There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
For the sending of the Holy Spirit to supply the want of Christ’s bodily presence, to carry on his undertaking, and to prepare things for his second coming.
I bless you that when the Lord Jesus went away, he sent his people another Helper to be with them forever, even the Spirit of truth, John 14:16-17(ESV) who shall glorify the Son, for he will take what is his and declare it to them. John 16:14(ESV)
That being exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, Acts 2:33(ESV) he poured it forth as rivers of living water. John 7:38(ESV)
Blessed be God for the signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, with which God bore witness to the great salvation. Hebrews 2:3-4(ESV)
And blessed be God for the promise that as earthly parents, though evil, know how to give good gifts to their children, so my heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him, Luke 11:13(ESV) that promised Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of my inheritance until I acquire the possession of it. Ephesians 1:13-14(ESV)
Romans 3 From this week’s lessons we learn that Romans 3 can be considered the heart of the Bible because of the clear and comprehensive way it shows us the depth of our sin, and what the Lord Jesus Christ has done to save us from it.
Theme
God’s Remedy in Christ
Propitiation comes from the world of ancient sacrifices and concerns the wrath of God. Most of us do not like the idea of wrath. We push it off. But the ancients understood more than we do at this point. They knew that God was a God of wrath because they knew they were sinners. Unfortunately, they wrongly thought that they were capable of appeasing that wrath by their actions. This is what the sacrifices were all about. Everybody had the idea that God’s wrath was appeased by sacrifices. When you did something wrong and knew that God was angry with you for acting in this wrong way, you came with a sacrifice. If your act was just a bit wrong, you brought a little sacrifice. If you had done a big wrong, you brought a big sacrifice.
The problem with the pagans’ view was that they imagined they could turn aside the wrath of God themselves. We cannot do that, but the Bible conveys the good news that God has done that for us. This is the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross. In Christ, God has turned aside His own wrath, punishing sin in the person of His Son who died for sinners. We deserve to die. The wages of sin is death, and we have sinned. Nevertheless, God sent Jesus to bear the punishment of death in our place. He experienced the wrath of God for us. So it is not a question of our turning aside God’s wrath but of God satisfying His wrath Himself so that His love might go out to save the sinner. That is the meaning of propitiation.
The second word is justification. It is a judicial term. It has to do with the courts. To justify a person is to declare that the person is in a proper relationship to the law. If someone comes into court accused of a particular crime and the case is heard and the judge decides that the law of his court is satisfied, the person is justified. He or she is free. This is what God does for us on the basis of Christ’s death. You and I are guilty before God’s laws and court. We have sinned. But Jesus died for us; as a result, when God looks at Jesus and His work, He says, “The requirements of the law are satisfied so far as this sinner is concerned. This sinner deserves to die, but Jesus has died in his place. The penalty has been paid. Therefore, I declare that this one is now justified. He is free to go.”
In verse 26 Paul says that God did this to “demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus.” What is he talking about? He is saying that there was a time in history, before Jesus Christ actually came and died in our place, when God had been justifying the ungodly. Abraham was a sinner, yet God justified Abraham. Abraham stood in a right relationship to God. So, when Abraham died, he did not go to hell; he went to heaven. When Isaiah died, it was the same situation. So also with David, Moses, and the other Old Testament believers. God justified them. He saved them.
Yet, says Paul, this really was a puzzling reality before Christ came. It was evident that God was forgiving people; He was justifying them. But on what possible basis? Is it not necessary for the judge of all the earth to do right? We can understand God wanting to forgive, but how can He forgive? Can He just forget about sins? A righteous judge cannot do that. But then the puzzle was explained. Jesus Christ died, and sin was dealt with. It was now seen how God could be the justifier of the ungodly and be just at the same time. It was because God sent His own Son to pay the debt, to die for sinners.
Study Questions
Reread Romans 3:21-26, where Paul mentions the three important doctrines of propitiation, justification, and redemption. What is the meaning of propitiation? How does the Bible’s definition of it differ from the view of ancient pagans?
Define justification. How can God be both just and the one who justifies the ungodly?
Application
For Further Study: At the center of God’s gracious action in the Gospel is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Download for free and listen to James Boice’s message, “God’s Greatest Gift.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
The future of global Christianity is African, but this explosive growth is under massive attack. Join us as we interview Paul Carden (Centers for Apologetics Research) and Rodgers Atwebembeire (Africa Center for Apologetics Research) to discuss the hidden dangers, manipulative movements, and organized cults aggressively targeting Christians across the continent. This is a deep dive into the “flip side of the Great Commission”—the vital work of doctrinal polemics and counter-cult ministry needed to prevent spiritual disillusionment and protect millions from toxic, heretical teaching.
In this urgent discussion, you will learn:
Why the Word of Faith and Prosperity Gospel movements are devastating in Africa.
The difference between general apologetics and cult-focused doctrinal polemics.
How aggressive international cults like Shincheonji (South Korea) and UCKG (Brazil) are operating.
The terrifying reality of indigenous false prophets—from those commanding followers to eat grass to those causing mass starvation deaths (e.g., the Shakahola Forest tragedy).
Why the chaos of extreme charismatic groups, including the New Apostolic Reformation, makes orderly cults, like Mormonism, appealing.
The danger of spiritual inoculation: when false doctrines turn people away from true Christianity.
The most powerful gift you can give your grandchildren this Christmas isn’t under the tree—it’s prayer. Here are 10 heartfelt ways to cover them in God’s care this season.
1. A Heart of Gratitude
1. A Heart of Gratitude
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The Bible teaches us that having an attitude of gratitude is important. Being thankful for what we have and all that the Lord has done for us is so important. Have conversations with your grandchildren frequently about what you are thankful for, what the Lord has done, and what you are trusting him to do in your life. Encourage them to be thankful for everything in their lives, no matter how big or small.
Prayer: Dear Lord, thank you for my grandchildren. They are the light of my life. Please help me be an example of gratitude to them. Help them appreciate everything in their lives, no matter how big or small. Amen.
Family bonds are important, especially at Christmas time. However, sometimes families struggle with unity and love during the holiday season. Divorced parents, family conflicts, and other issues can cause this. Pray for the parents and other adults in your family to put their differences aside and have a peaceful, civil holiday season for the grandchildren. If this is not possible, pray for your grandchildren to have God’s peace and comfort this holiday season.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I pray for our family this holiday season. Let everyone get along, or at least be civil, as we gather to celebrate you and spend time with each other. I ask that you soften hearts and help people remember that there are children around. Help us have nothing but love and unity within our family during this festive holiday season. Amen.
Photo credit: Pexels/cottonbro
3. Health and Well-Being
3. Health and Well-Being
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The health and well-being of your grandchildren is important, and with the holidays come the ‘sick season’ and ‘stress season’. Make sure your grandchildren take every precaution possible to ward off sickness, like eating healthier, getting the flu shot, and getting enough sleep.
Stress also increases during the holiday season. Parents are rushing around, dragging kids to shopping, parties, and family gatherings, and letting them stay up later than usual. These things lead to more stress because their schedules are all out of whack. As a former daycare teacher, I’ve seen this hundreds of times. Keeping kids on a regular schedule, especially during the holidays, is critically important for everyone to get through the season healthy and happy.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I pray over my grandchildren right now. Please keep them from sickness and stress during this hectic season. Help their parents keep them on a regular schedule as much as possible, and if they have to keep them out a little later, help them discern their limits and know when it’s time to go home. I ask that you will help my adult children during this crazy holiday season to be the best parents they can be despite all the distractions. In your name I pray. Amen.
We live in a world where guidance and wisdom can become very blurry in our grandchildren’s lives. A variety of influences surrounds them every day, and their friends’ guidance and wisdom may not align with your family values or beliefs. Therefore, praying for divine direction in their decisions and choices is so important.
Take some time this Christmas to talk to your grandkids about making good choices and asking God for direction in making those choices. Share stories from your life about when you weren’t sure what to do and how God came through and showed you the way to go forward or the answer that you needed. Ask them about the areas they struggle with and pray with them about making those decisions.
Encourage them to seek God and others for wisdom in the following ways:
Prayer: Dear Lord, please help my grandchildren with the decisions they make. They live in a chaotic, dark world where what you say is good is bad, and the things you forbid are good. It’s easy for a child to be confused about what to do or say due to pressure from peers and society. Please give my grandchildren the discernment to hear your voice and the courage to make the decisions that please you. Amen.
Kids these days are cruel. Therefore, it’s important to teach your grandkids about character, kindness, empathy, and compassion. Teach them to be kind to the outcasts, to stand up for those who are being bullied, and to have empathy for those going through difficult situations. Their character and kindness will make a world of difference.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I ask that you help me be an example of character, kindness, empathy, and compassion for my grandchildren. Help them grow in these important virtues so that they can be more like you and less like the world. I pray that they will make a difference in the world, having a ripple effect in their sphere of influence, one act of kindness at a time. Help them do what’s right in all situations. In Your Name I pray. Amen.
Photo credit: Getty/Halfpoint
6. Spiritual Growth
6. Spiritual Growth
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Christmas is all about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Pray that your grandkids will develop a deeper relationship with faith and a greater understanding of God. To help them do this, you can buy young kids a children’s Bible, buy a children’s devotional to accompany your older grandchildren when they study the Bible, or buy a Bible for your older grandchildren and highlight your favorite verses and passages, and write heartfelt notes and wisdom in the margins.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I pray for the spiritual growth of my grandchildren this Christmas. Draw them to you and light a fire in their hearts to know you better. Open their minds and hearts to your Word and speak to them in a way that is unique to them. In your name I pray. Amen.
The holiday season is filled with fun activities, such as sledding, skiing, baking, cooking, and playing outside in the snow. Even though these activities are fun, sometimes things happen that can jeopardize safety. Take time to pray for peace and security for your grandkids during this busy season.
Prayer: Dear Lord, please be with my grandchildren as they navigate this busy holiday season. It’s full of fun things to do, but sometimes safety isn’t the first thing kids think of. I pray you will be with them everywhere they go and that they will have peace and security in everything they do this season. Amen.
‘Tis the season for getting together with friends, family, and community. It’s important to support your grandkids’ relationships with their friends and encourage positive interactions. Kids can be extra tired and crabby this time of year, which can lead to misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and the boiling over of emotions. This isn’t always the case, but sometimes when kids aren’t on their regular schedule, things can happen.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I pray for my grandchildren and their friends this busy holiday season. Please help them have a fun season in all they do, and be mindful of each other if they aren’t feeling well or are tired. And if there is anything I can do to help, please reveal it to me. Help them have a joyous season with their friends and those they connect with in the community. Amen.
Supporting our grandchildren’s dreams and aspirations is extremely important. Kids want to know you love and support them no matter what. Regardless of whether they want to be a doctor, lawyer, electrician, welder, writer, or artist. All occupations are worthy of being pursued. All you can do is pray that the Lord will lead them on the right career path and that he will bless them as they explore their passions and pursue their goals.
Prayer: Dear Lord, I pray for my grandchildren’s dreams and aspirations. I know that you have a path and a purpose for each of them, and I ask that you will reveal it to them as clearly as possible. I know that sometimes we need to take different paths to find out what we are truly meant to do, and I pray that you will be with them and guide them all the way. Amen.
Photo credit: Deagreez
10. Expressions of Love and Generosity
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This is a great time to encourage expressions of love and generosity and to be an example to your grandchildren. Donate to a favorite charity, buy a meal for a homeless person, or take them to serve at a food pantry or soup kitchen. Bake together and then deliver goodies to your neighbors and friends.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help me be an example of love and generosity this season, no matter how big or small. Let my grandchildren see that every act of kindness makes a difference, from the thousand-dollar donation to the fast-food meal given to a homeless person. That the size of the generosity doesn’t matter, only that it’s done with love. In your name I pray. Amen.
In this season of peace and love, pray over your grandchildren and trust that God will be with them in this hectic holiday season.
Imagine that your boss invites you to a Christmas party at his house, which you have never visited before. Or that hot new Christmas toy you want to snag for your toddler is only available at a store in an area of town you seldom visit. Or you want to go to a farm in the country to cut down your own Christmas tree, but you’re nervous because you get lost easily.
How would you find any of these locations? Today the answer is simple: Plug the address into the GPS system in your car or on your cell phone, and — voilà! — it leads you step-by-step to where you want to go.
In an analogous way, the ancient prophecies about the coming of the Messiah lead us, step-by-step, not only to the place where he would be born but also to the very individual himself. These predictions exclude every other individual who has ever lived and zero in on the Savior of the world. With all pretenders ruled out, the baby in the manger is pinpointed as the one and only Messiah, the Son of God.
Thus messianic prophecy becomes “the infallible guide leading in a straight line from Moses and the Prophets to Jesus and the Apostles,” said Old Testament scholar Jacob Jocz.1 For example, when the bloodthirsty King Herod asked his chief priests and teachers of the law where the Messiah would be born, they didn’t have to think long before answering, “Bethlehem.”
How did they know? Because the prophet Micah had foretold the birthplace hundreds of years earlier. Micah 5:2 reads, “You, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel” (NIV). Verse 4 adds that this King’s “greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.”
Like using a navigation system, this prophecy helped the religious leaders pinpoint the birthplace of Jesus with accuracy. It is just one of dozens of predictions about the coming Messiah contained in the Hebrew scriptures. For instance, prophecies about his ancestry dramatically winnowed down potential messianic candidates — the Messiah needed to be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and a member of the tribe of Judah and the house of David.
However, the single most controversial prophecy came from Isaiah. Christians say the prophet foretold that the Messiah would be born of a virgin, but critics maintain that this prediction is actually an error based on a misunderstanding and mistranslation.
Did Isaiah Foretell a Virgin Birth?
Some seven hundred years before the first Christmas, Syria and Israel were threatening to overthrow King Ahaz of Judah, a faithless leader who refused to join their military coalition against Assyria. Isaiah tried to reassure Ahaz that everything would turn out all right if he put his trust in the Lord. He urged Ahaz to ask God for a sign to set his mind at rest. Feigning humility, Ahaz said he couldn’t do such a thing.
Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. The Lord will bring upon you and upon your people and upon your father’s house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah — the king of Assyria!
In his gospel, Matthew later applies this prophecy of a virgin birth to Jesus as confirmation that he is, indeed, the “Messiah,” which means the “anointed one” sent to bring salvation to God’s people.
Arguments Against Messianic Prophecy
However, agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman is among the critics who say this is not a messianic prophecy. “It is clear that Isaiah 7 is not predicting something that is going to happen in the distant future,” he said.2
Old Testament scholar John Walton said Isaiah was only predicting that a young woman in the court of Ahaz will give natural birth to a child. He said that proper interpretation of the relevant passage “gives us no clue that Isaiah had been aware that he was speaking of the Messiah.”3
Critics typically raise several issues in arguing that Isaiah 7 is not a messianic prophecy. First, they contend that the word virgin is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word ‘almah, which simply means a young woman. If Isaiah had intended to say virgin, they assert, he would have used the Hebrew word betulah. Second, they say Jesus was not named Immanuel, as Isaiah says, but he was named, well, Jesus! And third, they say this prophecy was actually intended for Ahaz and was fulfilled centuries before Jesus was born when a maiden married and gave birth to a son.
He said messianic expectations were bristling at the time of this exchange between Isaiah and Ahaz. That’s because Ahaz was a descendant of David and was being threatened with annihilation, which had huge implications for the future emergence of the Messiah, who needed to be from David’s line. “If Ahaz and the entire royal house were to be destroyed, it would bring an end to the messianic hope,” Rydelnik said.”4
Not only was there a messianic context to this conversation, but Rydelnik said Isaiah 7 shouldn’t be read in isolation. Actually, it’s part of a larger complex of verses foreshadowing the Messiah. In Isaiah 7, he is going to be born; in Isaiah 9, he has already been born and declared “mighty God”; and in Isaiah 11, he is reigning in the supernatural power of the Spirit.
