Today, I preached on Isaiah 26:3: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. ”
We closed by singing “We Rest On Thee.” It is often sung to the tune Finlandia. Because we use Finlandia for “Be Still My Soul,” we decided to set this one to Mendelssohn’s lovely piece, Consolation (embedded video with music below):
One voice says, “I will exalt me.”
Another voice says, “I will exalt Thee.”
Isaiah 25:1
O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.
“Legal action against Christian bakers is ‘a crushing blow to religious liberty,'” says the headline on Christian Today’s website. They are wrong — it is a crushing blow to all liberty. If the action is successful, freedom of speech in Britain is dead.
Most, on reading the headline, would think, “Oh, this is another case of a Christian baker refusing to do a cake for a ‘homosexual wedding.'” Those cases are bad enough, but this is (remarkably) even more chilling.
© Trustees of the British Museum
“This is [the tomb of Shebna]yahu who is over the house. There is no silver and gold here, only [his bones] and the bones of his maidservant with him. Cursed be the man who opens this.” (The wording in brackets is missing on the inscription and has been supplied.)
Two thousand years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ asked a question. Few were prepared to answer it then, and few want to answer it today — but still, it echoes down the ages, slicing through human hypocrisy today, just as it has ever since He first asked it.
Seen on a sign at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh:
Plants and Pollinators. One can’t live without the other.
So which evolved first?
I started a new series of sermons today (yes, I still have a series on Isaiah running, sometimes I run two series at a time). I’ll be preaching a few sermons on why we do things the way we do in our church. Today, I preached on the centrality of Scripture, and how our belief is reflected in what we do when our church gathers together.
Everyone has traditions — they way they do things. We want our traditions to be “on purpose” — established to serve a Scriptural purpose. That is the focus of this series. Following are some of the thoughts from today’s message.
Mind Renewers 