The sermon tomorrow will be an exposition of Deuteronomy 7:1-5.
None of us are held hostage by our sin - every sin in our lives is an invited guest. The Israelites could not complain when pagan peoples and elements poisoned the promised land and became a thorn in the sides of generations to come. God had defeated those seven nations that were greater than them. Israel let them up off the mat. When we become believers we find our "promised land" in much the same shape that the Israelites found theirs. We find that it is not unoccupied but filled with many well fortified and defended strongholds of sin, deception, and rebellion. All of these strongholds are stronger than we are but God has defeated them. It is our calling and life's purpose to "tear down", "smash", "hew", and "burn" all those institutions of our former disposition and build and inhabit that city on a hill from which flows milk and honey.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
The Sacred Desk
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4 comments:
How I would enjoy sitting in your congregation.
John, when I read the word "hew" in your post it reminded me of this hymn from the 1800's I ran across a couple of years ago. I have made fun of its vivid and inelegant intensity, but I've been convicted by its sentiment.
Oh, this Agag, inbred sin,
I have long endured within,
Till he trembling saith death's bitterness is past,
But the hour of death has come,
And his evil course is run,
He shall die and from his resting place be cast.
Chorus:
Hew the Agag to pieces,
Hew the Agag to pieces,
Hew the Agag to pieces, help my Lord.
Hew the Agag to pieces,
Hew the Agag to pieces,
Spirit's sword, the death blow strike.
I'll trust thy word.
Each verse is even more purple than the one before.
Oh, how sinful and how vile
Is this Agag of my soul;
And his hands are red with blood, and black with crime;
Rotten to the very core,
Covered with sin's unbound sore,
Seed of sin, and daubed with hellish, lustful slime.
It's hard to believe, but there were congregations where this was earnestly sung.
John, does your church record your sermons at all? Would it be possible to get them to do it?
Joel
I almost forgot: the author of Hew the Agag was V.A.Dake, a holiness preacher from the midwest who died on his way to serve as a missionary in Liberia.
Hey there Joel ~
What a cool hymn - can you imagine a band like Third Day including it on their next acoustic praise album? A hymn like that is hardly sung today because it rightly identifies the obstacle to holiness as being something much more difficult to overcome than an Agag - our own apathy.
We don't record sermons here; but it has been discussed a few times.
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