‘Almah vs. Betulah: Understanding the Hebrew
What about the claim that ‘almah should be translated as young woman rather than virgin? Actually, there is no single word in biblical Hebrew that always and only means virgin. ‘Almah is best translated as maiden, that is, “a young woman who is unmarried and sexually chaste, and thus has virginity as one of her characteristics.”5 Besides, betulah doesn’t always denote virginity — for example, Joel 1:8 refers to a betulah who is a widow.
The best way to determine the meaning of ‘almah, Rydelnik said, is to see how it is used elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures. He examined the eight other times it’s found and said, “In every usage of the Hebrew Bible, the word ‘almah either refers to a virgin or has a neutral sense.”6
Even in the pre-Christian era, two hundred years before Jesus was born, scholars translating the Hebrew scriptures into Greek chose the word Parthenos — that is, “virgin” — in translating ‘almah.
Rydelnik said Isaiah chose his words with precision. “While the Hebrew betulah could refer to a virgin of any age, ‘almah would refer to a virgin who had just arrived at puberty. She is a maiden in the truest and purest sense. So there does not seem to be cause to abandon the traditional interpretation of ‘almah as ‘virgin’ except for an antisupernatural or antimessianic bias.”7
Interestingly, the great medieval Jewish commentator Rashi twice translated ‘almah as virgin in another Old Testament book but declined to do so when it came to Isaiah 7:14, which Rydelnik attributed to an antimessianic bias.8 However, Rashi said this regarding the Isaiah 7 passage, “And some interpret that this is the sign, that she was a young girl [‘almah] and incapable of giving birth.”9
A young girl incapable of giving birth? Was even Rashi acknowledging that some Jewish experts believed there was something extraordinary — perhaps even supernatural — about the birth that was being foretold?
The Meaning of Immanuel
With regard to Jesus not being named Immanuel, it’s important to note that many biblical names were descriptive in nature. Immanuel means “God with us,” and for countless people around the planet, that’s exactly who Jesus is. In the deepest and most ultimate way, he is Immanuel. And, of course, in his gospel, Matthew specifically applies this prophecy — including this name — to Jesus himself.
Who was in the manger that first Christmas morning? And how can we know for sure?
In this completely revised and updated edition of The Case for Christmas — reflecting the latest scholarship and research — award-winning legal journalist Lee Strobel weighs the evidence to distinguish myth from truth about what happened in Bethlehem.
Footnotes
Quoted in Michael Rydelnik, The Messianic Hope: Is the Hebrew Bible Really Messianic? (B&H, 2010), 190. ︎
Lee Strobel, In Defense of Jesus, 231. Rashi is an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitschaki (1040–1105), considered the foremost commentator on the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the Babylonian Talmud. Rashi did not personally believe that Isaiah 7:14 was a prophecy about a virginal conception of the Messiah. See Rabbi A. J. Rosenberg, The Judaica Press Complete Tanach with Rashi, CD-ROM ed. (Judaica Press, 1999). ︎
Vers. 8, 9. For My thoughts are not your thoughts.—God’s thoughts:— The thought of God! Who can fathom it? Astronomers tell us of stars in the sky at such infinite distances that their light, shooting through space at the inconceivable rate of 185,000 miles a second, would require 3,500 years to reach this earth. And yet God’s thought placed them thus far away in space, arranged the laws that govern them, not unlikely has set whirling around them planets like our own, peopled with sentiment and responsible beings like ourselves. To such distance reach the thoughts of God with the same clearness and wisdom as on this little globe. Shall not these thoughts, piercing the sublime avenues of infinite space, find a way whereby we may be saved? (Monday Club Sermons.) The thoughts of God:— We can form some conception of them through the works of His hand, whether in nature, providence, or redemption. The psalmist describes them as permanent in their endurance; as surpassing the reckoning of human arithmetic; and as being a fathomless deep. It is told of Kepler that, one night, after hours spent in observing the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed, “I have been thinking over again the earliest thoughts of God.” But there are earlier thoughts than those impressed on nature. The love that led to the choice of man in Christ, and will culminate in the glory, is older far. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.) God a thinker:— “I think, therefore I am,” was the formula in which the great mind of Descartes found peace. We may reverently adapt it, and say, “God thinks, therefore God is;” and the proof that He thinks is the great universe around us bearing everywhere the marks of a designing hand. The quality of any mind is determined by its product. The rare quality of the mind of Shakespeare found expression in “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” that of Milton in “Paradise Lost,” and that of Tennyson in the “Idylls of the King.” Stephenson demonstrated the wonderful mechanical power of his brain in the production of the steam engine, and Edison has shown what he thinks by inventing the telephone and phonograph. You stand and gaze with reverential awe at St. Paul’s, with its lofty dome, its magnificent portico, its beautiful windows. What is it? A church. Yes, a church in the heart of the busiest city in the world; a constant witness to the hurrying, bargain-making crowd, that man does not live by bread alone. It is a fine building—a veritable poem in stone—begrimed by the smutty fingers of old Father Time, but strangely weird and solemn, as I have seen it bathed in the moonlight, with the mighty city sleeping around it, silent and still, or at least as still as London ever is. It is one of the peep-holes through which London gets a view of Heaven. But it is something more. It is the visualized thought of a great man; mute witness to the fact that mind is the great thing in the world. Sir Christopher Wren thought cathedrals, they were on his brain, he saw them before a single stone was laid, and then he selected one and put it on paper and said to the builder, “Now go to work. Put this thought of mine in stone, and let it stand there in the midst of the city, so that all men may see the kind of thing my brain is capable of producing.” So this world, so full of wondrous forms and lovely colours, is but the outward expression of the thought of God. (S. Horton.) Man, like God, a thinker:—
The power of thought is one point in which man is made in the image of God. Other animated creatures which are put in subjection to the thinking, intelligent creature man, have no fellowship with God in thought; into His world of pure spirit they cannot enter. When men do not think, and especially when they do not think of the highest and most important matters, they degrade themselves from the true position and occupation of immortal minds.
In the text we have two persons thinking; and as the result—man’s thoughts and God’s thoughts. God’s thinkings are declared by Himself to be exceedingly above man’s, and yet if ever man is to dwell with God, he must think as God thinks. “How can two walk together except they be agreed?” What, then, can I do to rise to Him? Think as much as I please, thinking only sets me on my feet, and so far does me service, but it still leaves me on the earth, and God is yonder far above me, and my thoughts can no more attain unto Him than an infant can touch the stars with his finger. Still it is a comfort to me if I am sincerely thoughtful after God, that He is thinking about me, for if my thoughts cannot bear me up to Him, His thoughts can bring Him down to me, and when He has established a connection between the heaven which is above me and the earth which is beneath Himself, then I, laying hold on His thoughts, and believing what He has thought out for me, shall be drawn up to His elevation, and I shall come to think His thoughts, and so to be in communion with the Most High. (C. H. Spurgeon.) God forgiving sin:— At first, men have very low ideas of sin. But when the Holy Spirit begins to deal with them, sin grows to be an intolerable burden, a fearsome thing. While the thought of sin becomes clear, the thought of pardon is not, at first, so clear. Sin is great, and for that reason the sinner thinks it cannot be pardoned, as if he measured the Lord by his sin. In our text God in condescension helps the sinner to believe in pardon by elevating his idea of God. Because God is infinitely superior to man, He can abundantly pardon. I. YOUR OWN THOUGHTS JUDGE PARDON TO BE IMPOSSIBLE.
To some it seems impossible that there can be forgiveness for them, because of some special, secret, gross, and grievous sin. Most persons, when they remember their past lives, see a certain spot blacker than the rest.
To others the difficulty of pardon seems to lie not so much in some special offence, as in the number of their sins, and the long continuance of them.
Others have been grievously oppressed with the idea that they could not be pardoned because of the wilfulness of what they have done. Certainly this is a very grievous evil. Wilfulness is the very damnableness of sin.
“Sir,” says one, “I sinned with a great falseness and treachery of heart; for I was baptized and joined a Church.”
I hear one say, “There is about my sin this peculiar heinousness, that I have injured myself and others by my sin.”
Perhaps one may even say, “But, sir, my sin was of this kind, that I dishonoured God: I denied the Deity of Christ.” II. GOD’S THOUGHTS OF OTHER THINGS ARE FAR ABOVE YOURS. It is quite certain that the best thoughts—the most logical thoughts, the most original thoughts, the most correct thoughts you have ever had—are not worthy to be compared with God’s thoughts. Look in nature. The things you see in nature were, at first, thoughts in God’s mind, and He embodied them. Did you ever think such thoughts as God has thought in creation? God’s thoughts in providence—how wonderfully they are above ours! You read history, and everything seems to be a tangle. Yet, before you have read through the chapter, you see in it all a plan and a method. It has ever been so in your own mind as to the future. Read the prophecies, and see what is yet to be. III. HIS THOUGHTS ABOUT PARDON ARE ABOVE YOURS.
Are you not slow to forgive? “He delighteth in mercy.”
You come to an end of your forgiveness before long. But God goes on to seventy times seventy times—on, and on, and on, and never comes to the end of pardoning mercy so long as a soul cries to Him for forgiveness.
Some things you find it hard to forgive. God does far more in the way of pardon than we ask or even think.
I am afraid I must say of some of you that you forgive, but you do not forget. God promises to forget our iniquities. “I will cast all their sins behind My back.” “I will cast their iniquities into the depths of the sea. They shall not be remembered against them any more for ever.”
We forgive, and yet feel some returns of anger. “I have blotted out,” says He, “thy transgressions.” Once blotted out, they are done with for ever.
I do not slander you when I say that you are not very eager to pardon. He, the offended One, seeks the offender and proposes to make peace with him.
Do you think that any of us would suffer much for the sake of being able to forgive another? Should there be a very serious difficulty in the way, so that you cannot rightly forgive without some atonement being made, would you make the atonement yourself? IV. GOD’S THOUGHTS ARE ABOVE YOURS IN ALL THINGS WHICH CONCERN HIS GRACE. See the first verse as to the freeness of His grace. Your thought is that you can get nothing without paying for: God’s thoughts are, “Come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” But you think that if God were to save you He would perform it in a second-rate style. Not He! He will have no niggard salvations. If He supplies His people, it shall be most richly and freely. Listen to this: “Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” It is not a sip of the water, or a crust of the bread, or a drop of the milk; but when Christ invites poor sinners to come, He invites them to a high festival. You that are the guiltiest may come to Christ, and be among the happiest and the best of His saints. Nobody would ever imagine that a sinner could ever enter into covenant with God—that God should strike hands with guilty men, and pledge Himself to grace. Listen to this: “Incline your ear, and come unto Me,” etc. (ver. 3). I remember a man, shut up in prison, under a long sentence, and he was so violent that he was put into a solitary cell. The chaplain had done all he could as to bringing him to repentance; but one day he read to him this verse, “I will make an everlasting covenant with you.” The man said, “I never heard of such a thing. Can God make a covenant with such a wretch as I am? Sir,” said he, “it will break my heart;” and it did break his heart and he became a new man in Christ Jesus under the power of that amazing thought, that God would enter into covenant with such a wretch as he was. In ver. 5 Christ is said to call a people so ignorant that they did not know Him. This is to be His glory, that He is to call them by His grace. It is not one of your thoughts, but one of the thoughts of God, that He will glorify Christ in the saving of great sinners. “Ah, well!” says one, “I will go home, and cry to God for mercy.” That is your thought. Listen to God’s thought. “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.” Ah! still you think, “How can I be pardoned?” Listen to this, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts,” etc. Read the rest of the chapter, and say to yourself, over each verse, “This was not my thought; this was not my way.” End all your doubts with the last verse, “Instead of the thorn,” etc. (Ibid.) The Greatness of God:— Until we believe in the greatness of God, not only in action, but in thought, we shall misunderstand our Bibles, the world in which we live, and ourselves. We use such words as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, infinite, but how little we grasp their meaning! They are but the poor, etymological husks in which we try to thrust that which no words can express. There are some things that you cannot describe, you can only feel. Language is too poor, too clumsy a medium to express God’s best, or biggest things, much less to describe Him. It is like the colours with which the artist tries to reproduce the glory of a sunset. It is not a reproduction; at best, it is but a far-off resemblance. You look up on a cloudless day and there is not one speck, not one bit of white cloud against the vast expanse of undimmed azure, and yet feel, but cannot describe the infinity of space. Let that feeling of infiniteness rest upon you, soak into your mind, for it is good for man, the creature of a day, the heir of eternity, to linger amongst great expanses, and to learn that his geography is but a petty science, and his astronomy, with its measurements of millions of miles, does but nibble at the edge of the great universe of God. Thus you will preserve a reverent spirit, keep alive the faculties of wonder and admiration, and it is to be hoped be saved from the positive assertion of little narrow dogmas which have been adopted by certain sections of the Church, and declared with as much assurance, and fought for with as much bitterness, as though an angel from heaven had proclaimed them every morning since the creation. (S. Horton.) God’s thoughts higher than man’s:— Theology ought to be the science of God and Divine things. Often it is systematized misrepresentations of Divine things. It is not the revelation of God’s greatness, but of man’s littleness; it starts with theories, instead of facts. Our text is God’s appeal against human misrepresentation. There is always a danger of putting our own limitations of thoughts and speech upon the Almighty, and of making our thinking and doing the measure of His. Have we not all met with the man who sees nothing in the Church but bricks and timber, in its devotions only so many needful exercises to be got through as speedily as possible, and in the great redemption plan nothing but convenient fire escape from the miseries of hell, and in God only a High Commissioner of Police? It is vastly important that, as far as it is possible, we should get right ideas of God, for our whole character and conduct will be coloured by our thoughts of Him. And though it must ever be that our thoughts are as much beneath His thoughts as the earth is beneath the heavens, yet if He reveal Himself to us, as He is always willing to do to the humble soul, we shall at least be saved from those mental caricatures of Him that have darkened many a life, and been the fruitful soil in which unbelief has found its foothold.
The setting of the text takes us at once to the central doctrine of the Christian faith. The verse before it proclaims the pardon of God for the sinner, who, repenting of his sins, returns to the Lord. How can a sinless God forgive a sinful man, and yet maintain the majesty of His own law? And there rises before our eyes at once the form of a cross, and on it One, who, struggling in the death agony, exclaims, “It is finished.” All the wonder and mystery of the ages gathers round that cross. If you can explain that you can explain all. Was it possible for sin to take upon itself a deeper shade of guilt than the sin of the people of Judah in Isaiah’s time? Crimson-hued and scarlet-dyed, what could even God do with such sinners as these? Sweep them away with the strength of His right arm. Yea, and all heaven and all earth would approve the justice of the sentence. But He can do something else. He can forgive them. At first we revolt at the very idea. Forgiveness for them! And then once more we hear the voice which says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.” “I will never forgive him” is the language of the man who has been wronged. But God says, “I will give My best and dearest if I may but win the wrong-doer to love that which is good. I will save him by showing him what love can do.” Do you know it is the hardest thing in the world to persuade men to believe that God loves them with a love like that? There is a good deal of truth in the sarcasm of a scoffing French writer “that man has made God in his own image.”
