Cup & Sparrow

“Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Luke 12:7 ☕️🐦✝️ #Jesus #grace #faith #lutheran

[Cup & Sparrow @cupandsparrow]

Has American Christianity Failed?https://t.co/wgdjBQGh2W

[KFUO Radio @KFUOradio]

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. Hear Christ for you at https://t.co/CNJZkzVCPV! #AthanasianCreed #CatechesisFriday

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

I've posted three videos over the last few days, all of which deal with various questions related to baptism. These videos have a total of 2500+ comments on Facebook, with hundreds more on my other channels.

Needless to say, this topic has generated plenty of discussion. I am grateful for that. Thank you to everyone who joined in, either to agree or disagree.

The timing was unplanned, but it turns out that a new video by @Caleb_E_Keith at @1517 was just released on baptism as well. In about seven minutes, Caleb sums up perfectly what I have been trying to teach in my videos.

I wholeheartedly commend it to you.
https://t.co/46t66SH2jU

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

“Why are you treating me this way? What did I ever do to deserve this?” That complaint summarizes what Moses, Job, and Jeremiah said to God.

When things were falling apart in the wilderness, and the Israelites were bellyaching and weeping, Moses cried out, “Why have you treated your servant so badly?” (Num. 11:11). When Job lost his possessions, his health, and his children, he cursed the day of his birth and hurled Why? Why? Why? toward heaven.

Jeremiah does the same in Jeremiah 15, which we read today in Bible in One Year. Echoing Job, he turns Happy Birthday into Woeful Birthday. He feels born only to be a burr under the saddle to everyone around him. It’s not as if he’s been a provocative evildoer. He has simply been a faithful prophet. But no good prophet goes un-persecuted.

Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake” and “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you” (Matt. 5:10–11). Indeed, they persecuted the prophets, prophets like Jeremiah.

But Jeremiah was not rejoicing and being glad. He was lamenting and being sad.

Persecution comes in many forms, from mocking to martyrdom. Most Christians will not be martyred, but few disciples of Jesus have escaped ridicule for remaining faithful to the Lord and his Word.

When things do not improve, and especially when they get worse, it is not hard to understand why Jeremiah accuses God of being “like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail” (Jer. 15:18).

When we long for a cold drink of hope from heaven, sometimes we get a mouthful of sand instead.

But God answers Jeremiah with grace and steel. “If you return, I will restore you” (Jer. 15:19). He promises to make him “a fortified wall of bronze” (15:20).

The sweetest and most joy-filled words God saves for near the end: “For I am with you to save you and deliver you, declares the Lord” (15:20). You bet he is, for the “I-am-with-You” God is Jesus the Emmanuel, the one who comes to save us and deliver us.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because they are thereby united with the One who was persecuted unto death, died that death, and rose from the grave, so that, no matter how lukewarm or hot the persecution we face, we know that we are safe in Jesus, for “who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35, 38-39).

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

Infant Baptism?

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

When people complain to God, he does not always put his arm around them and comfort them. Sometimes he gives them a swift kick in the pants.

To Job, he says, “Dress for action like a man” (Job 38:3). After the prophet Jeremiah has been whining about the prosperity of the wicked, the Lord says, “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?” (Jer. 12:5).

In other words, Jeremiah, if you are already worn out by this level of opposition, what are you going to do when things really heat up? If you are moaning and groaning about the burden you have to carry now, how will you handle it when the road gets steeper, and the cross gets heavier?

Do you want to run with horses or shuffle with sloths?

The same question confronts us. If we are constantly grumbling over small inconveniences, small sufferings, small acts of obedience, how will we endure when true trials come? How will we follow Jesus down the hard road of costly discipleship?

Yes, there are many times when we need the Lord to put his arm around us, bind up our wounds, and speak tenderly to us. And he does. But there are also times when we need him to shake us awake, get in our face, and rebuke our spiritual laziness and self-pity. And he does that, too.

