak of Jesus being tempted (e.g, Luke 4:2), they are speaking of the Savior from the perspective of his human nature. Likewise, when Jesus says, “I thirst” (John 19:28), or “Concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son” (Mark 13:32), he speaks from the perspective of his human nature. Jesus was sinless yet was tempted (in his human nature) in every way like us (Heb. 4:15). Systematic theologians debate the theoretical question as to whether sin was possible for Jesus because of his inherently sinless divine nature. Wayne Grudem observes,
But the question remains, “How then could Jesus’ temptations be real?” The example of the temptation to change the stones into bread is helpful in this regard. Jesus had the ability, by virtue of his divine nature, to perform this miracle, but if he had done it, he would no longer have been obeying in the strength of his human nature alone, he would have failed the test that Adam also failed, and he would not have earned our salvation for us. Therefore, Jesus refused to rely on his divine nature to make obedience easier for him. In like manner, it seems appropriate to conclude that Jesus met every temptation to sin, not by his divine power, but on the strength of his human nature alone (though, of course, it was not “alone” because Jesus, in exercising the kind of faith that humans should exercise, was perfectly depending on God the Father and the Holy Spirit at every moment). The moral strength of his divine nature was there as a sort of “backstop” that would have prevented him from sinning in any case (and therefore we can say that it was not possible for him to sin), but he did not rely on the strength of his divine nature to make it easier for him to face temptations, and his refusal to turn the stones into bread at the beginning of his ministry is a clear indication of this.1
Most critically, Christians must be aware that God is sovereign over every challenge that comes their way.
“God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). Rather, the source of fallen humanity’s temptation is an indwelling inclination toward wickedness. This indwelling evil desire can be stoked by worldly allurements (Mark 4:19) or demonic activity (1 Pet. 5:8), but in the end the human agent is to blame for allowing himself to be lured away and enticed. Commentators frequently note the unusual word order of James. The natural chronological progression of temptation is “enticement” followed by “luring away.”2 By reversing the natural chronological progression, James places emphasis on the “luring away.” The tragedy of giving in to temptation is that we are dragged away from the realm of true spiritual flourishing—pulled away from the truth, goodness, and love of God’s kingdom.
James abruptly shifts to a birth metaphor: “Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). The main point remains the same. Yielding to temptation results in a horrible downward progression—from the desire for evil, to the act of sin, to the sinner’s engulfment in the torrent of sin’s destruction. Scholars have debated what sort of “death” James speaks of here. Some have proposed that James envisions physical death as temporal punishment for a believer’s sin (cf. Acts 5:1–11; 1 Cor 11:29–30).3 More likely, James again poignantly lays before his readers two ways—one of life and one of death. There is no middle ground, no nuancing, no gray area. The path of yielding to temptation and engaging in sin leads down the road to eternal destruction. By painting in full color the end destination of sin, James warns his readers from taking that path. In actual practice, do believers often yield to sin and then repent? Yes. He tells us as much in other parts of his letter (e.g., “For we all stumble in many ways,” James 3:2). Nevertheless, the strength of James’s warning against temptation is enhanced by his lack of nuance, footnote, or commentary. Jesus used hyperbole in a similar fashion (Matt. 7:3–5; 18:8–9; 23:24; Luke 14:26).
In this broken world, the question is not whether Jesus’s disciples will face difficulties and temptations but when they will face them, to what degree, and how they will respond. James steels his readers with theological truths to prepare them for days of trials and temptations. Most critically, Christians must be aware that God is sovereign over every challenge that comes their way. Christians can rejoice because the diverse trials in their lives are being used by God to strengthen them spiritually and produce the character qualities of endurance or perseverance. When facing temptations, believers need to remember the holy, untemptable character of God (James 1:13) and consider the devastating realities to which giving in to temptation leads (James 1:15). Such spiritual truths will fortify believers to glorify God through resisting temptation and trusting him in the pressure of trials. James acknowledges that “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). Nevertheless, our loving heavenly Father is eager to lavish on us the familial reconciliation and forgiveness that restore us to a healthy relationship with him. The placement of language focusing on trials and temptations near the beginning of James’s epistle invites us to consider how his instruction on these topics applies to the later issues addressed in his letter. James’s teaching on trials and temptations is, in some respects, a perspectival window through which to view the rest of the letter.
Notes:
This article is adapted from Living Faith: A Theology of James by Robert L. Plummer.
