"If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know." -- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Do I feel the Gospel in my heart?? Or is this all merely an intellectual exercise?
Do I have Gospel lenses in which I see the world in such a way that I am constantly aware of my own depravity, the goodness of God despite my depravity, in the cross, and the grace afforded to me in a thousand different places stirring up in my heart towards biblical themes like gratitude, thankfulness, worship?
Slow down. Breath. With a renewed mind (Romans 12:2) you see God everywhere.
Proverbs 18:22 "He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord."
God gave me Dani - this very beautiful, gifted, smart, determined woman, who loves ME - despite who I am. She is an incredible gift.
As Saint Augustine looked towards the sea several centuries ago he wrote down, "If these are the pleasures afforded to sinful men, what does God have in store for those whose hearts are His?" Romans 1:20 says, "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made."
Ithaca is beautiful. This is on my bike ride to and from work. Amazing.
How do you know that God has moved from being a concept to being a reality? Verses 5-8
Isaiah heard the seraphim call out, "Holy, holy, holy!" In Hebrew, magnitude was gotten a cross by doubling a word. Nowhere but here in the Old Testament is there a tripling of a word. There is a category beyond categories here.
What is holiness? Holy wisdom is wisdom that is infinitely beyond anybody else's wisdom. Holy love is infinitely beyond and infinitely more perfect than anybody else's love... Holiness also means brilliance and beauty. The seraphim were constantly singing and praising. They were/are fascinated and love His holiness. They can't get enough of it, they were/are enamored by it.
There are people that say that they used to believe in God, I used to go to church, but He didn't come through for me. He let this and that happen and I don't know why He let my life go in this direction and I asked for this and He let me down... If this is true for us then we are in a sense 'marrying' God 'for His money'. He is an object, a concept, in these cases, without weight... But the seraphim are adoring and serving God just because of the beauty of who He is. For the seraphim His holiness is not useful, it is beautiful... (tangent) What good do you get out of listening to great music by yourself? Does it make money for you, move you along in your career? No. It is a good in itself. It is not useful, it is beautiful. Isaiah 6 is telling us here that is how God should be if you knew who He really was. (My heart longs to find Him to be that much of a reality in my life!!)
How can someone, though, find the complete and unique holiness of God as beautiful in itself? The power of God is a benefit to you, the wisdom of God is a benefit to you, the mercy of God is a benefit to you, but (Jonathan Edwards said it like this) "God's holiness is of no use to us at all." And so we cannot attack it with our selfish ambition. On the surface, it seems God's holiness is nothing but a threat. But anyone who really worships God's holiness, is loving Him for who He is in Himself because it is of no help to us.
How on earth could we possibly get to this place? That we see the beauty of His holiness because, again, on the surface it is only a threat. You cannot overpower, question, escape God because of his Holy power, His Holy wisdom, and His Holy presence. How can this be beautiful?
Verse 5 "Woe to me!" Isaiah is putting a curse on himself... A friend of mine in Ithaca, who, in a sense, dismantles me in Chess every time, went up against a "Chess Master" at the Ithaca Fest this weekend and became undone. HE was absolutely dismantled. There was nothing he could do about it. He was overwhelmed from the beginning. He had a "Woes me!" moment in the face of human holiness.
Jewish tradition says that Isaiah's father was brother to the King. This would have made Him one of the elites. We know from Isaiah's book that He was a man of artistic and communicative genius. He was a man with masterful speech, masterful "lips". In an oral culture, this would have meant great power. In a time of great upheaval in his country ("King Uzziah" had died), at a time where he wielded great influence, he would have most certainly been, as we do today, proclaiming the errors of the old generation, the establishment... But then He meets God and he sees that He was the problem. Even his "lips", the best part of his self were unclean, flawed, wrong, twisted... Every time someone in the Bible sees God as a reality they start to hate themselves... Reaction to this could be: 'This sounds like low self-esteem and I believe in a God of love.’ Okay. Let's suppose that there is a God that is nothing but love. No holiness. No justice. No wrath. You would still hate yourself in the presence of a god who is just pure love. You would say, 'I am so cruel! so unloving! I thought I loved people, but I now know I really haven't loved anybody!' ... If in the presence of human holiness you can be undone, how much more than would it be so with God.
This is how you know that God has begun to move into your life as a reality. You think you are "sinner", you think you are "lost". You think you are more capable of cruelty, evil, more selfish, more petty, more small-minded, more impatient than you thought you ever could be. You know you are a sinner and you can only be saved by grace... If there is a real God it would have to feel like this! How could it be otherwise! And I think we can move this beyond ‘it is this way because that is what the Bible says’. I think this is common sense, if you think through the implications of the reality of God...