Do we want easy, spiritually apathetic lives? Or do we want the long, difficult, but deeply blessed life of running with horses on the path Christ has set before us?

So let us hear the exhortation: “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance [run with horses!] the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).
____
We read Jeremiah 12 today in Bible in One Year. Join us at https://t.co/XxNvEtNH7e

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

Does baptism give forgiveness of sins?

[KFUO Radio @KFUOradio]

2 Lord Jesus, my salvation,
My light, my life divine,
My only consolation,
O make me wholly Thine!
For Thou hast dearly bought me
With blood and bitter pain.
Let me, since Thou hast sought me,
Eternal life obtain.

Lutheran Service Book 689

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

Christianity has far too many voices that would have us believe in a God who doesn’t wound us. But the Lord declares otherwise: “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal” (Dt. 32:39).

Or as we read today in Bible in One Year from Hosea, “Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him” (6:1-2).

Verses like these are summarized perfectly by Proverbs 3:12, “The LORD disciplines the one he loves” (see Hebrews 12:6).

Would a loving parent let a child get away with everything? Pour rat poison into his cereal? Run onto an interstate? Play with a loaded pistol? Of course not. That is the definition of unloving parenting.

So with our Father. He disciplines us because he cares for us. He knows that we often learn hard but necessary lessons only in our woundedness.

Our Father knows that it is only in our weakness and woundedness that we simultaneously discover our own ineptitude and his healing power. Without wounds, we foster an image of ourselves as strong and healthy.

But the hands that wound us—they themselves bear the stigmata of grace. Our Savior kills, but only to make alive; wounds, but only to heal. He is conforming us to his cruciform likeness so that we see ourselves exclusively in his resurrection reflection.

This is Christian growth: to become in our weakness more and more dependent on his strength, to seek in our woundedness more and more of his healing.

[Portals of Prayer @PortalsOfPrayer]

Gracious God, Your eternal light penetrates the darkness brought about by our sin. Thank You for Your grace given in Jesus, which covers our sin and restores our light of hope. In His name. Amen.

[Joe ₿ryan @satmojoe]

If you don't have Bitcoin in self-custody, then you are on the wrong side of the wall.

(A presentation to treasury company shareholders)

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

Christ’s church is a little bit hospital, a little bit mental ward, and a weekly reunion of sinners who’ve made a mess of their lives.

It’s a place where self-proclaimed righteous people who have it all together will be bored because there’s nothing for them there.

Church is for real sinners who really sin with other real sinners, for here they find the Friend of Sinners, Jesus the Christ.

[Adam Livingston @AdamBLiv]

Time is the asset. It was always time.

Every percent of inflation is them reaching into the future and stealing hours off the back end of your life that you will never see coming.

You think you have a savings account?

You actually have a clock running backwards.

The reason boomers seem calm and you feel insane is they got the hours BEFORE the theft accelerated.

We’re in different timelines.

Same country. Different clocks.

Do you SEE it now?

Buy Bitcoin.

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

Imagine losing an entire book of the Bible. That’s essentially what happened in 2 Kings 22, which we read today in Bible in One Year.

The high priest found a scroll of the Torah in the temple, likely Deuteronomy. When it was read to Josiah, the young king realized how far the nation had strayed from the path of Yahweh. The result was reformation, a revitalization of faithful worship in Judah, all sparked by the rediscovery of God’s Word.

That raises a question for us. What will revitalize the church today? Clever marketing? Entertainment-driven worship? A more culturally comfortable version of church? No.

Reformations may seem to arise because people grow sick of the church’s theological trash stinking to high heaven and decide to wheel it to the curb. They abhor the cancers of corruption worming their way through the soul of the ecclesial hierarchy. They are dismayed over closeted creeds mildewing, muscular singing atrophying into the blubber of emotionalism, and want to vomit every time they catch a whiff from a pulpit exhaling the bad breath of moralism, legalism, or self-helpism.

But in the end, reformation does not happen because people react. It happens because God acts.

