More Barriers Overcome with Zoom

 

 Where we go one, we go all.

Thanks to Zach Engleman's help tonight, we got a lot more done for Sunday. I did some things Friday to set up the emails, and they got away, blank messages. 

Today I tried some things did would not work today, so I asked Zach to go through Zoom with me to set up procedures. That worked well except for the music. Saturday we are working on that.

A New Letter From Tom Fisher, Farmer

 

Dear Pastor Jackson,

Please publish this letter. Feel free to include your comments and insight. Feel free to use any pictures from my farm.

The home of my childhood was unusual, warm, and wonderful!  We had NO TV.  We had a huge garden, a huge Macintosh apple tree, three beautiful cherry trees, and a huge nearly acre of grass to cut.  My two brothers and I spent our summers picking cherries, cutting grass, and tending the huge garden. Work was a privilege and blessing. Our mom taught us this by example. She always sang as she worked. Her faith in Christ was never lazy, timid, or idle. She had NO TV to baby sit, brainwash, and ruin us kids. Instead she spent every minute teaching us the Lord's Prayer, the Ten commandments, and especially to NEVER fight or hurt each other with words or fists.  We grew up helping each other instead of hurting each other.  How unusual and wonderful this was! My dad was a design engineer at Caterpillar. He NEVER cursed.  He told us it showed your stupidity. He never drank any liquor.  He warned us about it's danger to us and others. He insisted we learn to spell words correctly and to look up the correct spelling and meaning in the dictionary. He knew Latin, English, and math very well! My parents were always there to help me and encourage me to excel academically and spiritually.  I remember my mom constantly asking, "Did you read your Bible today?" Then in eighth grade my parents bought me my first King James Bible. This is when I began to read, study, and memorize the Bible. 

I really want to speak about an even more wonderful home of our childhood with God our Heavenly Father, and Christ His Son, and God the Holy Ghost. God our Heavenly Father has made all of us His children by faith in Christ His Son. "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Galatians 3:26,27  - Baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost clothes us in the righteousness of Christ, and gives us the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. Here in our baptism God makes us His children, and gives us forgiveness of all sins, and makes us heirs with Christ.  Faith in Christ and our baptism in the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost creates a new home for all of us called the Christian church where God the Holy Ghost forgives all our sins, sanctifies us, and keeps all of us in the one true faith.  God has already created a new Lutheran Synod and church among us by His Word, Faith, Baptism, Holy Communion, and the Office of the keys. Christ is our good Shepherd. He calls us all by name. We know His voice and follow Him as one flock. "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." So our new Lutheran Synod and church is a gathering together of two or three true Lutheran Christian believers in Christ. Christ has not left us comfortless.  "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." John 14:18 Christ sends us the Comforter: God the Holy Ghost. "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." John 14:26.

So let us not be lazy Lutheran laymen (myself included).  Our faith in Christ cannot be idle regarding the reading, memorization, and study of God's Holy Word (KJV). We have the gift of God the Holy Ghost in our Baptism. He is our teacher guiding us into all truth. God the Holy Ghost is always with the Word. " For the Word of God is quick (living) and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 "But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." II Timothy 3:16

In Christ,

Tom Fisher

PS from GJ

I enjoy hearing from Tom. He knows the KJV Bible very well and supports Justification by Faith in a world where "Lutheran" pastors and professors deny the Chief Article, mock Luther, and sell Luther trinkets at Concordia Publishing House to prove how shallow they are.

 This mocks Luther, who faced burning at the stake for teaching the Gospel.

This is how to get to the Purple Palace, honor the Reformation with a dog-shirt.

Substitutes

 

 Early scary McDonalds commercial.

Spinach, kales, collards, turnip greens are loaded with nutrition and satisfying, with almost no calories. But white rice, white flour, white bread, and white ice cream create a craving for morke - and they have almost no nutrition, and are fattening with loads of calories.

Juices of all kinds are mostly sugar and not nutritious. Paul Newman's orange drink's first ingredient is corn syrup, the worst of all forms of sweetener! Fresh and frozen fruit do not have sweetener added - except by the Creator Himself - and provide a lot of fiber which is essential to food digestion. Fruits are a rainbow of nutrition and not fattening.

Nuts are sold with heavy doses of salt. People gladly or sadly pay large amounts of money at the pharmacy for statins, expensive drugs that claim to block one's high cholesterol chemistry - while providing horrible side effects. Plain walnuts with no salt, no sugar, no roasting - they take away the bad cholesterol, simply with a handful of walnuts a day. Raw almonds can do that too.

Candy is very appealing, especially in all the fruit colors but has none of the fruit benefits. Nothing is more fun than getting the best blueberries, apples, oranges, bananas, pineapples, etc. A bag of MnMs with "almonds" cost me $4.23 today. They were atrocious. I ate a few and gave the rest to squirrels.

All the prepared meals, whether fast food joints or grocery stores or delivered, are manufactured with huge amounts of fat, salt, and sweeteners. They are extremely expensive and often poor quality cuz - profits. A little preparation in the family will yield delicious, low cost meals with a high level of nutrition and very little sugar-salt-fat.

