Things Unseen

Things Unseen is a podcast by Sinclair Ferguson. It is available on https://www.ligonier.org/. Key🗝️…..

1 Corinthians 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

The Things Unseen podcast seems to be repeating itself. For example, reflection on Room C37 we had last year. I understand. I think I’ll switch to a different podcast.

July 2, 2024 – Room C37. A study bedroom (as a student). Many important readings, realizations, and understandings were made there.

July 1, 2024 – A Little Pulpit in Scotland. Sinclair was converted near the small pulpit. Then later preached from it. Later the Sr. Pastor. John 8:12 Jesus is the Light.

Week – reflect on special places, in gratitude to God.

Peter said Jesus was crucified at the hands of wicked men, but although He was crucified at the hands of wicked men, it was God’s purpose that through that event, others would be brought to salvation.

One of God’s very best gifts, obviously, is family. He sets the solitary in families, we are told, and we know that family life is one of God’s greatest blessings to us. But that’s exactly why Satan seeks to corrupt and to destroy families.

Jacob, Joseph, & brothers dysfunction. Past circumstances were going to be the instruments of God’s providence to transform them. Understanding and wisdom do come, eventually—to get healing and reconciliation. Therefore, pray for wisdom.

June 26, 2024 – The Mystery of Providence. John Flavel (Englishman) wrote a book on providence. You see them like you read Hebrew – backwards. Jacob’s, and his family’s, favoritism (2 generations) finally was broken in the end.

Yes, be obedient. However, obedience does not cause or guarantee a smooth life. The obedience probably will help the long term transformation.

Romans 8:28 We know that all things work for good for those who love God,^* who are called according to his purpose. God works in and through us for our good, but also for the good of others.

June 25, 2024 – God Meant It for Good. God’s gracious providence.

William Cowper, who knew a great deal of pain and struggle in his life, and must often have asked, “God, why is this happening to me?” goes on to say:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with blessings, and shall break
With blessings on your head.

Week: Providence

June 21, 2024 – The Spirit of the Father. So, in a way, this is our first privilege, our simplest privilege, and also our highest privilege when we are given the gift of the Father’s Spirit, who is also the Spirit of the Son. We call Jesus “Lord,” and we call the Father “Abba, dear Father.”

So, what becomes clear is that in everything Jesus did for us, He was relying on the Spirit’s presence and power. From womb to tomb, and eventually to the throne, the Lord Jesus was indwelt by the very Holy Spirit that He promised to give to His disciples.

June 19, 2024 – The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. John 14:17 “You know him, for he dwells with you [I’’m with you now] and will be in you” (John 14:17).

The Holy Spirit who was in the life of Jesus from the moment of His conception right through the whole of His ministry, until the end of His life, when by the power of the eternal Spirit, He offered Himself as a sacrifice to the Father. That’s the same Spirit that the Lord Jesus was promising to give to His disciples. Not another spirit, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus.

We are so wonderfully united, first of all, to the Lord Jesus Himself, and then wonderfully united to each other.

June 18, 2024 – Another Helper. John 14-16. Jesus’ words. And in John 14:16, the word “another” in “another paraclete” is the word allos, which means another of the same kind.

How could Jesus leaving and another Helper coming possibly be to his advantage?

Well, of course the answer is that the Spirit is another just like Jesus. We need to think more about that today, don’t you think? In fact, we’ll need to return to it tomorrow, so I hope you’ll join me then. But in the meantime, today, remember that if you are a Christian, the other Helper, just like Jesus, is with you, and as we’ll see, He’s more than just with you.

We need to worship and glorify the Spirit together with the Father and the Son. In order to do that, I need to get to know Him better.

Week – Holy Spirit

June 14, 2024 (somewhat mislabeled online) – Reconciliation in Christ. 🗝️ Good summary: This week we’ve been thinking about His work, how it is that Jesus provides for us a propitiation that saves us from God’s wrath, a justification that saves us from our guilt, and a redemption that sets us free from our bondage in sin. So in a sense, we’ve been visiting the temple, the law court, and the slave market. But now there’s a fourth word to think about. It’s the word reconciliation, and it has to do with personal relationships. Alienation involves disintegration. these alienations, these disintegrations, have a single root. Every human alienation is rooted in our alienation from God. We are at enmity with Him because of our sin, and He is at enmity with us in our sinfulness. Jesus has made the exchange. Jesus did it all!! Big change. Reconciliation! Jesus has done everything we need to live the reconciled life.

