It is Palm Sunday, and locally the beginning of mid term break, which will lat until after Easter. And I slept in. Kirk starts at 0830: I need an alarm for that — which is on my smartphone and I forgot to charge it overnight. So I am hoping to get to second service. In half an hour.

I’m not that disciplined

Now, the issue today is one of discipline and confrontation. Internal and external. Because anyone who says that our Lord and master was not afraid to confront has never meditated on what he did when he cleared the temple.

And part of the passion is a choice not to strike back, because in a spiritual sense it was tactically unwise. That our Master disciplined himself to withstand punishment, to accept injustice, and to teach by his actions.

Matthew 21:12-17

¹²Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. ¹³He said to them, “It is written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’;
but you are making it a den of robbers.”
¹⁴The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. ¹⁵But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry ¹⁶and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise for yourself‘?”
¹⁷He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

Isaiah 50:4-9a

⁴The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. ⁵The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. ⁶I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. ⁷The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; ⁸he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. ⁹It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

1 Timothy 6:12-16

¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you ¹⁴to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵which he will bring about at the right time — he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. ¹⁶It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

Dalrock has something wise to say here about how we, as a church, have lost this ability to confront.

…understanding women better has only increased my empathy for them. This is true even though I’m willing to call out bad behavior by women. In fact, failing to confront bad behavior by women is the primary way Christian men are failing women today.

Yep, and this destroyed marriages. Women are akin to children in one aspect: they will push boundaries adn (if protected) will be fearless. Men know that fear is useful. We know to scan streets. We know to dress so we do not get beaten up when we enter a bar, nor rejected by a night club. Because we do not have the feminine ability to inspire protection (the imperative, if you will). This means at times they push against “No”. When I reflect on my marrige and the errors I made one was not leading sufficiently. I was taught to be nice. But niceness is not righteousness.

We men need to stand in the faith. We need to have made our mind as flint and our flesh as armor. For if we fall, our family falls with us.

TIme for Kirk. May Holy week this year be one of repentance, confrontation and revival.