Let us apply our text to the many problems that gather round our life, to those many difficulties behind which as yet we can see no meaning. Life for many is a prolonged agony. It is a burden, a pain, a puzzle to which we have not yet the key. Behind the pain, and the tears, and the smart, God is, and His plan for us is the best possible plan. He is but a poor shallow fool who says, I will accept nothing that I cannot understand. As a matter of fact he is always accepting what he does not understand. Does he understand sleep? Does he understand why a seed grows? why a child thinks? why men die? And yet there are many men who reject the idea of a personal God because they cannot understand His works and ways. They declare life to be without purpose, and an aimless consciousness between two eternities. To all such our text is a rebuke. Faith is a bird of stronger wing than reason. Two texts are sufficient for me. Upon them I stake all for time and for eternity. “God is very great.” “God is love.” Socrates has put our belief once and for all into a convenient formula, “What God is I know not; what He is not I know.” God is not, cannot be cruel. God is not, cannot be pitiless. God is not, cannot be making useless experiments at our expense. Without that faith, how could we face the hopeless poverty, the misery of our slums? Oh! wearied heart, rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. When faith falters, when the sun goes out in darkness, when the storm beats loud and fierce, when over a coffin-lid hope drops its head and weeps, wait for God. Give Him time to discover Himself. It is at the midnight hour that Christ walks on the tempest-lashed sea. Hush all your questionings and wait; simply wait. Is that easy? No; it is the hardest thing of all to do; but wait, only wait. What we cannot know—what it would not be wise for us to know now—we shall know hereafter. (Ibid.) God’s thoughts and ways:— I. SPECIFY SOME INSTANCES IN WHICH THIS DECLARATION IS STRIKINGLY ILLUSTRATED.
In His production of the most stupendous results from insignificant causes. Nature abounds with illustrations. Providence is still more abundant. Consequences the most stupendous, involving the destinies of individuals, of families, of empires, have arisen out of causes which we deem insignificant. But the most abundant proofs are derived from the history of the Gospel. Our Lord has suggested this view of the subject in His own illustrations—“The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed,” and so on. And this is an illustration of the rise and progress of Messiah’s Gospel. Who, and what was the Founder of the Gospel—as to His human appearance?
In the accomplishment of the most glorious designs by the weakest and most insignificant instruments. Who were the first propagators of the Gospel? In what school were they educated? With what armour did they go forth to the war?
In the sovereign exercises of His grace, in connection with its freedom and fulness. II. ASSIGN SOME REASONS FOR THIS.
His knowledge is more extensive than our information.
His judgment is more accurate than our decisions.
His purposes and plans are uninfluenced by our prejudices and passions.
It is His determination to humble pride, and His fixed resolution that no creature should glory in His presence. III. LEARN LESSONS OF HUMILITY, GRATITUDE, AND CONFIDENCE. (T. Raffles, D.D.) God’s thoughts:— The word “thought” is used here objectively. It expresses a result and not a process. I. ILLUSTRATION. Here we need only contrast the human with the Divine style of thinking. Observe some particulars:—
Creation. The visible creation that surrounds us on every side and spreads away into immensity beyond us, is only an embodied thought of the infinite, uncreated Intelligence. Tell me if it be at all like one of man’s thoughts. Equip man with omnipotence, and set him to create a universe—and would it resemble the universe as it is? By no means! (1) Man’s universe would be absolutely consolidated. Into one immense continent would all these world-islands be cast, and all tribes and types of life inhabit it as a common dwelling! His agonizing regret this day is that he cannot fling the line of a mighty telegraph from star to star, and thus, even in face of the immutable ordinances of heaven, gather these isolated islands of life into one vast virtual consolidation! (2) A universe projected by man would be motionless and steadfast. We build our homes, not on the waters, that they may be locomotive, but on the shore, that they may be fixed. But God’s universe is in everlasting motion. Or, descending from the survey of a universe of worlds to consider the economy of a single world, even with greater force shall we feel the same truth. Such a world as this no wise man would have created. He would have filled up the ocean with plough-ground, and sloped the mountains gently for vineyards, and covered with rich verdure the sands of the wilderness. And the waters would have brought forth after their kind only beautiful things, and every creature moving in the forests would have been musical and fair; and the sky would have been without cloud on its rich blue, and the year without winter or storm in its long summer of loveliness.
Providence. And whether we regard the entire economy of providence as a stupendous whole, or each successive development in its separation, the same truth will be manifest. Man certainly would have ordered the whole thing differently. Instead of those mysterious periods of slowly ascending life, he would have rounded earth into beauty at first as a home for immortals, and breathed Divine life into man made in God’s image. Place at the head of human affairs an omnipotent philanthropist, and how soon would every dark thing be swept from a groaning creation. How the captive would leap from his chain, and the conqueror lay off his mail, and the cries of violence cease, and the rod of the oppressor be broken! How these dark places of cruelty would be irradiated with heavenly light, and Christianity, borne as on angel-wings, circle the round world! II. APPLICATION.
Our first remark is addressed to this very class who reject the Bible because to their finitude it seems either unwise or incomprehensible. The poor erring creature of an hour, who cannot build a hovel that will not leak, nor weave a perfect garment to cover him, he—wonderful man that he is—would lift his thoughts into brotherhood with God’s thoughts, and adjust the complicate sublimities of revelation by the square and the line of his insignificant faculties! Why, the sceptic should begin further back and earlier with his scepticism, as his arguments lie as strongly against creation and providence.
Within our own time a new philosophy hath invaded the Church of Christ, with its watchwords “spiritual insight,” and “the moral reason,” and “intuitional capacity,” setting itself to overthrow the indispensable condition of all true piety—the entire, unquestioning, adoring submission alike of life, and conscience, and intellect unto God. And while the Church receives not this philosophy formally—for this were openly to deny the faith—yet, under its insidious and malign influence, there has come to pass a setting up within Zion of our own intellectual and moral judgments as critic and arbiter of the great doctrines of revelation. Doctrines that are profound or mysterious, if not openly rejected, are at least modified to square with our philosophy. And the positive declarations of God are lowered to the comprehension of our natural reason. We are as yet learners in God’s school-room, not advisers in His council-chamber! We shall understand things better by and by, when eternity flings its full light on the page of our scholarship! But until then humility is the apt temper of a learner. And faith, not comprehension, the great law of the scholarship! Till then ours must be the submission of an infantile mind to an infinite Intelligence—the trust of a short-sighted child in an all-seeing Father.
But the thought under consideration applies as well to the phenomena of Christianity as to its facts. Take, for example, its gradual increase and development. The characteristic of the age is impatience of anything but a demonstrative and headlong progress. Tell me where, either in creation or providence, God thus hurries to conclusions? So far from discouragements in this slow progress of Christianity, we have therein only fuller proof of its Divine origin, nobler prophecy of its ultimate consummation.
There is a still more consoling application of this truth to things unseen and eternal—immortality. The grand characteristic and charm of the eternal world is its utter unlikeness to the temporal and earthly. (C. Wadsworth.) God’s ways and man’s ways:— There is nothing, perhaps, in which God’s thoughts and ways are more seen to be “higher” than man’s than in the matter of salvation; and it is in renouncing his own ways, and yielding to God’s, that the main difficulty of salvation on man’s part lies. Because there is nothing more simple than the plan of salvation—substitution. I. God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts IN THE MATTER OF PARDON. This is proclaimed freely, without any condition on man’s part in the way of satisfaction to God’s holy and broken law. Salvation is represented in Scripture as something which God Himself has achieved. God has “delivered man from going down into the pit; He has found a ransom;” and therefore, in every point of view, this salvation is perfect and complete. It is, further, proclaimed to sinners as a gift which they cannot earn or deserve, but which they are entreated to accept as a gift on account of what Christ has done (Rom. 15:23). Men are called on to believe it instantly, to receive it and enjoy it at once, as the gift of God’s love in Christ Jesus. Now, to this the world objects, because such a plan of salvation knocks down man’s pride, and leaves him in the position of a rebellious sinner dependent wholly on God’s grace and mercy. To escape, therefore, from such an ignominious admission, some go on to argue that by this view God’s law is dishonoured, sin is treated as if of no consequence, and the pardoned sinner is left without any obligation to obey God. But is this true? II. God’s “thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways,” IN THE WAY IN WHICH PEACE AND JOY FOLLOW ON BELIEVING THE GOSPEL. This is proclaimed in Scripture as instant (Rom. 5:1). But the world objects to this, and calls it presumption; and if they hear of a notorious sinner being converted, and entering into peace, they immediately set him down as a hypocrite. The question is not whether they are hypocrites, but whether a man who believes the Gospel, and is full of joy and peace in consequence, is a hypocrite. Whatever the world says on the subject, Scripture does not so represent him. We must take care and not conclude that where there is no peace there is no faith. This would be as wrong as to conclude that where there is not perfect health there is no life. III. There is still another point in which “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways,” namely, HIS LONGSUFFERING. In preaching, I have no limit to make in the Gospel. If you say, “This surely is abusing the goodness of God,” I reply, “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, neither are our ways His ways.” (J. W. Reeve, M.A.) God’s thoughts:— The very act of thinking implies imperfection. But it is a way of picturing the Divine nature by a comparison with man. Man thinks, reasons, and so arrives at certain results. These he calls thoughts or conclusions. It is not so with God. He has no need to arrive at conclusions by any mental process. He knows everything. It is difficult to find any English word wherewith to express the idea intended. The word “feelings” might partly do so—method of action as the result of “feelings”—“dealings.” It is really the whole of the Divine nature. “My nature is not as your nature, nor My ways of action as your ways of action.” The grand idea is a consciousness of the vast difference which exists between ourselves and God, and to certain practical inferences to be devolved therefrom. These are— I. THAT WE ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF GOD BY OUR OWN FEELINGS. How can we for one moment put ourselves in the place of the great and mighty King of kings?
Consider our ignorance compared with His perfect knowledge—our weakness compared with His almighty power—our short life compared with His eternity of existence. All these things point out the folly of setting ourselves to judge of the Divine acts or the Divine method of providence, by the methods which we would pursue. And yet people say, or think if they do not say, in so many words, that they could carry on the world far more wisely than God.
Consider our sin in comparison with God’s holiness. Sin prevents all feeling, all right, all truth. It has changed all men’s views with respect to propriety or justice. And yet there are men who would dispute the justice of the Almighty’s dealings with men. II. THAT WE ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR OWN POSITION BY OUR OWN THOUGHTS. The ways of every man are right in his own eyes. We think we are acting for the best when we are acting for the worst. We think we are serving God when we are bribing the devil. We think we are setting an example of all virtue to our neighbours, when all the while we are nought but hypocrites. We are not to judge of our position of holiness by our own thoughts. What a criteria of judgment are human thoughts! They go astray from the beginning, they are altogether depraved. How can we estimate our own advancement by them? Woe be to those who do, for they will only court destruction. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. Some are nearer the kingdom of heaven than they suppose, while others are further off. III. THAT WE ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF ANY OF THE MYSTERIES OF THE FUTURE BY OUR OWN THOUGHTS. The world has a way of either perverting revelation, or inventing new theories from its own imagination. (Homilist.) Disparity of thoughts, Divine and human:— I. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING LIFE—the meaning of our present existence, as we live in this world day by day. Man’s general conception is that he has been sent into this world endowed with certain powers of body and mind that he may get on, and rise commercially, socially, and in those things which are hemmed in by things seen and temporal. As men are thus employed God looks down upon them with the tender eye of a mother and the pitying heart of a father, and says to His erring children, “Why do ye spend your time and destroy your immortal powers in such a vain pursuit? You have mistaken the meaning of your present life, and the reason I sent you into the world. My thoughts concerning it are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways. Your life was given that you might grow in wisdom, experience, and Divine likeness in character, and the earth is a school in which you are to be trained, educated for highest worship and noblest service.” II. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING DIFFICULTIES AND SORROWS. The human and natural way of looking at these things is to view them as unmitigated evils, and that either God knows and cares nothing about those who endure them, or that they are manifestations of His ill-will and judicial anger. These are not the thoughts of God. As seen in the light of heaven they are either the result of the violation of the law of love, of selfishness and sin, or are educative agencies to make the soul strong, tender, and true. III. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES. Hatred has been met by hatred; scorn has been answered by scorn; and for evil rendered evil has been repaid in full measure, pressed down and running over. Far otherwise has it been with God. Regarding treatment of enemies, God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and My ways are not your ways. Ye would render evil for evil, hate for hate, blow for blow. I love Mine enemies, I seek to bless the greatest sinner, I cause My sun to shine on the unjust, and unthankful, and am ready to take all prodigals into My forgiving embrace.” This has been God’s action from the first man till now. IV. GOD AND MAN DIFFER IN THEIR THOUGHTS REGARDING DEATH. Men’s thoughts on the matter are full of sadness, and they beget a melancholy most difficult to bear. But God understands life and He understands death, and if we are filled with His thoughts and walk in His ways, the supposed enemy that seems to be a fiend and the destroyer of our existence shall appear in the glorious position of being the condition of a higher, purer, fuller life, that shall never cease to be, and like the echoes of the soul “shall grow for ever and for ever.” (W. Adamson, D.D.) The mystery and the glory of redemption:— The whole Bible is but an expansion of one utterance of the Eternal, “I am Jehovah.” Hence the revelation must be incomplete, for a God who could fully reveal Himself to His creatures would be no God; and it must also be astonishing and amazing, for a professed record of any part of God’s thoughts and ways that did not land in mystery and tend to wonder, would be self-condemned, and proved to be neither true nor Divine. I. God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE NEED OF REDEMPTION. The lessons of Scripture, while leaving the entrance of evil in its awful mystery, assist our faith by showing that our misgivings in regard to God, which thence arise, are groundless, and also that, however strange, yet as a matter of fact, evil can be overruled for good. II. God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PURPOSE OF REDEMPTION. Man, as we learn from Scripture—the only source whence we can expect to know it—is not the only being who has fallen; but man is the only being who is redeemed. There are those who profess not to believe in Scripture, but who arraign this supposed procedure as unfair and unequal; and there are those also who accept Scripture, and yet reject its apparently clear testimony as to the exclusion of fallen angels from mercy. Both classes of objectors go upon the same principle that God cannot justly punish with a final sentence of rejection those who have sinned against Him, no matter how aggravated their offences may be; but that in some way having given them being, He is bound to make that being ultimately good and happy. But this runs counter to the whole Bible doctrine of grace; for on this footing, redemption is a clear debt; and whether it be fallen angel or fallen man God is not entitled to withhold it. Men may stand in their views either upon justice or upon grace; but they are not entitled to stand upon both. III. God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PLAN OF REDEMPTION. How utterly unlike to any means of man’s devising are those which God has chosen for the recovery of His lost creatures to His favour and image! All the opposition to evangelical religion with which we are surrounded, and which incessantly repeats, “Give us a Christianity that is rational! Give us a Christianity that we can believe! Give us a Christianity that meets, as everything else is doing, the advancement of the age!”—what does it amount to but this, “Give us a Christianity without God! Give us a Christianity without that element of grandeur, of mystery, of overwhelming superiority to man’s thoughts and ways, which compels awe and humbles pride!” We accept the demand, come from what quarter it may, as an, involuntary homage to the superhuman glory of the faith we stand by. IV. God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts, in regard to THE PROGRESS OF REDEMPTION. Redemption has a history; and this of all others the most difficult to scan, not only as it lies in the Bible, but in uninspired records. It has been said, “Interpret the Bible as any other book;” but though there is a certain truth in this, if we take it roundly it ultimately means, “Interpret God as you interpret man.” You cannot even interpret Church history as you interpret any other history. It is in a sense which belongs to no other history, the story of a battle not yet fought out, of a campaign not yet ended; and there are combatants at work beyond the range of human observation, and a supreme celestial leader, whose point of survey none can share. I shall illustrate this union of mystery and greatness in regard to three features in the progress of redemption.
The rate of its progress.
The instruments of its progress.
