Every August the grapes come in, muscadines and scuppernongs in this part of the country.  Strong flavored, thick-skinned, acidic, and seedy, they are best for jelly and juice, though true Floridians enjoy noshing on them as is.  With the boys grown now, I go through fewer peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so the jelly production has dwindled and the juice making increased, and I have discovered the easiest method for making and canning grape juice.

              Put a generous cup or so of clean grapes in each sterilized quart jar.  Add some sugar and fill the jars with boiling water.  Process and once the lids have sealed, put them on your shelf for at least two months.  The liquid and the sugar will leach the goodness right out of those grapes.  When you open the jar, strain them out and enjoy what’s left behind.  Perhaps not as much fun as jumping into the vat with Lucy and Ethel, but far cleaner and easier.

              One day I decided to taste one of those strained-out grapes just to see what was left in it.  I should have known—it was duller and several shades paler than its original shiny purple-black, and loose as a deflated balloon.  How did it taste?  Like sour nothingness.   Maybe that’s what happens to us when we steep ourselves in the world. 
 
             Is wealth consuming your thoughts?  “Just let me have enough,” is a lie we tell ourselves.   He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income, Eccl 5:10.  If you allow thoughts of riches to flood your life—even if you don’t have them--anything spiritual will be washed out of your heart.  Notice the prediction God made about Israel:  But [they] waxed fat, and kicked: you have waxed fat, you have grown thick, you are covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation, Deuteronomy 32:15.  Their wealth (“fatness”) covered them so that it was all they could think about.  Any notion of serving God was completely forgotten.  If you think we aren’t at risk, just take a minute and look around.  What used to be a God-fearing nation has become a people who worship wealth, power, and celebrity instead.

              Other times we allow the pleasures and conveniences of this world to permeate our lives so that the mere thought of sacrificing anything, whether comfort, ease, or even opinion, will be smothered out of us.  “Self” will leach the good out of hearts and minds, and leave nothing but the emptiness of indulgence.  If your “rights” spring to your lips every time someone crosses you, you have stifled the spiritual character of yielding to others, whether your neighbors, the man in the car in front of you, or the brother who sits next to you on the pew.  You have suffocated the spirit of mercy that marks us as His children.  For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh... For to be carnally minded is death… Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God, Romans 8:5-8.

              But sometimes we simply drown in “stuff.”  What do you do all day long?  Run from this to that to another event, none of which is evil, but none of which is spiritual either.  How do you feel at the end of the day?  Drained, probably, and maybe even quicker to fall into the sins of impatience and intolerance simply because you are so tired.  And he that was sown among the thorns, this is he who hears the word; and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful, Matthew 13:22.

              What are you floating in today?  Will it make you sweet and useful to the Master, or will it leave you an empty, useless hull of a servant, one who will be strained out and thrown away?  Let me know if you need a jar of my grape juice to sit on your shelf as a reminder.
 
My foot has held fast to his steps; I have kept his way and have not turned aside. I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food…For zeal for your house has consumed me, Job 23:11-12, Psa 69:9.
 
Dene Ward

Nothing annoys me much more than a chirping smoke alarm.  Yes, yes, yes, I tell it.  I know you need a new battery.  I will get to it as soon as I can.  But aren't we glad we have them?
 
             It has taken a long time for affordable, reliable, home smoke detectors to hit the market.  The first fire alarm was invented and patented by Francis Robbins Upton, a friend of Thomas Edison, in 1890.  George Andrew Darby of Birmingham, England invented the first smoke detector in 1902.  Both items were too basic to be reliable and marketable.  In the late 1930s a Swiss physicist named Walter Jaeger attempted to invent a poison gas detector.  It didn't detect the poison, but the smoke from his cigarette did set it off.  This one was too expensive to produce to have much impact on the market.

              I was finally able to find a patent given to inventors Randolph J. Smith of Anaheim, California and Kenneth R House of Norwalk, Connecticut on August 5, 1969.  Their model was evidently the first battery-powered residential model that was actually affordable and reliable.  It emitted a piercing alarm at the presence of smoke.  And yes, I suppose it did that annoying little chirping thing, too.