But this was not all that happened to Isaiah. People with low self-esteem who find themselves in the presence of God realize to a great degree that their low self-esteem was self absorption. The only way that they could ever get out of their low self esteem is if something gets them to think outside of themselves. And this something must be heavier than their very self or they will remain unshaken.
As soon as Isaiah confesses, as soon as he talked about the reality of his sin (at his point of the lowest self esteem you'd ever want), God begins to explode into his life. The angel of God flies towards him. Isaiah sees the fire in his hand and he would have thought he was a goner. The fire of God represents judgment and wrath in the Old Testament. Fire consumed people in the presence of God and Isaiah probably would have expected to be wiped out here. He saw that he deserved it, he saw the magnitude of his sin undone by the weightiness, the "glory" of God. But as soon as the fire got to his mouth, it must of hurt, but it did not consume. He had been cleaned...
One second after Isaiah realized he didn't deserve to live, that he was more wicked and flawed then he ever dared believe. He was then more affirmed valued and wanted than he ever dared to hope. Because God is saying at this point in Isaiah 6, 'I am saving the world and I need a new partner. And by the way you are going to be utterly ineffective and persecuted.' Isaiah immediately says, 'send me!' What happened to Isaiah? His self image had been deconstructed and reconstructed on the spot. Before he thought he was good by a performance standard... If there are performance standards: if I do this, if I live like this... If you are living up to your standards, you are bold and confident, but not humble, you are arrogant. If you are not living up to your standards, you are humble and kind of sensitive to other people, but you are not confident. in the grace of God you are both bold and humble at the same time because you are more wicked than you ever dared believe and you are more loved than you ever dared to hope. This gives you a new stability. Nothing in this world now can move you then. When you fail, you can remember the affirmation of God, which is there by grace, not performance. When you succeed you are not arrogant because you remember that you are nothing more than a sinner saved by grace. Bold AND humble at the same time. Theoretically you can handle anything... to the degree that God is a reality in your life. When God starts sliding towards becoming a concept again, you got to make sure He is a reality. And then you can handle anything.
Now how is that possible? How could the fire of God (here in Isaiah 6) be an agent of cleansing? Centuries later almost the same thing happened. The temple was shaken. There was an earthquake because God came down. The very veil of God in the Temple ripped. Do you know when that happened? Matthew 27
In the Garden before He was taken Jesus said, "I am sorrowful even onto death." In other words He was saying, 'Woes me I am undone! I feel like I am coming apart!' ... But no angel came down that time and said that his sin was atoned for because Jesus was the sacrifice. Jesus Christ became our sin and was shaken by the judgment of God so that you and I could be unshakable. So that our sin could be atoned for... If this is really true, that we are accepted completely in Him, not on the basis of our performance, His holiness than will truly be beautiful! You then will not serve God on the basis of getting things because you have already gotten everything! ... WHY THEN SERVE GOD??? BECAUSE OF THE BEAUTY OF WHO HE IS and WHAT HE IS DONE! Because you want to know Him, resemble Him, because you want to be apart of this new business of Him in saving the world...
Isaiah 6:3 - the whole earth is full of His "glory" The Hebrew word "glory" is a word that is more sharply, more literally defined as WEIGHT. The substantial or important instead of the unimportant. Compared to anything else: God alone is real, God alone is permanent, and God alone matters.
A rock has more "glory" than the water, in this picture, and replaces and disrupts. The water's reality is completely rearranged... The reality of God coming into our lives is similar. Everything changes.
There is a difference in believing in God and actually having an experience of God's glory. Isaiah believed in God before Isaiah 6, but God was just a concept until this moment... and then God became a reality.
What is the difference between a concept and reality? It is all a matter of "glory". God as a concept is lighter than you. When you bring God as a concept into your life you shape it. It fits in around your existing patterns. It does not move you around. A God concept cannot change your beliefs around, it just fits in with your existing beliefs. We have to remember that our beliefs come from a cultural moment (our great grandchildren are going to be just as embarrassed about the beliefs we hold today as we are about the beliefs our great grandparent held). They seem so real, and we give it weight and glory and then we go shape our god with it. We do not have a real God when we do this. We have god as a concept. We do not have a God that could actually change some of our deepest held beliefs. He fits into us. We shape the concept. We have more "glory" and rearrange it. And this leads to the god as a concept being arranged around our existing plans, agendas, and goals. Plenty of people become religious because they need help in getting to their goals...
God as a concept is lighter than us, but God as a reality is heavier then us. When you get into the presence of the real God, things give way in your life to His "glory". Things you have always believed very deeply are changed by His word because God has more "glory" than my beliefs. He can change things I think. And instead of working God into your agenda, God becomes your agenda. He radically redefines your priorities...
