Only Sinners Have Bank Accounts

“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... Therefore do not be anxious.” So many people read this as though He had said, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... Therefore do not have barns.” Too many people confuse Jesus' statement of fact, “humans do not gather into barns,” with his command, “ do not. Clearly Christ is talking about being anxious, and the whole reason that He mentions barns is to help us see that humans, of all creatures, should not worry. The birds are taken care of and they are not greatly valued (relative to us) and they do not store for safekeeping. How is it that we worry when we are greatly valued and have so many graces like barns and banks? Therefore, keep the barn, keep the bank account, and lose the anxiety.

Perfection Hurts My Brain

Psalm 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect...

-----There are stunning implications to the truth that the Word of God is perfect. Everyone judges. Whatever our eyes fall upon we evaluate. This is fine and natural in almost every single instance because we almost never see perfect things. But this will not work when we come upon the only perfect thing we will see in our lifetimes: the Bible. When we look at it we can no longer evaluate what we are looking at, and yet there are things that are unpleasant to us, that seem completely wrong, and that are offensive. Since we know the Bible is perfect, however, we must attribute all the faults we see to ourselves instead of to it. This is one way I think the Bible is like a mirror. We cannot evaluate it but only ourselves as we look at it. For instance, when someone gets offended that God would command Israel to kill every living thing among the Canaanites, they should be ashamed that their mind is so twisted by sin that they cannot see God's right to command such a thing. Practically, when there is a command that contradicts our lives we must not try to change it, but we must seek for God to change us.