The hindrances to its progress. Man would have thought that hindrances would have speedily been removed, or that if they were suffered to remain or to return, they would have proved unmingled evils to the Church. But God, on the other hand, we can now so far see, by giving the victory slowly, trains the faith and courage of successive generations, and by permitting old enemies to return, or new ones to spring up, shows the un-exhausted and inexhaustible energy of His Gospel, to face and put down every hostile power. V. It is only necessary to add a few words in regard to THE LIMITS OF REDEMPTION. Here also God’s ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts. And hence the real and painful difficulty, which has always been felt in regard to the Gospel, and perhaps never more openly expressed than in our own day. Why should not all men, as God wishes, “be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”? Why should redemption, in the case of the human family, have any limits at all? Can we aspire to take in all God’s view of what a tremendous evil, like sin, and especially the rejection of the Son of God, may demand? (J. Cairns, D.D.) Sovereign thoughts:— I. THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE; THE THOUGHTS OF MEN ARE TEMPORAL AND CHANGEABLE. Reflections on things older and less changeable than ourselves are the best guides to the unknown heights of the Father’s wisdom. They lead us some distance, but only to show us the way. These mountains were long seated on their rocky seats ere the plan of the pyramids of Egypt was conceived in the heart of man. These rivers had flown majestically in their channels for thousands of years before man made his aqueducts to entice them from their course. The revolving sun poured its ceaseless floods of light on the universe myriads of ages before the scientist made the first telescope. Astronomy tells us that the worlds which occupy distant locations in space have swept silently through their trackless regions for periods of indefinite duration. Geology unfolds the rocky leaves of the earth’s crust, and deciphers hieroglyphics which roll us backward beyond animal and vegetable life to primeval rocks whose age no historian can compute. Thus we are furnished with materials to write a grand history of by-gone generations, stretching into the past beyond our comprehension. This history is the A B C of the eternal. The fact that the thoughts of God are eternal, fixes His immutable counsel and purpose. The redemption of fallen man is a thought without beginning, and is not subject to any variation. This is the rock on which we build our Christian faith. Through the varying scenes of life there runs the one purpose of God in Christ Jesus to save our souls and reconstruct human society. II. THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE PRIMARY CAUSES, WHILE OURS ARE MERE IMPRESSIONS.
The heavens and the earth are manifestations, not only of power and wisdom, but of mind.
No less evident is it that the revelation of Himself as the Saviour of man through human consciousness is the product of His thoughts. (1) God’s thoughts in the Gospel are greater than man’s thoughts. So great are some of them that they are above human comprehension (Rom. 11:33). (2) God’s thoughts are better than man’s thoughts. The whole of the chapter is a declaration of sovereign mercy. The offender is called to repentance, and offered a free pardon. Human wisdom would ask, How can this be? How shall moral government stand without punitive justice. Can God be just if He justify the repentant sinner? There is but one answer: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Mercy is inexplicable except in its operations. III. GOD’S METHODS ARE INSCRUTABLE, LIKE UNTO HIS THOUGHTS; BUT MEN’S WAYS ARE CROOKED AND PERVERSE. The Scriptural meaning of the word “way” is the character with which actions are stamped. Actions reveal the thoughts and motives of the actor. They are a reflex of himself. The ways of God are His thoughts in operation. “Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known.” These words echo those of an older book, or, at least, they are the echo of the wisdom of the ancients—“By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens; His hand hath formed the crooked serpent. Lo, these are parts of His ways: but how little a portion is heard of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand?” “Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Fix your minds on the way of His goodness and mercy unto us. Think of the wonderful display of wisdom in the redemption of mankind. Jesus has appeared to remove our offences by the sacrifice of Himself. This great manifestation of eternal thought is the banquet at which the intelligences of heaven will sit, world without end. IV. THE THOUGHTS AND WAYS OF GOD ARE BEFORE US FOR CORRECTION AND IMITATION. V. THE THOUGHTS OF GOD ARE WITH US AS OUR INHERITANCE. He who has passed through the process of examining the casket to the possession of its contents, can say, “How precious also are Thy thoughts, O God! how great is the sum of them.” (T. Davies, M.A.) The incomprehensibility of the mercy of God:— “Lo, these are parts of His ways, but how little a portion is heard of Him!” This is one of the most sententious sayings of Job, and it expresseth, in a very emphatic manner, the works of God. What this holy man said of the wonders of nature, we, with much more reason, say of the wonders of grace. Collect all that pagan philosophers have taught of the goodness of the Supreme Being. To the opinions of philosophers join the declarations of the prophets. Add the discoveries of the evangelists and apostles. To the whole join your own experience; your ideas to their ideas, your meditations to their meditations, and then believe that ye are only floating on the surface of the goodness of God, that His love hath dimensions, a “breadth, and length, and depth, and height,” which the human mind can never attain: and, upon the brink of this ocean, say, “Lo, these are only parts of His ways, and how little a portion is heard of Him! Three things are necessary to explain the text. I. THE MEANING MUST BE RESTRAINED. It is certain, that, in many respects, God’s ways are our ways, and His thoughts our thoughts. I mean, that there are many cases in which we may assure ourselves that God thinks so and so, and will observe such or such a conduct. To contrast the supreme grandeur of the Creator with the insignificance of the creature; to persuade mankind that the great Supreme is too lofty to concern Himself with us, that our conduct is entirely indifferent to Him; that it signifies nothing to Him whether we be just or unjust, humane or cruel, happy or miserable: to say in these senses, that “God’s ways are not our ways,” that “His thoughts are not our thoughts,” these are the arms that infidelity hath sometimes employed with success, and against the attacks of which we would guard you. For these reasons, the meaning of the text must be restrained, or it will totally subvert religion and morality. The exercise of my reasoning powers produceth in me some incontestable notions of God, and, from these notions immediately follow some sure consequences, which become the immovable basis of my faith in His Word, of my submission to His will, and of my confidence in His promises. These notions, and these consequences compose the body of natural religion. Let it be granted that God is, in many respects, quite incomprehensible, that we can obtain only a small degree of knowledge of this infinite Object, yet it will not follow that the notions which reason gives us of Him are less just, or, that the consequences, which immediately follow these notions, are less sure. If reason affords us some adequate notions of God, if some necessary consequences follow these notions, for a much stronger reason we may derive some adequate notions of God, and some sure consequences, from revelation. II. THE OBJECT MUST BE DETERMINED. The prophet’s expressions would have been true, had they been applied to all the attributes of God; however, they are applied here only to one of them, that is, to His goodness. Wherein do the thoughts of God differ from ours? In God there are treasures of mercy, the depth of which no finite mind can fathom. In Him goodness is as inconceivable as all His other attributes. In God, a sinner, who seems to have carried his sin to its utmost extravagance, and to have exhausted all the treasures of Divine grace, shall still find, if he “return unto the Lord,” and cast himself at the foot of Him who “abundantly pardoneth,” a goodness, a compassion, a love that he could not have imagined to find. III. THE PROOFS MUST BE PRODUCED. (1) The means by which God conciliated His justice with His love. (2) His patience with those who abuse this means. (3) His intimate union with those who fall in with the design of His patience. Let us address the text to the gloomy mind of a melancholy person, who, having failed in the courage necessary to resist temptations, fails again in that which is necessary to bear the thought of having fallen into them. What madness possesseth thy melancholy mind? The Holy Spirit assures thee that “though thy sins be as scarlet” He will make them “white as snow;” that “though they be red like crimson” He will make them “as wool;” and dost thou think that thy sins are too aggravated to be pardoned in this manner? The Holy Spirit gives thee a long list of the most execrable names in nature; a list of idolaters, murderers, extortioners, adulterers, persecutors, highway robbers, and blasphemers, who obtained mercy when they sought it: and art thou obstinately bent on excluding thyself from the number of those sinners to whom mercy is promised; and because thou dost not believe it attainable, dost thou obstinately refuse to ask for it? The Holy Spirit hath lifted up a Cross, and on that Cross a Redeemer, who is “able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him;” and who Himself saith to all sinners, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And dost thou flee from this Cross, and rather choose to sink under the weight of thy sins than to disburden them on a Redeemer who is willing to bear them? But, passing all these, let us return to the text. “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” etc. This is sufficient to refute the whole system of a despairing mind. (J. Saurin.) God’s ways and man’s:— These words are grand poetry and noble theology, but they are meant practically and in fiery earnestness. The “for” at the beginning of each clause points us back to the previous statement, and both of the verses of our text are in different ways its foundation. So we have here two things to consider in reference to the relation between the Divine purposes and acts and man’s purposes and acts. I. THE ANTAGONISM, AND THE INDICTMENT AND EXHORTATION THAT ARE BASED UPON THAT.
Notice the remarkable order and alternation of pronouns in the first verse. “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” saith the Lord. The things that God thinks and purposes are not the things that man thinks and purposes, and therefore, because the thoughts are different, the outcomes of them in deeds are divergent. God’s “ways” are His acts, the manner and course of His working considered as a path on which He moves, and on which, in some sense, we can also journey. Our “ways”—our manner of life—are not parallel with His, as they should be. But that opposition is expressed with a remarkable variation. Observe the change of pronouns in the two clauses. First, “My thoughts are not your thoughts”—you have not taken My truth into your minds, nor My purposes into your wills; you do not think God’s thoughts. Therefore—“your ways (instead of ‘My,’ as we should have expected, to keep the regularity of the parallelism) are not My ways”—I repudiate and abjure your conduct and condemn it utterly. Now, of course, in this charge of man’s unlikeness to God there is no contradiction of, nor reference to, man’s natural constitution, in which there are, at one and the same time, the likeness of the child with the parent and the unlikeness between the creature and the Creator. If our thoughts were not like God’s thoughts we should know nothing about Him. If our thoughts were not like God’s thoughts we should have no standard for life or thinking. Righteousness and beauty and truth and goodness are the same things in heaven and earth, and alike in God and man. We are made after His image, poor creatures though we be. But that very necessary and natural likeness between God and man makes more solemnly sinful the voluntary unlikeness which we have brought upon ourselves. Mark how wonderfully, in the simple language of my text, deep truths about this sin of ours is conveyed. Notice its growth and order. You begin with a heart and mind that does not take in God’s thoughts, truths, purposes, desires, and the alienated will and the darkened understanding and the conscience which has closed itself against His imperative voice all issue afterwards in conduct which He cannot accept as in any way corresponding with His. First, the thought unreceptive of God’s thought, and then the ways contrary to God’s ways.
Notice the profound truth here in regard to the essential and deepest evil of all our evil. “Your thoughts;” “your ways.” Self-dependence and self-confidence are the master-devils of humanity. And the root of all sin lies in these two strong, simple words, “Your thoughts not Mine; your ways not Mine.”
Notice, too, how there are suggested the misery and retribution of this unlikeness. “If you will not make My thoughts your thoughts, I shall not take your ways as My ways. I will leave you to them. You will be filled with the fruit of your own devices.” The question rises in many a heart, “How am I to forsake these paths on which my feet have so long walked? And if I do, what about all the years behind me, full of wild wonderings and thoughts, in all of which God was not?” The second verse of our text meets that despairing question. II. THE ANALOGY BUT SUPERIORITY, AND THE EXHORTATION AND HOPE THAT ARE BUILT UPON THAT. This clause begins with God’s ways, from which alone men can reach the knowledge of His thoughts. The first follows the order of God’s knowledge of man; the second, that of man’s knowledge of God.
God’s way of dealing with sin is lifted up above all human example. There is such a thing as pardoning mercy amongst men. It is a faint analogy of, as it is an offshoot from the Divine pardon, but all the forgivingness of the most placable and long-suffering and gladly pardoning of men is but as earth to heaven compared with the greatness of His.
Again, God’s way of dealing with sin surpasses all our thought. All religion has been pressed with this problem, how to harmonize the perfect rectitude of the Divine nature and the solemn claims of law with forgiveness. We have Jesus Christ. The mystery of forgiveness is solved, in so far as it is capable of solution, in Him and in Him alone.
We are taught here that God’s way of dealing with sin is the very highest point of His self-revelation. If we want to see up into the highest heavens of God’s character, we must go down into the depths of the consciousness of our own sin, and learn first how unlike our ways and thoughts are to God, ere we can understand how high above us, and yet beneficently arching over us, are His ways and thoughts to us. (A. Maclaren, D.D.) God’s thoughts and ways far above ours:— I. THERE IS REBUKE ADMINISTERED. The Lord says, “Forsake your way, for it is not My way; leave your thoughts, for they are not My thoughts.” The rebuke is enveloped in love, and made into a sugar-coated pill; the sweet promise of abundant pardon conceals the reproof. Let us take the rebuke, and notice—
The fault of man’s thoughts. “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” (1) As between each other, God’s thoughts are not man’s, though they ought to be. God’s thoughts are love, pity, tenderness; ours are forgetfulness, ingratitude, and hard-heartedness. (2) Your thoughts as to your conduct are not God’s thoughts. He considers that the creatures He has made should obey Him, but you judge that it matters not what a man does towards his Maker so long as he is just towards his fellow-men. (3) God’s thoughts, again, as to the life which a man needs in order to salvation are very different from man’s thoughts. In this chapter He says, “Hear, and your soul shall live.” He reckons, then, that man is dead till he has heard the word of God in his soul. Man reckons that he is alive enough. (4) God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, again, in reference to the truth. Man thinks himself so wise and good that he does not like God’s thoughts concerning himself, his fall, his guilt, and his danger. (5) In the matter of salvation God’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts, for God thinketh that man has so sinned that he must he condemned except a substitute be found. Man thinks not so. God sets before him pardon freely presented through the precious blood: man thinks to buy it by his devotions, or to win it by his merits.
The text advances to say that man’s ways are not like God’s. Our ways are the outward actions which spring out of our thoughts. God’s ways are ways of holiness and purity. God hath never done anything unjust to His creatures or unrighteous to Himself. But our ways are not so; they are full of error, marred with evil, polluted with impurity. By nature we love that which we ought to hate. Two cannot walk together in heaven except they be of one mind; so that our ways and God’s ways must be made to be alike in character. Now, it is not possible for us to conceive of God’s making His thoughts to be like our thoughts. What then? We must rise to Him.
I ask you to consider the difficulty of this. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways.” How are we to be lifted up from earth to heaven? The word that answers the question is that matchless syllable, “grace.” God in Christ Jesus, by His almighty grace, must raise us up together with Christ. II. WE HAVE REPENTANCE ENCOURAGED. “Let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts.” It is clear that there is a connecting link between the abundance of pardon and the lofty character of God, and that men are encouraged to forsake their ways and thoughts by the hope of pardon derived from the greatness of the Divine thoughts and ways.
Do not stand back because you cannot understand God. It is not needful that you should comprehend His ways and thoughts.
Neither start back because you cannot find a parallel to the grace which God declares that He will display towards you.
According to our text, whatever your ways towards God shall be in the future, He will exceed them. And as to your thoughts—can you think of how He will receive you? III. EXPECTATION EXCITED. This time the link is forward instead of backward. “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither.”
You are to expect that the Lord’s word will be unfailing to you.
Next that you are returning to a God whose ways are so much above your ways, and His thoughts so much above your thoughts, that your heart shall be filled with joy—“ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace.” God will not merely break off your chains and say in cold accents, “You are free;” but He will release you amid the music of the spheres.
Next to this, all your surroundings shall minister to your gladness. “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing,” etc. The mountain which you feared shall break forth into song, and the forest at which you trembled shall become an orchestra in which every tree shall clap its hands for joy.
And then, there shall happen to you wonderful transformations. Evil habits shall be withered and holy principles nourished.
This mercy is to endure for ever. (C. H. Spurgeon.) Man’s thoughts and God’s thoughts:— I. Compare your thoughts of THE POSSIBILITY OF PARDON with God’s thoughts about it. You naturally form your ideas of God’s ways from what you conceive would be yours if you were in His position.
I take you on that ground, and we will suppose that some wicked person has very grossly injured you and that the question of your forgiving him is now mooted. We will suppose you to be of a generous, frank, forgiving disposition, and in a calm and judicious state of mind. You are ready to act most leniently, but still the case in hand is no trifle and requires consideration. After well pondering the matter, you feel bound to say, “I could forgive this person, but his offence is of a peculiarly grievous kind. With the most sincere desire to pass over it, I feel that I must not, but must let the law take its course.” There have been many occasions when persons aggrieved have thus spoken, and when no reasonable person could have blamed them. Such, O awakened sinner, is your case as before the Lord, and if He should think of you as one man would think of another, you must own Him to be just. You have offended God in the very tenderest point; you have denied His right to you, though you are His creature. Though you have been a pensioner upon His bounty, you have constantly insisted upon it that you were your own master, and had a right to do just as you pleased. You have thus invaded the crown rights of the King of kings, and committed treason against His sovereignty: worst of all, you have committed sin against His only begotten and most dear son, the Lord Jesus. If it were your case, you could not forgive; but be astonished as you hear that your thoughts are not God’s thoughts, and His ways of forgiveness are as high above your ways as the heavens are above the earth.
