While on the road for a couple of hours yesterday while taking my father-in-law to a doctor appointment....I thought we might listen to a Charles Spurgeon sermon. I wanted something fairly light as he had things on his mind....and picked a sermon titled...."Go Home And Tell The Story....A Christmas Sermon"....but there wasn't even a mention of Bethlehem or a manger or that glorious event....but rather other glorious events....I'll let you find out for yourself what they are if you are interested. The evening before....I pulled up an old 1947 film classic for my wife and I to watch....Life With Father....starring Pittsburgh native William Powell and a young Elizabeth Taylor. It's a period film....around the 1880s....the same time that Charles Spurgeon would be preaching to London from the Metropolitan Tabernacle....(the film....based on a play....based on an autobiography of sorts....takes place in New York.) If you should ever watch the film....or possibly remember it.....it's all about a wife trying to get her profane but very successful husband to be baptized. It shows the extraordinarily hollowness of much of Christianity at the time.....and as I watched I could imagine if the character might have been dragged to a Spurgeon sermon....instead of going weekly to his $5000 pew in his Episcopal church. Anyway....I recommend Spurgeon's sermon in this lead-up to Christmas! The following post is from the 14th of September....and it describes what I have tried to do in these posts.....essentially.....go and tell a story.
Take The Ephesians Exit.....6:11.....To The Celestial City.....September 17, 2020
"Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil."
I'll meet a friend that I haven't seen for a while on the street....or the grocery store....and it will be nice....and we will talk....maybe even fellowship....but we can't shake hands....and definitely not hug....and it's a bit sad....but that's the way that it has to be for a while at least....anything short of this social distancing is reckless....almost as if we were saying to God...."You're going to have to do a lot more than this to get our attention." He is about to by they way.
Being a reader of history....I've seen it before....where a demigod or a demagogue....takes captive those who fall in line....inciting them to a dangerous anger....(the former with so much power over their supporters that it's almost as if they are a god to them....and the latter who addresses primarily the emotions of their supporters). Donald John Trump is a horrible manifestation of both definitions.For the umpteenth time in these posts....if you have not read on Trump's life....then you do not know him or what his methods are....or that the man who has elevated the words 'fake' and 'hoax' to the top of political rhetoric in America....is himself the biggest fake and hoax that was ever perpetrated upon us. Informing the reader of this is what I've attempted to do....that you might snap our of it and move on in what is our shared pilgrimage....or if you have not as of yet fallen in awe and wonder and thanksgiving before the Lord of Glory....that you might humble yourself and look to Him.
Having put here these thoughts....in one form or another....as I mentioned for the 'umpteenth time'....I need to say this....there is only 1 'follower' listed for these posts....as I disabled that option when I first saw it when I began these posts....for I don't want people to just come back occasionally or even regularly to read....in effect falling into a trap where the information piles up....but tranquilizes more than edifies.
Go to ligonier.org.....or go to whitehorseinn.org....or go to gty.org....or to the YouTube sermons of a Spurgeon or a J. C. Ryle or Martyn Lloyd-Jones or O. Palmer Robertson or D. A. Carson or Sinclair Fergusen or Michael Reeves or Alistair Begg. Spend any time that you might have spent here....in prayer.
My hope in these posts is to reach someone only long enough that the bondage of a Donald Trump might be shaken....or that of a works salvation....or the pitiful sermons today that do more harm then they help. So I repeat some posts over again a number of times....for the visitor who somehow stumbled across these posts.
As much as I post on Donald Trump.....politics is not the primary reason.....but rather the hold that he has on evangelicalism. Not only are we no longer being warned of those truths from the Bible that we need to hear....we are falling for those very things of which we should be warned. Thank you for considering what I write....but God's very Word to us....the most valuable possession in this world....is right there by your side....take up and read!
