Center Your Life on the Word of God

"No one can be a good Christian who does not with holy zeal set out to know, delight in, and live by the Word of God!" --John R. Rice

John R. Rice was not a perfect man. But rather than accentuate his imperfections or even extol his myriad of contributions, I'd simply like to highlight that he was a man who was preoccupied with honoring God through His Word.

While creation testifies of God's greatness (Psalm 19:1), we know God through His self-revelation...through the Bible. This is the central point of the Christian's life. We are not to live by some code of generic kindness. While that may be the popular mantra of many Christians today, and kindness and charity towards others is, without question, advanced by the Bible itself (Matthew 22:39; Ephesians 4:32), kind deeds are not the measure of our Christian faith. We measure ourselves by the Word of God.

"Thou hast commanded [us] to keep thy precepts diligently." --Psalm 119:4

D.L. Moody's Thoughts on the Sabbath

Today is a special opportunity to honor God. If you don't often attend church, perhaps you'll read this early enough to get there today. Here's an exerpt from Moody's famous sermon "Weighed in the Balances."

THERE HAS BEEN an awful letting-down in this country regarding the Sabbath during the last twenty-five years, and many a man has been shorn of spiritual power, like Samson, because he is not straight on this question. Can you say that you observe the Sabbath properly? You may be a professed Christian: are you obeying this commandment? Or do you neglect the house of God on the Sabbath day, and spend your time drinking and carousing in places of vice and crime, showing contempt for God and His law? Are you ready to step into the scales? Where were you last Sabbath? How did you spend it?

I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath." It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was--in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.

The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. The fourth commandment begins with the word remember, showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote this law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?

I believe that the Sabbath question today is a vital one for the whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you give up the Sabbath the church goes; if you give up the church the home goes; and if the home goes the nation goes. That is the direction in which we are traveling.

The church of God is losing its power on account of so many people giving up the Sabbath, and using it to promote selfishness.

Without a doubt, this day has become a day of selfishness. A day to spend on ourselves, not God. Truly America is suffering because 1) we do not honor God with a day of worship; and 2) we do not apply the principle of sabbath rest.

President Obama Continues Bias Against Jews

Morton Klein, of the Zionist Organization of America, recently bemoaned President Obama's favoritism of Islam over Judaism, saying:

Obama’s attitude towards Jews and Israel, following the latest presidential Rosh Hashanah Message, addressed strangely to “everybody,” and in which he never actually mentioned ‘Jews’ or ‘Judaism’ even once, referred to ‘Jewish tradition’ only once, and said nothing about the Jewish contribution to American life or anything else. (This is in stark contrast to President Obama’s August 2010 Ramadan Message, in which he referred to ‘Muslims’ six times and to ‘Islam’ twice, stated that “American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country,” and praised “Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings … a faith known for great diversity and racial equality”).

You can read the entire commentary here.