Heidelberg Catechism Devotional Q24

Q.24. How are these articles divided?

A. Into three parts: God the Father and our creation; God the Son and our deliverance; God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.

Monday

Have you ever tried to memorize a series of facts?  It can be difficult, but if you can arrange them into some sequence that makes sense, and points you to the next item, it is much easier. So it is with the Apostles’ Creed.  It is divided into 3 sections related to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  Furthermore, each section attributes an action to that particular person of God: Creation, salvation and the making of our present lives holy.

This does not mean the others persons of the godhead have nothing to do with the other processes.  They most certainly do, for “God is one.” But like all memory aids, it helps us to understand what God has done, is doing and will continue to do through his one divine nature. 

Read Psalms 33.  Did you notice that the one Lord creates, saves and is our hope for holiness?  The first two are easy to spot; but the last one is expressed in the final verse, “May your unfailing love rest upon us.”  If God’s love is to rest on us, we must be made holy.  Thank the Lord for these three wonderful acts at work in the world.

Where's Jesus? Joseph reveals himself (Genesis 45)

 After all the family struggles, the revealing of past sins, and the effort expended to make a life, Joseph's brothers are shocked at the behavior of Pharaoh's second in command.  It is easy to imagine that such actions from a dignitary could be viewed as eccentric, even crazy.  But the great turning point for the family comes when Joseph recites these words,

"I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! An now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you...God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance." (Genesis 45:4-5, 7)

Heidelberg Catechism Devotional Q23

Q.23. What are these articles?

A. I believe in God, the Father almighty,


creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
     

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
     

and born of the virgin Mary.
     

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
     

was crucified, died, and was buried;
     

he descended to hell.
     

The third day he rose again from the dead.
     

He ascended to heaven
     

and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty.
     

From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
     

the holy catholic* church,
     

the communion of saints,
     

the forgiveness of sins,
     

the resurrection of the body,
     

and the life everlasting. Amen.

Monday

Last week we began to talk about creeds.  There are many creeds in our world and many in the Christian churches.  But there are 3 creeds every church believes that set the foundation of the Christian faith.  They are the Apostles’ Creed, which we have learned today, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed.  These three creeds help us to understand what the bible teaches with regard to God, Christ The Holy Spirit and Salvation. 

Creeds are not new.  Throughout the bible we find many people who make proclamations about who God is.  We will explore some of these this week and in the coming weeks we will take a closer look at the Apostles’ Creed. If you haven’t memorized this creed yet, make it your goal to learn it by heart by the week’s end.  Read Psalm 119:66 as a way of seeing what the psalmist believed.

Thoughts on Goodness

Goodness: Again, the reader should be aware that this is the third post in a series related to the Fruit of the Spirit written by Stephen Winward.

"The holy God, who is perfect goodness, requires his people to be holy; 'You shall be holy, for I am holy' (1 Pet. 1:16).  It is in order that we may meet this requirement that he gives to us the Holy Spirit, who produces in us the goodness of Christ.  And so it is from God, from the Holy Trinity, from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that all human goodness is derived.  Goodness is gift, grace, fruit." (pg. 148).

Just think on that for some time.  Without the Holy Spirit, without God alive in us, we will not be able to do anything which God will ever deem "good".  It is only his actions that are good, Jesus said so when he responded to the rich young ruler - "Why do you call me good?  There is only one who is good - God." 

The girls baptism

Our daughters were baptized on Sunday.  In the reformed tradition, we believe that God's promises are for us and our children, and that baptism is a sign that he will be at work in their lives calling them into covenant relationship with him, even before they realize it.  Well enough of the theological, lets get to the personal.

As a pastor, I had the privilege of baptizing my new daughters.  Frankly, I was fairly nervous about doing it.  Our youngest is fairly shy and withdrawn and having water placed on your head in front of an entire church could be a fairly scary thing.  But her response was exhilarating.  There was no fear, but a calm peace, even a sense of excitement, and after I handed her back to Jen, she kept smiling and saying, "Momma, wa," and making the sign of the cross on her head.  She was ecstatic to be included into the family of God.  Oh that more people would exhibit the kind of euphoria at being part of God's church forever.  It truly is something to be very emotive about.

Thoughts on Kindness

Kindness: This first thing to catch my interest in this chapter of Winward's Fruit of the Spirit was a quote from Quaker Stephen Grellet,

"I expect to pas through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."(pg. 136)

The words show a great amount of wisdom and ring a warning to us about our temporal lives.  We may not live until tomorrow to do that next act of kindness that has been put off.  We need to act now.  But what was more striking to me was how he connected Christian conversion with kindness.  Using the story of Paul and Silas in Philippi he tells us they had been beaten and the jailer had fastened them in the stocks, without any concern for their pain and suffering, but when he was converted the text tells us, 

"He took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds." (Acts 16:33)

Kindness is part of being a Christian and it is a radically different way of interacting with society than the non-Christian way.  The actual word used in Gal 5:22 is chrestotes and means

"goodness toward the evil and ungrateful, it is beneficience towards enemies." 

In the case of Paul, Silas and the Jailer, they were his enemies, but now his friends.  Paul and Silas showed not anger, rather they showed patience and kindness to the Jailer, he in turn, after conversion, showed kindness and love.

Thoughts on Patience

I promised more comments on Winward's Fruit of the Spirit.  Here they are.  Overall the book is excellent, a wonderful source for devotional reading and reflection on my life.  I have been reading through the 3 chapters on patience, kindness and goodness this week.  Each of them contained a wonderful nugget worth pondering.  I will post something from each chapter over the next 3 days.

Patience:  The reader should understand that the word used in this particular instance in Galatians 5:22 that has been translated patience is the Greek word makrothymia.  With that in mind read on,

"As the word makrothymia indicates, patience operates in the context of anger.  Makros means long, and thymos means anger.  Patience is the prologed restraint of anger...There is a tendency nowadays to assume that anger is always bad...Anger can be excellent; it is a characteristic of God himself.  It's true that God is 'slow to anger', but he does become angry. There is a divine impatience with evil. God doesn't always restrain his anger, and the servants of God should not always restrain theirs." (pg. 126)

After thinking on that for awhile, the author then helps the reader to distinguish between good and bad anger.  These are two kinds of anger that exist in our world. "Good anger is other-people centered; bad anger is self-centered."

My only complaint, with the chapter is the digression he takes into discussing patience in relation to waiting for things.  While I think our culture needs to hear his words, the Greek for patient waiting is a totally different and unrelated word, which the author acknowledges, but which he moves on and covers anyway.