What Do You Most Want in Life?

What is it that you most want in life? I love the way Ecclesiastes shows the goodness of many things God gives us to enjoy while warning us that good things are not the source of our ultimate hope in this sin-broken world.

It is one thing to say that, but it is often hard to let that truth grip us. For that, we need the help of imagination. We need the fact to intersect with our lives and thinking. I appreciate Zack Eswine's help here (From Recovering Eden: The gospel according to Ecclesiastes, pg. 76-77)

When we were young, we dream of a house to buy, a yard to create with, pieces of furniture to possess, and a bank account from which to use for our gain. When we are old, a time comes to sell everything that once represented our dreams of a future. We have to move to an assisted living facility, or in with our kids while someone else uses the drapes we left on the windows we used to wash and enjoy.  

A young woman fills a hope chest with treasures over which she dreams, and intends to bring into her future with her man. An elderly woman has long since buried her lovely man and now has to sell or give her hope chest away.  

"As he came from his mother's womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil that he may carry away in his hand." (Eccl. 5:15) 

The One greater than Solomon [ie. Jesus] takes up this truth and preaches it. There are treasures, so called, that last for a moment but rust and moth eat away. Other treasures exist of a kind that rust and moth cannot touch. The former make us smile, but they cannot keep the frowns of the world from taking place. A treasure of a different kind is needed that can outlast this life under the sun (Matt. 6:19-20).
...
Even though there are these pleasures in the world that are ours for use, they cannot satisfy what only God can.

Persecution in Russia

As we thought about persecution this past week in Sunday's sermon, I'll point us to a prayer request for our brothers and sisters in Russia.

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Russian government has passed and signed into law massive restrictions on religious liberty (Here is the press release from the USCIRF).

According to Joe Carter, at the Gospel Coalition,

The new law will ban “preaching, praying, proselytizing, and disseminating religious materials” outside of sites officially designated by the state. Citizens can also be fined up to $15,000 for engaging in these activities in private residences or distributing unauthorized religious materials through “mass print, broadcast, or online media.”

Even foreign missionaries will have to be invited by a government sanctioned organization and will be limited to working within specific locations.

We can be sure this law will bring about persecution for our brothers and sisters and make it more costly for them to "make disciples." Let's pray for their courage and strength to follow Jesus even if it means the plundering of their property and more.

"Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, And The Dallas Police Massacre"

As Rod said on Sunday, as he prayed, "It seems our flag is always at half mast." How should we as Christians mourn, speak, and act? Should it look different than the world around us? What about our social media posts? Should they look different than those who don't know Christ?

I found this podcast about the recent acts of violence in our country helpful in answering these questions (from Heath Lambert on the Truth in Love podcast).  Take a listen. It is about 15 minutes long (though I listened to it in my pocketcast app at 1.3 speed and it took less than 15 minutes...perhaps one of our math students can tell us exactly how long it should have taken).

An Ominous Sign for Religious Liberty

We finished our book club last week by looking at John Piper's final chapter in Desiring God, "Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism." In that discussion, I mentioned that we face relatively light persecution at this point but that it seemed that would probably not remain the case. I mentioned that religious liberty is waning in our country. I wanted to mention one recent example.

Why talk about this?
The reason I point this out is to help us get serious about properly valuing Christ now. A shallow or superficial connection to Jesus is not going to stand up when difficulty for following him comes. Second, I want us to be aware of what is going on so we can argue for religious liberty in our spheres of influence. Finally, I want us to know what is going on so we can pray for others and our country. Notice, my reason is not so we will feel sorry for ourselves and bemoan how things used to be better. There is not really a place for that when we know we live under our sovereign God's care and love.

An example of a threat to religious liberty.
A privately held pharmacy in Washington state has effectively been shut down by that state's government because they refused to sell a drug used to kill unborn children in the womb. This refusal is out of their religious convictions that life begins at conception and this drug would effectively be killing one patient at the request of another. See the video below for more details:



In June, 2016, the US Supreme Court decided not to hear the case. This effectively means these pharmacists have lost the case and will no longer be able to run their pharmacy. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote, in dissent,

This case is an ominous sign...If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.

This is a sitting supreme court justice writing that we ought to be very concerned about what the Supreme court is doing in this case. What they are doing is ignoring the constitution, which is the document they are charged to apply to laws in this country.

The first amendment to the constitution reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This has subtlety been changed, in regards to application of the law, to guarantee a freedom to privately hold beliefs and to worship as you want. That is, you can have your religious views and conscience as long as it doesn't affect the way you live, talk, or do business. However, this law actually guarantees more than that. It promises the right to exercise one's religion freely - not just to go to what church one wants to attend.

Let's spend some time thinking about the value of Jesus so that we will be ready to lose everything, if necessary, in order to have him.