Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

For decades Nike marketers have defined the times by simply capturing the values that move us with a few, stark words and images. They are the "mirror mirror, on the wall."

America, we are Tiger.

"the whole cause of our trouble"

We see now that the whole cause of our trouble is that people do not base their lives upon God. They have set themselves up as gods, and the gods are fighting one another, and life has become chaos.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones in "The Gospel in Genesis: From Fig Leaves to Faith"

Awaiting the City of God - from R.C. Sproul (some political controversy for you)

From the Ligonier Ministries Blog... some election-season controversy:

Evangelical Christians love America. Some see in her the last hope of creating a Christian nation. But it is not a Christian nation. It is pagan to the core. It is in danger of becoming, if it is not already, the new “Evil Empire.” The Mayflower Compact is a museum piece, a relic of a forgotten era. “In God We Trust” is now a lie.

Yes, we must always work for social reform. Yes, we must be “profane’ in Martin Luther’s sense of going out of the temple and into the world. We do not despise the country of our birth. But in what do we invest our hope? The state is not God. The nation is not the Promised Land. The president is not our King. The Congress is not our Savior. Our welfare can never be found in the city of man. The federal government is not sovereign. We live—in every age and in every generation—by the rivers of Babylon. We need to understand that clearly. We must learn how to sing the Lord’s song in a strange and foreign land.

America will fall. The United States will inevitably disintegrate. The Stars and Stripes will bleed. The White House will turn to rubble. That is certain. We stand like Augustine before the sea. We pray that God will spare our nation. If He chooses not to, we ask for the grace to accept its demise. In either case, we look to Him who is our King and to heaven, which is our home. We await the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, whose builder and maker is God.

Coram Deo: Are you looking to your King and to your eternal destiny, despite the circumstances around you? Keep your focus on the heavenly Jerusalem, whose builder and maker is God.

1 Corinthians 15:50: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.”

John 3:5: “Jesus answered, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’”

2 Peter 1:11: “An entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

What do you think? Is R.C. right? Is that a fatalistic view?
(I just wish he were a little more clear about his opinion.)

Are we really in danger of idol worship?

If that resonates at all, I commend Keller's book to you.

How Christ wins the life or death war for our affections

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4.23)

There is a war within the heart of every Christian. It is subtle and the heavy artillery often arrives as whispers.

The ground? What will we love?
The world and its offerings are tangible and immediate. And, yet, every time we foster that romance there is something in us that feels sick. The indulgence was sweet, but desperately unhealthy. And it comes with a crash.

This is sin. James tells us plainly that friendship with the world is hatred towards God (James 4:4). In our souls, we know it and we feel the degrading effects. This unhealthy feeling is a blessing. Cursed is the heart that isn't restless in the siege. But what do we do to address it?

Generally our first inclination is to go on a diet - to stop eating the world's sacchariny smorgasbord. This is good, but it is never enough. We need to develop a hunger and a love for good food.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant (Isaiah 55.2–3)

This was the point of Thomas Chalmer's (1780-1847) famous sermon "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection."

An excerpt:

In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object, is to fasten it in positive love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all old things are to be done away and all things are to become new. To obliterate all our present affections by simply expunging them, and so as to leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character, and to substitute no new character in its place. But when they take their departure upon the ingress of other visitors; when they resign their sway to the power and the predominance of new affections; when, abandoning the heart to solitude, they merely give place to a successor who turns it into as busy a residence of desire and interest and expectation as before - there is nothing in all this to thwart or to overbear any of the laws of our sentient nature - and we see how, in fullest accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great moral revolution may be made to take place upon it.

The Love of God and the Love of the World are Irreconcilable

This, we trust, will explain the operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual preaching of the gospel. The love of God and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity - and that so irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell together in the same bosom. We have already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart, by any innate elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from it; and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one. Nothing can exceed the magnitude of the required change in a man's character - when bidden as he is in the New Testament, to love not the world; no, nor any of the things that are in the world for this so comprehends all that is dear to him in existence, as to be equivalent to a command of self-annihilation.

But the same revelation which dictates so mighty an obedience, places within our reach as mighty an instrument of obedience. It brings for admittance to the very door of our heart, an affection which once seated upon its throne, will either subordinate every previous inmate, or bid it away. Beside the world, it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world and with this peculiarity, which is all its own - that in the Gospel do we so behold God, as that we may love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy, by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed Mediator. It is the bringing in of this better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God - and to live without hope, is to live without God; and if the heart be without God, then world will then have all the ascendancy. It is God apprehended by the believer as God in Christ, who alone can dispost it from this ascendancy. It is when He stands dismantled of the terrors which belong to Him as an offended lawgiver and when we are enabled by faith, which is His own gift, to see His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, and to hear His beseeching voice, as it protests good will to men, and entreats the return of all who will to a full pardon and a gracious acceptance. It is then, that a love paramount to the love of the world, and at length expulsive of it, first arises in the regenerated bosom. It is when released from the spirit of bondage with which love cannot dwell, and when admitted into the number of God's children through the faith that is in Christ Jesus, the spirit of adoption is poured upon us - it is then that the heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is delivered from the tyranny of its former desires, in the only way in which deliverance is possible.

Additional Resources
Chalmer's Entire Sermon
What should we seek in the Scripture?
Tomorrow we should feel

Licking the earth - by Ray Ortlund

“Sinners lick the earth, that is to say, love earthly pleasures.”

Pascal, Pensées, #666.

Our lifestyles devoted to earthly pleasures while marginalizing Christ — let’s depict them bluntly: “licking the earth.” But here is what we were created for: “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8).

There is nothing degrading in Christ. Only satisfying, uplifting, humanizing.

Follow Ray here.
Additional Resources
"Lurking and nourished sins are always a sign."
Coming to Jesus without hating what we have left
No one thanks a vending machine