June 13, 2024 – Redemption through His Blood. Redemption is from the world of slavery. Perhaps 1/3 of population in Roman times in slavery. Jesus death paid the redemption price. John 8:34: “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin, but if the Son sets you free, you’ll be free indeed.” Sinful bondage may to a wide variety of things. Redemption comes as we are in Christ; not something we get from Christ.

June 12, 2024 – God Justifies the Ungodly. Justification is not the same as propitiation (related, but not the same). Justification is a legal term. We need to remember our ungodliness. We have to be careful to look for our glimmers of good traits. Justification is permanent.

The doctrine of justification concerns God’s gracious judicial verdict in advance of the day of judgment, pronouncing guilty sinners, who turn in self-despairing trust to Jesus Christ, forgiven, acquitted of all charges and declared morally upright in God’s sight.

Justified, justification, being counted righteous because of Christ’s righteousness and not my own, takes place at the very beginning of the Christian life when we come to trust in Christ.

Propitiation means “averting the wrath of God by the offering of a gift.”

The horror and the wonder of the mercy of God in Christ.

June 5, 2024 – Truly God and Truly Man. Always had a divine nature. Then, the Word became flesh. Incomprehensible. Early (and current) theologians didn’t (can’t) explain the trinity/incarnation, but they described it as best they could. Definition of Chalcedon of 451 AD. Stunning statement, should cause us to ponder and worship and appreciate Jesus Christ.

June 4, 2024 – The Person of the Son. Velcro strips of basic Christian doctrine are like a Biblical worldview. doubting Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” And in between John 1 and John 21, we learn what it means that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” and “of His fullness we have received grace upon grace.”

June 3, 2024 – Thinking about Jesus. “We’ve become a generation of people who possess vast amounts of fairly detached pieces of information.” “It’s collecting fragments of a picture, but not really knowing where and how these fragments fit into the frame.”

Even though it has become difficult in this day and age, we need to be able to sit and meditate, perhaps for 5 whole minutes, on the person and work of Jesus. One useful framework (or outline) is that he is 1 person with 2 natures (fully God and fully man while he was on earth).

Week – God. The Creator-creature distinction.

May 24, 2024 – The Glory of Pentecost. The knowledge of God (sometimes called the secret) in the old covenant was second hand, given through a prophet, priest, or king (via prophecies, dreams, and visions). With the new covenant, the resurrected Christ is our prophet, priest, and king. Due to the Holy Spirit, all believers have direct access to God. We no longer need a mediator here on earth. Joel was prophesying this. Peter quoted Joel. The bottom line of Pentecost, is that all have knowledge (and blessings) of God. *all – this was an internationalizing of God’s covenant.

May 22, 2024 – Welcome to the Last Days. The Pentecost setting was very diverse. Since we are on this side of the resurrection, we are now in the last days. The old has passed away, the new has come. New creation.

The saints of God seek to see and understand things through the eyeglasses of God’s Word. This becomes to the instinct of the believer.

The doxology:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.

J.B. Phillips wrote a little book with the title, Your God Is Too Small. It’s not really about the Trinity, but I think those words do apply to our appreciation of the Trinity, because if we’ve thought about the Trinity as a speculative and impractical doctrine, then our God is too small.

We’re called to live the Christian life as those who belong to the family of God. We’ve been named for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—for the Trinity. That’s our new family name. But it’s not just a formal thing. It’s an amazing, glorious reality in which, by the indwelling of the Spirit, not only does the Spirit indwell us, but through the Spirit, both the Father and the Son come, as Jesus says, to make our lives their home.

May 15, 2024 – Baptized into the Triune Name. Trinity, is in fact, basic/foundational and profoundly practical. “I baptize you in the name (singular) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”—the words that go back to Jesus’ Great Commission in Matthew 28. Baptism is a naming ceremony. The initial question is often, “By what name is this child called?” Then the baptism occurs. The person is given the identity of being in the Christian family/kingdom/covenant. The child’s name they are called is associated with the name of God, which is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

May 13, 2024 – Knowing the Trinity. The human tendency to think that if we don’t fully understand something, then it must not be important, is flawed (flaw 1). We don’t fully understand the trinity, but it is (nonetheless) essential. There is only one God, and this one God exists eternally in a unity of three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each of these persons having a distinct relationship to the other two.