Our agenda apart from God is to have a nice and safe, tidy little life. And to watch your back, looking out only for yourself. But God says, 'Be brave! Sacrifice your individual needs because I am more real, I have more glory!'
I don't think the question of whether or not you are a Christian should ever be: have you prayed the prayer. I don't even think that should be a question! For one's own self I think a worthwhile question is, however, has God moved from being a concept to becoming a reality. I am sure He will only be an absolute reality to us when we meet up with Him face to face. But if God is real and Jesus really came down for us, it tells us that He is here in our world now and He can rearrange us now. I feel like I am in this process where God is making Himself more and more of a reality. I am not at the end and will only be there at the end of my life, but the renovation has started. Whether I am willing or not is not the issue, the overwhelming weight of His very self has floored me and I am undone.
And one more thing... You are not going to have an experience like Isaiah :> ... Nobody else in the history of the world has. Even Jeremiah 1 is very different than Isaiah 6 because these men were very different. Isaiah was proud, Jeremiah was filled with self-deprecation. God tells Jeremiah "Stop trembling!" and God tells Isaiah "Start trembling!" But in both cases He showed up.
If Jesus came as a model and example for us in order to redeem ourselves, He is an utter failure. If this were so, I would then wish he would have never have come, because nobody can care like Jesus cared, nobody can love like Jesus loved, and nobody can give like Jesus gave...
And if He is my model and all He gives me is just one more shot to be like Him, all He shows me is that I can NEVER redeem myself. As a model He discourages me, He DOES NOT encourage me. He devastates me, He demolishes me! He leaves me in the darkness if that is all...
But the Bible tells us that Jesus came and died to pay the penalty of our failures. And if we receive Him, His record becomes our record. He isn't the god of second chances, 'let's get it right this time!'. Instead He says in a sense, 'Your doing will never get you there. Looking at me proves that! I have done all the good deeds for you. I have lived the perfect life. I have died the perfect death. I put myself in your place and took your penalties, so that if you trust FULLY in me and you lay your doing down, the Father will welcome you as complete.'
Martin Luther used to pray, "You are my goodness, I was your punishment. You assumed everything I deserved and was, so that I can receive everything you deserved and are."
"This is that mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ's, and the righteousness of Christ not Christ's but ours. He has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might clothe us with it and fill us with it; and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might deliver us from them." -- Martin Luther
Now what do we do about these idols. You have to believe and have your heart riveted by some things:
the idols of your heart cannot simply be removed, they can only be replaced. We are slaves to _____ . Most people, once realized to their condition, will white-knuckle it saying, 'I am not going to be controlled by these things!' But it will never work, at least not for very long. There is not one personal transformation in which the heart is not left with an object of ultimate beauty and joy. The heart's desire for one particular object can be conquerable, but its desire to have some object is unconquerable. Something you grasp with the mind, has to be something that rivets and captures your heart, that is the only things that is going to save you, change you. That is the only thing that will move you into the "you have died" "and your real life is with Christ". This is radical.
First there is a truth. What is it? We are being told here: when you become a Christian, when you say "I believe!!!" What makes you a Christian is not now I am living in a certain way (though change does come - we are not saved by our "fruit" but there never is "fruitless" faith), what makes you a Christian is now you are IN Christ. It means God sees you as so one with Him. He looks as you as though you have died and have been raised with Him because you have in a sense. This means that God sees you free from the guilt of anything you have done wrong, having died on the cross to pay for it. But it was already paid by Him! Jesus has THE place of highest honor having come down and been brought back up victoriously. It says here that you are raised with Him. You are seated with Him. That means that if you give yourself to Jesus Christ, God now delights so much in you as if you had done everything that He had done. God delights in you as much as He delights in His own Son. Unless you know these things can you even begin to be free of people's approval, family relationships, parental expectations, the way the world sees money and power and sexual beauty. These very things that drive you, with anxiety, addictions. The only way is to first know this. Do you believe that? That is the Gospel. The Gospel is not that we give God a good record and then God blesses us, BUT rather that God, through Jesus Christ, gives us a perfect record and delights in us through Him and then we cannot help but live for Him out of the freeness of that.
You have to set your heart on that. (now what does that REALLY mean?) If live for a career my whole life and fail it will beat me up for the rest of my life. But if I fail Jesus... He died for me to forgive me. Jesus is the only Savior who will satisfy you. And if you fail Him, and we do, He died for you.
Religious people, when they get down cast they start putting their emphasis on the will, and they say buck up! be strong! Non religious people, when they are downcast put all of their emphasis on their emotions. And they say feel better about yourself, do nice things for yourself.
