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My Shepherd

  A psalm of David. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:1-3) Before we launch into comparing ourselves with David as he describes himself in this passage, we need to remember that there are also times when he laments his sinfulness and when he whines at God, calling on God to shatter the teeth of his enemies. Today’s passage is the “mountaintop” and the circumstances we believe we want, but it wasn’t even David’s reality all the time. At the same time, it was David’s reality, and ours. As we read it, we think of living a pleasant pastoral life, wandering from pasture to brook along pleasant, well-tended trails. If you read a shepherd’s understanding of what the psalm says, it’s all stuff that sheep need for their well-being. A good shepherd would do these things. But, He makes me…He leads me…He guides...
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No Gentile or Jew...

                     Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (Colossians 3:11-12)                 The second half of this passage makes it sound as though we’re supposed to wear our hearts on our sleeves. That’s why I backed up a verse to give it some context. Paul wrote that the various tribes and cliques did not belong in the Church. It didn’t matter what you looked like, what your social status was, or how you had identified before coming to Christ. Once you were in Christ, you were part of the family, and the behavioral code for family members was different from the behavioral code for everyone else....
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Love, Faithfulness, and

                 Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for; through the fear of the Lord evil is avoided. (Proverbs 16:6) The best example of the first half of this verse is, of course, the love and faithfulness of God that led to the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it is because of our love for others and our faithfulness to them and/or to what is right that we seek reconciliation and make restitution for wrongs done to us and forgive those who have wronged to us and seek reconciliation with them. We can atone for our sins against others and we can forgive sins committed against us. The second half of the verse is something I've discussed before. It's not about a phobia. It’s about healthy fear. I used to be phobic of spiders. Now, I have what I would describe as a healthy fear. I’m not likely to try to agitate a spider or even to handle it. But I’m also not likely to leave a building becau...
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Add To Your...

                  For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (II Peter 1:5-8) He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:28)   Given the priority given to love in passages like I Corinthians 13, the list above is interesting. Of course, it ends with love while I Corinthians 13:1-8 describes love. But you know that person or those people you know you’re supposed to love, b...
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What Then?

                        What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! (Romans 6:15)                 God has forgiven our sins, past, present, and future. If we confess our sins, God will forgive us (I John 1:9). So, what’s the big deal if we sin? If God is a loving God, what’s the problem with our sinning? To answer this, let’s look at the concept of sin. God told Adam and Eve that if they broke His law about eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die. So, what was the big problem with their eating? They died, and with them, so did every other human. We were separated from God. Sin separates. We like to think of sin as some minor thing that God gets bent out of shape about. But every sin is a brick in a wall we’re building between ourselves and God, between ourselves and...
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WD-40

                 His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.  (II Peter 1:3-4) Duct tape, WD-40 and bubble gum…all you need to fix anything, right? And the bubble gum is to give your mouth something to do besides use foul language. That’s sort of the way today’s passage sounds. All we need is…knowledge of Him (Duct Tape) and His great and precious promises (WD-40), and we can live a godly life, participate in the divine nature, and escape the corruption of the world. Of course, if you know me, I’d say “WD-40” is “WDA” What all this boils down to is that what we need in order to live the sort of life we like to think we dream ...
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To A Thousand Generations

                 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments . (Deuteronomy 7:9) The first thing that comes to mind as I read this verse is that Scripture can and does include figurative language. The thousand generations is not some magical limit. When the 1001 st generation comes along, God can and does remain faithful and keep His covenant. The reality is that within those thousand generations, there is likely to be another generation, perhaps the 848th, that also loves God and keeps His commandments. If the thousand-generation bit was literal, that would require that God keep His covenant to the 1849 th generation. God’s certainly capable of keeping track of such things, but that would make His behavior contingent upon the behavior of those who love Him and keep His co...
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