              Maybe it’s because I am the only one around here who even needs the smoke alarm.  Keith not only can’t hear the chirping, he can stand under the thing when it goes off and not hear it.  As long as I am in the house I can wake Keith up and get both of us out in time should a fire start.  If only the toaster and the broiler and the occasional spillover on the burners didn't set it off too.

              Warnings are often annoying.  How about the various beeps in your car?  For us, it’s just the ding-ding-ding when you leave the keys in, but I have friends whose cars ring, buzz, beep, or whoop-whoop-whoop when they back up too close to something, pull in too close to something, swerve a little too close to the lane markings, let their gas tanks get too low, open the wrong door at the wrong time…  Honestly, I don’t know how they stand to drive at all.

              But only a fool ignores warnings.  And there are quite a few of them out there—fools, that is.  Just try warning someone about losing their soul, and you may well lose a friend.  They get mad, they strike out with accusations about your own failings, they tell everyone how mean you are.  Trouble is, ignoring the warnings won’t get them anywhere they want to go. The danger is still there.

              If I don’t answer the call of the chirping smoke alarm with a new battery, I may very well burn to death one night.  Telling everyone how annoying the thing is won’t change that at all.  If I don’t answer the warnings of someone who cares enough about me to brave losing his reputation and being hurt, my end won’t change either.  It doesn’t matter whether I thought he was mean or whether he needed a warning just as badly as I did.  I know the first reaction is anger.  I’ve been there myself.  But anger never saved anyone, nor accusations, nor whining and fussing about my hurt feelings.  There is a whole lot more at stake than a few feelings.
 
             Heed the warning when you get it, no matter how you get it or from whom.  It may be the only one you get.  People aren’t like smoke alarms.  Not many of them will put up with your bad reactions.  They’ll either stop chirping now, or never chirp again.  Then what will you do when the fire starts?
 
"Son of man, speak to your people and say to them, If I bring the sword upon a land, and the people of the land take a man from among them, and make him their watchman, and if he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning; his blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life, Ezekiel 33:2-5.
 
Dene Ward

Whenever we whiz past workers on the interstate, I cringe, especially if they are not standing behind the "protection" of those concrete barriers.  What if one of them slipped and fell?  What if a couple of them were engaging in horseplay and a little shove propelled one into traffic?  What if…  My imagination can run overtime with those things, I'm afraid, but even if I were not to blame, I would feel terrible if he fell in front of my car.

              I know that is so because when I was a child, one of my parents' friends accidentally killed a child who was riding his bike around his neighborhood.  No, it was not the man's fault.  The boy was not watching where he was going and simply whizzed out into the middle of the street.  Maybe, as an inexperienced child, he thought a car could stop on a dime.  I don't know, but he was killed instantly.

              Our friend was a wreck.  Witnesses stood by him and he was cleared of all culpability, but he still had a hard time with it.  Over and over he kept thinking, "I killed an innocent child," and the word "accident" made no difference to him whatsoever.

              I would feel the same way, and I believe you would, too.  Being responsible for the death of anyone at all, much less an innocent, would be a terrible burden to bear.  Would there be anything we wouldn't do for that family to try to make amends?

              Yet we are all guilty of killing an innocent person.  Every one of us who has sinned even one sin—if that were possible—has murdered the Son of God.  Does it haunt you the way killing that child haunted our friend?  Would you do anything to make amends? 

              And the worst of it is this—for us it wasn't even an accident.  And in the words of the old hymn, every time we sin, we "crucify him once again."  If it made us feel as bad as it ought to, maybe we wouldn't have such a difficult time with temptation.  If we truly felt horrible about it, we might just be able to overcome.

              Something to think about this morning.
 
For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Heb 6:4-6)
 
Dene Ward

Our study of faith on Tuesday mornings continues to amaze us.  When I first handed out this 68 page, 15 lesson study that had taken me an entire summer of toil and sweat to produce, the women looked at me a little dubiously.  Faith is supposed to be easy, a first principle, so to speak.  How could you possibly come up with this much?

              Did you ever look up “faith” in a concordance?  All I did the first three days was write down scriptures.  I wound up with twenty pages.  I spent the next two weeks reading those scriptures and jotting notes about them that would jog my memory when it came time to organize them, which took another two weeks.  Then another week’s study gave me possible lesson titles, and in a few more days I sorted the scriptures I had found into those lessons.  Then I finally started writing lessons.