The REAL solution is worship. Paul is saying in Colossians 3 - go back into what Jesus has done for you. Go back into your story. You are there! He is doing that for you!
If you saw a sculptor run into the path of a bulldozer that was about to take out a prized sculpture of his you would say, 'That sculpture must have been his life!'
Jesus died for us. We were His life. When that moves you, when you see Him doing that for you, when you see yourself as being apart of that story, it changes your heart... You can then look at anything and say 'you are not my life!' Paul always does it this way. 2 Corinthians 8 - he doesn't work on the will, or the emotions, he says you know the generosity of Jesus on the cross for you, he was infinitely rich and became infinitely poor so that you through His poverty can become rich. you are freed from the need to have a lot of money... Paul takes you back into the story. You don't do it by working through the will, the emotions... Ephesians 5 - you know that Jesus was infinitely faithful to you on the cross, you now have the freedom from going to some other woman... Instead of just being generous, being faithful because I want to feel better about myself, the Gospel utterly changes you in the heart, in the root, and it frees you to live as He intended. Free from death, and free to venture into love, hope, and life to the fullest.
"Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature" - anger, rage, malice, slander, bitterness - I would love to be free from these things, but they keep coming back. Here is the reason why: (in verse 5) evil desires, idolatry
translated from the Greek "evil desire" is "epithumian" which more sharply is defined as: an over desire, an excessive desire - it is very hard to translate and we are not able to see its significance usually (the word is in the New Testament basically every time it mentions character change) because when we see "evil desire" or, as it sometimes is translated, "sinful desire", we see it as desiring something evil. We see a forbidden list, things you are not supposed to do... This is wrong... "Epithumian" is an "over-desire" for something that is good. That is what is wrong.
Why is this a bad thing? Connect with another word seen in verse 5 "idolatry". Taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing. This is how your heart works, according to the Bible, unless God changes it. Exodus Chapter 20. The first commandment: "I am God. Have no other gods before me." There are only 2 options: you either worship the uncreated, true God, or you will worship some created thing as a false god. There is no third alternative. You either are going to worship God or you are going to worship something else. It is NOT possible for your heart NOT to build its identity on something, NOT to build its significance on something, NOT to make something your life...
How do you know what those things are? How do I know what those good things are that I have turned into ultimate things, things I have turned into saviors, those things I have turned into my meaning, my hope, my life?
a question to find out: What things, if you lost them, if you failed them or they failed you (financial means, relationships, family, professional identity, human approval, power, control of your environment, etc), would cause you to not want to live? ... Be honest. You have something.
There are two types of people that answer this question as such: the religious - I believe in God, Jesus! I have accepted Him as savior! I don't have any idols in my life! ... oh yes you do. There is something that is your functional savior that is not Him. There is something that you look to know that can make you feel good, that gives you meaning/security/hope for the future... the secular - I don't have any idols, I don't worship! ... Yes you do. This is true of everybody!
To get further clarification on your idols: follow the over-desires back to the source... if a good thing in your life is jeopardized, you worry, but if it is an ultimate thing, you are paralyzed. If a good thing in your life is blocked by somebody, you get mad at them, but if an ultimate thing is blocked, you get embittered, enraged! If a good thing in your life is lost, you are very sad, but if it is an ultimate thing, you ready to throw your self off of a bridge.
Do you understand your emotions? Do you see that there are somethings that absolutely cast you down? Do you understand why you find yourself doing things you thought you would never ever do? It is because these things drive you. When you give your "heart" (your most inward part that is yourself) to a functional savior, (everybody is doing this) and don't understand that, you cannot change. And whatever you have given your heart to, it converts you. It gives you your identity. It gives you a sense of worth. And as a result it drives you and you will spend all of your life never getting enough of it, always being desperately afraid, always being thrown about by inadequate desires that do not satisfy. Have you dug down to see what those things are? Until you have done that you will be enslaved to things that are slowly killing you...
You have to dig down and REALLY see what's down there, what's driving you. The Gospel calls you to do this because it is NOT basically about a list of dos and donts. It is about making God your Savior and Lord through Jesus. And as you see THAT as the Gospel, it throws everything in your life into a new light... to be continued...
*A lot of this was taken from and built around a great sermon by Tim Keller. That sermon is here.
David's lament in Psalm 39 is amazing and disturbing at the same time with emphasis on the last two verses:
I said, “I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence.” I was mute and silent; I held my peace to no avail, and my distress grew worse. My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: “O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions. Do not make me the scorn of the fool! I am mute; I do not open my mouth, for it is you who have done it. Remove your stroke from me; I am spent by the hostility of your hand. When you discipline a man with rebukes for sin, you consume like a moth what is dear to him; surely all mankind is a mere breath!
