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| St. Paul: On The Same Page
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| What is this blog about? - Friday, June 01, 2007Each week I'll be writing some thoughts about the upcoming Sunday lessons, two Sundays ahead. My hope is that this will help laity be better prepared for worship, that it will help me to be better prepared for preaching, and that it might possibly be a service to some of my fellow pastors as well. NOTE: this is not a heavy exegetical blog. I won't be digging into the Hebrew or Greek. That is step-one of the sermon preparation. This is step-two, some cogitating about the devotional application of the text. How can we apply it to our lives. I hope it's helpful.
You can find a schedule of all the Sunday readings here.
You can read the SPOTS Devotion from St. Paul here in pdf format. read more ... |
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1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 - by Don Neuendorf
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have not hope...
I am deeply troubled today. Sure, I have lots of opinions about politics and economics and what government should do about this or that. But as vital as some of those issues might seem they pale to insignificance before the one issue that lies so heavy on my heart. Worse, I don't know how to find comfort in this case from Paul's words.
Please note: add up the populations of Michigan (10,095,643), Indiana (6,313,520), Ohio (11,478,006), Illinois (12,831,970), Wisconsin (5,556,506), and Minnesota (5,167,101) and you'd have 51,442,746 people. That's a lot of people.
That still does not equal the 53,430,000 American citizens who have been killed by abortion since it was legalized in 1973.
And now what do we do with Paul's words, that we should not be ignorant about those who have fallen asleep nor grieve like the rest of men if our nation appears to be bent upon continuing down this path?...
In recent years abortion rates have declined slightly from 1.4 million to 1.2 million per year. And yet, if our president-elect fulfills his campaign promises, then the small restrictions that have been imposed on abortion with so much labor and cost and debate over these last 3 decades will be swept away.
How can we not grieve? William Wilberforce is well remembered for his strenuous labors to end the slave trade in Great Britain. He devoted his life and political career to the task. It took 20 years. We have been battling abortion in the United States for 35 years, and the toll of lives is unimaginably higher. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were set free after Wilberforce's success, but those children who have been aborted will have no second chance at life.
"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant..." Those who die in Christ will return with Jesus when he comes again. But what of those who die apart from Christ?
God's Word offers us no knowledge of any other way. Instead, Paul says in Romans, "How can they believe if they have not heard?"
All the more reason for God's people to wake up - to redouble their efforts to seek the lost - and to dedicate themselves to defending the helpless ones.
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