Robert L. Plummer (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Collin and Evelyn Aikman professor of biblical studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and host of the popular screencast at DailyDoseOfGreek.com. He has authored, coauthored, or edited numerous books, including 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible; Beginning with New Testament Greek; Greek for Life; and Held in Honor.
Considering sin doesn’t have to mean conceding to it. Knowing this keeps you from being crippled by unnecessary guilt; it gives hope to keep fighting, even when temptation is raging.
Here are five things you might focus on in your prayers as you seek to do the heart work necessary in your own circumstances.
Why do we need a shield to live the Christian life? The Bible is clear: because we have an enemy, who is poised ready to attack us.
D. A. Carson, John D. Woodbridge
That you are experiencing rounds of temptation is not as unusual as you might suppose. From the inception of the church believers have found this pilgrim way to be strewn with multiple temptations.
Source: How to Respond to Temptation
Ver. 13. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments.—The purpose of life:—
I. LIFE HAS A PURPOSE. The architect intends the building he designs and erects to answer a specific end; so is it with the engineer, the ship-builder, the mechanic, the artist, the creator and fashioner of any work. Surely God must have had some end in view in making the universe, and in making us what we are, and in placing us in the midst of such wondrous realities.
II. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?
Exell, J. S. (n.d.). Ecclesiastes & The Song of Solomon (Vol. 1, pp. 314–317). Fleming H. Revell Company.
12:13 His final conclusion may give the impression that he has at last risen above the sun. He says, “Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man, man’s all.” But we must keep in mind that the fear of God here is not the same as saving faith. It is the slavish terror of a creature before His Creator. And the commandments do not necessarily mean the law of God as revealed in the OT. Rather they might mean any commands which God has instinctively written on the hearts of mankind.
In other words, we need not assign a high degree of spiritual insight to Solomon’s words. They may be nothing more than what a wise person would conclude from natural intuition and from practical experience.
This is man’s all—not just the whole duty but the basic elements that make for a full and happy life.
MacDonald, W. (1995). Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments (A. Farstad, Ed.; p. 915). Thomas Nelson.
12:13. The book concludes (here is the conclusion of the matter) with an explicit recommendation to fear God and keep His commandments. These words were not added by someone other than Solomon, as is often claimed, but are the culmination of many other implicit references in Ecclesiastes to fear God and serve Him acceptably (cf. comments on 2:24–26; 7:15–18; 11:9–10; 12:1). Here Solomon said such reverence and service are everyone’s duty (NASB‘s “this applies to every person” is preferred to NIV‘s this is the whole duty of man).
Glenn, D. R. (1985). Ecclesiastes. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 1006). Victor Books.
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
“Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.” —George Mason (1788)
The Editors
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Nate Jackson
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the feisty MAGA representative from North Georgia, has announced her resignation from Congress, effective January 5, 2026. After seeing her video, the first question I have is a serious one: Why is her Christmas tree up already when it’s not even Thanksgiving yet?
Okay, kidding (mostly) aside, Greene’s resignation after five years in Congress prompts numerous questions for the Republican Party. At the same time, it could be little more than a ripple in the grand scheme of things — by which I mean that a Democrat is not about to win GA-14.
“I believe in term limits and do not think Congress should be a lifelong career or an assisted living facility,” Greene wrote. That’s a funny line, but why resign before her term is up? Why cheat the people in her district, whom she claims to love and represent, by getting out of Dodge halfway through the term she was elected to serve?
On second thought, maybe I should be asking why she’s waiting until January 5. Well, Greene’s generous congressional pension becomes fully vested on January 3.
Oh.
Republican Governor Brian Kemp will call a special election within 10 days of the vacancy, but the seat will remain empty for at least a couple of months, robbing House Speaker Mike Johnson of a critical vote in a razor-thin majority.
MTG’s resignation came just days after President Donald Trump personally threw her under the MAGA Express, calling her, among other things, a “traitor” and a “ranting Lunatic.” She had earned it, of course, by becoming increasingly vocal against Trump’s priorities and actions in office to the point where Trump and others were wondering if she wouldn’t be a better fit on the other side of the aisle. On the other hand, Trump is a “ranting Lunatic” sometimes himself, so maybe it takes one to know one.
For better or worse, President Trump sets GOP priorities, and a single representative isn’t going to win that fight.
