These are the days when dogs lie around and pant because it’s hot, right? Wrong!!! The dog days of summer didn’t originally have as much to do with dogs, but stars. The dog days of summer have to do with the ancient Greeks and constellations! They begin when the star, Sirius, rises just before dawn in late July or early August. Homer referred to the appearance of Sirius as “Orion’s dog’s rising,” and the Greeks identified a unique constellation during this time of year: a dog chasing a rabbit.
Over time, things lost meaning and fuzzy thinking set in. We forgot the dog days have more to do with stars than dogs…we forgot the stars and remembered only the August heat!
This year, the week of prayer for Northgate Baptist Church is August 20-27. That’s the week when we remember to pray for the ministries and activities of God’s church at Northgate. We just celebrated the Lord’s Supper in July and soon, on September 17, we will once again remember God’s atonement for our sins through the shed blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper.
It is important that we remember.
Southern Baptists adopted ten resolutions this year at the Southern Baptist Convention. One of those resolutions was entitled, “On the Necessity of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.” It was adopted to remind us and to reaffirm “The truthfulness, efficacy, and beauty of the biblical doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement as the burning core of the Gospel message and the only hope of a fallen race.”
It would astonish our Christian ancestors that anyone claiming to know Christ would attack the doctrine which is at the very center of the Gospel. The Resolutions Committee of the SBC wrote, “The denial of penal substitutionary atonement constitutes false teaching that leads the flock astray and leaves the world without a message of a sin-cleansing Savior.”
For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation (Romans 5:6-11, NKJV).
The shed blood of Jesus Christ is the greatest gift God has ever given! May we never forget: There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r in the precious blood of the Lamb!
Blessings in Jesus,