Brown's Daily Word 7-24-14

The Lord blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday.  The temperature reached into the nineties in some parts of our region.  The Lord lavished on us some torrential rains. 

    The monsoon season has come to the State of Orissa, India.  The farmers are busy planting rice.  The rice fields where we worked during our growing years are being planted for another season.  The farms and vineyards in the State of New York look luxuriant.  The tomato plants in our little garden are tall and bearing much fruit.  Some of the hot peppers are red and redder and ready to be picked.  Alice is planning to pick some beans today.  The Lord is good and His mercy never fails.  He blessed us with a wonderful Wednesday gathering of fellowship and study, along with much laughter. 

    We moved to Union Center, the great suburbs of Endicott, in beautiful Broome  County, New York in June, 1990.  The Wednesday gathering which meets every Wednesday was meeting in 1990 also.  When we first came there was a man here by the name of Oscar Iobost.  He was one of the teachers in the church.  He was zealous for the Lord.  He went to be with Jesus recently at the age of 92.  He used to use the expression, "the non-negotiable truths of the Gospel", or the non- negotiable foundations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  During the Protestant Reformation, these core foundations were described as the five solas.  Sola is the Latin word for alone.  We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.  The Bible alone has the unique authority to speak about these things.  All of this is done to the glory of God alone.  These core foundations extend back to the Gospels and to the early church. 

    In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me."  The early church took this to heart.  In our Wednesday gatherings we have been looking at   the Book of Acts.  In our study yesterday we looked how  Peter was testifying before the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court in Jerusalem.  They interrogated Peter about a man who was healed.  They wanted to know how this miracle happened, how this man was saved.  Peter answered: "It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed."  He then went on to say, "Salvation is found in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved."

    That is solus Christus—salvation in Christ alone, healing through Christ alone, redemption through Christ alone, the kingdom of heaven coming to earth through Christ alone.  This has been a core, must-have confession for the church's entire history.  This concept is offensive in our culture today.  The claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation sounds arrogant or narrow-minded, but the church has not confessed salvation in Christ alone for 2,000 years in order to be smug, arrogant, or narrow-minded.  We confess this belief because we know who Jesus is.  Jesus is unique.  Jesus once said, "Behold I stand at the door and knock." 

    If you will let Him in, He will love you forever.  Come to Jesus and live.

 In Christ,

 Brown

http://youtu.be/e8HgAVenbUU

Brown's Daily Word - 7/22/14

      Praise the Lord for this new day.  Praise the Lord for the way His goodness and mercy that follow us all the days of our lives.  I get to talk to my daughters almost every day.  It is a great thrill and joy as we share the blessings and the faithfulness of our Lord.  I was visiting some saints yesterday.  One of them is in her nineties lives in her beautiful home.  She is in her nineties .  She never misses coming to church.  She is no longer is able to drive.  Some body from the church picks her for worship every Sunday.  She is a living and walking testimony to Jesus our Lord.   She is frail but her mind is very keen and sharp.  Her heart is full of praise and thanksgiving.  She spends the bulk of her time praying for others.  The Lord has kept her vigorous and full of zeal.  Another person I was visiting is one of the sweet servants of Jesus.  She is battling some devastating health concerns.  Despite her health problems she has set aside the whole week teaching children for the vacation Bible School of her church.  She is faithful and committed. 

    It seems like the whole world has become an inferno. . . from the tragedy of the Airplane that was shot down to the conflict in the Middle East.  Sunita has been several times to Israel, including a trip to Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on earth.  We are reminded to pray for " Peace of Jerusalem".  Pray for the whole situation in the Gaza strip.  Pray for the persecuted Christians in Mosul, Iraq.  In the face of trials, tragedies, and tears , those who love Jesus look at His face.  They declare the audacity of their faith in the words the Psamist:  "I Hope in God; For I shall yet praise Him, the help (literally the "salvation") of my countenance and my God." Psalms 42:5

    In his book, When God Interrupts Craig Barnes, one of my favorite preachers,  tells the story of how he was tying to prepare a sermon, settle a staff conflict, and basically save the world in one week. He had one more thing to do before going home: he had to lead a Communion Service at a nursing home.  As he said, "It was the last thing I wanted to be doing."  He was in the "blue funk" that sometimes settles over the pastorate.  That is when he met Mrs. Lucille Lines.  I read from his book:

    "Mrs. Lines was almost blind and very hard of hearing.  She had gradually become shut off from the world.  Her health was slipping away, and now she is confined to a small room, having given up her house years ago.  She has outlived her husband and close friends.  Very few people in our church still remember her. She has lost almost everything but life itself" (page 147).

