Originally posted by IDB Vice President, Matthew Coombe on mjcoombe.com

For me its been a rough couple of weeks. In the last month two friends of mine were killed hiking, my brother was in the hospital several times,  my cousin fell down dead of “natural causes,” my girlfriend moved 1,200 miles away, and there are other issues I am not at liberty to discuss. But I tell you this, I have never been so happy in all of my life. Of course I would have to be a sadist to claim that these events made me happy, but herein lies the key. If you allow events and things to make you happy, then you likewise allow them to make you unhappy. I am not intending that we should not feel happy at a wedding or when we receive a gift, or in the company of the one we love, my point is simply, wherein you place your happiness your happiness is affected. Placing happiness in things is not bad, but what happens when things change? Placing happiness in people is not bad, but what happens when people and circumstances change? True happiness and joy is contingent upon the source of focus.

When happiness and pleasure is focused on the LORD your joy and happiness does not fade when the world around you corrodes. Does this mean I have not cried at each of the events I mentioned? In no way! In fact I do not remember a time when I have cried so much. But the difference in my tears and the maintaining of happiness, as the apostle Paul stated mentions, we do not mourn as people without hope. If I placed my sole source of happiness in the unfortunate events that recently occurred I would be in shambles right now. But as it stands, I feel the pleasure and goodness of the LORD, I am influenced by His word, and dedicated to seeking Him.

Consider Job, here is a guy who loses everything. His family, wealth, health, and friends; and he boldly claims, “For He knows the way that I take and when He has tested me I shall come forth as gold.” If Job’s happiness and contentment was in any other source besides the LORD could he have uttered these words? Of course not, but since His everything was directed at the LORD He was able to be confident in his assertion.

I challenge you consider to what you place your hope and trust and happiness in? If it is anything but the LORD, you will find yourself to be most unhappy when events become unfortunate. Happy is he who trusts in the LORD.

Originally posted by IBD Vice President Matt Coombe on mjcoombe.com

In the mist of my morning studies as I was reading a book concerning the resurrection of Christ I realized how Christian view of Christ (and more importantly Christ himself) has not waivered for 2,000 years. The early followers of the resurrected Christ were put to death and tortured because they would not cry “Caesar is LORD” but rather maintain, “Jesus is LORD.” For the initial 250 years of Christianity two things were certain, the Christians would not think of Christ as anything else other then God, and they were willing to die for this belief.

Some early disputes arose concerning the deity of Christ and the bodily resurrection of Him among early believers but they were quickly refuted by eye witness accounts. As latter disputes arose, once the eye witnesses were dead, the apostolic fathers (the disciples of the disciples) were likewise easily able to refute claims that Jesus was not God.

For the most part, views concerning Christ were in no way refuted with any source of evidence until the turn of the 18th century when German Higher criticism arouse.  I am not going to respond to this now, because I don’t have space though, I do have a lecture on the subject on www.sermonaudio.com. From this, people had a new criticism, Jesus was not who He claimed to be. This view was met with a barrage of responses, but none better the simplistic response of the logician C.S Lewis, who singled the argument to, Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or LORD. The attacks on Jesus ceased.

The attacks moved from Jesus to the people that wrote about Him, the apostles. They had turned him into an unwilling icon of their religious revolution. Jesus never claimed to be God. So the responses turned to the apostles as well, “if the first 250 years were marked by disciples for dying for the refusal of calling Christ anything other then God, then the question remains, ‘do people die for what they know to be a lie.”

Running out of cards to play, the criticisms returned to Jesus, “He never really existed.” By far the most laughable of all the claims, because there is neither any evidence to support this and not one scholar who is dedicated to first century history holds to it.
Attacks have come and gone for the last 2,000 years and the Christian response has yet to change, “Jesus is LORD.” And we back this up not with a fist but with words. We eagerly anticipate the next objection so that we can refute that as well!