It is supposable that when you are weighing the case of an offender you decide upon it thus: “I could forgive him, bad as the sin is, if I thought he had fallen into it from inadvertence or carelessness, or if I supposed that he was moved by some great hope of gain for himself, but the offence was intentional, malicious, and wanton, and therefore I cannot remit it.” Naturally you transfer these thoughts of yours to the Lord of heaven, and you say, “He will never pardon me, for I have trespassed wilfully. I have sinned without excuse.” Such language as this befits a penitent’s tongue; men cannot forgive their fellows when they perceive wanton malice in their crimes, but God can forgive you.
You will in some cases also be obliged to say, “I could very readily have overlooked this fault, but it has been repeated.” Such to the full, is your case, O troubled sinner, with regard to God. Though you hardly dare to think of forgiveness, God can not only think of it, but bestow it.
I can conceive a person greatly injured saying, “I would overlook all these injuries which have been hurled against me, but I cannot see any reason why I should have been the particular object of this man’s spite; it has been quite undeserved on my part, and unprovoked.” That would be a very excellent reason in a court of justice for insisting on the punishment of an offender. Listen to the voice of the good God whom you have injured chap. 1:2, 3). What is the sequel to this very just but sad complaint? (1:18).
“Yes,” says an offended person, “I might overlook the fault if I thought the man were wholly humbled now; but you see he asks me to pardon, but he has not a sufficient sense of his guilt.” Troubled sinner, this is very much your case. You are somewhat broken down, but you must confess that your heart is hard still, compared with what it ought to be. But God says, “I will take away the heart of stone, and I will give them a heart of flesh.”
“Still,” exclaims the aggrieved party, “I think the man ought to make me some compensation.” This principle is very properly recognized in courts of justice. Now, poor sinner, you feel that you cannot bring any compensation. But our loving God does not ask you for any compensation; He says, “Only return unto Me.” Sin is freely forgiven for Jesus’ sake.
Naturally, many a just-minded person would say, “If I were most gracious, yet I could not find it in my heart freely to forgive when I see the consequences always-before my eyes.” Suppose that somebody had wantonly injured your child; suppose he had broken one of your child’s limbs, for instance; I think I hear you say, “I could forgive him, but look at my poor limping child.” But sinner! God sees before Him daily tokens of what you have done! You can never unwrite the past, nor restore the lost one. All that accursed past of sin must live on. If you light the fire, it will burn on to the lowest hell. God may forgive your incendiarism, but the fire itself still continues. With all the consequences of your sin before Him, He forgives you freely if you rest on Jesus.
Furthermore, I can conceive a case in which the offended party can fairly say, “I do feel from my heart fully prepared to forget this offence against me, but it was public, and therefore highly obnoxious and injurious.” Trembling sinner, you also may well think, “Surely God will never forgive me, for against Him only have I sinned, and done this evil in His sight. I sinned in the face of the sun. I sinned unblushingly, and gloried in my shame.” Rejoice, poor mourner, that this is no reason why the Lord should not forgive you, for as high as the heavens are above the earth so high are His thoughts above your thoughts.
I can imagine it possible that an offended one might add, by way of clenching all his arguments against pardon, “My forgiveness he has already despised. I have put myself to great expense in order to subdue his hatred, and yet he has stood out against me. How can reason and justice expect me to do any more?” I might, perhaps, answer, No; neither of them can well expect more of you; but what we cannot expect of you, the guilty sinner may yet expect of God. II. Contrast your thoughts about THE PLAN OF PARDON with God’s thoughts. If you have advanced far enough to believe that God can pardon, and have to this extent laid hold upon God’s thoughts, it is well; but still another of your own thoughts drags you down, for you have a wrong idea of the way of pardon.
I will suppose that there are persons who ignorantly say, “If it be true that the Lord will pardon sin, let Him do it outright; let Him just take the pen and mark through all my transgressions, and have done with them. He has but to say, ‘I forgive thee,’ and there is an end of it.” But God’s thoughts are not your thoughts in this case. You have evidently become so impure in heart as to look upon sin as a trifle; but the Judge of all the earth is of another mind. The great Rules cannot suffer sin to go unpunished.
Others have a notion that God may, perhaps, forgive them by putting them through a course of affliction. It is still a superstitious notion lingering in England, that poor persons are the special objects of Divine favour, and that hard work and poverty, and especially a long lingering sickness, are a means of putting away sin; for persons so afflicted have had so much misery in this life that they do not deserve to suffer more. But your thoughts on this matter are not God’s thoughts. You may be as poor as Lazarus, but never lie in Abraham’s bosom; you may endure as many sufferings here as fell to the lot of Job, and yet may go from Job’s dunghill to hell. Cast out any idea that these sufferings or privations of yours can make atonement for sin.
A more current idea still is, that God will put away the past and give men a new start, and that if they go on well for the future, then in their dying hour God will speak pardon. But there is nothing of that kind in the Word of God.
There is a very current supposition, however, that God pardons sin in this way: that He says, “Well, now, I forgive you the past. My law was a little too severe for you, but I will try you again under a more lenient rule. Do as well as you can, and I will save you.” But God does nothing of the kind! The forgiveness which is given to a sinner reaches to the sins which are yet to be committed as well as to the sins which he has already done. Christ stood for you, and therefore God is severely just while He is bountifully merciful to you. In the next place, when God forgives you He does it unconditionally. III. THE PRESENT POSSESSION OF THIS PARDON.
There is an idea in the mind of many that the plan of just trusting in Christ, and being pardoned on the spot, is too simple to be safe. It is a well-known fact that the simplest remedies are the most potent and safe; and, certainly, the simplest rules in mechanics are just those upon which the greatest engineers construct their most wonderful erections. Do not despise the Gospel because it is simple.
I think I hear you say, “It is too good to be true.” But it is just like our God.
I think I hear your heart say, “It seems to me to be a plan too swift to be sure.” This is no human nostrum, this is a Divine prescription. “Believe and live!” Have done with thyself, and begin with Christ. (Ibid.) Neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.—The great contrast:— Nature, Providence and Grace abound in eloquent illustrations of the text. I. OBSERVE NATURE.
God’s works are characteristic. They manifest His character. Man’s do not. We cannot tell infallibly what a fellow-creature is by remarking what he does. A garment is made for you. Are you able, as you look at it, to discover what the maker is? A carpenter constructs a box, table or chair; but nothing in its manufacture informs the spectator of the workman’s holiness or sinfulness. It is even so with books. The productions of the pen sometimes oppose the deeds of the life. But God’s works show us Himself. The purity and power, the mercy and majesty of Jehovah, are all displayed in creation.
God’s works will bear the most minute examination. In yonder gallery of art is a painting. Stand from it at a certain distance and you are struck with its beauty. Look at it closely and it becomes a mere confusion of colours. But ascend a hill. Gaze at the landscape. Here it is a Divine picture. The fields are emerald with grass, golden and white with prolific wild-flowers. Beheld afar off, the scene is glorious. Come down the hill, however. Go into the meadow. Pluck one of the flowers, and gaze at it minutely; gather a blade of grass, and subject it to a most scrutinizing examination. It will bear it. It is as beautiful as ever. A piece of lace which looks delicate and fine to the naked eye becomes coarse and clumsy under a microscope. Not so the wing of a fly or a moth. Magnify the finest needle ever made, and it immediately looks rude and rough; but magnify the sting of a bee a million of times, and its surface is still smooth and unvarying.
God’s works are inexhaustible in attractiveness. We never tire of nature. Human achievements are limited in the interest which they yield. II. STUDY PROVIDENCE. How opposed to men’s expectations have been many of God’s dealings. Placed in His position they would have done the very opposite of what He was pleased to accomplish. E.g. Israel when brought out of Egypt; Joshua and Jericho; Gideon and the Midianites; Naaman and his leprosy. “Man proposes, God disposes.” We form our plans; He frequently leaves them where they are, and never allows them to crystallize into action. Brains are racked and hearts made anxious touching divers schemes and sundry intentions, when, lo! He who has the disposing of the lot quietly ignores them, and leads us into an altogether different path from that which we expected. I once visited the house of a friend. While waiting for admission my attention was arrested by a trivial but suggestive object. Beside the door an evergreen had been planted It was drooping and dying. Close to it, however, was a wild flower. Dropped by a passing bird, or cast there on the wings of the wind, some seed had taken root. It flourished and grew strong. Nor is it otherwise with human events. Schemes which we set, water, and watch, disappoint us and fail, while God gives to something very different vigour and life. III. CONSIDER GRACE. In His spiritual dealings with us, “Neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.”
God loves all. We do not. Large-hearted philanthropists, whose affection takes in the whole race, are exceptional.
God makes allowance for our difficulties. Physical infirmities commonly awaken pity. We take them into account when we judge. Would that we carried out the same rule a little further! Not seldom when we Judge of our fellows morally and spiritually, we lose sight of the difficulties which they have to encounter. If we remembered their peculiar trials and temptations, we should speak a little less harshly of them. God makes full and large allowance for our difficulties. He sees and appreciates the obstacles with which we grapple. “He remembereth that we are dust.”
God helps us through our difficulties. Adversity is a severe ordeal. Tried thereby, many friendships are found wanting. Fair weather and smooth sailing on life’s sea will win fellow-voyagers, but clouds and breakers few will share with us. How different is it with God; “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee”—not even in trial. Nay, He is nearer to us then than ever. He not only makes allowance for our difficulties, but helps us through them. Two children were once overheard talking about the Good Shepherd. “What does He do?” said one. “He feeds the sheep, and drives away the wild beasts,” was the reply. “But,” rejoined the first, “He does more for the sheep; He carries them up hill.”
God is very forgiving. Man is not: he is slow to pardon (ver. 7). (T. R. Stevenson.) God’s longsuffering surpasses man’s:— An evangelist was conducting special services in a Yorkshire village and urged his Gospel-hardened audience to immediate decision. As he pictured the longsuffering of God his face beamed with holy excitement. Then, falling on his knees, he cried, “Lord, Lord, how stubborn they are! If I had been Thee, I’d a had ’em all in hell long since.”
Exell, J. S. (n.d.). Isaiah (Vol. 3, pp. 235–249). Fleming H. Revell Company.
And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. (Exodus 23:28)
What the hornets were we need not consider. They were God’s own army which He sent before His people to sting their enemies and render Israel’s conquest easy. Our God by His own chosen means will fight for His people and gall their foes before they come into the actual battle. Often He confounds the adversaries of truth by methods in which reformers themselves have no hand. The air is full of mysterious influences which harass Israel’s foes. We read in the Apocalypse that “the earth helped the woman.”
Let us never fear. The stars in their courses fight against the enemies of our souls. Oftentimes when we march to the conflict we find no host to contend with. “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.” God’s hornets can do more than our weapons. We could never dream of the victory being won by such means as Jehovah will use. We must obey our marching orders and go forth to the conquest of the nations for Jesus, and we shall find that the Lord has gone before us and prepared the way; so that in the end we will joyfully confess, “His own right hand and his holy arm, have gotten him the victory.”
If you’re a Christian, you might have heard the anti-Christmas rumblings on social media, or maybe even in real life: Christmas has pagan origins…Santa’s elves started out as demons…the Roman winter solstice celebration of Saturnalia morphed into Christmas…Mithras…Krampus…the “naughty list” about the origins of Christmas goes on and on. Are these things true? Should Christians celebrate Christmas?
There’s an old story about a woman who made a ham every year for Christmas dinner. As she was preparing it one year, her daughter asked, “Mom, why do you cut off the end of the ham before you put it in the oven?” The woman answered, “That’s the way my mom taught me to do it.” The woman thought about her daughter’s question all day long, and finally decided to call her own mother to ask about it. When the woman got her mother on the phone, she asked, “Mom, why did you teach me to cut off the end of the ham before putting it in the oven?” The woman’s mother said, “That’s the way my mom taught me to do it.” Intrigued, the woman called her grandmother and asked once again, “Grandma, why did you cut off the end of the ham before putting it in the oven?”. Her grandmother replied, “Because I didn’t have a roasting pan large enough for a whole ham.”
Human beings are creatures of habit and tradition, so it’s always important to examine why we do the things we do. As Christians, whether it’s putting up a tree every year, a beloved hymn we’ve been singing since we could talk, or the annual church picnic, our brains should never be on autopilot, unquestioningly taking part in activities by rote.
Do some aspects of the celebration of Christmas find their origin in millennia-old paganism? Possibly. But are you participating in that paganism if you put up a tree or give gifts at Christmas? Probably not. The “Christmas is pagan” lore is so ancient and uncertain that most people aren’t even aware of it. How could you possibly be participating in paganism if you’re not even aware of its existence, you have no intention of participating in it, and it has nothing to do with your reasons for celebrating?
Did you know that many of our days of the week and months of the year were originally named for pagan idols and gods? “Sun”day was originally a pagan Roman holiday, and the sun was an object of worship for many ancient peoples. Should we stop having church on Sunday because of that? Are we somehow participating in paganism by holding the Christian day of worship on an ancient pagan feast day? Of course not. Ancient pagans don’t own certain days on the calendar or any particular object or symbol. The Bible tells us, “The earth is the Lord‘s and the fullness thereof.” When godless people take a day or an object God has created and use it for evil, they are the ones in the wrong, not godly people who come after them and want to use that same day or object for a godly purpose. To say that Christians can’t use a certain day or object for celebrating Christmas because pagans used that day or object for pagan purposes is to give those ancient pagans power over Christians. Power they have no business holding.
To say that Christians can’t use a certain day or object for celebrating Christmas because pagans used that day or object for pagan purposes is to give those ancient pagans power over Christians. Power they have no business holding.Tweet
Furthermore, just because pagans used a day, an object, or a symbol for their wicked practices hundreds or thousands of years ago does not mean those days, objects, or symbols carry the same meaning today. Think about the way a mere word can change meanings in such a short time. The 1890’s were known as the “Gay Nineties.” The song, “Deck the Halls” contains the phrase “don we now our gay apparel.” The primary meaning of the word “gay” – just 100-150 years ago in our own country – was “happy, merry, or festive.” Now it means “homosexual.” But the “Christmas is pagan” folks would have us believe we’re supposed to attach centuries old definitions and foreign cultural practices surrounding Christmas and other winter observances to our 21st century American celebrations? Santa may have had demon elves hundreds of years ago in another country and culture, but in our culture today, they’re just his happy little helpers – no demonic strings attached. The meanings of cultural practices and symbols change over time.
And if anyone should understand that, it ought to be Christians. We took the cross – “the emblem of suffering and shame” to everyone in the known world at the time of its use – and turned it into a symbol of victory and triumph. The Romans wanted people to look at the cross and think, “criminal.” Today we look at the cross and think “Christ.” They wanted the cross to evoke fear. To us it means freedom. The cross used to mean humiliation. Now it reminds us to honor our glorious Savior.
The Romans wanted people to look at the cross and think, “criminal.” Today we look at the cross and think “Christ.”Tweet
Certainly, there’s no biblical requirement for Christians to observe Christmas in any way, so anyone who doesn’t want to observe the holiday doesn’t have to. Conversely, there’s nothing in the Bible that says we can’t celebrate Christmas, so Christians are free to do so as long as we aren’t violating any of the clear commands and principles of Scripture. But whatever conclusion we come to, it’s crucial that we base everything we do on God’s Word correctly applied to our actions and motivations, not supposed connections between Christmas and paganism. There are probably dozens of objects in our homes, traditions we observe, and days on the calendar that can, if we go back far enough and look hard enough, be traced back to one pagan religion or another. Don’t be ruled by that. Christians are ruled by God’s Word, not fears and superstitions.