    Dr. Barnes wrote that it was a humble scene.  He muttered the words, "This is my Body broken for you.  This is my blood poured out for you."  They fumbled their way through and he guided her shaking hand to the bread and the cup.  Then she spilled the juice on his slacks.  He thought to himself, "Just one more thing that isn't going right!"  He patted her on the back, said a prayer and was leaving when he heard her so clearly: "Thank you, God, for being so good to me.  Thank you that I am not forgotten.  Thank you for always loving me."  Her words were his healing that day.

    Her insights are that of the Psalmist.  In the darkest moments of life, when we are at the very end of our lives, shaking and confused, our Lord is there.  When we are speechless and deaf to the world, when we may even be spilling our salvation all over ourselves, Christ is just beyond the veil.  In Christ, in the presence of the Holy Spirit, in the love of a Father who will never let us go, God is good and God is here.

    There are many twelve step programs devised by men to deal with our human problems of depression, and addiction of all sorts.  They are all good, but the best plan is orchestrated and executed by our Lord Jesus.   It is a "One-Step Plan". . It is the step that God took when He left heaven and came to earth.  For all who seek to follow Him, sometimes even through the fog of life, we cling to the promises and we may even sing in the night:

"What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!

O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,

all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer!

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care?

Precious Savior, still our Refuge — Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Do thy friends despise, forsake thee? Take it to the Lord in prayer;

In His arms He'll take and shield thee, Thou wilt find a solace there."

In Christ,

  Brown 

http://youtu.be/X35JDIdQF5A

Brown's Daily Word 7/21/14

   The Lord  blessed us with His presence and love in His house yesterday.   Blessed be His Name.  Alice and I walked in the evening gazing at the setting sun and brilliant and colorful clouds.  It was 45 years ago yesterday that Americans landed on the moon.  I was in my senior year in college.  We were spellbound to know that men have walked on the moon.  In India people worship the moon and the sun.  I recall visiting an elderly woman in her nineties and telling her that Americans have walked on the moon.  She could not believe the story.  Many in the world worship the sun, moon and the stars, but we worship the Living God, the Lord who made the heavens the earth.  He made the sun, moon, and the stars. 

    I love to listen to the amazing piece, "Creation", by Hayden.  The psalmist says, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1).  To prove his point, he looked at the same old sun and said it "comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy" (Psalm 19:5). Whether the sun seems to make any progress or not, it bears witness to the joy and strength of its Creator.  Therefore, "From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord's name is to be praised" (Psalm 113:3).

    As for all the repetition that we see in nature, this too is a testimony to the goodness and orderliness of our Lord God who is mighty and merciful. .  The regularity of the created world shows the constancy and the faithfulness of our God..  The winds blow at his bidding; the waters flow at his command; and this is for the blessing of this earth..  It is written, "He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind" (Psalm 104:3; cf. 147:18).  Again, it is written "He draws up the drops of water; they distill his mist in rain, which the skies pour down and drop on mankind abundantly" (Job 36:27-28).  So rather than simply perceiving the day in, day out routines of nature , we can see them the way Jeremiah saw them, when he said: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23).

    Looking above the sun also gives us a different perspective on our experience. Is there anything new?The writer of Ecclesiastes   wrote that there is nothing new under the sun .Maybe not under the sun.   BUT  our Lord God who rules over the sun is always doing something new.  There is a new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ (Luke 22:20)—the blood that he shed on the cross for the forgiveness of all our sins.  There is the new life that came up from the empty tomb when Jesus rose from the dead with the power of eternal salvation.  There is the new heart that God gives to everyone who believes in Jesus (Ezek. 36:26).  There is the new self that the Holy Spirit starts to grow in the knowledge and holiness of God (Eph. 4:24).  This is so new that the Bible calls it "a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17), which is a way of saying that when you trust in God, his work in your life will recreate your whole world.

    The Christian life is not just the same old, same old.  The living Lord  who sits on the throne of the universe says, "Behold, I am making all things new" (Revelation 21:5). This is the promise to hold on to whenever you are tired of life and all its troubles. The God you worship is the God who says, "Behold, I am doing a new thing" (Isaiah 43:19).

    One day this God our Lord and Redeemer will make a whole new heavens and a whole new earth.  When that day comes, our restless  lives,will be fully and finally satisfied when we see Jesus Christ and hear the sound of his glorious worship.  "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined," this is "what God has prepared for those who love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9).  We will no longer look this way and that way for something to satisfy us, but our senses will be saturated with the glory of God.  This is something to remember whenever we  are frustrated and angry and lonely and sad and disappointed with everything in life that is getting broken or falling apart or going wrong.   Let us  remember that this life is not our final existence.  We were made for a better world.  When we turn to the Lord  in faith, trusting him for life and eternity, we discover that all our memories are safe with him.  The apostle Paul said, "You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).  God so preserves us in his Son that nothing essential to who we are will be lost forever.  We are invited to set our minds "on things that are above, not on things that are on earth" (Colossians 3:2).

In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/9_Q3NrB_eHM