B.B. Warfield said, “The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or not at all perceived before.”

God’s trinitarian nature reminds us that while we can know Him, we do not, cannot, and never will, fully comprehend Him, because He is God and we are not. Another human tendency is to take something we do not fully understand and simplify it to something we can understand (flaw 2). This can work with some things. However, we have to be careful (perhaps better, avoid) doing this with God.

We don’t come to trust Christ as our Savior without simultaneously coming to Him as our Lord, for the simple reason that you can’t have half a Christ any more than you can have half a wife. ..and we are always growing in faith and relationship.

3 enemies are: the world that seeks to conform us to itself, the flesh that seeks to drag us down into sin, and the devil who seeks to draw us away from our trust in and love for the Lord.

May 8, 2024 – The Heavenly Ministry of Christ. Continuing His ministry as Prophet and Priest and King. Priest preaching, but through and using His human instruments.

God’s Word begins to do its own work in us, shaping and reshaping our thinking, transforming our affections, melting our wills, and renewing our minds. And Prayer

May 7, 2024 – Dominion Regained. While in many cases, Jesus did things in a subtle way in this case, our Lord left the Apostles and the young church in a very decisive way in an event that, in its own way, was like His incarnation, His crucifixion, His resurrection—a once for all event.

The first words of Psalm 110 where David says, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” That’s what’s happening in the ascension. Jesus is not just leaving the world; He’s going to heaven.

All dominion in heaven and earth has been given to Me (Jesus). Satan got dominion after the fall.

Week – the ascension.

May 3, 2024 – Looking to Our Loving Father. Satan in the garden…they’d exchanged the truth about God for the lie. And even when they were restored, that lie was now in the bloodstream of the human race. We’re suffering not just from long COVID; we’re suffering from the long lie.
JohnOwen said, “Christians are but little exercised . . . in holding immediate communion with the Father in love…This makes us go heavily, when we might rejoice; and to be weak, where we might be strong in the Lord.”

he goes on to offer us the solution to this affliction. He says, “Eye the Father as love.”

Lie is this: “God says He’s loving and generous, but He’s actually mean and restrictive. Is He really the kind of God who would put you in this magnificent garden and then said, ‘Ah, none of it is to be yours,’” twisted and distorted view of God.

Just as Satan attacked Adam through his favorite thing, Eve, he attacks God through His favorite thing, humans — who the divine Trinity created in their image. Satan hates God joy in us.

[Satan strategy] James says, “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire… echo there of Genesis … “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.”

[Satan strategy] Using the very best gift the Creator had given to Adam, Eve, Satan call Adam away from God. This is a common strategy of Satan. Use our faves to pull us away.

Week: tragedy of the fall.

“The Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals” (Mark 1:12–13). Well, that little footnote, “He was with the wild animals,” gives us a clue to what was happening here. Jesus was reversing the tragic and sinful act of Adam and Eve. They were tested by Satan in a garden of plenty. They were surrounded by a docile animal kingdom that was under their authority.
This sixth, and final, petition about temptation is followed by the affirmation of God’s kingdom, power and glory.

April 23, 2024 – On Earth as It Is in Heaven. Renew/refresh/reorganze our mind. It begins to shape how we think about life. It reorders our priorities. It recenters us on the Father. It sets our affections on the right things and in the right order. Thy will be done On Earth as It Is in Heaven—What we’re praying for here is help to know and to do God’s will.

Prayer is a pattern for living.

Apostle John expresses all this very pointedly in 1 John 3:8: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”

Revelation 12: Sinclair’s idea is the devil pursuing the women is our present time- where the church is now.

Therefore, join in heaven’s song of praise to the Lamb who was slain.