Christians are ruled by God’s Word, not fears and superstitions.Tweet
So let’s be sure we take some time to examine our Christmastime traditions. Why do we put up a Christmas tree every year? What do we tell our children about Santa Claus? What do the words of those Christmas carols mean? Are we doing anything that conflicts with Scripture? If so, it’s incumbent upon us to stop, repent, and make sure “whether [we] eat or drink, or whatever [we] do, do all to the glory of God.” Because it’s not about what pagans did centuries ago a world away, it’s about what we’re doing today, why we’re doing it, and whether or not it glorifies God.
It’s not about what pagans did centuries ago a world away, it’s about what we’re doing today, why we’re doing it, and whether or not it glorifies God.Tweet
We are still in the section of verses from the Bible depicting the prophecy of Jesus’ coming, His arrival, and His early life before ministry. With two more days to go, afterward we shift into looking at Jesus Himself, His earthly ministry, and the different aspects of Himself that He displayed in His incarnation.
John MacArthur preached on Jesus’ brother James in a sermon called James: The Brother of Our Lord. In it, MacArthur discusses the early home life of Jesus and contrasts it to the rest of Jesus’ siblings. From the siblings’ point of view, especially the focus of James, what was it like to grow up with literally a perfect brother? The venerable theologian proposes this:
“I don’t know how many times Joseph and Mary said this, but they must have said it more than they ought to, “Why can’t you be like your brother?” which doesn’t really help either.”
LOL.
There are not many verses recounting the childhood and pre-ministry life of Jesus, but there are a few. Here is one:
What happened during Jesus’ childhood? (GotQuestions) Other than Luke 2:41–52, the Bible does not tell us anything about Jesus’ youth. From this incident we do know certain things about Jesus’ childhood. First, He was the son of parents* who were devout in their religious observances. As required in the law, Joseph and Mary made the yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When Jesus was 12 years old, they brought Him along on the trip to celebrate the Feast with them. Luke paints a picture of a typical boy in a typical family of that day.
The boyhood of Jesus (Biblehub) Although the boy Jesus was gifted with a wisdom far beyond His years — a wisdom which was His because He was the Son of God, yet He lived much as other boys lived, doing the tasks that were given Him by His parents and being subject to them in all things.
Because thine heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, when thou heardest what I spake against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and hast rent thy clothes, and wept before me; I also have heard thee, saith the Lord. (2 Kings 22:19)
Many despise warning and perish. Happy is he who trembles at the Word of God. Josiah did so, and he was spared the sight of the evil which the Lord determined to send upon Judah because of her great sins. Have you this tenderness? Do you practice this self-humiliation? Then you also shall be spared in the evil day. God sets a mark upon the men that sigh and cry because of the sin of the times. The destroying angel is commanded to keep his sword in its sheath till the elect of God are sheltered: these are best known by their godly fear and their trembling at the Word of the Lord. Are the times threatening? Does infidelity advance with great strides, and do you dread national chastisement upon this polluted nation? Well you may. Yet rest in this promise: “Thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace: and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place.” Better still, the Lord Himself may come, and then the days of our mourning shall be ended.
We confess and acknowledge that God has given to man His holy law a in which not only are forbidden all such works as displease and offend His godly majesty, but also are commanded all such as please Him and as He has promised to reward. And these works be of two sorts. The one are done to the honor of God; the other to the profit of our neighbors; and both have the revealed will of God for their assurance. To have one God, to worship and honor Him, to call upon Him in all our troubles, reverence His holy name, to hear His Word, to believe the same, to communicate with His holy sacraments are the works of the first table. To honor father and mother b, princes, rulers and superior powers c, to love them, to support them, yes to obey their charges (not repugnant to the commandments of God), to save the lives of innocents d, to repress tyranny e, to defend the oppressed f, to keep our bodies clean and holy g, to live in sobriety and temperance h, to deal justly with all men both in word and deed, and finally to repress all appetite of our neighbor’s hurt, are the good works of the second table which are most pleasing and acceptable unto God as those works that are commanded by Himself. The contrary of which is sin most odious which always displeases Him and provokes Him to anger i. As not to call upon Him alone when we have need, not to hear His Word with reverence, to condemn and despise it, to have or to worship idols, to maintain and defend idolatry, lightly to esteem the revered name of God, to profane, abuse, or condemn the sacraments of Christ Jesus, to disobey or resist any that God has placed in authority (while they pass not over the bounds of their office) j, to murder, to consent thereto, to bear hatred or to suffer innocent blood to be shed, if we may withstand it k, and finally the transgression of any other commandment in the first or second table, we confess and affirm to be sin by which God’s hot displeasure is kindled against the proud and unthankful world.
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (1:14)
Verse 14 is the most concise biblical statement of the Incarnation, and therefore one of Scripture’s most significant verses. The four words with which it begins, the Word became flesh, express the reality that in the Incarnation God took on humanity; the infinite became finite; eternity entered time; the invisible became visible (cf. Col. 1:15); the Creator entered His creation. God revealed Himself to man in the creation (Rom. 1:18–21), the Old Testament Scriptures (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21), and, supremely and most clearly, in Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:1–2). The record of His life and work, and its application and significance for the past, present, and future, is in the New Testament. As noted in the discussion of 1:1 in chapter 1 of this volume, the concept of the Word was one rich in meaning for both Greeks and Jews. John here clearly stated what he implied earlier in the prologue: Jesus Christ, God’s final Word to mankind (Heb. 1:1–2), became flesh. Sarx (flesh) does not have here the negative moral connotation that it sometimes carries (e.g., Rom. 8:3–9; 13:14; Gal. 5:13, 16–17, 19; Eph. 2:3), but refers to man’s physical being (cf. Matt. 16:17; Rom. 1:3; 1 Cor. 1:26; 2 Cor. 5:16; Gal. 1:16; Eph. 5:29; Phil. 1:22). That He actually became flesh affirms Jesus’ full humanity. Ginomai (became) does not mean that Christ ceased being the eternal Word when He became a man. Though God is immutable, pure eternal “being” and not “becoming” as all His creatures are, in the Incarnation the unchangeable (Heb. 13:8) God did become fully man, yet remained fully God. He entered the realm of those who are time and space creatures and experienced life as it is for those He created. In the words of the fifth-century church father Cyril of Alexandria,
We do not … assert that there was any change in the nature of the Word when it became flesh, or that it was transformed into an entire man, consisting of soul and body; but we say that the Word, in a manner indescribable and inconceivable, united personally … to himself flesh animated with a reasonable soul, and thus became man and was called the Son of man.… The natures which were brought together to form a true unity were different; but out of both is one Christ and one Son. We do not mean that the difference of the natures is annihilated by reason of this union; but rather that the Deity and Manhood, by their inexpressible and inexplicable concurrence into unity, have produced for us the one Lord and Son Jesus Christ. (cited in Bettenson, Documents, 47)
No wonder Paul wrote of the Incarnation,
By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness:
He who was revealed in the flesh,
Was vindicated in the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Proclaimed among the nations,
Believed on in the world,
Taken up in glory. (1 Tim. 3:16)
Charles Wesley also captured the wonder of the Incarnation in his majestic hymn “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see,
Hail th’ incarnate Deity!
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Some found the Incarnation so utterly beyond human reason to comprehend that they refused to accept it. The heretical group known as the Docetists (from dokeō; “to seem,” or “to appear”), accepting the dualism of matter and spirit so prevalent in Greek philosophy at that time, held that matter was evil, and spirit was good. Accordingly, they argued that Christ could not have had a material (and hence evil) body. They taught instead either that His body was a phantom, or an apparition, or that the divine Christ spirit descended upon the mere man Jesus at His baptism, then left Him before His crucifixion. Cerinthus, John’s opponent at Ephesus, was a Docetist. John strongly opposed Docetism, which undermines not only the incarnation of Christ, but also His resurrection and substitutionary atonement. As noted earlier in this chapter, in his first epistle he warned,
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 John 4:1–3)
John was so horrified by Cerinthus’s heresy that, as the early church historian Eusebius records,
John the apostle once entered a bath to wash; but ascertaining Cerinthus was within, he leaped out of the place, and fled from the door, not enduring to enter under the same roof with him, and exhorted those with him to do the same, saying, “let us flee, lest the bath fall in, as long as Cerinthus, that enemy of the truth, is within.” (Ecclesiastical History, book III, chap. XXVIII)
The eternal Son not only became man; He also dwelt among men for thirty-three years. Dwelt translates a form of the verb skēnoō, which literally means “to live in a tent.” Jesus Christ’s humanity was not a mere appearance. He took on all the essential attributes of humanity and was “made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7), “since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). As the writer of Hebrews goes on to explain, “He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17). And He pitched His tent among us. In the Old Testament, God tented with Israel through His glorious presence in the tabernacle (Ex. 40:34–35) and later in the temple (1 Kings 8:10–11), and revealed Himself in some pre-incarnate appearances of Christ (e.g., Gen. 16:7–14; Ex. 3:2; Josh. 5:13–15; Judg. 2:1–4; 6:11–24; 13:3–23; Dan. 3:25; 10:5–6; Zech. 1:11–21). Throughout eternity, God will again tent with His redeemed and glorified people:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell [skēnoō] among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:3–4; cf. 12:12; 13:6)
Though Jesus manifested God’s divine glory during His earthly life with a clarity never before seen, it was still veiled by His human flesh. Peter, James, and John saw a physical manifestation of Jesus’ heavenly glory at the transfiguration, when “His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light” (Matt. 17:2; cf. 2 Peter 1:16–18). That was a preview of the unveiled glory to be seen at His return (Matt. 24:29–30; 25:31; Rev. 19:11–16) and the fullness of His heavenly glory as the only Light of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:23). But the disciples saw Jesus manifest God’s holy nature primarily by displaying divine attributes, such as truth, wisdom, love, grace, knowledge, power, and holiness. Jesus manifested the same essential glory as the Father, because as God they possess the same nature (10:30). Despite the claims of false teachers through the centuries, monogenēs (only begotten) does not imply that Jesus was created by God and thus not eternal. The term does not refer to a person’s origin, but describes him as unique, the only one of his kind. Thus Isaac could properly be called Abraham’s monogenēs (Heb. 11:17) even though Abraham had other sons, because Isaac alone was the son of the covenant. Monogenēs distinguishes Christ as the unique Son of God from believers, who are God’s sons in a different sense (1 John 3:2). B. F. Westcott writes, “Christ is the One and only Son, the One to whom the title belongs in a sense completely unique and singular, as distinguished from that in which there are many children of God (vv. 12f.)” (The Gospel According to St. John [Reprint; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978], 12). Jesus’ unique relationship to the Father is a major theme of John’s gospel (cf. 1:18; 3:35; 5:17–23, 26, 36–37; 6:27, 46, 57; 8:16, 18–19, 28, 38, 42, 54; 10:15, 17, 30, 36–38; 12:49–50; 14:6–13, 20–21, 23, 31; 15:9, 15, 23–24; 16:3, 15, 27–28, 32; 17:5, 21, 24–25; 20:21). Jesus’ manifestation of the divine attributes revealed His essential glory as God’s Son, “for in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Col. 2:9). The two attributes most closely connected with salvation are grace and truth. Scripture teaches that salvation is wholly by believing God’s truth in the gospel, by which one receives His saving grace. The Jerusalem Council declared, “But we believe that we [Jewish believers] are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they [Gentiles] also are” (Acts 15:11). Apollos “greatly helped those who had believed through grace” (Acts 18:27). Paul described the message he preached as “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). In Romans 3:24 he wrote that believers are “justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus,” while in Ephesians 1:7 he added, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” Later in that same letter, Paul wrote, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). He reminded Timothy that God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity” (2 Tim. 1:9). That same “grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men” (Titus 2:11), with the result that believers “being justified by His grace … would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:7). There is no salvation grace except to those who believe the truth of the gospel message. Paul reminded the Ephesians, “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Eph. 1:13). In Colossians 1:5 he defined the gospel as the “word of truth” (cf. James 1:18). Paul expressed to the Thessalonians his thankfulness that “God ha[d] chosen [them] from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth” (2 Thess. 2:13). People are saved when they “come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4; cf. 2 Tim. 2:25). On the other hand, “those who perish” will do so “because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thess. 2:10). Everyone will “be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness” (2 Thess. 2:12). Jesus Christ was the full expression of God’s grace. All the necessary truth to save is available in Him. He was the full expression of God’s truth, which was only partially revealed in the Old Testament (cf. Col. 2:16–17). What was foreshadowed through prophecy, types, and pictures became substance realized in the person of Christ (cf. Heb. 1:1–2). Therefore He could declare, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.… If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 14:6; 8:31–32). A vague belief in God apart from the truth about Christ will not result in salvation. As Jesus Himself warned, “Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). Those who think they are worshiping God, but are ignorant of or reject the fullness of the New Testament teaching about Christ, are deceived, because “he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him” (John 5:23; cf. 15:23). In his first epistle John affirmed that “whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23; cf. 2 John 9). Those who reject God’s full revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ will be eternally lost. Summarizing the magnificence of this verse, Gerald L. Borchert writes,
In analyzing this crucial verse of the Prologue it becomes quickly apparent that this verse is like a great jewel with many facets that spreads it rays of implication into the various dimensions of Christology—the theology of Christ. As a summary of this verse it may be said that the evangelist recognized and bore witness to the fact that the characteristics ascribed only to God by the Old Testament were present in the incarnate Logos, God’s unique messenger to the world, who not only epitomized in person the awesome sense of God’s presence in their midst as a pilgrim people but also evidenced those stabilizing divine qualities God’s people had experienced repeatedly. (John 1–11, The New American Commentary [Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2002], 121–22. Italics in original.)
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006). John 1–11 (pp. 39–43). Moody Press.
Witkoff to meet Umerov in Florida Witkoff and Kushner recently returned to the United States after visiting Moscow where they met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for nearly five hours. US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he believes Putin wants to end the Ukraine war. The statement came despite signals from Russia indicating no breakthrough after the talks …
Israel again demands that Hezbollah completely disarm Israel emphasizes that the Islamist movement Hezbollah must be completely disarmed when negotiations are held with the Lebanese government. Lebanon responds that the country is far from normalizing relations with Israel. The direct high-level talks between the two countries on Wednesday were the first in a very long time.
Sinking Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’: Has the Ukraine war reached Senegal? A Turkish-owned oil tanker that recently visited a Russian port was heavily damaged by explosions off the coast of Senegal last Thursday. While Kyiv has not claimed responsibility for the attack, the bombing follows a campaign targeting ships accused of belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet” – raising suspicions that the Ukraine war has spread all the way to West Africa.
