I have come to think that care of the soul requires a high degree of resistance to the culture around us, simply because that culture is dedicated to values that have no concern for the soul.
— Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
Note: While there are many things I do not see eye-to-eye with Merton on, this observation is right on the money.
If you're using the Daily Devotional Guide for your daily bible readings (and I hope you are!), this morning you read Matthew 18.21-35. This reading is one of the very difficult parables of Jesus that we tend to gloss over, explain away, or ignore.
In this parable, a king forgives a man who owed him an inconceivable amount of money: 10,000 talents. Now, some study bibles will do the math to compute exactly how much money this is in current dollars (the ESV Study Bible computes it at nearly $6 billion). What is more shocking, however, is that a) a talent was the largest known denomination of money at the time and b) 10,000 is the largest numeral for which a Greek term existed. In other words, it is not nearly as important to try and run the numbers as it is to realize this is the largest sum of money that could readily be described in that day. One scholar says the combined effect of these two terms together “is like our 'zillions.' What God has forgiven his people is beyond human calculation.”
If ever one wished to render the church’s message obsolete and her existence pointless, adopting queerness would seem a most excellent way to do it. Queer theory is the perfect tool for demolishing any “oppressive” dogma or claim to transcendent truth. But if the church has no truth to proclaim, why does she exist? Or, more pointedly, why should anyone bother with her?
— Carl R. Trueman, “Lessons from the Decline of Protestant Churches”
It seems far too early to make mention of Christmas, but today—nine months before the celebration of our Lord's birth—is when the Church celebrates the festival of the Annunciation our Our Lord. This day commemorates Gabriel's visit to Mary and his announcement that she would conceive and bear the Messiah, God incarnate, in her womb.
Some think they have no need for the liturgical calendar or that it is 'too Roman Catholic' or something. I think that attitude is a mistake. Everything on the Church calendar points us to Jesus and his saving work for us. On this day, we remember, marvel, and worship that God kept his promise made through the prophet Isaiah in a particular place and time in history. These words of the Prophet are not relegated to the lost recesses of the Old Testament but are front and center for our faith:
Moreover the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, “Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; ask it either in the depth or in the height above.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, nor will I test the LORD!”
Then he said, “Hear now, O house of David! Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.
— Isaiah 7.10-16 (NKJV)
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
— C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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To hear the voice of the Spirit speaking, you have to know what the Spirit has said. In other words, to know what God is saying now, you have to also know what God has said in the past. Scripture is this living record of God's acts and pronouncements. God has already told us that He is yesterday, today, and forever the same. Unlike us, God does not reinvent Himself over and over again. He is who He is. He is who He was and who He will be. They are not new or different but the same.
Pr. Peters writes about Rome, but the same is true of all who diverge from sola scriptura, whether Roman Catholic, Charismatic/Pentecostal, or liberal/progressive mainline Protestants. This is surely worth a careful read.