--“Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers. Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!--
1. God in His grace understands your weeping. It’s safe to pour your heart out to Him.
“Look away from me” ?? This Psalm has been a struggle to accept because it seems to just not fit. Yes other Psalms are filled with wrestling, weeping, crying, but they always end with a note of triumph, at peace, or confidence/trust in God.
But in Psalm 39 it ends in absolute theological incorrectness. He is saying to God, ‘look away so I might have a little bit of peace before I die’. David ends here with such an overwhelming feeling that he ends by telling God the opposite of what he is “suppose to”. We aren’t “suppose to” talk/pray/feel/be like this! Are we?? What is it doing in my Bible? He is “suppose to” be telling me what to do. And what does this mean to the idea of the Bible being without error. Isn’t this an error?
And then I ran into this: “The prayer ‘look away from me’ makes no more sense then Peter’s ‘depart from me’, yet God knows when to treat this plea, as He does to Peter in Luke 5 or when the crowd says it in Matthew 8. The very presence of such prayers in the scriptures is a witness to His understanding, He knows how we speak when we are desperate.” -- Tim Keller
That blew my mind.
In Psalm 39, God gives us a glimpse of His empathy, understanding, assurance: its inclusion in the Bible means it is safe to pray to Him like this. It shows us that our deepest emotions, anger, fears belong, not in some managed, manufactured confessional prayer, but belong in a pre-reflected (God wants you to know yourself) outburst from the very depth of your being in the presence of God. This may or may not be how we are “suppose to” speak, but God knows us better than ourselves and He says it is safe to do so in His presence.
2. 'Plant your tears' (taken from Psalm 126) in the vision of the cross.
Why is He so understanding? It is because God Himself came down and became a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53) even saying the night before His crucifixion, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death”. He was so sorrowful that He thought His sorrows could actually kill Him before He even got to the cross.
God knows what it is like to look to God and have Heaven barred (apparently). God knows what it is like to look to Heaven and feel nothing. God knows what it is like to cry out desperately: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me??” God is able to keep coming to us even after we have said “turn away” because when Jesus said, ‘Come to me!’ God turned away from Him. Jesus was calling for God and God turned His face away, or in other words, Jesus got the abandonment we deserved. And so now when we turn our face, God will come because He experienced what we should have received and therefore He is understanding.
If you look at Jesus on the cross saying, ‘Why me?’ You will still sometimes cry 'why me?', but you will never cry 'why me?' in the same way. Jesus’ tears in the cross produced joy. It produced our welcome into the embrace of God. Whenever we see that here is what you can do: take your tears and think about Him crying out on the cross, think about Him looking for God and God turning away from Him... and here’s what will happen, your tears will change because whenever bad things happen we have a tendency to feel guilty. Right? Be honest. Don’t we say: what’s wrong, why me, am I being punished, am I a bad person? Get rid of that! How? Look at the cross and you can say: 'even though I feel like I am being abandoned by God I am not. Even though it feels like God is punishing me for my sins He is not'. Why? Because He was punished for my sins. Even though it feels like God is abandoning me it is only an apparent abandonment because on the cross Jesus got real abandonment so I didn’t have to. And so if you ever feel, during your suffering, that God has rejected you, abandoned you, or you feel like a terrible person or weighed down with shame and guilt... look at Him die for you. God has not rejected you because Jesus was rejected for you.
And if you process your sorrows through the reality of the cross here is something else that will happen: you will get rid of that self-pity. The thing that will really kill you! Weeping, grief, disappointment are all fine. Jesus was always weeping, but weeping in self-pity? NO. That will make you a small little person who can’t forgive, who is always feeling ill-used, who gets incredibly touchy and incredibly oversensitive.... Look at the cross! And you can say, ‘you have really suffered for me. My sufferings are nothing compared to yours. If you suffered for me, I can be patient with this suffering for you.'
What if you are weeping and you say: I don’t see what God is doing in this??!! Impatient tears and you don’t see what God is doing... Look at the cross. and think of all the people who went home that night, who saw Jesus dieing on the cross (which was the greatest act of wisdom, salvation, grace, and love in history) and went home and lost their faith. Do you realize that many people looked at the cross, and not understanding it said, ‘I don’t even believe in God anymore. I don’t see what good God could be bringing out of this!’ They looked right smack into the face of the greatest thing that God ever did and said because I don’t understand - I don’t believe. (Why is it the greatest thing God ever did? It is because without it, Jesus abandonment here on the cross would have been ours.) When you see Jesus dieing on the cross and you can’t figure out what God is doing in your life, remember that.