              In the process things changed.  Some lessons were divided in two.  Shorter ones were merged to create one longer one.  Questions were constantly in flux, created, edited, sometimes deleted altogether, other times expanded to two or three. 

              As I worked it became clear to me that we have shortchanged “faith” in our Bible studies.  It has become simply the first stairstep in the Plan of Salvation chart so many of us grew up memorizing.  When you really study it—I mean, twenty pages of scriptures, folks!—it is far more important.  In fact, I wound up calling our study, “Faith:  Stairstep or Staircase?” 

              As we ended lesson 8, “Faith in Hebrews 11,” which I bet you have never in your life studied the way we did, something else became apparent to me.  I had inadvertently put these lessons in a good order.  “Inadvertent” is not really accurate though; I did think about the order and rearranged them more than once, but as we have continued, it has become clear that the sequence has worked out beautifully.  I was certainly not inspired, but God’s providence has worked in its usual wonderful way, and through no fault of my own, these things are fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle.

              Can I share one “for instance?”  The lesson right before the Hebrews lesson was actually two, “Faith in the Book of Romans,” parts 1 and 2.  (Keith wrote those since Romans is one of his specialties.)  At the end of the lessons we drew this conclusion: our faith is not in a what but a who.  It is not in the promises of God, but in the God that made those promises.  Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, Rom 4:3. 

              Do you see how much better that is?  When you believe in the who, the what automatically follows.  Of course the promises will come true—God made them!  [Abraham was] fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.  That is why his faith was counted to him for righteousness, 4:21.  Believing in the “Who” leaves no doubt at all about “what” you will believe.

              Then as we moved on into Hebrews 11 we took it a step further.  Our faith in God must eventually become a personal faith—we don’t just believe God; He becomes “our God.”  That increased depth in our faith makes God not only proud of us, but willing to be “our God,” and to have that personal relationship with us.  Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, the writer says in 11:16. 

              And what does that do for you?  It effects every action, every word, and every decision you make when the relationship between you and God is personal.  What did Joseph say to Potiphar’s wife?  “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Gen 39:9.  He may not have said “sin against my God,” but you get the feeling nevertheless.  To sin against God would have been a personal affront.  You don’t get that motivation to stay pure if your faith has not reached that level of closeness with your Creator.

              Instead of just ripping through the list in Hebrews, we really looked at the actions of those great heroes. “By faith” Enoch walked with God, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, Jacob blessed his sons, Joseph mentioned the exodus before he died.  Wait--those are courageous and daring feats of faith?  No, they are just the words and deeds of men who believed God when He made His promises, and whose belief imbued every part of their lives.  Isaac, in recognizing that God had been in control when he (blindly) wasn’t, refused to change his blessing.  Jacob in his blessings to his sons embraced the entire promised future of Israel, from the conquest of the Promised Land to the coming Messiah.  Joseph spoke assuredly of the future exodus and his desire to be laid in that Land.  And Enoch?  He just lived every day as his God wanted him to, walking with his God in a personal relationship that made every action and decision obvious instead of an internal struggle.  Faith is believing God; faith is believing my God.

              And so we will continue on in our study.  It has become exciting to see each new aspect of an old and neglected issue. 

              “Faith only?”  Well, that depends.  Is it one step in your life, one instant of “Now I am saved,” or even, “Now I can move on to the next step,” or is it, as it was for those ancient patriarchs, the entire staircase that lifts you to Eternity?
 
For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever. Micah 4:5
 
Dene Ward

Then the angel who was speaking with me went out and said to me, “Lift up now your eyes and see what this is going forth.” I said, “What is it?” And he said, “This is the ephah going forth.” Again he said, “This is their appearance in all the land (and behold, a lead cover was lifted up); and this is a woman sitting inside the ephah.” Then he said, “This is Wickedness!” And he threw her down into the middle of the ephah and cast the lead weight on its opening. Then I lifted up my eyes and looked, and there two women were coming out with the wind in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens. I said to the angel who was speaking with me, “Where are they taking the ephah?” Then he said to me, “To build a temple for her in the land of Shinar; and when it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal.” (Zech 5:5-11)

              Zechariah sees an "ephah."  An ephah is a standard Hebrew measure, about 22 liters I found in several books.  However it is quite possible that the word here simply means "large."  Here is a large basket, large enough to hold a grown woman.  Evil is often personified as a woman in the Bible, but lest you get your knickers in a knot, notice who it is that carries this "Evil" away and disposes of it—two [good] women.  She is deposited in Shinar, "the ancient name for the district in which Babylon, Erech, and Akkad were situated (Gen 10)."  (Homer Hailey)  These places were associated with going against God's way.  Baldwin says they were symbolic of Satan's government.

