What in the World is a Sacrament?

What in the World is a Sacrament? (Audio) Click link

The two Sacraments are Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, or Communion. But the interpretations of these two great events can differ wildly even within the orthodox Evangelical environment. Is anything “spiritual” actually happening when we come together for Communion? Does “Do this in remembrance of me.”, imply that the ritual can be reduced to a mere memorial? Since we are not under the ceremonial law, why these ceremonies? What about the “elements”? For 1900 years the churches used wine. Is grape juice acceptable? What about Pepsi and cookies? Should everyone be invited to participate? Or just Christians? How will we measure who the Christians are? Profession of faith? Church Membership? Is Baptism the cause of salvation? A means of salvation? A sign of salvation? Irrelevant to salvation? Should only adult professors of belief be baptized? What about the little children? What in the world is a sacrament seems like a simple enough question but the answers can get very complicated.

http://www.apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=371:what-in-the-world-is-a-sacrament&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

Christopher Neiswonger, Lindsay Brooks, and Pastor Kent Moorlach of Communion Presbyterian Church of Irvine CA

Are You Using God Given Gifts To Sin?

In the book of Hosea, God had strengthened the people and they turned around and used that strength to sin against Him. We do the same thing when we sin.

God Bless,

Doug

Michael Jackson Has Died (A Christian Reflection)

It was just reported that Michael Jackson has died after going into cardiac arrest.  During this time our hearts, as Christians, go out to the family and his children.   To reflect on such an event as a believer is sobering to say the least.  To reflect on the death of anyone would do the same, but there seems to be something extra when it is a person like Michael Jackson.  To imagine that even kings, even if they were just the “King of Pop,” will one day stand before the King of kings, should cause us all to pause and reflect for a moment on our lives.

Scripture tells us that it is appointed once for a man to die, then the judgment (Heb. 9:27).   All men, even those who seemed to have the world by the tail for a time, are subjected to it.   What is more troubling for the Christian who considers such an event, is to see how many people are still clamoring to have what Michael had at the height of his fame, knowing that many fail to see how quickly these kingdoms will come crashing down.

There is no doubt that fame has engulfed many to the point that it seems to have consumed them, and it should not be surprising when we consider that scripture tells us that “the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest” (Isa 57:20).  Even if we end up with all that we dreamed of in this world, unless Christ is our treasure we will not find the rest that seems to be eluding us (Matt. 16:26).   In fact, we often impale ourselves with many troubles as we pursue it (1 Tim 6:10).

There is a restlessness in the human heart as Augustine pointed out when he said,  “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”  This restlessness comes from the fact that there is a knowledge of God written on our hearts, and in our sinfulness we want nothing to do with it (Rom. 1:18-20).  It is from this point that our pursuits for peace take us everywhere except the one place we would be able to find it.

In our sinfulness we reject God, knowing that we have violated his ways (Rom 1:32), and to cover up that knowledge, we tend to work even harder to find things that can distract us from that truth.  In it we tend to go further and further down a path of vanity, for all is vanity apart from Christ (Ecc. 1:2). 

From here we create our own standards of what we think a good person ought to be, but even by our own standards we fail to measure up.  Only by deceiving ourselves are we able maintain any level of respectability and righteousness.  Often during these pursuits, we find ourselves engaging in all kinds of aberrant behavior simply trying to measure up to our own standards.  In it, we are clinging to our own righteousness in order to appease the God we know is there.  For many, even in their suppression of the truth, will create a God to their liking and will try to appease him (Rom 1:23), but the God of scripture tells us that all our righteousness is like filthy rags, and he wants nothing to do it them (Isa. 64:6).  But, praise God, He then goes on to tell us of the remedy that he has offered in Christ Jesus for all of us have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God (Rom. 3:23) .  You see, God the Father sent his son to die upon the cross to bear the punishment for all who will believe in Him (John 3:16) in order to bring us into a right relationship with Him and give us the peace we are seeking. 

As was mentioned before, it is appointed once for a man to die then the judgment, but the only way anyone will be able to stand in the judgment is if they are in Christ, because he is the only one who has lived a truly righteous life and paid the penalty for our sins (Acts 4:12), and if we are not in Christ we will have to pay our own penalty for sins.  This truth applies to all men and women, whether rich or poor, famous or unknown, loved by the world or not.

To paraphrase John Donne, when we hear that someone has died and we wonder for whom the bell tolls, there is a sense in which it will always be tolling for us.  It is a constant reminder of our own frailty, telling us to be cognizant of our own end, and to ponder what awaits us afterward, and whether or not we are living life the way it should be lived; to the glory of God (Psalm 39:4).