"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things - the beauty, the memory of our past - are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have not visited." Clive Staples Lewis -- The Weight of Glory
I remember listening to Sufjan Stevens play Predatory Wasp... for the first time and it made me feel overwhelmed with breathing correctly. I remember watching Magnolia and feeling like I had not felt enough. I remember listening to Sigur Ros at Coachella and being broken to my most inner core. I remember watching Saving Private Ryan and breaking down. I remember listening to Is This It by The Strokes with my brothers and feeling like life really was finally about to begin.
Each one of these feelings have failed me in my life. I tore through each one like a hungry man hungry for life... until I saw Jesus as the fulfillment of them all. And only now I feel I have just tasted Him for the most briefest of moments. fire, redemption, hope... I am starting to listen again to music I have not listened to in awhile and now I cannot help but worship Him. His creation is breath taking. I can only imagine the beauty of its Creator. Meeting Him face to face is going to be awesome.
Romans 8:19-23 -- For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
Revelation 21 -- 1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” 5 And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!”
. . . demands of my dead religion - empty. numb. chokes. suffocate. . but the stone fist of His heart began to bang on that cold stiff chest. breath spilled over into His battered body, and now . resurrection of my life. mercy. love. and new breath. . walk with others. in their pain. in their happiness. as you breath out His breath that fills your lungs . . .
James 1:27 "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."
-- I am going to venture a guess and say that James is not talking about sitting down with orphans and widows for a cup of coffee while on a mini-vacation to a town called Affliction....
I honestly don't know what to do with this... What an excruciating death it's going to be for me to really love my neighbor as I do myself, to store treasure up in heaven and not on earth, to love as commanded by our Lord on earth... This is going to hurt. I don't even know how to start... Lord show me the way!!
The Church should be seen no greater then an emergency room where all are sick and only one physician is sufficient.
Luke 5:30-32 30 And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
There is a problem with the church when only the sinners are called to repent of their sin... the religious must also be called to repent of their religion.
Love is not defined by abstract concepts, love is defined by an event... and that event is the cross. It is very humbling, but it is our only hope to submit to this, for we are helpless to desire real love without it, that is devoid of ourselves, that is truly genuine...
1 John 4:7-12 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
"God calls us to cruci-formed love, love that shapes itself to the cross of Jesus Christ... which can be defined as willing self sacrifice, for the redemptive good of another, that doesn't demand reciprocation or the person that is being loved is deserving." -- Paul Tripp
... our hope can only be in the cross, because no one is deserving, everyone fails, all are prideful, all need to be redeemed...
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
I am sorry but we can not individually grade these characteristics. The fruit of the spirit is SINGULAR not plural. Love grows together with peace! Patience grows together with faithfulness! Joy grows with self-control!
This is an impossible calling. But we have a true example... we have an empathetic priest... Christ's slaughtered himself to bring us to this place.
1) What is the gospel? No question is more important, and biblical clarity in response to this question is critical. Sadly, confusion about the gospel is quite common among professing evangelicals today. I find Graeme Goldsworthy’s comment all too relevant: “The main message of the Bible about Jesus Christ can easily become mixed with all sorts of things that are related to it. We see this in the way people define or preach the gospel. But it is important to keep the gospel itself clearly distinct from our response to it or from the results of it in our lives and in the world.” So here is my attempt to heed the counsel of Dr. Goldsworthy and keep the gospel “clearly distinct.”
The following definition of the gospel, provided by Jeff Purswell, the Dean of our Pastors College, seeks to capture the substance of the gospel: “The gospel is the good news of God’s saving activity in the person and work of Christ. This includes his incarnation in which he took to himself full (yet sinless) human nature; his sinless life which fulfilled the perfect law of God; his substitutionary death which paid the penalty for man’s sin and satisfied the righteous wrath of God; his resurrection demonstrating God’s satisfaction with his sacrifice; and his glorification and ascension to the right hand of the Father where he now reigns and intercedes for the church.
“Such news is specific: there is a defined ‘thatness’ to the gospel which sets forth the content of both our saving faith and our proclamation. It is objective, and not to be confused with our response. It is sufficient: we can add nothing to what Christ has accomplished for us--it falls to us simply to believe this news, turning from our sins and receiving by faith all that God has done for us in Christ.”
