This just came in the mail from my brother Steve, accompanied by a two sentence note written on the bottom part of a torn off internet printout. I'd say you have to know him to understand, but I think the picture speaks (yea even screams "hilarious") for itself.
(and yes, i did make it back ok.)
I'm siding more towards the latter. These are from an email (additive 1) forwarded repeatedly (factor 2). They purport to be views of Isabel from a ship. The shots are surprisingly clear, visually impressive, and just good enough to make me raise an eyebrow. (factors 3, 4, and 5) So what do you think...am i a cynic, or are they for real?
44:6
Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts:
"I am the first and I am the last,
And there is no God besides Me. "
44:7
Who is like Me?
Let him proclaim and declare it; Yes, let him recount it to Me in order...
44:8
Is there any God besides Me,
Or is there any other Rock?
I know of none.
45:5
I am the LORD, and there is no other;
Besides Me there is no God.
45:6
That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun
That there is no one besides Me.
I am the LORD, and there is no other...
45:18
For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens
(He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited),
"I am the LORD, and there is none else."
45:21
And there is no other God besides Me,
A righteous God and a Savior;
There is none except Me.
45:22
Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is no other.
46:9
Remember the former things long past,
For I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is no one like Me...
quotes copied from www.studybibleforum.com, an interesting site in itself but noted here because it has the NASB available.
This is the first of what I plan to be a series of blogs on this passage. I'm not promising (or even attempting) to produce anything extremely...exciting in some sense of the word, but I will do my best to avoid posting all the little things about these verses that I'd like to.
This first entry is simply the exegetical outline I did for a class. In that class, we're taught that the exegetical outline is like a skeleton to a sermon-you have to have a skeleton to exist, but nobody wants to see it. As one popular analogy puts it, people want to see the display of the pearl diver's wares, not hear about the depth of the dive, the temperature of the water, or the pretty coral at the bottom.
So although I'm breaking that rule, I'm doing it on purpose. I hope this might provide some amount of information you might not have considered before, give a framework for this passage, and, even if you don't really utilize it now, give you something that will help you in your Bible study at some point. (besides, i'm not preaching it, so the venue legitimizes it as well. :-)
I hope it will also give a little peak into the sermon process. This outline can remind you that making a sermon is work. (especially if you look at it as it is and promptly dismiss it for its lack of communication) Your pastor does this work every week, and it's good to remember that a quality sermon doesn't just happen. (this outline represents right around 5 hours of work, and it's not even close to being a sermon yet. 5 hours is a meager amount of time in comparison to what needs to be done.)
So with that rather extended bit of disclaimer, here's what I perceive to be the structure of 1 Peter 4:1-11.
FCF: Our sinful nature dictates our actions and distorts our perspectives.
Theme: In light of revealed reality, think and live God’s way.
I. Since Christ suffered in the flesh to the point of death (1:11, 2:21, 3:18), equip yourself with His way of thinking. (vv. 1-6)
A. The reason for considering your flesh to be dead (v. 1) (Rom. 6:7)
B. The result of considering your flesh to be dead (v. 2)
1. Not living according to man’s lusts
2. Living according to God’s purposes
C. The arguments (Hiebert-motivations?) for considering your flesh to be dead (vv. 3-6)
1. You have already done more than enough fleshly evil in the past (v. 3)
2. Christ will judge every human according to his fleshliness (vv. 4-6)
a. Christ is ready to judge the natural man’s headlong plunge into fleshliness. (vv. 4-5)
b. Christ has prepared righteous judgment even for those already dead (v. 6)
II. Since the end of all things is near, follow God’s way of living. (vv. 7-11)
A. Be clearheaded and self-controlled for the purpose of prayer. (v. 7)
B. Maintain constant and intense love for believers because of love’s effects. (v. 8)
C. Be hospitable without a complaining manner. (v. 9)
D. Use your gifts to serve believers as (like or since?) one entrusted with God’s grace. (vv. 10-11)
1. How to serve as a minister of grace (v. 11a)
a. Minister God’s words, not your own.
b. Minister in God’s strength, not your own.
2. Why to serve as a minister of grace (v. 11b)
a. For God’s glory
b. For Christ’s magnification
Works Consulted: BDAG, Blum, Hiebert
The distinction between a positive and an exhaustive conception has been overlooked in the recent discussions respecting the possibility of man's possessing a positive conception of the infinite.
If by a positive knowledge is meant an infinite or perfect knowledge that exhausts all the mystery of an object, then man cannot have a positive knowledge of even any finite thing. But if by positive is meant true and valid as far as the cognition reaches,--if the term relates to quality and not to quantity,--then man's knowledge of the infinite is as positive as his knowledge of the finite.