God Bless,

Doug Eaton

Adultery: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Adultery: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

Just gave his press conference about his ongoing affair with a woman from Argentina. He said that he had been in counseling with clergy about the matter for the last 5 months. His wife already knew about it and he said they were trying to work it out. More to the purpose of this blog, he spoke a lot about the laws of God. He said, “the laws of God are not oppressive rules”, but “are always put into place for our own protection”. He also said that the laws of God were absolutes and that he had been attending Christian bible studies. Any of that relevant?

So lets’ get to a few specifics… should he resign as the Governor of South Carolina because he has been committing adultery? No. Why not? I think the more pressing question would be why should he? Is there a standing law in the state of South Carolina that people caught committing adultery should quit their jobs? What about special ones for elected officials? What he has shown is that he should not have been elected, but elected he was, and there really isn’t any legal basis for either quitting or being fired. What about the moral basis? Well what kind of moral basis do we need for people to quit their jobs? Is there some public standard for that kind of thing? I’d like to see the list. “If people do A, B, or C they should quit their jobs”. I’d like to see that. What about the extreme indignity and betrayal to the people that elected him, especially since he ran as a Republican and Republicans are known for being moral and upstanding citizens? If the people of that elected him wanted to force people out of office for this kind of thing they should have said so before they hired him, and those of you that think the Republicans are known for being moral or upstanding citizens are out of touch with reality. Sexual immorality is no more common with Democrats than with Republicans; they are all together politicians and generally untrustworthy types of folk. (Since Libertarians define themselves by their God given right to sexual immorality I guess they are in their own category here.)

So should we elect people to public office that are sexually immoral? No. Of course not. Being sexually immoral is not a special category of immorality and should be taken as general representation of the person’s personal character as a whole. It is an expression of the basic commitments to which they hold and how they interpret themselves and other people. It also says a lot about how they view pleasure and what they are willing to do to enjoy themselves. More than this, if they are willing to harm myriad other persons in order to pursue their own desires what does it say about their character in general? There is nothing that is more indicative of a person’s thinking about human relationships than their sexuality, and that is why when men cheat on their wives, or visa versa, they are telling you that their most powerful commitments are compromise-able and easily cast aside, and that, for almost nothing.

So we have all kinds of reasons to not take as friends, or ministers, or elect as office holders, or hire as employees, or work for, sexually immoral people. They have already telegraphed what they are about on a most intimate level. I know it’s horribly provincial and unfashionable to say that sexual immorality is one of the most immoral things that a person can do, with the greatest negative effects upon the self and the society, but I can say it because I am not running for office.

An example of the effects of sexual immorality upon the larger society…

A man cheats on his wife with another man’s wife; the other woman gets pregnant; She then must decide whether or not to kill the child through abortion; the husband of the pregnant woman finds out and commits himself to revenge against the adulterous man through violence; The adulterer’s wife finds out from the offended husband and sues for divorce fighting in court for sole custody of their four children ages 3 to 16 who now are subjected to public shame and humiliation not to mention being torn away from the safety and care of a nuclear family; The grandparents are immediately estranged from the children as they are required to take sides with their sons and daughters; Grades plummet; The teenagers begin the usual divorce trauma process of sexual and drug experimentation; The pregnant woman decides to have the child as she is opposed to abortion and is put out of the home by her offended husband; She sues for child support from the father of the child so that she can have a bare subsistence; He denies the child is his own not from spite but because his alimony payments to his ex-wife and child support payments for his other four children have already left him bankrupt while living in a studio apartment and still making court ordered house payments on the home where his ex-wife, her new boy-friend, and three of his four children live, the oldest having run away to avoid abuse by the new live in boy-friend; The courts decide against the adulterous woman as the legal assumption is that any married woman’s pregnancy is caused by her husband and so her now ex-husband is assumed to be the father by law and her claim for child support is denied; She does the only thing that she thinks she can do and files for child support from her ex-husband whom she knows is not the father of the child; The court finds in her favor and attaches the ex-husbands wages causing him to go into bankruptcy and flee the state in order to avoid paying child support for the child of his ex-wife’s lover; Before leaving the state he and two of his friends exact vengeance upon the adulterous man beating him severely with tire irons and leaving him hospitalized for months; Since he can no longer afford coverage his bills are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, public assistance, and what is not covered is sent to his ex-wife’s address in the form of a bill for $137,000.00; The adulterous woman raising the child alone takes to a combination of prescription medication and alcohol just to be able to emotionally function as now that she has no money and is raising a child alone men no longer find her attractive for more that a few days; The ex-husband of the adulterous woman is arrested at the state line by the highway patrol and sentenced to 2 years in state prison after a plea down to battery from attempted murder; and then things just go on from there…

Really this kind of thing should be regulated by law. The things that have the greatest negative effect on the society are the things that the laws should regulate. There is nothing with more severe or long lasting effects than sexual immorality, specifically, adultery. If there were laws against this kind of thing the situation involving Governor Sanford, President Clinton, and whomever else would be a done deal, but as there are no laws against this kind of thing in mature and socially sophisticated cultures like ours, we just let it be.