In a human sense, though, her statement included something with which I sympathize: “I … do not want my sweet district to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms. And in turn, be expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.”
That’s politics, but it’s not insane to say, “No thanks.”
If she has honestly faced death threats after Trump’s “traitor” condemnation, then she shouldn’t have to put up with that either.
Greene invested a lot in Trump — for example, showing personal loyalty to the point of showing up at his New York trial when few other Republicans did. The sudden souring of their relationship has been both spectacular and completely normal for people in Trump’s orbit.
As our Douglas Andrews noted after Greene issued her statement, she listed five specific issues on which she’s disagreed with Trump of late: over-issuance of H-1B visas, which she says take American jobs; state-level AI moratoriums, which she believes encroach on states rights; 50-year mortgages, which she called a debt-for-life scam; our involvement in foreign wars, which is code for Trump’s military support for Israel; and the release of the Epstein files, for which I suspect she feels some vindication. What’s interesting is that Trump is recognized as a populist president, but MTG is on the populist side in each of these five issues.
That said, Greene leans far too hard into the Uniparty idea of hers, as if there’s no difference between the parties. Sometimes, that certainly seems true. Or at least it’s true that Republicans are frustratingly ineffective at truly distinguishing themselves from Democrats. Yet Greene is simply not correct that “the results are always the same — nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman.” So far, Trump’s second term has been far short of the economic turnaround people hoped for, but his first term demonstrably improved people’s lives. So did making his first-term tax cuts permanent in this second term.
Remember, no Democrats voted to cut your taxes.
As for Trump and Greene’s relationship, Trump said on Saturday that he was open to reconciliation. “Sure, why not?” he responded to a reporter’s question. “I mean, I get along with everybody.”
He added, “I said, ‘Go your own way,’ and once I left her, she resigned. She would never have survived the primary, but I think she’s a nice person.”
Right. Also on Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “The Republican Party has never been so UNITED AS IT iS RIGHT NOW! Other than Rand Paul, Rand Paul Jr.(Massie!), Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown, and a couple of other ‘lowlifes,’ and other than the fact that many want the Election threatening Filibuster TERMINATED (the Dems will do it in the first minute of their first chance!), and some don’t, there is great spirit and cohesion.”
Actually, there are increasing signs that the MAGA movement Trump built is unravelling a bit. Something tells me that when MTG starts her own podcast, she’ll contribute a little more to that fraying. For example, she name-dropped the dreaded “Neocons” toward the end of her resignation statement, though she seems to define that as conservatives who want America to engage with the world or, more specifically, support Israel.
That’s not the correct definition, but maybe she and Tucker Carlson know that.
In any case, the Republican Party doesn’t have long to figure out what it stands for in the 2026 midterms and beyond.
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.
Fact-Check: True
“If the Democratic Party was run by the people in it … it would be the party of labor unions. It would be the party of taxing the rich.” —Senate candidate Graham Platner (D-ME)
Letting the Mask Slip
“I hate the city. I hate the bachelorettes. I hate the pedal taverns. I hate country music. I hate all of the things that make Nashville. … I hate it.” —Tennessee congressional candidate Aftyn Behn (D)
Defamation
“Isn’t it obvious … that Trump was involved with Epstein?” —”The View” co-host Joy Behar
Mea Culpa
“Our guests have a right to be upset. … We messed up.” —Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino
Re: Mass Migration
“Mass migration poses an existential threat to Western civilization and undermines the stability of key American allies. [T]he State Department instructed U.S. embassies to report on the human rights implications and public safety impacts of mass migration.” —State Department
“There is a difference between Little Italy, Little Tokyo, and Little Mogadishu. Not all cultures are equal. Some exist in a state of civilization, others exist in a state of barbarism. Choose wisely.” —Christopher F. Rufo
“If you want to stop socialism in this country, you have to do more than condemn it. For starters, maybe stop importing millions of third-world socialists, who are the entire reason Mamdani was elected in New York City.” —Sean Davis
Re: The Left
“The problem with a party line is that it is deductive, not inductive. Ideology makes facts fit dogmas, rather than evidence leading empirically to conclusions. So inflexible cults like climate-change orthodoxy, DEI, and Trump Derangement Syndrome make their adherents look utterly ridiculous.” —Victor Davis Hanson
“It is incredibly cruel of so many judges to push murderous thugs on the innocent public! And double shame on anyone who funds them to do so.” —Elon Musk
For the Record
“It’s not your imagination. Traveling has become more uncivilized!” —Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on the sorry state of air travel
“I met with Nigeria’s National Security Advisor and his team to discuss the horrific violence against Christians in their country. Under POTUS leadership, DOW is working aggressively with Nigeria to end the persecution of Christians by jihadist terrorists.” —Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
“The [Epstein] files, of course, will never be enough. There will be hundreds of ghosts to chase. If conspiracists don’t get what they’re after, they’ll simply claim that other files are being hidden.” —David Harsanyi
Upright
“The cultural identity of the United States — the religiously imbued habits, values and expectations that enable our national creed, ‘E Pluribus Unum’ — has never been infinitely malleable. America has always had a dominant public ethos shaped by a historical Protestant-majority culture.” —Josh Hammer
For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.