              The message is this:  wickedness will not be tolerated in God's kingdom.  It will be removed.  So how is that encouraging, especially when we know we still on occasion sin?  It's the attitude, people.

              Then he cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, “Bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.” And behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand, and with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing case at his waist. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his waist. And the LORD said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. (Ezek 9:1-5)

              In Ezekiel's vision, God is ready to slaughter the people of Jerusalem.  But first he sends a man to mark those who "sigh and groan" over the sin in that city so they will be spared.  These people are not perfect, but they don't sit back and enjoy watching the sin either.   They don't abstain while wishing they could participate.  These people hate the sin, even when they themselves slip and fall.  When you have that attitude, when you have learned to love what God loves and hate what he hates—sin!—the thought of being in a place where it no longer exists is liberating.

              And that is why God's kingdom ousts the rebellious.  (1 Cor 5, etc.) Not the people who slip and fall, but the ones who sin and dare you to do anything about it.  The ones who are proud of their sin, as well as those who approve of them (Rom 1:32).  

              If you hate sin, God's kingdom will be your haven.  It is the place you can go to get away from the filth of this world and calm your weary heart, your sore eyes, and battered ears.  This is where your soul can rest.
​
Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, who forsake your law. ​I look at the faithless with disgust, because they do not keep your commands. My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law. (Ps 119:53, 158,136)
 
Dene Ward

I suppose it’s because of our age.  Or maybe it’s because we have lost three of our four parents.  We are the ones at the top of the escalator.  No one stands between us and eternity.  My mother is still alive but she is into her nineties, so it still feels like we are the older couple now, and it is indeed sobering.  All things being equal, we will be next to step off on the upper floor.

              Maybe that’s why we have spent a lot of time lately looking through old photographs.  What did we find?  Dogs and cats from puppy- and kitten-hood to grizzled muzzles and bent old bodies, baseball teams, science projects, birthday parties, and Christmas presents; old friends and their young children, who are now grown up like ours; school pictures of the boys, all the way to college graduation; even a few pictures of a couple of kids in 70s polyester, freshly married, with lots of hair and far skinnier than I thought possible.  Occasionally we looked at a picture of a toddler and said, “Are you sure that isn’t Silas?  Or Judah?”  Those always made us smile.

              We also found pictures of this place of ours from back when we first arrived.  A before and after picture probably wouldn’t do the monumental amount of work we have done justice.  We have turned an old watermelon field into a homestead.  Sometimes I wonder what will happen thirty or forty years from now.  Will someone else enjoy my jasmine vines and eat my muscadines?  Will they exclaim over the profusion of volunteer black-eyed Susans and the heat-hearty crepe myrtles?  Will they build a better house up under the oak grove in the middle of the property, just west of the firepit?  I used to dream of the time we could do that ourselves, but it will obviously never happen.

              One thing that surprised us the most were the live oaks.  When you see something every day you don’t notice how much it grows.  I have always thought of those trees as huge, but now they are twice the size around that they were 33 years ago, and many feet taller.  If I hadn’t looked at those pictures, I might never have noticed.

              Sometimes we do that to our brethren.  We tar them with a brush based upon their behavior decades before and never give them any credit for improving.  Can there be anything more discouraging to a brother in Christ? 

              Think today of your various brethren and how you would describe them to someone else.  What exactly are you basing that description on?  Something that happened yesterday, or something that happened twenty years ago?  Are you giving them any credit for growth?  “Judge righteous judgment,” Jesus reminded his disciples in John 7:24.  This poor judgment isn’t just a careless mistake of no consequence; it’s a matter of righteousness. 

              Maybe today would be a good time to reassess our opinions of our brethren.  Throw out the old photographs and take a new one.  Maybe—just maybe—they will do the same for us.
 
