Bits and Pieces – 91st Edition – December 5, 2021

Religion can be found anywhere.  Some find religion in nature, or in psychology, or in intellectualism.  Some can find religion in egotism, humanism, and even in atheism.

But you will find Christ, and the salvation of your soul, only in the Word of God, a medium despised by the majority in the world today.

Some of the ships of the Spanish Armada (1588) were wrecked off the west coast of Ireland.  As much as possible of the gold they carried was salvaged and placed on the galleass, Gerona.  Then she too was wrecked off the north coast of Ireland, and the hunt for her treasure was on in earnest.

It was reported that she sank at the mouth of the river Bush but repeated expeditions never found her.  Historical records of the Armada in the universities of Europe all pointed to the river Bush.

In 1967 a Belgian diver, Robert Stenuit, went to Northern Ireland to see if he could find the Gerona.  While at the nearby Giant’s Causeway he picked up a copy of the Causeway brochure.  In it he read of the Gerona sinking at the nearby Port Na Spaniagh.  But that could not be right, he thought, for the universities pointed to the Bush mouth.  But he dived at Port Na Spaniagh on chance and found the treasure on his first day.  The answer to a centuries-old search was in the despised 25-cent book.

The treasure of the real Christ is found in the book despised by the world and thought valueless, but loved by the redeemed – the Bible – the Word of God!

“He will not suffer thy foot to be moved” [Psalm 121:3]

The way of life is like travelling among the Alps.  Along mountain paths, one is constantly exposed to the slipping of the foot.  Where the way is high the head is apt to swim, and then the feet soon slide: there are spots which are as smooth as glass, and others that are rough with loose stones, and in either of these a fall is hard to avoid.

He who throughout life is enabled to keep himself upright and to walk without stumbling has the best of reasons for gratitude.  What with pitfalls and snares, weak knees, weary feet, and subtle enemies, no child of God would stand fast for an hour were it not for the faithful love which will not suffer his foot to be moved.  [C.H. Spurgeon].

“It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching” [I Corinthians 1:21]

An earnest young Christian prayed that the Lord would bless his pastor for “it pleased God through the preaching of foolishness to save.”  That unconscious verbal mistake is near the truth in many pulpits today.

It is a “preaching of foolishness” that exalts a human, mutable philosophy and neglects the life-saving Word of God.  Likewise, when the cardinal doctrines are omitted or buried under a mass of human tradition.  It is foolish preaching where everything is a mist and a haze, and the unfortunate sinner has no idea from his preacher of the way to heaven.  Preaching that never mentions the name of God, or the Holy Spirit’s essential regenerating work, or justification by faith, or redemption by the shed blood, is foolishness indeed.

But Paul speaks in this verse of the “foolishness of preaching” and in so doing gives the world’s view of the preaching of the cross.  Why should it be seen as foolishness in the eyes of the world?

Perhaps because ordinary people receive it.  There is a snobbery of intellect that believes its superiority could not stoop to something as simple as the Gospel of Christ.  The Gospel does not come by human speculation, but by divine revelation.  Proud man does not like to acknowledge that fact.

The world regards preaching as foolish because it punctures man’s pride.  He does not like to be told he is nothing and a nobody. Not many mighty are called, but God has called the weak, the foolish, the base, and the despised into His kingdom.  [I Corinthians 1:26ff].

Proud man wants to retain some of his glory, but the Bible shows us that man has nothing to glory in save the cross of Christ.  That which is foolishness to the world is wisdom with God and is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” [Rom. 1:16]

We are but tenants on the Lord’s earth.  Let us care well for our temporary home not just in the physical, but also in the moral and spiritual realms as well.

“It is a good land that the Lord our God doth give us”  [Deuteronomy 1:25].