Israeli interceptors over Berlin: Arrow-3 system delivered to Germany Israel officially delivered the Arrow 3 missile-defense system to the German Air Force on Wednesday in a ceremony near Berlin. The Israeli delegation, led by Defense Ministry Director-General Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amir Baram and Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor, handed over the first battery to the Luftwaffe commander and Germany’s deputy defense minister …
Trump Would Crush This. Israel Absorbs It. This time it happened near Ateret, a Jewish community in the Binyamin region of Samaria, just north of Jerusalem. This is the biblical heartland, the very center of ancient Israel — and today, a frontline of daily terror. Yesterday, a civilian noticed a suspicious man with a backpack walking along Route 465. Soldiers approached to question him. In an instant, he pulled out a knife and stabbed them. Thank God, our soldiers were lightly injured and the terrorist was eliminated. By afternoon, Israel had already moved on, as if the attempted murder of Jews in Samaria is simply what mornings look like. This isn’t “violence.” It is terrorism
Portland Christmas Tree Lighting Turns Into ‘Free Palestine’ Rally Portland’s annual Christmas tree lighting took an unexpected turn on Friday when a featured speaker used the stage to call Israel’s actions a “full-blown genocide” and led portions of the crowd in chanting “Free Palestine.” The appearance of pro-Palestinian activism at the 41st annual ceremony — attended by thousands in Pioneer Courthouse Square — drew criticism from residents who said the political messaging was out of place at a city-sponsored holiday event. Portland officials avoided saying the word “Christmas” throughout the program, referring to the Christmas tree only as “the tree.” In addition to stripping Christmas of its name, traditional Christmas songs were renamed “holiday songs,” and the ceremony made no effort to acknowledge Hanukkah,
White House rolls out ‘media offender of the week’ to counter misinformation The White House has launched a new online “Media Offender of the Week” site to track news outlets that distort President Trump’s statements and spread misinformation. Visitors to the site are greeted with ranked lists, color-coded labels, and detailed breakdowns of media missteps, all packaged as a government-backed system for monitoring “false and misleading” reporting. The broader list stretches across CNN, MSNBC (formerly MSNBC), The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, ABC News, Axios, AP, and others, with entries tagged under categories such as “Bias,” “Lie,” “Omission of Context,” and “Left-Wing Lunacy.”
A CALL TO ACTION: Submit “Media Bias” Tips The White House recently launched a Media Bias Portal as a service to truth and transparency. Its purpose is to combat the baseless lies, purposely omitted context, and outright left-wing lunacy of the Fake News Media — a tall task that demands the help of everyone who believes in facts and accuracy over Fake News. That’s why the White House is calling on everyday Americans to support the truth and hold the Fake News accountable. By visiting whitehouse.gov/biastips, anyone can submit biased or undeniably false articles, and valid submissions will be used to keep the Media Bias Portal updated.
Conservative prof speaks out on importance of First Amendment: ‘Not just a right. It’s a responsibility’ Dr. Trevor Tomesh, an outspoken conservative professor, has been taking on woke indoctrination and ideology at a Wisconsin college campus and beyond. Dr. Tomesh joined Liz Collin on her podcast to explain why he has been speaking out on college campuses (and had to start with a disclaimer that his views are his own and don’t represent his university). I saw that as kind of what I thought was soft tyranny. And then finally, what really set me off was the 2020, the George Floyd protests down here and watching lie after lie in the media, because I was also watching the protesters themselves filming themselves on Twitch. And I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And I thought, well, if they’re lying about this, what more are they lying about?
Knesset advances motion backing Trump’s Gaza plan as coalition boycotts vote A Knesset motion endorsing US President Donald Trump’s 20-point framework for ending the Gaza conflict moved forward on Wednesday, clearing its first reading with 39 votes in favor and none opposed. The measure passed easily, but the near-total absence of coalition lawmakers turned the vote into a pointed political moment rather than a test of parliamentary strength.
Hamas’s Grip on Gaza NGOs Exposed as World Plans Post-War Rebuilding Efforts As world powers outline multi-billion-dollar plans to rebuild Gaza, newly obtained documents reveal that Hamas has long run a coordinated effort to penetrate and influence NGOs in the war-torn enclave — contradicting years of denials from major humanitarian organizations. On Wednesday, NGO Monitor — an independent Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations — released a new study revealing how Hamas has for years systematically weaponized humanitarian aid in Gaza,
Israel Says It Received Body From Hamas, Indicates Rafah Crossing to Open Soon to Let Gazans Cross Into Egypt Israel received a body that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said was one of the last two deceased hostages in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israel said it would allow Gaza’s gateway to Egypt to open once all hostages were returned. A body has been transferred by the Red Cross to the Israeli military and will undergo forensic identification, a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said. Hamas also handed over remains on Tuesday, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later said were not of any hostage.
House foreign affairs panel advances bill to designate Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced legislation on Wednesday to require U.S. President Donald Trump to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), passed through the committee with the support of every Republican and about half of the panel’s Democrats, including Reps. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and George Latimer (D-N.Y.).
Deception As Islam Terrorizes Europe, The Left Resists Trump’s Efforts To Protect America From The Same Future The days of unfettered borders and immigration are now gone under the Trump Administration, and God willing, they are never coming back to America. In a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the President stated: “For six months in a row, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States. You believe that? Zero. We had millions of people coming in a year, millions. Now we have zero for six months.”
What To Know About The ‘764’ Online Predator Network And The Federal Crackdown Department of Justice (DOJ) officials are attempting to crack down on an online predator network known as “764,” as online exploitation of vulnerable groups increases. This group has proven to be dangerous for many victims, including minors, who are targeted and threatened through forums and gaming platforms. The FBI announced on Feb. 20 that it has prioritized investigations related to the group. The group has been known to prey on victims as young as 9 years old.
The Future Of The Entire Planet Hangs In The Balance As Putin, Maduro And Trump All Indicate That They Are Ready To Fight It is far easier to start wars than it is to end them. As we watch global events develop, so many of us have a really bad feeling about what is ahead. Without a doubt, 2025 has been a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, but it appears that things are ready to go to the next level in 2026. Vladimir Putin, Nicolas Maduro and President Trump all say that they are ready to fight, and they aren’t the only ones. A really bad case of “war fever” has gripped leaders all over the world, and that is not good news for any of us.
U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace Why is the number of business bankruptcies in the United States rising so rapidly? It isn’t because the economy is doing well. Every day there are more news stories about businesses that have failed, and this is clearly reflected in the numbers that I am about to share with you. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and if our economic troubles continue to accelerate during the months ahead 2026 is going to be a very messy year.
Christian OU student flunked after calling gender ideology ‘demonic’ A Christian pre-med student has gone viral in recent days after filing a religious discrimination complaint that claims a trans-identified teaching assistant flunked her for an essay stating that gender ideology is “demonic.”
Supreme Court appears torn over evangelist’s challenge to protest ordinance The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared torn over a Mississippi evangelist’s challenge to a city protest ordinance he was previously convicted of violating, seeming hesitant to cast aside a conflicting past ruling but wary of restricting the path to legal relief too heavily.
January 2021 pipe bomber in FBI custody: After nearly five years of apparently fruitless searching and finding no more information than the height of the suspect, the FBI has finally made an arrest in the case of the pipe bombs discovered near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters in January 2021. Brian Cole, a Virginia resident, was arrested this morning and will be arraigned later today. The Patriot Post’s Mark Alexander asks, “WHY did this take five years to resolve? The answer is in part because Biden’s weaponized DOJ spent so much time on the J6 prosecutions of the mostly nonviolent offenders. But that is not the only answer…” This story is still developing.
IG report on Hegseth and Signal: A War Department Inspector General investigation into Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal snafu has concluded that he did violate departmental policy in using the app to share sensitive information, but it also noted that Hegseth had the authority to declassify intelligence. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell welcomed the IG’s report, stating that it “is a TOTAL exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along — no classified information was shared.” He proclaimed, “This matter is resolved, and the case is closed.” Hegseth also responded, posting on X, “No classified information. Total exoneration. Case closed. Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report.” After seeing the report, Sen. Eric Schmitt appeared to agree, calling it a “nothing burger.”
Immigration applications frozen: Foreign aliens from 19 countries pursuing U.S. citizenship have just had their proceedings halted under a new directive from President Donald Trump. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has placed a hold on green cards, citizenship, benefit applications, and even naturalization ceremonies for nationals from Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, and 16 other high-risk countries of concern. Additionally, all asylum applications have been frozen regardless of the nation of origin. The hold will allow USCIS to perform a “comprehensive re-review, potential interview, and re-interview of all aliens” from the affected countries. This action comes on the heels of the Islamic terror attack by a legal Afghan migrant who killed one National Guardsman and injured another.
Henry Cuellar pardoned: On Wednesday, President Trump announced that he had given a “full and unconditional pardon” to Texas Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife. In May 2024, the Biden administration’s DOJ charged the couple with accepting $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan oil company and a Mexican bank. In issuing his pardon, Trump asserted that Cuellar was a victim: “the Biden Administration weaponized the Justice System against their Political Opponents.” Trump noted that Cuellar had spoken out against “the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe.’” Cuellar thanked Trump “for his tremendous leadership and for taking the time to look at the facts.” It was Cuellar’s daughter who reached out to Trump in a letter, asking for compassion and clemency for her parents.
Congress subpoenas Jack Smith’s testimony on Trump’s classified docs: The House Judiciary Committee will compel former Special Counsel Jack Smith to appear for a deposition on December 17. Smith will need to turn over documents relating to his prosecution of Donald Trump by the 12th. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan says the deposition is meant to delve into Smith’s tactics, such as placing a leading presidential candidate under a gag order during an election year. Smith’s attorneys are objecting to the deposition’s closed-door nature and requesting that it be open to the public. Smith’s desire to get Trump has been apparent, with him going so far as to say that he would have secured a conviction had Trump not won the 2024 election. Smith has said that the implication that his actions were politically motivated is “laughable.”
Trump’s ninth cabinet meeting: On Tuesday, President Trump met with his cabinet for 2.5 hours. It was the ninth such meeting, which, as Gary Bauer pointed out, is “the same number of cabinet meetings that Joe Biden held over all four years!” Foreign policy took the main stage at the meeting, with Venezuela remaining in the spotlight. Of narco-terrorists smuggling drugs out of Venezuela on speedboats, Trump’s stated policy was “taking those son of a b****es out.” He added that strikes against cocaine manufacturing plants and drug cartels on land are coming soon. Trump once again suggested that the tariff income from his new policies is so high that soon Americans “won’t even have income tax to pay.” News media and economists are skeptical that tariffs could ever again pay for the national budget — as they did toward the end of the 1800s — but Trump has confounded them before.
Medal of Honor Act raises pensions: Since 1863, some 3,528 service members have received the highest military decoration in the United States — the Medal of Honor. Up until this week, the 61 living recipients — heroes in every sense of the word — were receiving a special pension of $16,880 annually. The Medal of Honor Act, signed by President Trump on Monday, quadrupled that pension to approximately $67,500. MOH recipients “spend most of their time traveling our country, telling their stories,” says Rep. Troy Nehls, a sponsor of the legislation. This special pension will “lift the financial burden off of these selfless warriors” as they continue to inspire “the next generation of America’s heroes.”
Trump undoes Biden’s fuel standards: In the Oval Office yesterday, President Trump announced that he was rolling back Joe Biden’s restrictive fuel economy standards, asserting that doing so will save Americans some $109 billion. “Combined with the insane electric vehicle mandate, Biden’s burdensome regulations helped cause the price of cars to soar more than 425%, and in one case, they went up 18% in one year,” Trump explained. “Today, we’re taking one more step to kill the Green New Scam.” Under the Biden administration, automakers were required to increase vehicle fuel efficiency standards to an average of 50 miles per gallon by 2031. Trump has now eliminated that onerous and costly CAFE standard and allowed the free market to direct manufacturing output.
Was DC killer threatened by the Taliban? The 29-year-old Afghan national who attacked two National Guard members in DC last week may have been threatened by the Taliban. Investigators are reportedly digging into information indicating that the Afghan attacker may have been motivated to carry out the attack after receiving a threat from the Taliban that they would murder his family in Afghanistan if he did not perpetrate the terrorist attack. As one intelligence source explained, “Most of them have families back home, and if the Taliban cannot get to them, they are making it very clear that they will go after their families.” The investigation is also focusing on the vetting process following Joe Biden’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan. With tens of thousands of Afghans brought into America following the U.S.‘s exit, the effort by the Taliban to blackmail and weaponize them for terrorism against Americans is troubling.
ICE arrests another Afghan terrorist in the U.S.: Not only did the U.S. waste $148 billion on Afghanistan reconstruction from 2002 to 2025 to no avail, but it also spent $14 billion to resettle nearly 200,000 Afghans in the U.S. with shoddy vetting. After the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration abandoned certain protocols in the interest of processing tens of thousands of Afghans into our country quickly. There was no way to check the identities of anyone coming in because, at the time, the Afghan government was in chaos. As a result, on Wednesday, another Afghan man with links to the terrorist group that killed 13 American soldiers at Abbey Gate was arrested by federal immigration officials. Jaan Shah SafiSafi is a terrorist linked to ISIS-K and is the third Afghan to be detained in the past week.
Headlines
ICE agents descend on Minneapolis to crack down on Somali migrants (NY Post)
Venezuela resumes accepting U.S. deportation flights after Trump closes airspace to country (Fox News)
California announces new online portal to report alleged misconduct by federal agents (Just the News)
Illinois police department rehires illegal alien arrested by ICE earlier this year (Not the Bee)
Trump-backed congressional push to halt state AI regs falls short (National Review)
Texas Tech restricts teaching of race and gender (Fox News)
Humor: Democrats accuse Luke Skywalker of war crimes for using more than one proton torpedo against Death Star (Babylon Bee)
“Ilhan Omar is garbage,” said President Donald Trump of the Democrat representative from Minneapolis Somalia. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”
Hoo boy, Trump does know how to stir the pot!
No one should even pretend to be shocked by what Trump says anymore. Ruffling feathers is his MO. But by all means, let’s talk about presidents and presidential candidates saying insulting things.
I don’t want ’em in our country, I’ll be honest with you. Some people will say, “Ooh, that’s not politically correct!” I don’t care. I don’t want ’em in our country. Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want ’em in our country. …
Our country’s at a tipping point. We could go bad. … We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.
Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people that work. These aren’t people that say, “Let’s go, come on. Let’s make this place great.” These are people that do nothing but complain. …
When they come from hell, and they complain and do nothing but b****, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.
Perhaps those comments are or should be beneath the dignity of the Oval Office. Imagine George Washington or Ronald Reagan saying such a thing.
However, Trump is just saying out loud what many Americans think and say themselves. And he’s right about the specifics. He also didn’t insult anyone for immutable characteristics (i.e., racism), but focused on their actions and contributions to society, or lack thereof.
Somali migrants, many represented by Ilhan “I Married My Brother to Commit Immigration Fraud” Omar, have been working a huge scam to steal a billion dollars from American citizen taxpayers. The level of COVID relief and Medicaid fraud is astounding. Democrats particularly hate it when money for their redistribution schemes is threatened by constitutional or tax restraint. But they have no problem when Somalis steal from programs meant for poor families, children, and the disabled.
Americans have every right to think those criminals are “garbage.”
Especially when those criminals and their representative hate America. Though the “fact-checkers” rallied to her defense, one might have good reason to doubt Omar’s loyalty.
In response to Trump, National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez argues, “It is despicable to call human beings ‘garbage.’” She makes a compelling pro-life case for how we talk about other people, and, as a fellow Christian, I certainly agree that humans are made in God’s image and we ought to be very careful and circumspect when harshly condemning others. We’re all pretty messy sometimes. I know I don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of pointed criticism, especially when I deserve it, and I try to remember that when dishing it out.
However, I also don’t think that “judge not” is a blanket prohibition on deciding whether another person is doing terrible things or has bad character.
Whether the American president — maybe especially one with Trump’s personal history — ought to say such things is another matter.
Yet even there, consider these things:
Barack Obama derided his political opponents because they “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion.” Hillary Clinton called her political opponents a “basket of deplorables.” In the most direct comparison, Joe Biden labeled Trump’s supporters “garbage,” which, fortunately, precipitated Trump’s hilarious garbage truck response. All of those Democrats, especially Biden and his sidekick/replacement Kamala Harris, falsely derided (implicitly or explicitly) people on the Right as Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, and the like. They clearly hold conservative Americans in contempt, and on multiple occasions, Biden even threatened those Americans.
Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate and the Minnesota governor who might be complicit in the aforementioned fraud, said we “should demonize” people like Elon Musk and “bully the s**t” out of Trump. Now he worries that Trump has “normalized this type of hateful behavior.”
Do you know what the difference is between their comments and Trump’s?