| ON THIS DAY in 1987, the U.S. and Soviet Union agreed to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned an entire class of nuclear weapons and called for dismantling short- and medium-range missiles. |
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
Escalating tensions to Israel’s North and South — from a major targeted strike in Beirut to new threats against an already fragile ceasefire in Gaza. Six international airlines have suspended flights to the Venezuelan capital of Caracas after the Federal Aviation administration warned major airlines about a potentially hazardous situation in the skies over South American nation. Thanksgiving is around the corner and that means millions of Americans are traveling for the holiday–it also leaves a higher risk of getting sick. In his inaugural speech, President Trump issued a call for a “Revolution of common sense.” That theme resonated with one leading Conservative, and he’s been promoting it ever since. Now Scott Jennings has written a book about the President’s vision and why he believes it’s so important. CBN’s Superbook has led the way for millions of children around the world to accept Jesus as their Savior. Now, they can learn even more about the word of God in a fun and interactive way through Superbook’s new Bible app.
Want more news from a Christian Perspective? Choose to support CBN: https://go.cbn.com/ugWBn
CBN News. Because Truth Matters™
Source: Escalating Tensions in Israel’s North and South | CBN NewsWatch – November 24, 2025
A deep dive into the rise of Islamist–leftist alliances in U.S. cities, from New York’s new mayor to rapid demographic shifts nationwide. Are we repeating Europe’s mistakes? Eric Stakelbeck and Dr. Rod Martin break down the growing threat and what comes next.
Financial records examined by RealClearInvestigations show that Warren has hardly followed the path of socialism in her personal finances.
Source: Elizabeth Warren Yells ‘Soak The Rich’ While Making Millions On Wall Street
Cancellations, sometimes violent protests, behind-the-scenes censorship, and overt government threats to muzzle the media. Free speech is doing better in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing well. It’s besieged by hostile politician and a shifting culture that is eroding the foundations of tolerance for dissent and an open marketplace of ideas. That has Americans worried, though even as they fret over the future of free speech a significant minority contribute to the problem.
Reporting the results of the quarterly National Speech Index (NSI) survey, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) noted that “a staggering 74% of Americans in the October edition of the NSI responded that things are headed in the wrong direction for free speech, compared to only 26% who believe things are headed in the right direction. This represents a 10-point jump since the previous July survey.”
“Notably, drops in confidence across all political parties contributed to the record-levels of pessimism,” FIRE added. “From July of this year, Democrats who think things are heading in the right direction fell from 17% to 11%, Independents fell from 31% to 19%, and Republicans fell from 69% to 55%.”
Unsurprisingly in these partisan times, Democrats and Republicans swapped roles as optimists and pessimists in January as the Trump administration took office. Democrats slid from 50 percent belief before the election that the country was on the right track when it came to people’s ability to express their views to 17 percent saying so. Republicans went from 24 percent confidence that the country was on the right track to 66 percent confidence. Independents also became more optimistic, though by less than Republicans. The public’s faith in the health of free expression, however, now appears to be on a universal decline.
Importantly, 59 percent of those surveyed by FIRE believed “the right to freedom of speech in America today” is either “not at all secure” (22 percent) or “not very secure” (37 percent).
The latest survey was administered after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10. That incident featured widespread public gloating over Kirk’s murder by those who disagreed with him, as well as firings and other forms of retaliation against the loudmouths—including, unfortunately, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s unconstitutional threat: “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” It wasn’t exactly a shining moment for the world’s bastion of protection for free expression as government suppression of even innocuous speech becomes more common elsewhere, including the supposedly liberal democracies of Europe.
