Together, we have faith

 God's Word is our strength

Personal Bible Journal

 Bible Study Tools
DAILY DEVOTIONAL 
By Carl Shank March 22, 2025
"Only the facts. Ma'am!" I recall that phrase said over and over again on TV as a kid watching the old TV series, "Dragnet." Dragnet was an American crime drama television series starring Jack Webb and Harry Morgan which ran for four seasons, from January 12, 1967, to April 16, 1970. This very famous and dour saying was Jack Webb's cryptic remark to interviewed witnesses of a crime. He did not want superfluous or extraneous or personal opinions to cloud the real "facts" of the crime or situation at hand. A current public radio program claims that they are following "only the facts," that they report only factual events as they really took place. They claim to be free of bias and not "progressively oriented" in their reporting. Consequently, a recent show on abortion offered the scientific "fact" of an unborn baby, or fetus, achieving "life status" at so many weeks of gestation. This was said in response to a conservative caller who phoned in citing other "evidence," including the Bible's take on conception, as the beginning of life. The public radio station claimed that the caller was wrong and cited "scientific facts" about the "real" beginning of life. This is an instance and example of what modern society, especially anti-Christian society, considers as "factual" and therefore worth reporting and worth our time. There are actually three problems with what are called "facts" today even when claiming to be fair and unbiased. The definition of what is "factual" has shifted, first of all, over time and history. Hillsdale College publishes speeches in a format called "Imprimis" ( https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ ) This very conservative institution offers excellent and gifted speakers who go against the tide of "progressivism" in the country. While they and their invited speakers are often dismissed and ignored by most public and social media today, they offer another look at American culture that is Constitutionally based. One of those speakers noted that in the court system today, progressive constitutional thinking has replaced and overtaken original constitutional mandates. This can actually be traced in the history of the court system. "Facts" seen as such years ago are now replaced by "real" facts, modern facts, today's facts. This is part of the problem of a public radio station purporting to only report the "facts" of a situation today. In the second place, reporters and journalists today have been schooled and educated by liberal elite to discard "old" ways of thinking, especially conservatively based thinking, and report things as they "see" them. And this is the problem. How we process what we see is often, whether consciously or unconsciously, biased in favor of a liberal, anti-Christian way of thinking and seeing. Rather than admit such presuppositional flavoring to "factual" reporting, the modern way is seen as the "only" way to see and process everything. Scientific reasoning, crafted by liberal theologians and philosophers of the Enlightenment, has replaced and driven out any hint of truthful reporting that takes into account biblical truth. And, of course, "religious" truth has been replaced by "scientific" truth, as if humanity's way of reasoning trumps God's revelation. Third, American individualism, copying the French Revolution, has defined American "freedom" today. This requires some explanation. Os Guinness in his Last Call for Liberty: How America's Genius for Freedom has Become Its Greatest Threat (InterVarsity Press, 2018), has carefully cited historical "facts" that link the 1789 French Revolution and the American Left — "The former struggled for "liberté" and "egalité" the latter for "liberation" and "social justice." The former won through violent revolution, whereas the latter seeks to win through a cultural revolution, after which the elite imposes its will through administrative and bureaucratic procedures (regulative bodies and the law courts). And both are characterized by their reliance on the state, their open hostility toward religion, their radical separation of religion and public life, their attempt to control language in order to control reality (French and Soviet "Newspeak," "doublespeak," and American "political correctness"), their unashamed espousal of power, their egalitarian appeal to envy rather than liberty, and their naive utopianism that the removal of repression will mean fulfillment of freedom." (51) He says that American has rejected its covenantal/constitutional heritage of freedom as a republic surrendering to those supoposedly "democratic" forces that redefine our "facts" and our heritage. "Only the facts, Ma'am!" has taken on a new meaning, a new way of thinking and processing, and an anti-Christian, anti-biblical, anti-religious cast that we cannot even see or take into account in our reporting of the "facts."
Show More

Oct 15, 2025

Week #41 — Sensible SIgns


Q. 92. What is a Sacrament?

A. A Sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by Christ; wherein, by sensible signs, Christ and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to believers.

Gen. 17:7, 10; Ex. 12; 1 Cor. 11:23, 26.

“And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you

throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.. . . This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.”

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,. . . For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”


“Note that two key words in Calvin’s definition of sacraments reappear in the catechism’s treatment of the subject. The first word is sign. The sacraments are “sensible signs”—objects that we can actually handle and see. These signs are water, bread, and wine, and as signs they point away from themselves to something else: all that is ours when we have Christ. We will be sorely disappointed if we look to the sacraments for anything other than a display of Jesus’s person and work.”


Excerpt From Glorifying and Enjoying God: 52 Devotions through the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Boekestein & Cruse & Miller)


Sensible signs. The first word (and for some the only word) that accurately and adequately describes the sacraments is “signs.” They are pointers to Jesus Christ and his work for us. Baptism is something we see, as the candidate is either immersed or splashed with the water, we are reminded of Jesus burial and resurrection for us. When we eat the bread and drink the cup we are reminded of the broken body and shed blood of Christ. Again, the bread is something we eat and the cup something we drink. The sight and sense, the use of our eyes and felt emotions, make these sacraments “sensible signs.” They objectively point us to Jesus as we subjectively partake of them.


A Puritan Prayer —

“O LORD GOD,

I pray not so much for graces as for the Spirit himself,

because I feel his absence,

and act by my own spirit in everything.

Give me not weak desires but the power of his presence,

for this is the surest way to have all his graces,

and when I have the seal I have the impression also;

He can heal, help, quicken, humble suddenly and easily,

can work grace and life effectually,

and being eternal he can give grace eternally.

Save me from great hindrances,

from being content with a little measure of the Spirit,

from thinking thou wilt not give me more.

When I feel my lack of him, light up life and faith,

for when I lose thee I am either in the dark and cannot see thee,

or Satan and my natural abilities content me with a little light,

so that I seek no further for the Spirit of life.

Teach me then what to do.

Should I merely humble myself and not stir up my heart?

Should I meditate and use all means to bring him near,

not being contented by one means,

but trust him to give me a blessing by the use of all,

depending only upon, and waiting always for, thy light, by use of means?

Is it a duty or an error to pray

and look for the fullness of the Spirit in me?

Am I mistaken in feeling I am empty of the Spirit

because I do not sense his presence within,

when all the time I am most empty

and could be more full by faith in Christ?

Was the fullness of the Spirit in the apostles chiefly a power,

giving the subsistence outside themselves in Christ,

in whom was their life and joy?

Teach me to find and know fullness of the Spirit only in Jesus.”


Excerpt From

The Valley of Vision

Edited by Arthur Bennett



"We must unquestionably receive its [the Bible's] statements of fact,  bow before its enunciation of duty, tremble before its threatenings, 
and rest upon its promises." – B.B. Warfield


Send us a Message