Those Democrats were condemning law-abiding Christian conservative Americans. Trump is expressing justifiable frustration with criminal Somalis who generally hate this country. Yes, Omar is a U.S. citizen, but she is also a criminal. She just didn’t have a Manhattan DA fabricate a bunch of felonies to get a conviction.
So, I guess if people want to get especially worked up about Trump because his rant was more colorful than the typical slimy utterances of Democrats, fine. Just don’t pretend that somehow he’s “breaking norms” or is a unique brand of awful. And for heaven’s sake, quit with the fantasies that places like Somalia aren’t complete disasters because the people there do terrible things. We have enough trouble in this country without importing that kind of, well, garbage.
Emmy Griffin: A College Student Gets Failed for Her Faith — A University of Oklahoma undergraduate was given a zero on an assignment by her gender-confused professor because she cited the Bible when addressing gender norms.
Thomas Gallatin: Globalist Mamdani Eschews U.S. Sovereignty — New York City’s radical socialist mayor-elect expresses seditious views regarding U.S. law by elevating “international law” above our own.
Sophie Starkova: Overrun by Violent Migrants, England Curbs Jury Trials — The United Kingdom chose to expedite a backlog of cases by removing trial by jury for some defendants, but the problem is far bigger than that.
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Reader Comments
Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
Dem Governor Caves to Trump — The Trump administration threatened to pull millions of dollars in federal highway funding for Minnesota over allegedly illegal CDL licenses.
My Soviet-Refugee Parents Spotted the Woke Red Flags — Katherine Brodsky shares the warnings her Soviet-refugee parents often gave about rising political correctness, which she’d initially dismissed as paranoia but later realized were dead-on.
SHORT CUTS
Demagogues
“People on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean carrying cocaine are not a direct threat to the lives of our service members or Americans.” —Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)
“I think, in many ways, the uniformed military may help save us from this president.” —Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)
Lawfare, Continued
“The one thing that should be clear to all of these Republican extremists … is that the statute of limitations for any crimes being committed now [is] five years. It will extend well beyond the end of the Trump administration.” —House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
Braying Jennies
“It’s a catastrophe. I think Pete Hegseth — it’s impossible to imagine that he survives this as secretary of defense. I think he must resign, and I think Republicans will ask for that ultimately once they investigate this. But this is a disaster for this generation of people serving in the United States military.” —MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow
“The Department of Homeland Security … is the single biggest threat to public safety right now.” —Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL)
“[Donald Trump’s] always been a racist, a bigot, xenophobic, and Islamophobic.” —Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
Fact-Check: True
“The WaPo narrative on Hegseth was blown up faster than a narco boat.” —Jack Posobiec
“Leftists are shedding tears and expressing more emotion over two foreign drug dealers than they are for a young American woman who died defending our nation’s capital.” —Gary Bauer
Editorial Exegesis
“The unpleasant reality is that we imported an element of Somalia’s culture of criminality, and for no good reason, while bogus charges of racism were used to keep suspicious authorities from following up on the blatant signs that something was amiss.” —National Review
Observations
“Every Republican scandal is like ‘the administration didn’t dot every i and cross every t when dealing with literal scum’ while every Democrat scandal is like ‘oops we decided not to enforce an entire body of law and now Americans are getting killed.’” —Will Chamberlain
A Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day
“Be nice? Yes, let’s be nice. What is NOT nice is hormonally or surgically mutilating children, cheating your way to stealing women’s athletic medals, lying your way into women’s spaces, debauching language etc.” —evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
For the Record
“Rewarding Putin’s aggression does not enhance American strength, it corrodes it. A forced Ukrainian capitulation would not yield ‘peace,’ it would yield a triumphant Russia, a demoralized Europe, and a crippled NATO alliance.” —Jeff Jacoby
“For centuries, Great Britain stood as one of the West’s crown jewels, a bastion of Judeo-Christian civilization, free speech and rule of law. … This week, we witnessed perhaps the gravest blow to the dwindling legacy of Great Britain: the scrapping of jury trials.” —Ian Haworth
Touché
“If Eric Swalwell wants to come online and talk about what jacket size I wear, I’m happy to send him a women’s medium so him and Fang Fang can go out again.” —FBI Director Kash Patel
ON THIS DAY in 1996, General Motors began mass producing the EV1, the first time an electric vehicle enjoyed that status. It launched a wild, sweeping revolution in which everyone wanted an electric car. Just kidding.
More than one thousand pastors and Christian influencers gather in the Holy Land for the Ambassadors Summit to show support for Israel; for the first time, Israel has officially partnered strategic pastors to commission them as ambassadors to combat anti-Semitism and reach the youth of their generation; US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee tells CBN News “there’s a growing cancer in the Evangelical movement in America where people are thinking Israel doesn’t matter;” pastors visit site of Nova Music Festival where Hamas terrorists attacked on October 7th; killing 378 and kidnapping 44; the Summit is a prelude to a massive campaign planned for next year to teach pastors and churches a Biblical worldview, so they realize God isn’t cancelling His promise to the Jewish people; Chris Mitchell talks about why this is a critical time for this event, what speakers said at the Summit, the importance of Evangelical support for Israel, the reaction of the Israeli government and Israeli public to support from evangelicals, and the planned campaign for next year to reach pastors and churches; terrorism expert Carole Lieberman, author of “Lions and Tigers and Terrorists, Oh My!” talks to CBN’s The Global Lane program about how the suspect in the shooting of two members of the National Guard may have been radicalized; and the Christmas season is officially underway at CBN with the Grand Illumination at the Founders Inn.
The United Kingdom has become an authoritarian nightmare, and the United States must remain vigilant if it does not want to go down the same course.
Elizabeth Kinney, a 34-year-old care assistant, was naked in the bathtub when 11 police officers barged into her home to arrest her.
Her crime was sending insults to another woman via text.
The International Business Times reported Wednesday that Kinney — a mother of four — was detained under the Malicious Communications Act. She had sent texts to a woman involved with a man who had allegedly assaulted her. In those texts, she used the word “f****t” to describe him.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, she has been convicted of a hate crime. Kinney is ordered to do 72 hours of unpaid work, complete 10 rehabilitation activity days, and pay a fine of £364. According to the International Business Times, she had initially faced 10 years in prison.
Per the Daily Mail, prosecuting attorney Jacqueline Whiting commented on the incident, “The defendant and the victim in this matter had been friends but had a falling out which resulted in an incident on the October 27, 2024 whereby abusive and homophobic text messages were sent to the victim causing her alarm and distress.”
“The Crown place this offence in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact.”
Kinney’s lawyer, Simon Simmonds, tried to help his client by telling the court she was distressed over being allegedly assaulted and was simply venting after an awful situation. “In terms of motivation and hostility, I do not suppose there was much thought process other than unloading a lot off her chest.”
“She was simply upset about what had happened to her. There is reference to another male they had both been connected to and this led to an incident not before the court that Miss Kinney was the victim of.”
Kinney insisted her words were a “thoughtless rant,” not an attack on anyone’s sexuality.
She appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” where she explained the arrest to him.
WTF. 11 police officers in Britain broke into the home of a woman and arrested her while she was still naked.
Her crime?
She sent a text to someone calling a man who assaulted her a "faggot."
“You were naked?” Morgan asked as Kinney described police violating her privacy over a text message. “How did that make you feel?”
“Disgusted,” she told him. “Really upset. I was crying my eyes out.”
“I was in utter shock.”
“What did they say they were there for?” Morgan asked. After explaining how violating it felt to have several male officers see her without clothes on, Kinney told him the one female officer told her they were there “for malicious communications and hate crime.”
A longer video of the interview was also posted to YouTube. Kinney told the story leading to the texts, including her injuries from the assault and her arrest.
Here, Morgan asked her about free speech in that country, which by any account is dead. “What do you think it says about free speech in this country?”
Kinney told him the United States cares more than the U.K. Morgan replied, “This would never have happened in America.”
Kinney’s story is one of many. In November, Turning Point activist Young Bob was arrested for “Breach of the Peace” while having a debate with a Muslim man at Speaker’s Corner in London.
The U.K. is gone, but Morgan can’t be so sure about the U.S.
Democrats love to scream about “hate speech” and “misinformation” spreading online.
Our First Amendment protects us, but for how long?
The minority Liberal government has struck a deal with Bloc Québécois to “eliminate long-standing Criminal Code safeguards for freedom of expression and religious freedom in exchange for the Bloc supporting Bill C-9,” according to the National Post.
Currently, the law exempts hateful or antisemitic speech if it based in good faith on the interpretation of a religious text, but that immunity is set to be removed. Additionally, the Liberals are expected to back off plans to eliminate the need for a provincial attorney general’s sign-off to pursue a hate-propaganda prosecution.
The removal of the religious exception clause is being driven by the Bloc Québécois, who have long sought to entrench cultural secularization. Months ago, the province of Quebec signaled their intention to introduce legislation to ban prayer in public. The Post continues:
Canada’s hate speech laws currently say people cannot be prosecuted for expressing, “in good faith,” an argument or opinion on a religious subject or “based on belief in a religious text.”
If this amendment is adopted and Bill C-9 is passed, people of faith could be imprisoned for up to two years for expressing deeply held religious convictions that the government finds offensive.
Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet said in a statement Monday “Speech that incites hatred is a criminal act, regardless of whether it is uttered under the guise of religion or not.”
Justice Critic Rhéal Éloi Fortin added “If we are serious about fighting hate, I think that… removing the religious exemption in the Criminal Code is important..We really need to clean up the criminal code and remove these kinds of exceptional defences, which are unacceptable.”
Conservative Part leader Pierre sounded the alarm after the Liberal chair of the House of Commons Justice Committee, Marc Miller, insisted that the bible contains passsages that are “clear hatred” and as a result prosuctors should be able to press charges.
“Clearly there are situations in these texts where these statements are hatefu. They should not be used to invoke or be a defence.”
Pollievre and the Conservatives woved to fight the removal of the exception.
Liberal-Bloc amendments to C-9 will criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah, and other sacred texts.
Conservatives will oppose this latest Liberal assault on freedom of expression and religion.
Sign here. Defend religious freedom. Keep Liberal thought police out of your… pic.twitter.com/WJXqUcMC8q
Canadian legislators are on the cusp of eliminating key religious protections from the nation’s hate speech statutes, potentially paving the way for prosecutions over biblical teachings on marriage, sexuality and other faith-based views.
What do you think are the prospects for war? Not a limited “police action” in which the U.S. gets bogged down in a conflict with a lesser power, but a world war scale conflagration in which the U.S. is fighting for its very existence?
European nations, long complacent under the security blanket of American protection, are now scared to death that Russia will invade them. Some nations are taking extraordinary measures, with their experts prediction war with Russia by 2029.
Princeton international affairs fellow Heather Penatzer has written an article for the British online publication Unherd entitled The Triumph of the Trump Doctrine.
She says that ever since the end of World War II, American foreign policy has been dominated by three priorities: First, the security of Western Europe against the threat of Soviet communism. Second, attempting to stabilize the Middle East, taking on Great Britain’s former role in securing access to the region’s oil. Third, protecting America’s commercial interests in the East Asia-Pacific region.
The three regions of interests formed a hierarchy of sorts: Europe first, the Middle East second, and Asia third. And despite runaway globalisation, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of China, this hierarchy of priorities has largely remained consistent. The past several US administrations doubled down on toppling regimes in the Middle East while acting as though Western Europe requires the same amount of US assistance that was needed to remedy the destruction of WWII and fend off Communism.
Penatzer thinks these preoccupations are outdated and praises what she calls the “Trump Doctrine” for setting new priorities. She writes:
At the heart of the president’s vision is a desire to devolve European security back to European states and to disengage from the sands of the Middle East. Reducing American commitments in those two regions is paired with an activist approach to the Western Hemisphere, while playing hardball economic statecraft with Beijing. While the execution of this reorientation has been mixed and, in several cases, dangerously flawed, the Trump Doctrine is a much needed update to last century’s strategic status quo.
Europe has gotten the message. Furthermore, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a sense of urgency.
The Wall Street Journal‘s Bertrand Benoit recently published an article entitled Germany’s Secret Plan for War With Russia. The reporter got his hands on a 1,200 pages document setting out detailed plans to mobilize and provide logistical support for 800,000 German and allied troops in the event of an attack from Russia, which it projects may happen in 2029. It also sets our plans for an “all-of-society” approach to war, organizing civilians for resistance and guerilla actions. Such plans are in conjunction with Germany’s 100 billion euro ($116 billion) rearmament initiative.
Meanwhile, France has gone so far as to introduce “voluntary military conscription” to enlist 18 and 19 year olds in 10 months of service, with an emphasis on combat training, as part of the country’s efforts to be ready for a war by 2030.
Norway, Sweden, and Finland have already been bolstering their military forces and training their citizens for resistance. So has Poland. In contrast, in the words of an article by UK analyst Keir Giles, Britain Hits Snooze as Russia Threat Intensifies, with the deck, “There is now clear evidence that despite an acknowledged threat, the UK is extending its holiday from history.”
In Asia, Japan–despite its pacifist post-WWII constitution–is growing its military capability against the threat of China. So is South Korea. China’s announced target, Taiwan, modeling its strategy on Ukraine’s success in styming a much more powerful military power, is implementing a “porcupine defense,” using decentralized units and small, individually operated and hard to detect weapons systems to resist invasion.
Now, historically, it’s not good news when Germany, France, and Japan militarizes, since all three countries have been threats to the whole world. (Think, WWI & WWII, Napoleon, and WWII, respectively.)
It’s surely healthy for nations to be ready to defend themselves, rather than expecting the U.S.A. to protect them. Some would say that a world filled with nations armed to the teeth is dangerous, since those weapons might not always be used merely for territorial defense. Then again, military deterrence and “peace through strength” have proven track records.
I myself question whether Russia is going to invade Europe in four years or less. Just as the U.S. has been giving the same level of assistance to the Europeans that it did before the Soviet Union fell apart, the Europeans may be assuming that Russia is as powerful as it was during the Cold War. Russia hasn’t even been able to conquer Ukraine, which would seem to be much less formidable than the NATO countries. And in trying to take over Ukraine, Russia has suffered a million casualties and used up a big part of its military technology.
China, though, is a much greater threat. It has dramatically built up and modernized its forces, including investing in cutting-edge military technology that rivals or even surpasses what the United States has.
Unlike these other countries, United States has not appreciably built up its military, though it is already powerful. Still, concerns have been raised about Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, warns that The U.S. Can’t Handle a War. “From ships to shells to soldiers, the U.S. military lacks the personnel and matériel it needs to fight a major war.” She writes,
Over the past few decades Washington has traded a larger, more durable military force for one that is high-tech but brittle. Defense planners have made small quantities of expensive, cutting-edge weapons a priority over producing enough firepower for a long fight.This shift relied on advanced weapons having the power to end fighting decisively and quickly. Yet modern wars have evolved to require both advanced systems and sheer volume of 20th-century staple munitions, such as artillery shells and missiles.
Ukraine is using up to 15,000 artillery shells a day in its fight against Russia’s invasion. The United States produces only 40,000 shells each month.
The United States is also short on advanced munitions, such as precision-guided missiles. When America helped defend Israel from Iranian attacks late last year, our warships used a year’s worth of SM-3 interceptor missile production in a single night. Offensive strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen are likewise draining stocks of cruise missiles — the same kind that would be critical in a conflict in the Pacific. War games simulating a conflict with China estimate that the United States would run out of certain vital weapons, such as long-range anti-ship missiles, in as little as a week.
She expresses support for President Trump’s mandate and Defense Secretary (sorry, War Secretary) Pete Hegseth’s efforts to reform the Pentagon and beef up our military capabilities.
The U.S. has treaty commitments to come to the aid of any NATO country and it has informal agreements to come to the aid of Taiwan. But under the Trump doctrine, which may or may not survive the next presidency, that could change, though part of the Trump doctrine is being tough on China.
The deeper question is this: Short of a direct attack on American soil, do you think the U.S. would, or could, or should go to war to protect other countries?
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