February 2, 2012

Tell Your Sons and Your Grandsons (2/2)

Thought from today’s Bible reading from Exodus 10-12.

The plagues with which God afflicted Pharaoh and the nation of Egypt were designed to do a couple of things: to cause Pharaoh to let the people go and to prove to all who heard of these events that the Lord was the one true God over all things. But this was not only for the benefit of that generation. It was to help those of future generations to develop their own faith as well.

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of Mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed My signs among them, that you may know that I am the Lord’” (Exodus 10:1-2).

Those who descended from Moses’ generation needed to know about these works of God. They needed to hear of His miracles. They needed to be told of the foolish and futile attempts of the Egyptians to oppose the Lord. If the future generations were not told, they could not know.
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September 28, 2010

Wasting the Teenage Years

The teenage years are an important time in one’s life. Therefore, we ought to think seriously about how these years are spent. How are parents to teach and encourage their teenage children? What should children be pursuing in their teenage years?

I read a post from Jason Hardin that got me thinking along these lines. It contained excerpts from the book, Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris. I haven’t read the book, so I’m not qualified to endorse it. But the quotes that Jason shared from it were very good. The basic theme is that we, as a culture, have allowed the teenage years to evolve into a wasted time of short-sighted irresponsibility.

The way many in the world view these years is that it is a time to focus on social interactions, unrestrained fun, freedom from responsibility, and schooling – not for the purpose of life preparation, but simply for the sake of education, even if it is without direction and usefulness.
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September 1, 2007

Immodesty in Dress: Who is to Blame?

Moral standards are being lowered all around us. One obvious area is in the type of dress people wear. Clothing generally has become shorter, tighter, and lower-cut. The problem of immodest dress has affected members of the Lord’s church as well. Some are either so bold or so ignorant that they even dress immodestly to the assembly of the saints. Who is to blame for this rising problem among God’s people?
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May 1, 2007

Why the School Shootings?

[This article was written by Tim Haile.]

Our nation has once again been shocked by another tragic school shooting. On April 16, 2007, Cho Seung-hui killed 32 people and injured 17 more at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Sadly, these shootings have occurred frequently enough over the past 15 years that we tend to forget just how many of them have taken place. It hasn’t been that many years ago that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 and injured 24 in Littleton, CO (Columbine High School, 1999). Along with these school killings, many other gang related murders occur at the hands of youths. It is not my purpose in this brief article to document the dozens of such shootings that have occurred, but rather to shed some light on why they are occurring, and why they are occurring with such increased frequency.

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December 1, 2005

Be Filled with the Spirit

Recently I heard someone describe some religious services he had attended. He told me of the bizarre and chaotic assemblies in those churches in which the churchgoers seemed almost out of control. Those caught up in this behavior would attribute their actions to being filled with the Holy Spirit. But are these outbursts the result of the Spirit’s influence, or are they an overexcited, emotional release on the part of these people?

Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus and said, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). The contrast is made between being filled with the Spirit and being intoxicated. Both being drunk with wine and being filled with the Spirit will affect ones behavior. So how does being filled with the Spirit affect us? Does it result in spontaneous, uncontrollable action? Let us notice the context.
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