“In the last three months, America watched as Charlie Kirk was murdered for simply debating on a college campus, followed immediately by a wave of censorship of those who opposed his views,” remarked FIRE Research Fellow and Polling Manager Nathan Honeycutt. “It’s no surprise that a record number of Americans of all parties now think that it’s a dire time for free speech in America.”
As you would expect when a culture starts to shift in ways that erode the foundations of basic liberties, the rot comes from within. While 56 percent of those surveyed completely disagreed with the statement: “The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,” 35 percent say it at least “somewhat” describes their sentiments. Another 8 percent say it “slightly” reflects their thoughts. You’d hope for a little more than bare majority support for a core protection for freedom.
Worse, 59 percent of respondents at least somewhat agreed that “words can be violence.” Characterizing speech one group dislikes as violence is often used to justify deplatforming, cancellation, and legal penalties. It blurs the distinction between ideas and action, potentially spurring real violence in response to disagreement—such as Kirk’s assassination. In September, the Buckley Institute’s National Undergraduate Study found that 39 percent of college students agreed “physical violence can be justified to prevent a person from using hate speech or making racially charged comments.”
Also, for people uncomfortable with the direction of free speech in this country, many Americans seem willing to see people tossed from their jobs for controversial comments that are politically charged but shielded from legal action by constitutional protections. According to FIRE:
The good news is that these are minority positions. The bad news is that the first one, at least, isn’t far from being a majority. And, while it’s natural that employers might want to discourage employees from saying things that tarnish the brand, these questions were all asked in the context of college professors who play with (frequently half-baked) ideas. Putting their jobs on the line won’t improve the climate for intellectual inquiry—especially when firings can result from political pressure.
Speaking of political pressure: The Biden administration infamously leaned on social media companies to muzzle dissent over pandemic policy and embarrassing news revelations. Officials used the implicit threat of legal and regulatory action to get private companies to suppress speech protected by the First Amendment. In the FIRE survey, 53 percent of respondents were very or extremely concerned about government “pressuring social media companies to suppress the posting of certain viewpoints.”
Since then, not only has Bondi hinted at action against “hate speech,” but the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of television companies that anger the president and his cronies. He did so again just days ago after an ABC reporter asked about the Epstein files. Fifty-two percent of FIRE respondents were very or extremely concerned about the federal government “pressuring private broadcast companies to remove certain viewpoints from the airwaves.”
Free speech still enjoys better protection in the United States than anywhere else in the world. But the American people are justifiably concerned that the rights protected by the First Amendment are under threat from both government and some of their fellow countrymen.
The post Most Americans Think Free Speech Is on the Decline, Survey Finds appeared first on Reason.com.
Source: Most Americans Think Free Speech Is on the Decline, Survey Finds
November 24, 2025 by Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Is Jeff Davis the Model?
Who is the real, or fictional, inspiration for the new insurrectionary wing of the Democrat Party?
The fictitious Hollywood insurrectionist, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “James Mattoon Scott” (Burt Lancaster), who in the 1964 film Seven Days in May attempted to overthrow the presidency?
Or perhaps Jefferson Davis? He ultimately ordered the attack by South Carolina state forces against the federal garrison at Fort Sumter, which ignited the Civil War.
Or is the better inspiration the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door?” Alabama Governor George Wallace likewise vowed to use his state’s law enforcement to nullify a federal law.
Yet how odd that the left, which had lectured us so often about a January 6th “insurrection”—a charge that not even the Javert-like special counsel Jack Smith ever lodged against Donald Trump—now talks frequently about the proud nullification of our nation’s federal laws.
The New Confederacy
Democrats weirdly boast of the subordination of the Constitution to international statutes. Our governors and mayors in blue states and cities take neo-Confederate vows to oppose the national government’s right to protect its own property, to direct its own employees, and to enforce our shared federal laws.
Over a decade ago, some 600 “sanctuary cities” declared that they were immune from the full enforcement of federal law. They further boasted that they would not hand over illegal aliens, detained by state or local authorities, to federal agents.
These were strange threats. Not long ago, at the 1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions, liberal grandees like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi had vowed to stop all would-be illegal aliens from unlawfully entering the U.S. Apparently, they all flipped to open borders when spiraling numbers turned the undocumented into a new Democratic constituency.
Moreover, being the left, their loud nullificationist vows were, of course, purely political and never principled.