I find this definition of the gospel faithful to the presentation of the four Gospels—they present the person and work of Christ as the good news. In the Apostle Paul’s concise summation of the gospel, he focuses more particularly on Christ’s death and resurrection as the core of his proclamation:
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures….” 1 Cor 15:3-4
Focusing more specifically still, the apostle encapsulates the work of Christ by focusing on the cross: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” 1 Cor. 2:2
So that is the gospel: God’s saving work in and through Christ. And the cross is the pinnacle of that work. Knox Chamblin helpfully notes this emphasis in Paul’s writing and ministry: “His gospel is ‘the word of the cross’ (1 Cor. 1:17-18); nowhere is there a comparable reference to ‘the word of the resurrection.’ In I Corinthians 1:23-24 it is ‘Christ crucified’ who is identified as ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God,’ not as we might have expected (especially in the case of ‘power’), Christ resurrected…. Both the cross and the resurrection are ‘of first importance’ in Paul’s gospel (I Cor. 15:3-4). Unless Christ has risen from the dead, the preaching of the cross (and of the resurrection) is a waste of time (15:14); but once the resurrection has occurred, the cross remains central.”
And the centrality of the cross isn’t temporary. The cross remains on center stage even when we receive a glimpse of eternity in the New Testament’s final book: “One is taken aback by the emphasis upon the Cross in Revelation. Heaven does not ‘get over’ the cross, as if there are better things to think about; heaven is not only Christ-centered, but cross-centered, and quite blaring about it.” Jim Elliff
There is nothing more important than getting the gospel right. Years ago, John Stott made the following frightening observation of the evangelical church when he wrote, “All around us we see Christians relaxing their grasp on the gospel, fumbling it, and in danger of letting it drop from their hands altogether.” It is my prayer that God would use the Together for the Gospel conference to strengthen our grip upon the glorious gospel.
2) What is the most serious threat to the gospel? For this question I think J.C. Ryle provides us with enduring discernment: “You may spoil the gospel by substitution. You have only to withdraw from the eyes of the sinner the grand object which the Bible proposes to faith--Jesus Christ--and to substitute another object in His place… and the mischief is done.
“You may spoil the gospel by addition. You have only to add to Christ, the grand object of faith, some other objects as equally worthy of honor, and the mischief is done.
“You may spoil the gospel by disproportion. You have only to attach an exaggerated importance to the secondary things of Christianity, and a diminished importance to the first things, and the mischief is done.
“Lastly, but not least, you may completely spoil the gospel by confused and contradictory directions… Confused and disorderly statements about Christianity are almost as bad as no statement at all. Religion of this sort is not evangelical."
3) Personal Application It’s not difficult to identify distortions of the gospel. But as a pastor, one of my main concerns for genuine Christians is a more subtle one: either assuming the gospel or neglecting the gospel. I have found this to be the greatest threat to the gospel in my own life. Jerry Bridges echoes this concern when he writes, “The gospel is not only the most important message in all of history; it is the only essential message in all of history. Yet we allow thousands of professing Christians to live their entire lives without clearly understanding it and experiencing the joy of living by it.”
So let us not only apply discernment to the church at large, but to our own hearts as well. Let us, in the words of Jerry Bridges, “Preach the gospel to ourselves daily.” Let us heed Charles Spurgeon’s exhortation: “Abide hard by the cross and search the mystery of his wounds.” Let us respond to John Stott’s invitation: “The Cross is a blazing fire at which the flame of our love is kindled, but we have to get near enough for its sparks to fall on us.”
So how can we get near enough? The following are books that will position you to experience the transforming sparks of the gospel:
The Cross of Christ by John Stott. A personal favorite. Stott says of the Savior, “It was by his death that he wished above all else to be remembered.” This book won’t let you forget.
The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges. The man who taught me how to preach the gospel to myself will teach you to do the same.
The Message of Salvation by Philip Ryken. This excellent book deserves a broad readership. My oldest daughter recently thanked me for recommending this book to her and told me how much she was benefiting from this book. You will benefit as well.
The Message of the New Testament by Mark Dever. My good friend reveals the storyline of the Bible in each and every book of the New Testament. A must read for pastors but highly recommended for all. My wife has really enjoyed reading Mark’s book.
The Cross and Christian Ministry by D.A. Carson. For pastors this is another must-read. I’m indebted to Dr. Carson for this book. It has defined effective pastoral ministry for me, and I pray it will do the same for you.
That ought to get you started. Each of these books will draw you near enough to the “blazing fire of the cross so that its sparks” will fall on you and kindle fresh love for the Savior in your soul.
Several years ago WORLD Magazine published a column by William H. Smith with the provocative title, “Christmas is disturbing: Any real understanding of the Christmas messages will disturb anyone” (Dec. 26, 1992).
In part, Smith wrote:
Many people who otherwise ignore God and the church have some religious feeling, or feel they ought to, at this time of the year. So they make their way to a church service or Christmas program. And when they go, they come away feeling vaguely warmed or at least better for having gone, but not disturbed.
