Pastor Joe did a great job preaching the points of Revelation 18 last week!

But I want to focus on two things particularly that quite clearly apply to us believers and to St. Mark today. First, that of shunning the porneia that killed the harlot, and secondly, the complete and total death of the city/church as a result.

First, the harlot apostate city/church had “fallen” because of her flamboyant sexual immorality (porneia) that she engaged in openly (3, 7). For us today, that’s not just bad theology, but also the embracing of its evil practice. It’s ignoring the scriptural blessings and practices of single and married sexual life, sexual beliefs about pornography, sensuality, abortion, prostitution, fornication, adultery, etc. Our culture, even church culture, is as slovenly drunken with those sins as the harlot appears in 17:4-6. We must consciously deviate, personally and as a church, from any of the present day’s deviant deceptions.

Secondly, we must put off those sins and put on faithful biblical living if we as people and as a church are to live on with vibrant joyful sounds of life. The deafening silence of verses 22-23 are catastrophic! Today’s apostate churches have no baby voices, because abortion or birth control or false teaching on the blessing of children killed them all. There are no musical sounds in the church because there is no reason to praise God in our selfish nihilism. There are no sounds of craftsmen because we don’t believe in dominion anymore; Mother Nature owns everything! There are no sounds of food and no light because there are no more Lord’s Suppers; Jesus stands against all that the harlot stood for. Crucify him! There are no wedding bells because we hate the future and hate love.

All warnings to us to remain faithful to the true Groom, Jesus. Silence is death!

It’s Father’s Day, a cultural holiday designed to honor fathers while lining the tradesman’s pockets with cash spent on sentimental gifts for dad… but I digress.

While Pastor Joe has been focusing on the Father in his Vesper homilies, it might be good to remind fathers, on their day, that they are raising and training their children to move on, to leave, to mature from glory to glory to the point they can leave “father and mother and cleave” to their spouse (Genesis 2:24).

So often parents dream of their children living next door all their lives, having a compound with their children and spouses and grandchildren all around them, happily ever after. But those children all have separate households and wholly other spouses than mom’s and dad’s genes and things don’t always work out, leaving everyone in a huff because they finally learned that father-in-laws and mother-in-laws don’t have equal authority in their children’s families. No, their son or son-in-law is in charge, and he, in Jesus, might not see eye to eye with them.

So fathers, on your day, be thinking about how biblical fathers train their children to look outward, to build the kingdom with and from their own family, in their own calling, all to the glory of God. Fathers, be thinking about how to model masculinity to your sons, with Jesus as the model: fearless, compassionate, caring, teachable, but also a leader who knows the heavenly Father’s goals, etc. Fathers, be thinking about how to love your daughters so that they are filled with kind love that they’ll want to source from the right husband in the future, and not fall for any “love ‘em and leave ‘em” types. Teach them the value of masculine leadership and provision and protection, so they’ll seek that out from a godly man as well.

All of this, of course, flows from you imitating the heavenly Father.

In case you didn’t see this, from our own Marc Hays:

DOWN SYNDROME: GOD’S GIFT TO THE WORLD

This past week, a prominent YouTuber announced that he and his wife had decided to “terminate their pregnancy” because they found out that the baby would likely have Down Syndrome. As the father of a young man with Down Syndrome, I’d like to take a moment to comment.

First, abortion is murder no matter the physical or genetic condition of the baby. If the baby is alive, then there ought to be a delivery, making every attempt to preserve that life, no matter the prospective difficulties that the child and/or the parents may face.

Second, the world needs more people with an extra 21st chromosome, not fewer. Have you, dear reader, ever met someone with Down syndrome? Were you sad or happy that you did? If you really know one, do you want to imagine a world without them?

When Alan, my son with a designer chromosome, was born, he had a hole in his heart that was too large to close naturally. He weighed only 3.7 pounds and the doctors wanted us to get him up to 6 pounds before the surgery, as the success rate at 6 pounds was drastically higher than the one at 3.7. Alan ate, Alan grew, Alan reached 6 pounds, and he received a successful heart surgery. Outside of that single major medical event, he has been the healthiest of my 6 children. The rest of the family would all come down with whatever “bug” was passing through, yet Alan usually remained healthy and strong. He got sick around 20% of the times the rest of us did.

(Continued at: https://www.kings-mill.com/blog/down-syndrome-gods-gift-to-the-world)