Once, an exasperated Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, had beseeched the Obama administration in vain to enforce its own federal laws at the southern border. In frustration, she finally sought ways to use her own state’s resources to do what Obama refused.
And the reaction of the Obama administration?
It was certainly not gratitude for Brewer’s efforts to enforce federal law. Instead, the Obama crowd sued her. It successfully sought out left-wing judges to stay her state’s efforts.
How strange that our current “principled” district judges once ruled that states could not interfere with federal border policing—even in cases where the federal government was illegally refusing to enforce its own laws.
But now they’ve become neo-Confederates who routinely favor states blocking the federal government when it is finally fulfilling its constitutional duties.
Of course, if any rural red county decided that it could nullify the federal government’s laws governing handgun registration or EPA regulations, the projectionist left would deem them insurrectionary new Confederates and send in the FBI.
Coup Bluster
In Trump’s first term, some retired four-star admirals and generals—Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice be damned—talked of a sitting U.S. President Trump leaving office, the “sooner the better”—whatever that meant. Others libeled him as a “liar” and “Mussolini,” his policies comparable to those of the executioners at Auschwitz.
Some retired lieutenant colonels in 2020 even publicly advocated using military units to confront presidential security details. Did they want an armed showdown to forcibly remove Trump from the Oval Office? And in their madness, they bragged about the purported greater lethality of their army friends to defeat the president’s supporters or security details: “Trump’s little green men, so intimidating to lightly armed federal law enforcement agents, step aside and fade away, realizing they would not constitute a good morning’s work for a brigade of the 82nd Airborne.”
Do we remember the Obama-era Pentagon lawyer who, eleven days into the first Trump administration, speculated in print about how to remove an elected President Trump? She offered up the choices of Trump removal by either the 25th Amendment, the impeachment process, or a military coup: “[A] possibility [for removing President Trump] is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup…”
We also remember Gen. Mark Milley, the recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
He once apparently diagnosed Commander-in-Chief Trump as unhinged.
So Milley took it upon himself to warn his communist Chinese counterpart that during any existential crisis, the People’s Liberation Army head would be first contacted by Milley—if Milley ever felt Trump was too erratic to be obeyed (in Milley’s nonprofessional medical judgment).
So Milley reported his call as follows: “General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise.”
Milley apparently also decided that he was exempt from obeying federal laws.
As JCS chair, he also violated laws governing the chain of command. He unlawfully directed regional commanders to report to him first, should they receive a direct presidential order deemed lunatic by Milley. Yet the legal chain of command mandated that subordinate theater commanders report to, and receive presidential orders via, the Secretary of Defense.
Later, ex-generals like Milley and John Kelly routinely and emphatically blasted ex-President Trump as a “fascist.”
“Fascist” was just the sort of dangerous hyperbole that the left so often has warned us can prompt the unstable—like a Thomas Crooks or Ryan Routh—to emerge from their creepy shadows to “save the republic.”
Fort Sumter?
Democratic officials are also currently calling for organized and state-sanctioned opposition to the federal government, in near-Bleeding Kansas or Fort Sumter insurrectionary fashion.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson claims he will use his city resources to actively thwart ICE duties. In deranged fashion, he threatens to call in the UN to prevent federal law enforcement. He apparently treats the Constitution as nothing, as if Johnson were elected not by fellow citizens but by global voters from Iran to North Korea.
Johnson’s idiocy is no mere boast: when a trapped convoy of ICE vehicles was recently besieged by violent protesters, local Chicago-area police were told to stand down and let ICE fight its own way out.
In Portland, the local police sometimes advise violent Antifa-related protesters on strategies for their anti-ICE street activities, presumably to help them avoid arrest.
Consider the blather of the increasingly disturbed octogenarian Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
She recently boasted that “Trump is ‘a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth.” Then she doubled down and giggled that she “could have done much worse.”
But what exact epithet could Pelosi mean that is “much worse” than “vile” and “the worst thing on earth”?
The ‘vilest creature in the cosmos’?
Pelosi, remember, as Speaker of the House, set an embarrassing historic precedent by tearing up on national television the State of the Union address of the President of the United States when the text, as is customary, was ceremoniously presented to her by Trump. Should that now become a normal part of all SOTU addresses?
Recently, in a veritable paean to Jefferson Davis, Pelosi warned that federal agents might be arrested on her home turf if her state officers determine whether their enforcement of federal law violates California statutes.
