False Palm Sunday

Today we celebrate Jesus' entry into Jerusalem amid crowds acclaiming Him God’s Chosen One, Messiah and King.

So it's a good time to remember Jesus' warning in Matthew 24:5, that "...many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,' and will mislead many."  Christians in the end-times Jesus' prophesied must beware the "many" deceivers who present themselves as false Messiahs.

For example, when the ex-president re-tweeted a misled follower’s praise that Israelis today, like the crowds at Jesus' Palm Sunday, "...love him like he’s the King of Israel...like he is the second coming of God.”

Trump tweets claim Israelis ‘love him like he is the second coming of God’

 

The Untouchables

In the 1987 movie, the tough Irish beat-cop Jim Malone (Sean Connery) on Elliot Ness' squad arrives home one night, unaware an assassin is lurking outside, watching for an opportunity.  But when the mafioso sneaks up behind the seemingly-oblivious cop with knife in hand, Malone turns to thrust his gun in the man's face, disgustedly saying, "Ain't that just like a wop, bringing a knife to a gun-fight ?"

I often notice the cars in my church' parking-lot with combative pro-gun bumper-stickers of the "cold, dead hands" variety.  A few other cars sport the "Gadsden Flag" vanity license-plates--a rattlesnake and "Don't Tread On Me" motto--sponsored by my state's Rifle Association.

I have to shake my head.  Ain't that just like a "conservative Christian," bringing a gun to a spiritual fight ?

"The pursuit of Happiness"

The Declaration of Independence claims so, but I'm skeptical that all men are "...endowed...with certain unalienable Rights" by "their Creator."  I don't have Jefferson's deistic qualms about naming God as Who He IS: but the question is if He actually guarantees every human being is entitled (for what else is a "right" ?) to "...Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

It's stirring political rhetoric.  I doubt it's sound theology, as does A. W. Tozer.

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"You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier."          --2 Timothy 2:3-4.

That we are born to be happy is scarcely questioned by anyone. No one bothers to prove that fallen men have any moral right to happiness, or that they are in the long run any better off happy. The only question before the house is how to get the most happiness out of life. Almost all popular books and plays assume that personal happiness is the legitimate end of the dramatic human struggle.

Now I submit that the whole hectic scramble after happiness is an evil as certainly as is the scramble after money or fame or success....

How far wrong all this is will be discovered easily by the simple act of reading the New Testament through once with meditation. There the emphasis is not upon happiness but upon holiness. God is more concerned with the state of people's hearts than with the state of their feelings. Undoubtedly the will of God brings final happiness to those who obey, but the most important matter is not how happy we are but how holy. The soldier does not seek to be happy in the field; he seeks rather to get the fighting over with, to win the war and get back home to his loved ones. There he may enjoy himself to the full; but while the war is on his most pressing job is to be a good soldier, to acquit himself like a man, regardless of how he feels.

"Oh Lord, redirect my focus. Help me today to be a 'good soldier of Jesus Christ.' Amen."