In this latter and only proper use of the term, man's conception of eternity is as positive as his conception of time, and his apprehension of divine justice is no more a negation than his apprehension of human justice.
Man's knowledge of God, like his knowledge of the ocean, is a positive perception, as far as it extends. He does not exhaustively comprehend the ocean, but this does not render his knowledge of the ocean, as to its quality, a mere negation.
But it is the quality and not the quantity of a cognition that determines its validity. There is for man no exhaustive or infinite knowledge of either the finite or the infinite. He finds it as impossibly to give an all-comprehending definition of time as he does of eternity, of an atom of matter as of the essence of God.
William G.T. Shedd, in A History of Christian Doctrine, vol. 1, pp.185-86.
Should God again,
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race
Of the undeviating and punctual sun,
How would the world admire! but speaks
it less
An agency divine, to make him know
His moment when to sink, and when to
rise,
Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle; but, seen
So duly, all is miracle in vain.
From Cowper's "The Task," Book VI
...there’s bad Mexican, and there’s good Mexican. And there’s bad American, and there’s good American. And there’s bad Yankees and there’s good Yankees. There’s good southerners and there’s bad southerners.
"Well, it's just what we are in the south."
Well, that might be good. It also might be sin.
That’s where you’re supposed to wake up, smell the coffee, get involved, pray, be courageous enough to be honest.
Trust the truth.
"Well then, you’ve got to throw away our traditions."
No you don’t, just evaluate them. Some of them should stay til Jesus comes. Some of them should have been gone a long time ago.
"Well then, what’s the decoder ring? Is there like a CD out there like that you sell somewhere? You have a table?"
Nope. We have a Text and we have a Spirit.
You can either play the real game or go on deluding yourself.
from a message preached at The Wilds from 1 Corinthians 9 by Tim Jordan, Dec. 31, 2002 "Music 03-07"
Well, at long last the summer has ended. The two job, two class, two nursing home ministry, too much to do summer has ended. (please notice the slight attempt, without extensive pleading or excuse-making, for my lamentable recent absence. :-) But along the way, the Lord was kind to shower blessings as plentiful as the evening thunderstorms that have become a Greenville summer staple.
I didn't really expect my two jobs to be a source of great lesson-learning. I grew to be extremely thankful for God's gracious providence of the perfect jobs for me.
Working at Clean Site gave me some more good job experience I may be able to use in the future (where else could a kid like me get so much time in a Bobcat and dumptruck), as well as bringing in bigger paychecks than I had ever seen in my whole life (which killed the ugly monster of my interest-bearing college debts faster than I could have imagined).
The Media Center brought more opportunities to learn about computers and more experience with learning useful skills while doing a ministry. I started to think and pray daily that I would be like Joseph to my employers. That because I was there, God would cause them to blessed (Gen. 39:2-5).
But I wasn't really expecting to learn much. I mean, it wasn't like I was at camp or something. I wasn't on a mission trip, didn't do an internship, and didn't even take any summer school. It looked to me like I would have one of those necessary summers-you have to work like a dog, but then you have to duck in embarassment at the end when people ask you what you did (with "ministry" or "school" or some other profitable idea tacitly wedged in there).
But the daily grind was also a great place for me to learn about self-discipline. It was the perfect time to remind me that walking in the Spirit must apply to the work environment, too, and hopefully it was a lasting teacher of what the people in my church will face on a daily basis.
Halfway into the summer, my boss met with all of us to inform us that while the payroll had never been higher, the production had never been lower. He's a very good motivator, and from that time on I could hear his voice at every site we went to. But moving as fast as you can launching 3/4 full 5 gallon buckets of primer over the side of a 8 foot tall dumptruck in 90 degree Greenville with 79% humidity gets old pretty quickly. So the opportunities to say, "Shut up, Self," and keep doing what I ought to started to multiply.
From the physical intensity of my mornings I would go to the air-conditioned comforts of the Media Center, where I was my own boss. Projects, organization, and doing computer stuff only added more opportunities for my flesh to rebel. It's amazing how un-motivated I can be when I just don't feel like doing anything.
Then I'd go home, and Church History correspondence and the weekly aggravation of summer extension would greet me in the three hours of evening I had left before my body demanded I go to bed.
All of those circumstances blended perfectly to bring me face to face with my daily need to say, "No" to my own will, to learn physical, mental, and spiritual self-discipline, and to experience just a taste of the demands future ministry might hold for me.
There's no way I can imagine anything that would have been more taxing to my self-discipline this summer than what I had. There's just no substitute for daily, in-your-face, this-isn't-going-away kind of intense pressure. And it was good for me.
They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts. From a lust to be lazy to the kind of lusts we don't even mention, they all must be brutally skewered with merciless, pitiless surety.
I'm not even sure I can put into words how beneficial this summer was for me.
It was good.