April 15, 2024 – The Central Promise of Scripture. Gen 3:15 is huge. Predicts ongoing struggle and that ultimately God will win. [From Holman notes] Hostility between the first woman and the serpent would be passed on to future generations. This verse is known in Christendom as the protoevangelium, or “first good news,” because it is the first foretelling of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Using an emphatic Hebrew construction, God announced here that a male descendant—He—would someday deal the serpent (meaning Satan) a fatal blow. The NT writers understood Jesus Christ to have fulfilled this prophecy (Heb 2:14; 1Jn 3:8). In an extended sense, the NT also indicates that God would work through the church—those indwelt by the Spirit of Christ—to destroy the works of the devil (Rm 16:20). The assertion that the snake would only strike his opponent’s heel (as opposed to head) suggests that the devil will be defeated in the ensuing struggle (Rv 2:2,7-10).

This question now haunts the younger generation. Not only is that true, but in effect, they’re told to be haunted by it. God said, in Genesis, we are created in his image and male or female. Society is saying, as in the garden, did God really say?

Week – What is man?

March 26, 2024 – Peter, Who Denied Him. Peter’s regeneration (trust in Jesus) prior, did not keep him from falling. Peter was saved (and Judas wasn’t.)

Peter was saved because Jesus prayed for him. Put another way, Peter’s salvation wasn’t guaranteed by what was done in him, but by what Jesus did for him. There’s a message there for all of us: Our security doesn’t lie in ourselves. It’s Christ who saves us—the Christ who died for us, who rose again for us, who is at God’s right hand for us, who makes intercession for us.

March 25, 2024 – Judas, Who Betrayed Him. Half of John‘s gospel is devoted to holy week. Judas.

John Bunyan’s poem, titled “A Caution to Stir Up to Watch Against Sin”:

Sin, rather than ‘twill out of action be,
Will pray to stay, though but a while with thee;
One night, one hour, one moment, will it cry,
Embrace me in thy bosom, else I die:
Time to repent (saith it) I will allow,
And help, if to repent thou know’st not how.
But if you give it entrance at the door,
It will come in, and may go out no more.

Week – people who encountered Jesus during Passion/Holy Week.

Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord,
praise the name of the Lord!

Blessed be the name of the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore!
From the rising of the sun to its setting,
the name of the Lord is to be praised!

Commandment number 10 really cut to the heart for the apostle Paul. Romans 7:7-12. it may be that he covered Stephen. In Stephen, Saul of Tarsus saw illustrated firsthand what he would write in the eighth chapter of Romans: a lifestyle that expressed beautiful obedience to the law, but a lifestyle that was effected only through faith in Jesus Christ.

Sinclair makes two points. We can’t argue backwards from what God does in His providence to justify everything that we or other people do (for example, to justify a lie). (2) while we should never bear false witness, this does not mean that we are obliged never to withhold information, or that we are obliged to tell people anything that we know that they want to know. There’s a time to speak and a time to keep silent.

March 13, 2024 – Theft (-) and Generosity (+). Do Not (-) is common in the 10 Commandments. This is partially for simplicity. As a small child Albert Einstein‘s father told him do not play with the electric socket. This was to keep him safe and alive. There would be plenty of time later for Albert to learn why. (Again, as first Corinthians 13 says, love always protects.) As the principal that was stated on March 11 states, for each negative there is a positive. do not steal, but also give generously.

The sabbath is a gift. It was Adam’s first full day. God provided Adam a day of rest, where he could admire the magnificent and beauty of the creation.

3×3 = 9-part harmony.

The Spirit of God works within the believer to produce a conformity to God’s law that God’s law itself could never reproduce.

What he’s saying here is exactly the same as what he says in Romans 8:3–4: But what the law couldn’t do because it was weak through our sinful flesh, God has done Himself, sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and for sin, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Only the Spirit of the Lord Jesus can make us like Jesus and produce in us the fruit of the Spirit. And when He does that, our lives become like trees that are bearing fruit and blossoming wonderfully.

GREAT STORY: When Augustine’s wanderings and searchings eventually led him to Milan, he encountered the figure of Ambrose, the bishop, one of the great preachers of his day. He was tremendously impressed by his eloquence. He says he hung on his diction with rapt attention, but he was pretty bored by what he said. What he loved was only the charm in his language, and as a result of that, he was relatively indifferent to what he said. But then as he got to know him, things changed. Listen to what he says towards the end of book five of his Confessions: “I began to like him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth, for I had absolutely no confidence in your church, but as a human being who was kind to me.” Isn’t that something? The milk of human kindness in Ambrose—not his great preaching—was what God first used to bring to faith in Christ a man whose Christian life, witness, and writings have shaped the history of the Western world for 1700 years. So, who knows what your kindness today to someone might mean?