I’m not trying to “pass judgement” upon Mark Sanford or anyone else. I’m just saying that nobody has a right to complain because we as a community have said yes to adultery. We have embraced it, we have justified it, and we have made room for it as an acceptable and irremediable part of our social behavior, so stop complaining. If you really thought it was wrong you would be shocked by the irrationality of no-fault divorce and astounded by the idea of decriminalization, but as it is, we indulge it, and as we indulge it, we should expect it and every ounce of human suffering there associated. We’ve been suborning adultery for years.

Neiswonger

When Loss is Gain

I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.   Phil. 3:8

Our hearts are easily lured away by the fleeting shadows of this world, and these shadows have a way of slowly enticing our hearts in ways that are so subtle that we are often unaware of how tightly they have begun to grip us.  Unaware that is, until we find ourselves reeling emotionally from being pulled in two opposite directions.  If we follow the ways of Christ, our hearts break in longing for that which we will have to deny, and if we give ourselves to whatever it is that has our hearts inordinately bound, we know that we will find ourselves disappointed in the long run, even though it seems like it is the very thing we need to give us the peace that seems to be eluding us.

We know in these moments that it truly is impossible to serve two masters, for we will end up despising one of them.   If we were left to ourselves, we would run headlong into sin, but praise God, our savior has ways of showing us our folly.  The things that have held us captive and entranced are often exposed, by some providential means, to be things to which we must bid farewell.  

How does the Lord do this?  Often it is through trials, for when we are tried, we are reminded that this world is not our home, and no matter what it was that we were pursuing, we begin to realize that next to the excellency of knowing Christ, all other things will let us down.  For if we are pursuing youth and beauty, he can remind us of our own frailty through illness and make us to be cognizant of our own end.  If we are pursuing wealth and affluence, even if he allows us to attain it, he can cause us to experience great emptiness in the midst of it all through a time of spiritual depression.  If you have made an idol out of some relationship, he has ways to show you how easily it is to be let down by those we trust or how easy it is to let someone down ourselves.

After the Lord has broken our hearts by showing us the futility of making anything of this world our ultimate treasure, he then reveals to us in even greater ways the unfailing treasure of knowing Him. For anything we may pursue in this life apart from Christ, only leads us to greater condemnation.   Our sin separated us from a Holy God, and no amount of youth and beauty, wealth and affluence, or any earthy relationships could have removed the penalty that we deserved.  But Christ, the Lord of Glory, stepped out of heaven into human flesh to save those who will have faith in him.  He was a man who had no form or comeliness (Isaiah 53:2), and any youth and beauty he did possess was marred beyond recognition as they crucified Him.  Being born in a stable he was not a man of affluence.  He had no place to call his home (Luke 9:58), and even the robe he did own was stripped from his back and gambled away by the roman soldiers.  Finally, he was denied by those closest to him; he was betrayed by Judas, disowned by Peter, and the rest of the disciples scattered as he was being tried and sacrificed for our salvation.   

If Christ denied himself all these things when it was necessary, how much more should we who follow him.  What good would it be if we had all these things, but did not have Christ?  For there was one aspect of suffering Christ bore in order that we would not have to.  While Jesus was suffering on the Cross, he was bearing something much more terrible than the loss of beauty, wealth, and friends.  He was bearing the very wrath of God the Father.  When Jesus told the people, “do not fear those who can destroy the body, but fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell,” he knew that he would be bearing that destruction in our place, and the blow would be given by his Father in Heaven.  As he cried, “my God, my God why have you forsaken me,” he was doing more than simply drawing a comparison to the suffering servant of psalm 22.  He was fulfilling its prophecy, and it pleased the Lord to bruise him (Isaiah 53:10).

Now why would Christ, who could have refused the suffering, choose to bear it, and why did the Father, who loved the son, choose to pour his wrath on his only son?  It was so that we could be reconciled to God, through the forgiveness of sins.  The punishment for our sins has been met in Christ, for He loves us with an everlasting love.  In Christ, though we may lose some of what this world calls pleasure, relationships, and maybe even our lives, we will gain all the blessings of God, including eternal life and a friend who sticks closer than a brother.  As we experience these losses, we must remember that those losses will be gain as we find our Savior.  There is no treasure that can compare to the greatness of knowing Christ. 

Doug Eaton