When anything other than Jesus becomes our hope (or our wealth, security, sufficiency, completeness, joy, safety, etc…), whatever we have replaced him with has become an idol. And when we place anything on that throne, we will defend it. We will justify it. We will protect it. We will cease to allow the gospel to confront it. We will hang a Do Not Disturb sign on it. As Gerald said on Sunday, “Our idols will always make demands of us.”
It has been interesting to see the effects of social media on our culture over the past several years. One
Our family had the awesome opportunity to see Rend Collective in concert this past Friday night. I have wanted to see
As a covenant community, the members of my church, Westwood, intentionally seeks ‘meaningful membership.’ I love that we are a
God’s rebuke of his priests in Malachi offers a sobering picture of the reality of marginal giving for the Church today. To understand this, we must fully understand the context of this heavy passage in light of the entire biblical narrative. In his indictment, God accuses the Priests of “offering polluted food upon my altar” when they “offer blind animals in sacrifice…and those that are lame or sick” (Mal 1:7, 8). Now at first glance we may simply believe that God chastises his priests for the mere fact that they have broken his law, which indeed they had (see Lev 22:17-25; Deut 15:21; 17:1). True, the priests were guilty of offering what was easy instead of what was commanded; however, the context and very purpose of the sacrificial system in which the priests participated forbids us to stop at that interpretive level.