Charlie Sue, my Patterdale Terrier, loves meals, which include Science Diet and enjoys such delicacies as bananas, blueberries, and apples. She gets a little meat each day too, plus a few treats. I love going to the grocery store to carve out our share of Walmart offerings. I can load up the cart with a lot of low cost high nutrition value fruits, greens, and vegetables. 

It takes time. I gave up eggs for breakfast and began making original oatmeal with raisins and almonds. It was very satisfying, minus a load of fat and choline. I get some candy now and again, which only reminds me that almost all candy is junk. Much of the gourmet candy is older than a Jack Benny joke. Kettle corn and Fritos were still attractive until I found my blood pressure soaring. Kettle corn is sugar-fat-grease. Fritos make up for the lack of sugar with extra grease and salt. 

Dr. Michael Greger has a mountain of short articles and videos on nutrition.

See what Ronald did for my stomach? Sassy Sue was afraid of the guy.

Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Sunday Before Lent Epistle - "We hold, and unquestionably it is true, that it is faith which justifies and cleanses, Romans 1:17; Romans 10:10; Acts 15:9. But if it justifies and purifies, love must be present. The Spirit cannot but impart love together with faith."

 

Complete Sermon - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. 

The Sunday before Lent

LOVE, THE SPIRIT’S FRUIT RECEIVED BY FAITH.

7. We hold, and unquestionably it is true, that it is faith which justifies and cleanses, Romans 1:17; Romans 10:10; Acts 15:9. But if it justifies and purifies, love must be present. The Spirit cannot but impart love together with faith. In fact, where true faith is, the Holy Spirit dwells; and where the Holy Spirit is, there must be love and every excellence. How is it, then, Paul speaks as if faith without love were possible? We reply, this one text cannot be understood as subverting and militating against all those texts which ascribe justification to faith alone. Even the sophists have not attributed justification to love, nor is this possible, for love is an effect, or fruit, of the Spirit, who is received through faith.

8. Three answers may be given to the question. First, Paul has not reference here to the Christian faith, which is inevitably accompanied by love, but to a general faith in God and his power. Such faith is a gift; as, for instance, the gift of tongues, the gift of knowledge, of prophecy, and the like. There is reason to believe Judas performed miracles in spite of the absence of Christian faith, according to John 6:70: “One of you is a devil.” This general faith, powerless to justify or to cleanse, permits the old man with his vices to remain, just as do the gifts of intellect, health, eloquence, riches.

9. A second answer is: Though Paul alludes to the true Christian faith, he has those in mind who have indeed attained to faith and performed miracles with it, but fall from grace through pride, thus losing their faith. Many begin but do not continue. They are like the seed in stony ground. They soon fall from faith. The temptations of vainglory are mightier than those of adversity. One who has the true faith and is at the same time able to perform miracles is likely to seek and to accept honor with such eagerness as to fall from both love and faith.

10. A third answer is: Paul in his effort to present the necessity of love, supposes an impossible condition. For instance, I might express myself in this way: “Though you were a god, if you lacked patience you would be nothing.” That is, patience is so essential to divinity that divinity itself could not exist without it, a proposition necessarily true. So Paul’s meaning is, not that faith could exist without love, but on the contrary, so much is love an essential of faith that even mountain-moving faith would be nothing without love, could we separate the two even in theory.

The third answer pleases me by far the best, though I do not reject the others, particularly the first. For Paul’s very first premise is impossible — “if I speak with the tongues of angels.” To speak with an angelic tongue is impossible for a human being, and he clearly emphasizes this impossibility making a distinction between the tongues of men and those of angels.

There is no angelic tongue; while angels may speak to us in a human tongue men can never speak in those of angels.

11. As we are to understand the first clause — “If I speak with the tongues of angels” — as meaning, Were it as possible as it is impossible for me to speak with the tongues of angels; so are we to understand the second clause — “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains” — to mean, Were it as possible as it is impossible to have such faith. Equally impossible is the proposition of understanding all mysteries, and we must take it to mean, Were it possible for one to understand all mysteries, which, however, it is not. John, in the last chapter of his Gospel, asserts that the world could not contain all the books which might be written concerning the things of the kingdom. For no man can ever fathom the depths of these mysteries. Paul’s manner of expressing himself is but a very common one, such as: “Even if I were a Christian, if I believed not in Christ I would be nothing”; or, “Were you even a prince, if you neither ruled men nor possessed property you would be nothing.” “And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor.”

12. In other words, “Were I to perform all the good works on earth and yet had not charity — having sought therein only my own honor and profit and not my neighbor’s — I would nevertheless be lost.” In the performance of external works so great as the surrender of property and life, Paul includes all works possible of performance, for he who would at all do these, would do any work. Just so, when he has reference to tongues he includes all good words and doctrines; and in prophecy, understanding and faith he comprises all wisdom and knowledge. Some may risk body and property for the sake of temporal glory. So Romans and pagans have done; but as love was lacking and they sought only their own interests, they practically gave nothing. It being generally impossible for men to give away all their property, and their bodies to be burned, the meaning must be: “Were it possible for me to give all my goods to the poor, and my body to be burned.”