He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous:  both of them alike are an abomination to Jehovah, Prov 17:15.
 
Dene Ward

I made a Peach Melba crisp this summer that was pretty good, and something a little different from your ordinary peach cobbler—fresh peaches, fresh raspberries, and a crunchy topping.  I knew the original Peach Melba dessert was named after Nellie Melba, Australian born soprano, but I did not know the whole story.  Even after some research, I still don't.  It's one of those he said/she said things, as well as a few problems with the dating.  But it goes something like this.
 
             Nellie toured the world in her prime.  She sang at the Met in New York, at Covent Garden in London, at the opera house in Paris, and at La Scala in Milan; she even sang for the tsars in Russia.  Covent Garden became one of her regular stops every musical season. 

            Nellie actually had a small repertoire for a diva—she only sang about 25 operatic roles—but one of them was Elsa in Wagner's Lohengrin.  In fact, that might have been the only Wagner she sang.  The chef at the Savoy Hotel where she stayed while in London, Auguste Escoffier, was so enthralled with her rendition of Elsa, he named a dessert after hearing her, Peach Melba—peaches and raspberry sauce over vanilla ice cream.

              And here is where things get sketchy.  The last date I can find that Nellie sang Elsa in London in the early 1890s was July 27, 1891.  Supposedly, the very next day Escoffier created the dessert.  However, he says he did not meet her until 1893.  What is the solution?  Maybe he heard her that evening in 1891 and it took two more years for him to come up with the dessert.  Maybe it was a different role two years later that finally brought the dish into being.  Maybe he, or she, misremembered.  We do know this—he did name the dessert for her, and that is not the only thing this renowned chef named for Nellie.  There is also melba sauce, a puree of raspberries and red currants.  Then we have the ever popular melba toast, a crisp and dry—very,very dry—toast.  And finally Melba Garniture, which is chicken, truffles and mushrooms stuffed into tomatoes with a velote sauce.  Whatever you might think of Nellie's singing, she certainly inspired a lot of creativity in the kitchen.  Escoffier, in particular, was smitten.

              And that makes Nellie an eponym, a person after which something is named.  Many scientists and inventors are eponyms—Louis Pasteur, Alessandro Volta, Andre-Marie Ampere, Georg Ohm, Nikola Tesla, Karl Benz, and closer to home, Henry Ford and Ransom E. Olds. 

              The Bible has a few eponyms too.  Everyone understands what we mean when we say, "She is a Jezebel."  That woman, whoever she may be, is a wicked, immoral person.  Or, "He's a Jonah," which means he is a jinx.  And of course, someone who is a "Judas" is a traitor.

              So if you were an eponym, what would your name have come to mean?  I find myself using the names of those who have gone on exactly that way at times.  When I see a woman who constantly serves others, who is in the kitchen cooking for someone practically every minute of every day, whether because they are ill or just because she wants to do something nice for them, who puts thousands of miles on her car taking people to the doctor, who sews, and repairs clothing for others, and who still manages to keep a spotless home, too, I say, "She is a Melvene Wallace."  If you were blessed enough to have known that good woman, you know exactly what I mean.

              When I see a kind, gentle man, who is always looking after others, visiting the sick and the widows, inviting college students into his home for a meal, helping others with such mundane tasks as digging sweet potatoes or stacking wood, taking literal boatloads of fathers and sons on fishing trips, scheduling his vacations around gospel meetings so he can attend every night, and always in a pew with a smile when the doors of the meetinghouse are open, I say, "He's another Cedell Fletcher."  And once again, if you had known him, you would instantly recognize the kind of man I mean.  I miss both of those people so much that some days it physically hurts.

              So here is your task for the day:  What would your name be an eponym for?  Recently, I had someone talk about hearing a "Dene-ism."  I am not sure what to make of that, except maybe I talk too much!  Some of us may not be known for anything particularly bad, like Jezebel, but are we known for anything at all?  If someone tried to describe us by our demeanor and actions, would anyone say, "Oh yes, I know her."  Or would they stand with a blank look on their faces, completely at a loss for words, "Who?"

              You don't have to be a famous singer like Nellie Melba.  You just have to be someone who does good for others in whatever way you can, whenever you can, for as long as you can.  If no one else can make an eponym out of you, God will.  You want it to be a good one.
 
Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a people for his own possession, zealous of good works. (Titus 2:13-14)
 
Dene Ward

What busy mother doesn’t love a one dish meal?  Whether a casserole, a Dutch oven, or a crockpot, that dish satisfies all the nutritional needs of the family, leaving little mess and full tummies. 

              Soups and stews, pot roasts, and pot pie may be the stuff of one pot wonders, but there are many others in the pantheon of gustatory delights that I have used.  If I have time, I may add some homemade bread, or maybe a salad, but those are redundant when the meat, starch, and vegetables are already included inside that single beautiful piece of steaming kitchenware.  I have a particular fondness for a half Swiss steak-half steak Creole concoction, braised in a tomato-y, herby vegetable sauce, dolloped with cheese grits.

              I was reading several passages the other morning when the thought crossed my mind that God’s Word is the ultimate one-dish meal for the soul. 

              It creates faith at the very outset of your relationship with God, Rom 10:17. 

              It instructs and enlightens, 1 Cor 10:11; Eph 3:3-5.

            It gives you a scolding when you need it, 2 Tim 3:16,17, and encourages you when you need a boost, Rom 15:4.

              It reminds you when you have forgotten, 2 Pet 3:1, and comforts you when the pain is overwhelming, 1 Thes 4:18.

              It can reveal your heart if you are brave enough to listen, Heb 4:12, and defeat the enemy if you wield it faithfully, Eph 6:17.

              The Word of God is indeed a one dish meal, satisfying all the spiritual needs of those who partake.  The world will tell you it’s irrelevant, out-dated and obsolete, that things have changed too much for it to be of any use to you at all.  Yet Jesus quoted an Old Testament that was just as far removed from him in time as the New is from us as if were as pertinent as the latest newsflash.  For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God, 1 Cor 1:18.

              From the feast of Psalm 119 to the quick power snack of passages like Rom 1:16, the Word of God will strengthen your faith, purify your heart, and save your soul—“words whereby you shall be saved,” the angel promised Cornelius, and sent those words with a preacher.

              Keep yourself healthy.  “Eat these words,” God told Ezekiel in Ezek 3:1, just like your mother telling you to eat your vegetables.  She knew what was best for you, and so does He.  
             
Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. Jeremiah 15:16
 
Dene Ward

We don’t travel a lot, but when we do we try to find a group of brethren who share our faith.  Most people call this looking for a “sound church.”  After several unsettling experiences with so-called “sound churches” on the road, I started studying the phrase.  Guess what?  You won’t find it anywhere in the Bible, not in any of the nine translations I checked.
 
             I have already mentioned a time when we forgot our “church clothes” and had to attend services in jeans and flannel shirts—camp clothes--and the cold reception we received.  Another time I was in a city far away from home for a scary surgery.  We remembered our church clothes, but it didn’t seem to make a bit of difference.  We walked in the front door, went down the middle aisle and sat two-thirds of the way down—Keith must be able to see faces in detail so he can lip-read.  We were at least 10 minutes early.  No one approached us, nor nodded, nor even looked our way.  Finally the woman in front of us heard Keith say, “I can’t believe no one has even greeted us,” and turned around to introduce herself.  After services we walked down the aisle surrounded shoulder to shoulder by the (still unwelcoming) crowd, stopped at a tract rack for a minute or two, and finally walked out the door before the preacher finally came out calling us to say hello.  It wasn’t like we didn’t give him plenty of time.  No one else even bothered.

              Contrast that to the time we entered a building thinking that we probably didn’t agree entirely with this group because of a few notices hanging on the wall, but were greeted effusively by every single member the minute they saw us.  We were even invited to lunch, while at the previous church I mentioned, living in a hotel between dangerous procedures, no one even asked if we needed any help.

              So when our recent study of faith came upon a passage in Titus about being “sound in the faith,” I decided to check the entire context and see what that actually meant.  Since I must be brief here, I hope you will get your Bible and work through it with me and see for yourself.

              First, the phrase applies to individuals, not a corporate body.  Titus 1:10-16 gives us a detailed and complete picture of someone who is not “sound.”  They are the ones the elders in verses 5-9 are supposed to “reprove sharply” so they may be “sound in the faith” v 13.  Look at those seven verses (10-16) and you will see a list that includes these, depending upon your version:  unruly, vain talkers, deceivers, false teachers, men defiled in mind and conscience, unbelievers (who obviously claim otherwise), those who are abominable, disobedient, and deny God by their works, being unfit for good works. 