February 16, 2024 – The Patience of God and of His Children. Other translations use longsuffering or forbearance. Get a longer fuse. Yes, be patient, even with fools. Testing situations grow our patience.

February 15, 2024 – Peace Be with You. Not just peace with God, but experiencing peace. Having a sense of peace. Old Testament word shalom, which was far more than simply a feeling of being at peace. It was the experience of being made whole and well—coming home, knowing that you belong, no longer being a stranger, being a member of the family—that sense that there is a well-being in your life that wasn’t there before. Jesus‘s first words on Easter evening, as he appears, “Peace.”
Augustine says in his Confessions that our hearts are restless? God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God.

The Rolling Stones’ words, an anthem of the sixties: “I can’t get no satisfaction, and I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried.” With God, we have peace and wholeness.

February 14, 2024 – A Supernatural Joy. It’s something that’s produced in us by the Holy Spirit. And it’s produced in us only when we’ve been brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; because our sins have been forgiven and we’ve been counted righteous; and because, as Paul says, we’ve begun to understand that through difficulties, trials, friction, sufferings, affliction, the Spirit is working to make us more and more like Jesus. He’s producing endurance and character and hope in us. It’s the smile on the face of the person who has peace from God.

Week 7, year 2 -Fruit of the Spirit Gal 5:22-23 (ESV)

Week 6, year 2 – Worship

We need to make a hymn (poem) “This is my father‘s word.”

Wonderful story about T.C. Hammond and his (street) boys and the Bishop.

We are clothed you in Christ’s righteousness. So, perhaps the thing we need to remember most of all is the one thing the Lord tells us He remembers no more. He’s given His Son to cover your sins. And He says to you, “Your sins I remember no more.” Know the peace that that brings.

January 25, 2024 – Remembering the Covenant. He is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. We need to remember it too.

January 24, 2024 – Storing Up Scripture in Our Hearts. Scottish hymn that’s called “God the Unchangeable.” Here’s the first verse:

Twixt gleams of joy and clouds of doubt our feelings come and go; Our daily state is tossed about in ceaseless ebb and flow. No mood of feeling, form of thought, is constant for a day; But Thou, O Lord, Thou changest not, the same Thou art alway.

Job says, “I have treasured the words of God’s mouth more than the portion of my food” (Job 23:12).

Prayer: May the Word of God go deeply into my soul. Lord, may your Word go deeply into my soul.

January 23, 2024 – Lest You Forget the Lord. “Take care, lest you forget* the Lord.” is in Deuteronomy twice. *forget what He is like.

PS 102: first 11 verses author is down in the dumps: he’s used the word “I” six times, the word “me” seven times, and the word “my” eleven times, and that’s the problem. As Martin Luther used to say, in some ways, it’s our biggest problem. We are, as he put it, incurvatus in se, “turned in upon ourselves.” We’re remembering ourselves, but we are not remembering the Lord.

Verse 12: “But you, Lord.” The engine of grace has been fired up. The spiritual memory file has unfrozen. He looks outward and upward. He looks Bible-ward, and he begins to remember. God is enthroned; God is the Lord; God has been remembered throughout the generations; God is merciful and will have pity on him; God is from everlasting to everlasting.

January 19, 2023 – Give Sin a Name. (1) Name the distortion. and… (2) Write down the name of the opposite grace of your blemish. We are not transformed merely by avoiding the works of the flesh. We need simultaneously to seek God’s *Grace (in pilgrimage) and the fruit of the Spirit. There’s God’s Grace (general), but there are various forms of God’s graces (plural). Paul says put off and put on. (3) Resources for lasting transformation are to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray the simple prayer, “Lord God, make me more like my Lord Jesus Christ.”

There are people enough to make a noise about political matters, who know not how to employ their time to a better purpose. Our Lord’s kingdom is not of this world; and most of these people may do their country much more essential service by pleading for it in prayer, than by finding fault with things which they have no power to alter.

What Mr. Querulus is doing is a sinful conformity to the men of this world.

Jesus’ words, “One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much.” Because faithfulness isn’t really faithfulness unless it’s faithfulness in everything.