He sees his starving people and ends the famine of the Word. He sends the rain of the Gospel so that we feast on Christ and his gifts.

Moral reform fades as quickly as a sandcastle before the tide. Political reform is like tidying the house while the roof burns. But Gospel reform endures, because it is nothing less than the life of God in Christ given to the dead.

Only the Gospel gives life because it alone gives us Jesus. Not Jesus plus our agendas, not Jesus plus self-improvement, but Jesus alone.

When that Word is preached, taught, read, and studied, the Spirit is at work. The church is drawn again into the life of Christ. Worship is enlivened. Preachers proclaim Christ crucified and risen. Hungry people are fed with something real.

That is how reformation comes. The church is nailed again to the crucified and risen Lord, sharing in his death and life. And so, once more, she becomes a living witness in the world, a place where mercy flows, and life is given through the Word.

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

It would be hard to out-sin Manasseh, who seems to have had a PhD in iniquity creation.

He stands as one of the clearest reminders that “like father, like son” is not always the case. His father, Hezekiah, was a reformer who tore down idols and called Judah back to the Lord.

His son, Manasseh, did the opposite. If Hezekiah was a reformer, Manasseh was the anti-reformer.

He reigned from 687–642 BC, the longest tenure of any king of Judah, and during that time, he plunged the nation into the toilet bowl of idolatry.

He rebuilt the high places his father had destroyed. He erected altars for Baal and Asherah. He set up altars in the house of the Lord itself, turning the temple into a shrine for the sun, moon, and stars.

It was spiritual adultery of the most grotesque kind, akin to an unfaithful wife covering the walls of the master bedroom with lurid images of her former and current lovers.

And Manasseh did not stop there. Oh no. He burned his own son as an offering. He turned to fortune-tellers, mediums, and necromancers. He sampled and slurped down every flavor of sin, licking his lips and demanding more.

Even his name carries a tragic irony. The Hebrew name “Manasseh,” first given to Joseph’s son, is formed from the verb “to forget.” This king lived out that meaning in the worst way, leading God’s people into exile because they forgot the Lord who saved them.

Yet what is most remarkable is not the swamp of his sin, but the ocean of God’s mercy to him.

In 2 Chronicles 33:12-13, we read that Manasseh prayed and humbled himself before the Lord. And the Lord forgave him, restored him, and welcomed him back. Yes, even him!

This is the scandal of grace, isn’t it? Even sinners like Manasseh, even sinners like us, are not beyond the reach of divine mercy. The Lord who pursued him still pursues us, calling us home, ready to forgive, ready to heal us in Christ.

[Portals of Prayer @PortalsOfPrayer]

Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

[ESV Bible Daily Verse @esvdaily]

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. https://t.co/YK0c5jN8Yh

[KFUO Radio @KFUOradio]

We pray the Holy Spirit would visit our humble minds and pour His joys on us! Hear Christ for you at https://t.co/CNJZkzVCPV.

Read the text for Lutheran Service Book 500 at https://t.co/aLMpEWqJhw.

[Portals of Prayer @PortalsOfPrayer]

Lord Jesus, our cornerstone, we trust that in You we are now unrejected, now forgiven, now possessing resurrection. In Your name. Amen.

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

The Orthodox theologian, Fr. Thomas Hopko, once composed 55 maxims to guide us in our Christian life. Although all of them are helpful, here are three of my favorites.

1. Have no expectations except to be fiercely tempted to your last breath.

2. Have a short prayer that you constantly repeat when your mind is not occupied with other things.

3. Endure the trial of yourself and your own faults and sins peacefully, serenely, because you know that God’s mercy is greater than your brokenness.

[Christopher Gillespie @dizziness]

At Pentecost, God came down to gather, and He gathered by preaching. Not by making the nations speak one language. By making the one Gospel spoken in every language. Every tongue heard the same thing: the Spirit gives you the peace Christ bought.
https://t.co/xc2D1UXZzt