If Pelosi’s confrontation materializes, will they use force?
Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani has boasted in the past that he will soon override federal law as mayor of New York and arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he arrive at the UN headquarters in New York.
But what if the federal government says, “NO!” Will Mamdani then call in the NYPD?
Note, Mamdani did not issue a comparable threat to the communist Chinese UN delegations, whose government oversees a million Uyghurs in work camps, nor to the Nigerians who have allowed Islamic terrorists to kill over 150,000 Christians, nor to Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine, causing over 1.5 million casualties in the greatest European slaughterhouse since World War II.
Instead, Mamdani appeals to a superior “international law.” In his unconstitutional mind, world law supersedes his own government’s constitutional authority.
As a de facto insurrectionist, Mamdani would claim that international human rights activists, or the International Criminal Court (?), deserve greater legal authority inside the U.S. than do Americans’ own elected federal government.
All that nonsense sounds like infamous Confederate Attorney General Judah Benjamin, who often bragged about how insurrectionary states could legally ignore federal authority.
Military Resistance?
Yet the most recent and dangerous example of insurrectionary nullification is an inflammatory video issued by Democrat and veteran politicos.
In it, Democratic lawmakers and veterans Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, Rep. Jason Crow, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, Rep. Chris Deluzio, and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan appeal to U.S. soldiers to “disobey” their superior officers’ orders if, in their own legal opinion, they feel the orders are “illegal” by contravening the Constitution. How or why, they do not say.
Are we then to imagine an insurrectionary fantasy of 1.3 million active-duty soldiers, now each acting as his own lawyer, questioning daily orders from their officers? Not one of these elected officials provided a single instance of any past Trump order or Pentagon directive that would serve as an example of their nullificationist dogma.
When these Democratic officials also appealed to federal intelligence officers to likewise disobey orders, should we laugh or cry?
Did any of these moralists ever issue such a video when the Obama- and Biden-era Directors of the CIA, FBI, and National Intelligence all admittedly lied under oath?
How about when “51 intelligence authorities” deliberately lied in an open letter to the American people on the eve of the 2020 election to help elect Joe Biden? Or when the FBI agents worked with private social media to suppress the news?
In the video, did these officials mean that soldiers should resist presidential orders to employ federal troops to quell domestic chaos and rioting?
Lots of presidents have done just that from the Civil War to the present.
Would they have urged U.S. soldiers to disobey any order in pursuance of the use of force without congressional approval?
If so, why didn’t they damn past presidents like Harry S. Truman, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, who all directed the military to act abroad without the approval of Congress?
How about Barack Obama’s serial use of Predator assassination drones that, on at least one occasion, blew up an American citizen?
These sanctimonious Democrat officials did not outline any possible scenarios for their advocacy of insurrectionary disobedience—because they had no example to draw on.
Nor did they dare reference in any detail Articles 90 and 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which explicitly spell out when, in the rarest of cases, a soldier can disobey an order.
The officials had no concern that their video was endangering thousands—if someone might take their advice and, without cause, disobey an order, putting lives at risk, well beyond their own careers.
What the Democrats did not say is that they cut the video to implant a false narrative that Trump was on the verge of issuing unconstitutional orders, and they were encouraging mass and politicized disobedience, after the previous failure of the shutdown, mass street protests, attacks on ICE agents, and Tesla dealerships.
The New Secessionists
Leftists are now back to the same old, same old incendiary conspiracies and paranoias of Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, removing Trump from the ballot, impeaching him twice, indicting him 91 times, raiding his home with armed FBI agents, plotting stealthily to record him to invoke the 25th Amendment— and all the dangerous and often illegal ways it has sought to destroy a political opponent by any means necessary.
We certainly are in dangerous times. But the crisis is one of the left’s own making, in overtly inciting the country to a virtual rerun of 1861.
What else is urging American soldiers to defy the orders of their superiors without citing a single specific cause?
How about claiming by fiat that entire cities and states are immune from federal jurisdiction?
What about threatening to use state officers to arrest federal law enforcement officials?
Withholding local police help and thus endangering federal agents at the hands of violent protesters?
Making a mockery of the Uniform Code of Military Justice?
Advising violent protesters on how best to demonstrate against federal officials without being arrested?
Subordinating U.S. federal law to global legal authorities?
Using city resources to help illegal aliens evade federal law enforcement?