January 15, 2024 – The Faults We Fail to Notice. There may (probably) be a scratch, or a dent, or a mark, or a blotch in your life that you’ve hardly noticed, but might be the thing that stands out to others and makes them think that although you profess to be growing in likeness to Jesus Christ, something is hindering you? Maybe even thinking about that will draw something to your attention. And if that’s the case, what you really need to do is to [pray] tell the Lord Jesus about it because He’s promised to forgive you, and He’s also promised to begin to cleanse you and make you more like Himself.

January 12, 2024 – Eyes Opened to Christ. The Word became flesh. And the purpose of it all is that those who come to trust in Him might have the right to become the children of God.
By God’s grace, we find the Savior. Furthermore, our minds open in awe and wonder, that in coming to know the Savior, we actually come to know the creator of the whole cosmos, and that coming to know Him as Savior meant that we can look on the creation with fresh eyes, that it was created by the One who came into it in order to save each of us.

We can never escape the revelation of God, not only because we are surrounded by it, but because in a sense, we carry it around with us even although we have defaced and deformed it, which is exactly the point that Paul makes in his sermon to the Athenians when he quotes a couple of pagan writers as saying, “In [God] we live and move and have our being. And we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28). So that it’s not only that there is no last exit from divine revelation that surrounds us.

Ultimately, if you deny the existence of God, it’s not only that God collapses from your world and life view, it’s that your own identity (and world and life view) becomes very shaky (and susceptible to collapse). That is, you no longer know who you really are.

We’re living, at least in the Western world, in a pandemic of identity crisis.

January 8, 2023 – Creation Reveals the Creator. Revelation, God’s revelation began at the creation and is ongoing.

Define Revelation (n). 1. the act of revealing or disclosing [seen or communicated]; disclosure. 2. something revealed or disclosed, especially a striking disclosure, as of something not before realized.

3. Theology. God’s disclosure of Himself and His will to His creatures. an instance of such communication or disclosure. something thus communicated or disclosed. something that contains such disclosure, as the Bible.

The age-old question that philosophers have always asked and scientists still seek to penetrate—“Why is there something and not nothing?”—is a question that’s answered right in the very first chapter of the Bible. In the beginning God created. Therefore, all of creation tells of The Creator. We’re blind to it because of our sin, and our eyes are opened to it by the grace of Jesus Christ. As Christians, we certainly don’t know everything, but the great thing is we know something about everything. We know that it’s been made by God. We know that we are living in His world. And we know that we are secure with Him.

Week 2, year 2. God’s revelation (in creation)

January 5, 2023 – A Life-Changing Experience. Maybe wishing for a Holy New Year is better than wishing for a Happy New Year. After his (Chapter 6) vision Isaiah realized that to be truly happy, one needs to be holy first; and his favorite description for the Lord becomes “the Holy One.”

Isaiah’s response seems to have been three-dimensional. (1) awareness of his own sinfulness. Even though is was very, very articulate, he said he had unclean lips. (6 woes in Chapter 5 [see ChatGPT], 7th is on himself in Chapter 6.); (2) his experience of God’s pardoning grace (burning, cleansing coal to the lips); (3) unreserved willingness to serve the Lord without question. “Here am I. Send me.”

Paul’s personal resolution in Philippians 3:10–14.

He says:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. And by any means possible, attaining the resurrection from the dead. Not that I’ve already obtained this, or I’m already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I’ve made it my own, but one* thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

*Fun, possible exchange between Paul and Timothy as Paul dictates the letter. Timothy ask the multitasker, “One thing?” Paul might have responded, “You need to understand I’m not busy doing many different things. I’m busy doing one thing in many different ways. And all of them are about getting to know the Lord Jesus Christ better, to share His life and to become like Him.”

January 2, 2023 – Growing in Love for the Church. And are we yet alive, by Charles Wesley (1749)

January 1, 2023 – Beginning a New Year Well. Begin this new year by sharing the Methodist Covenant prayer with you, and to invite you, with me, to commit yourself to the Lord and to pray for His help through this new year.

I am no longer my own, but Yours. Put me to what You will, place me with whom You will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for You or laid aside for You, exalted for You or brought low for You. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine, and I am Yours. May it be so. And may the covenant which I have just made here on earth be confirmed in heaven.

Year 2 Week 1; Week 53 overall.

Notes from 2023 are here.

Things Unseen 2023

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