              The context does not end just because the next line says, “Chapter 2.”  In that chapter Paul clearly defines what “sound in the faith” means, beginning unmistakably with “”Speak the things that befit sound doctrine, that the older men…” and going straight into the way people should live.  Read through it.  Everything he tells the older men and women, the younger men and women, and the servants to do and to be fit somewhere in that previous list (“un-sound”) as an opposite. 

              If people who are unruly are un-sound, then people who are temperate, sober-minded, and reverent in demeanor are sound.  If people who are defiled in mind and conscience are not sound, then people who are chaste, not enslaved to wine (or anything else), and not thieves are sound.  If people who deny God by their works and are even unfit for good works are not sound, then people who are kind, sound in love, and examples of good works are sound.  Go all the way through that second chapter and you can find a (opposite) match for everything in the first.

              Now let’s point out something important:  if being a false teacher makes you unsound, then being a teacher of good and having uncorrupt doctrine does indeed make you sound, but why do we act like that is all there is to it?  You can have a group of people who believe correctly right down the line but who are unkind, unloving, un-submissive, impatient, and who do nothing but sit on their pews on Sunday morning with no good works to their name and they are still not a “sound church!”  Not according to Paul. Nine out of the ten things on that “un-sound” list have nothing to do with doctrine—they are about the way each individual lives his life.

              I am reminded of Jesus’ scalding words to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:23:  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these you ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone. Yes, our doctrine must be sound, but doesn’t it mean anything to us that Paul spends far more time talking about how we live our lives every day? 

              If the church is made up of people, then a sound church must be made up of sound people who live sound lives.  That is the weightier matter of the law of Christ.
 
For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified: Romans 2:13.
 
Dene Ward

I opened the cooler and looked down into the plastic bin inside and saw a bloody mess.  Immediately my mind went into salvage mode.  We were camping, living out of a cooler for nine days, and couldn’t take any chances, even if it did cost us a week’s worth of meals.  As it turns out, the problem was easily solved.

              Whenever we camp, because space is short for that much food and eating out is not an option, I take all the meat for our evening meals frozen.  The meat itself acts as ice in the cooler, keeping the temperature well down in the safe zone, and we use it as it thaws, replacing it with real ice.  I learned early on to re-package each item in a zipper freezer bag so that as it thaws the juices don’t drip out and contaminate the other food and the ice we use in our drinks.  We also put the meat in plastic tubs, away from things like butter, eggs, and condiments—just in case.  That’s what saved us this time.

              Somehow the plastic bag in which I had placed the steaks had developed a leak, but all those bloody red juices were safely contained in the white tub, and the other meats were still sealed.  I removed the bin from the cooler, put the steaks in a new bag, dumped the mess and cleaned the bin and the outside of the other meat bags, then returned the whole thing to the cooler, everything once again tidy and above all, safe.

              We all do the same things in our kitchens.  After handling raw meat, we wash our hands.  We use separate cutting boards for meat and vegetables meant to be eaten fresh.  And lately, they are even telling us not to wash poultry at all because it splashes bacteria all over the kitchen.

              We follow all these safety rules, then think nothing of cross-contaminating our souls.  What do you watch on TV?  What do you look at on the internet?  Where do you go for recreation?  No, we cannot get out of the world, but we can certainly keep it from dumping its garbage on the same countertops we use to prepare our families’ spiritual meals.  There is an “off” button.

              Maybe the problem is that these things are not as repulsive to us as they should be.  The Psalmist said, I have not sat with men of falsehood; Neither will I go in with dissemblers. I hate the assembly of evil-doers, And will not sit with the wicked. I will wash my hands in innocency: So will I compass your altar, O Jehovah; Psalms 26:4-6.  Can we say our hands are clean when we assemble to worship God after spending a week being titillated by the sins of others?

              If we followed some basic spiritual safety rules as carefully as we do those for our physical health, maybe we would lose fewer to cross-contamination of the soul.
 
And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them; for the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of. Ephesians 5:11-12
 
Dene Ward