Arresting a foreign official with diplomatic immunity and under federal legal protection when he enters a local jurisdiction?
Freelancing by sidestepping the legal rights of the Commander-in-Chief and instead phoning to tip off an enemy general?
The common theme?
The desperate left feels the more insurrectionary tensions they can gin up, the more that the ensuing domestic crises hurt an elected president whom they loathe.
They assume they are exempt from following the law because they believe they are our moral and intellectual superiors.
And so for the next four years, they will once again insist they can ignore or violate with contempt any federal law they please—as the nation is heading toward widespread civil insurrection of the left’s own neo-Confederate making.
Members of Congress are pushing for the U.S. government to take action against campus organizations with ties to Hamas. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith called on the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of several groups accused of links to terrorism, political violence, and antisemitic activity on college campuses. The request coincided with the anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel and follows earlier efforts urging the IRS to act against organizations suspected of supporting Hamas or fueling unrest.
Smith’s letter argues that tax-exempt groups must operate strictly within their stated purpose and raises concerns about entities that may be channeling resources toward Hamas or enabling antisemitic activism. The organizations cited include Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, American Muslims for Palestine, Islamic Relief USA, Alliance for Global Justice, WESPAC Foundation, Tides Foundation, Peoples Media Project (The Palestine Chronicle), and The People’s Forum.
Senator Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, launched an investigation into American Muslims for Palestine after reports that the group helped organize violent, antisemitic demonstrations on U.S. campuses.
He announced the inquiry during a hearing on campus antisemitism, noting that Students for Justice in Palestine chapters linked to AMP have been suspended or banned at multiple universities, and cited reports that at least nine individuals connected to AMP or its partner organization have past or present ties to Hamas.
Students for Justice in Palestine is an anti-Zionist student organization active on U.S. campuses and known for leading Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaigns. After Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terror attack, many SJP chapters held demonstrations praising Hamas and the killings of Israeli civilians, while participants harassed Jewish and pro-Israel students. SJP has also been linked to harassment of Jewish students, mock “apartheid walls” and “checkpoints,” eviction notices on dorm-room doors, and efforts to disrupt pro-Israel speakers.
Universities report that the group’s presence correlates with a more hostile climate for Jewish students, and research shows that nearly 75 percent of Jewish college students witnessed or experienced antisemitism during the current school year. Founded by Hatem Bazian, SJP operates nationwide and promotes BDS and anti-Israel activism.
Congressional reports and watchdog organizations describe SJP as closely connected to American Muslims for Palestine, which they identify as a successor to earlier Hamas-affiliated entities such as the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation. AMP denies these allegations, though several of its leaders previously worked within the Palestine Committee network.
Hamas supporters have operated in the United States since the 1980s. FBI wiretaps and internal Hamas documents introduced in federal cases revealed a nationwide network involved in fundraising, lobbying, education, and propaganda. In 1988, this network formalized itself as the Palestine Committee, which created several public-facing groups, including the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Occupied Land Fund (later the Holy Land Foundation), and the United Association for Studies and Research.
A 1993 FBI wiretap of Hamas activists in Philadelphia captured discussions on concealing ties to Hamas and avoiding terrorism designations. Despite later prosecutions and the shutdown of several front organizations, most notably the Holy Land Foundation—whose leaders received long prison sentences for sending over $12 million to Hamas—many core activists continued political support activities in the U.S.
Federal action also dismantled additional organizations tied to the original Hamas-support network, including the Islamic Association for Palestine and the United Association for Studies and Research. Since October 2023, multiple universities have suspended Students for Justice in Palestine.
Florida ordered state campuses to deactivate SJP chapters, and Brandeis University became the first private institution to ban the group. Columbia, George Washington, and Rutgers later issued their own suspensions, citing policy violations and threats to campus safety.
Cassidy has requested documents detailing AMP’s relationship with SJP, its operations on college campuses, and its connections to individuals involved with Hamas-linked organizations. He also sent similar requests to the Department of Justice, the FBI, and several universities.
His letter outlines allegations that AMP figures have worked with student demonstrators and supported Hamas-linked charities and describes how AMP has provided training, speakers, materials, and financial support to SJP chapters and national conferences for more than a decade.
Cassidy argues that campuses should support free speech but cannot allow organizations with alleged terrorist connections to influence students or incite conflict.
The post Lawmakers Push For Action Against Hamas-Linked Organizations in the USA appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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