From Desiring God blog of John Piper
Tag: family
-
Hansel and Gretel – 2
IF you have NOT already taken time to watch the Hosea Movie of a previous post, it is related to this series and I recommend it. Watch it as a family, if possible (80 min.); especially your teens.
Roger Harned
HANSEL & GRETEL – Chapter 2
DIVORCE! in the Bible is more a picture of our broken relationship with God, than a contemporary image of broken vows between broken people with broken hopes and broken families.
The truth of christian divorce remains a picture of our broken relationships with God.
Where is your commitment to your vow in the Name of God?
Where is your commitment to your Lord?
Where is your commitment to your husband and lord of your family?
Where is your commitment to the children of your bowels (to borrow from a KJV lesser-known depiction of a deeper nature of the womb or compassion)?
Jesus said: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Pretty harsh words from our Lord.
And what follows Jesus’ caution against divorce in Matthew 19?
A lesson on the importance of children.
My wife is a christian. She is NOT an unbeliever. I need not go into the difficult detail of our not-so-fabled pasts to say how our children of another husband or wife became step-children in our crumbling houses of gingerbread.
The lesson for our Christian family relationships remains the same regardless of past circumstance:
God is Father and Jesus IS Lord over every family.
Rebellion of husband, wife or child is rebellion against Christ as LORD.
The fear of a child, even in a house of faith, is well warranted. Fear of our children as orphans as in the story of Hansel and Gretel is real. Fear of our children as orphans as in Jesus’ mention of children immediately after His caution against divorce is real enough in our broken homes of this 21st century.
Fear of separation from God for eternity ought to be the underlying motivation for ANY of our rebellion against a loving Father God and the blood of our redemption in Christ Jesus, His Son of the Cross.
To be continued…
-
Stuck in our Sin
Isaiah 63:16-17 For you are our Father,
though Abraham does not know us,
and Israel does not acknowledge us;
you, O LORD, are our Father,
our Redeemer from of old is your name.O LORD, why do you make us wander from your ways
and harden our heart, so that we fear you not?
Return for the sake of your servants,
the tribes of your heritage.Matthew 12: He said to them, “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? 12 Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!
- Are you a lost sheep of the Lord?
- Stuck in the mud, are you… and think no one cares?
- Been a while since you have found your self in fellowship and worship with other believers?
God our Father welcomes the ‘prodigal son.” (Do you recall, beloved lost sheep?)
Jesus our Lord and Redeemer leaves the ninety-nine of the fold to rescue the lost one. (…That angels might rejoice. Do you recall?)
James 4 (ESV)
Warning Against Worldliness
4 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions[a] are at war within you?[b]
2 You desire and do not have, so you murder.
You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.
You do not have, because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
4 You adulterous people![c] Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace.
Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Therefor be humble before the Cross. Bow down an worship your Redeemer.
Be NOT like a proud goat on his own hill,
But like a humble sheep,
Faithful to the call of the Shepherd.
