Tonight we will cover Matthew 7:21–23, “The Dan­ger of Self-Deception.”  I am hop­ing and pray­ing that God will call many to repen­tance and faith tonight.  Many good, reli­gious peo­ple in Amer­ica have said or said and done the right things, but have never repented of sin and trusted in Jesus.  There is a world of dif­fer­ence between know­ing about Jesus and being known by him.  Pray that God would bring the mir­a­cle of sal­va­tion to many tonight.

Justin and Lins­day Hol­combe, who both write for Resur­gence Lit­er­a­ture (Re:Lit), have posted a very good but heart­break­ing arti­cle on human traf­fick­ing.  They say:

“The United States is a des­ti­na­tion coun­try for inter­na­tional traf­fick­ing: trans­porta­tion of for­eign women and chil­dren into the U.S. for pur­poses of sex­ual and labor exploita­tion.  The State Depart­ment esti­mates that approx­i­mately 18,000 for­eign nation­als are traf­ficked annu­ally into the United States alone.

Vic­tims brought to the U.S. orig­i­nate from Asia, Latin Amer­ica, East­ern Europe, and Africa.  For­eign national women and chil­dren brought to the U.S. for sex traf­fick­ing find them­selves forced to work in mas­sage par­lors, host­ess clubs, commercially-fronted broth­els, res­i­den­tial broth­els, escort ser­vices, and strip clubs.”

The post includes a lengthy clip of Mark Driscoll talk­ing  about the real­ity and effect of sex traf­fick­ing in the U.S. and the world.

I encour­age you to read the post, watch the video, and begin to pray and work for change based on the Gospel of Jesus.

In the fourth chap­ter of Liv­ing the Cross Cen­tered Life, C.J. Mahaney explores “The Divine Dilemma.”  Many men and women believe the great­est dilemma in the world today is how to rec­on­cile the exis­tence of the Chris­t­ian God with the exis­tence of suf­fer­ing in the world.  C.J. ref­er­ences R.C. Sproul, who wrote that the most per­plex­ing ques­tion is not why suf­fer­ing exists, but why a God who is per­fectly holy would tol­er­ate sin­ful humans for any length of time.  Although the first “dilemma” is not easy to answer, this sec­ond is indeed beyond comprehension.

Here are sev­eral ques­tions to con­sider as you dis­cuss the chap­ter with others:

1. Mahaney opens the chap­ter by shar­ing his response to the ques­tion, “How are you?”  He says that for some time now, he has responded, “Bet­ter than I deserve.”  What does he mean?  How do you think peo­ple would react if you began to respond in that way?

2. Most peo­ple are not sur­prised to learn that God loves them (61).  What does this assump­tion tell us about our­selves?  How does this assump­tion affect the way even gen­uine believ­ers relate to God?

3. In 1 Tim­o­thy, Paul iden­ti­fies him­self as the fore­most, even the chief, of sin­ners.  What is your actual (not the­o­ret­i­cal) opin­ion of your sin as com­pared to oth­ers?  Why do you believe that is?

4. Why couldn’t God “just for­give” sin?  Why does the Bible say that God “will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:7)?

5. At the end of the chap­ter, C.J. talks about medi­a­tion as a legal process.  Look at Job 9:33–34. What did Job believe he needed?  Why did he come to this con­clu­sion?  How does this pas­sage pro­vide addi­tional insight to God’s over­all redemp­tive plan through­out history?

Next week we will con­sider chap­ter five, “The Divine Res­cue,” and learn why Jesus alone can save us from sin and its consequences.

If you are going through the mem­ber­ship process, you should have signed up for a per­sonal meet­ing this evening between 5:45 and 10 pm (unless you have spo­ken to one of the elders already and have sched­uled another time).

Despite the “weather” (I was born in Chicago; it has to snow 18–24 inches before they would even think about can­cel­ing school up there), we will still have our per­sonal meet­ings tonight.  If it con­tin­ues to rain/sleet/snow this evening and you are uncom­fort­able dri­ving in those con­di­tions, please email me and let me know you’d like to resched­ule.  Oth­er­wise, please leave ear­lier than you nor­mally would and drive slowly and carefully!