From Highland Community Church March 19, 2023 Bulletin

 

     Morality

People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. –C. S. Lewis

     Sin leads to a grave

Sin does not serve well as a gardener of the soul. It landscapes the contour of the soul until all that is beautiful has been made ugly; until all that is high is made low; until all that is promising is wasted. Then life is like the desert–parched and barren. It is drained of purpose. It is bleached of happiness. Sin, then, is not wise, but wasteful. It is not a gate, but only a grave. –C. Neil Strait

     Immutable–changeless

Said C. W. Brown in The Cap and the Gown, “Two and two make four. Never by any ill chance only three and a half; never by any amount of coaxing or stretching four and a half, but always everywhere just four, no more. It is an absolute statement of fact. It always has been so and always will be.” “There is no shuffling or chance in the moral world. Impulses lead to choice; choices become habits; habits harden speedily into character; and character determines destiny!” Just as sure as two and two make four is the operation of God’s immutable, changeless moral law: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind;” “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption (Hos. 8:7; Gal. 6:8). –Walter B. Knight

     God chooses not to work

It’s not that God can’t do something, it’s that He chooses not to do something when His people are living in sin. In Isaiah 59 God says, “You need to know that my arm is not too short that it cannot save, nor my ear too heavy that it cannot hear; but your iniquity, your sin, has come between you and Me, so I choose not to.” It’s not that Jesus couldn’t do mighty works because of unbelief, it’s that He chose not to. Unbelief does not block the sovereignty of God, but it does determine the sovereignty of God in the sense that He has said, “Where I find unbelief, I’ll choose not to work.” –Henry Blackaby