Why aren’t people disturbed by Christmas? One reason is our tendency to sanitize the birth narratives. We romanticize the story of Mary and Joseph rather than deal with the painful dilemma they faced when the Lord chose Mary to be the virgin who would conceive her child by the power of the Holy Spirit. We beautify the birth scene, not coming to terms with the stench of the stable, the poverty of the parents, the hostility of Herod. Don’t miss my point. There is something truly comforting and warming about the Christmas story, but it comes from understanding the reality, not from denying it.
Most of us also have not come to terms with the baby in the manger. We sing, “Glory to the newborn King.” But do we truly recognize that the baby lying in the manger is appointed by God to be the King, to be either the Savior or Judge of all people? He is a most threatening person.
Malachi foresaw his coming and said, “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.” As long as we can keep him in the manger, and feel the sentimental feelings we have for babies, Jesus doesn’t disturb us. But once we understand that his coming means for every one of us either salvation or condemnation, he disturbs us deeply.
What should be just as disturbing is the awful work Christ had to do to accomplish the salvation of his people. Yet his very name, Jesus, testifies to us of that work.
That baby was born so that “he who had no sin” would become “sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” The baby’s destiny from the moment of his conception was hell—hell in the place of sinners. When I look into the manger, I come away shaken as I realize again that he was born to pay the unbearable penalty for my sins...
Only those who have been profoundly disturbed to the point of deep repentance are able to receive the tidings of comfort, peace, and joy that Christmas proclaims.
Imitation, the imitation of Christ, is really the point from which the human race shrinks. The main difficulty lies here; here is where it is really decided whether or not one is willing to accept Christianity. If there is emphasis on this point, the stronger the emphasis the fewer the Christians. If there is a scaling down at this point (so that Christianity becomes, intellectually, a doctrine) more people enter into Christianity. If it is abolished completely (so that Christianity becomes, existentially, as easy as mythology and poetry and imitation an exaggeration, a ludicrous exaggeration), then Christianity spreads to such a degree that Christendom and the world are almost indistinguishable, or all become Christians; Christianity has completely conquered- that is, it is abolished!
"Time is the great leveler. It is one resource that is allocated in absolute egalitarian terms. Every living person has the same number of hours to use in every day. Busy people are not given a special bonus added on to the hours of the day. The clock plays no favorites.
We all have an equal measure of time in every day. Where we differ from one another is in how we redeem the time allotted. When something is redeemed it is rescued or purchased from some negative condition. The basic negative condition we are concerned with is the condition of waste. To waste time is to spend it on that which has little or no value.
I am a time waster. When I think of the time I have wasted over the course of my life, I am hounded by remorse. This guilt is not a false one fostered by an overactive work ethic. The guilt is real because the time I have wasted is real time.
The late Vince Lombardi introduced the adage, “I never lost a game, I just ran out of time.” This explanation points to one of the most dramatic elements of sports—the race against the clock. The team that is most productive in the allotted time is the team that wins the game. Of course, in sports, unlike life, there are provisions for calling time-out. The clock in a sports contest can be temporarily halted. But in real life there are no timeouts…
Given my propensity to waste time, I have learned a few tricks to help me beat the clock. They may be helpful to some of you.
First, I realize that all of my time is God’s time and all of my time is my time by His delegation. God owns me and my time. Yet, He has given me a measure of time over which I am a steward. I can commit that time to work for other people, visit other people, etc. But it is time for which I must give an account.
Second, time can be redeemed by concentration and focus. One of the greatest wastes of time occurs in the human mind. Our hands may be busy but our minds idle. Likewise, our hands may be idle while our minds are busy. Woolgathering, day-dreaming, and indulging in frivolous fantasy are ways in which thoughts may be wasted in real time. To focus our minds on the task at hand—with fierce concentration—makes for productive use of time.
Third, the mind can redeem valuable time taken up by ordinary or mechanical functions. For example, the mechanics of taking a shower are not difficult. In this setting the mind is free for problem solving, creative thinking, or the composition of themes. Many of my messages and lectures are germinated in the shower. When I used to play a lot of golf, I found that the time I had between shots was a great time for composing messages in my mind.
Fourth, use your leisure time for pursuits that are life enriching. Leisure time is often spent on avocations. Reading is a valuable use of time. It enriches life to read outside of your major field or area of expertise. Augustine once advised believers to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible, since all truth is God’s truth. Other avocations that are enriching include the arts. I like to study the piano and I dabble in painting. No one will ever mistake me for a serious musician or an accomplished artist. But these avocations open up the world of beauty to me that enhances my view of God and His manifold perfections. I also enjoy working cross-word puzzles to warm up the little gray cells and to expand my vista of verbal expression.
Fifth, find ways to cheat the “Sand Man.” Several years ago I had an epiphany about time management. Though my life-long pattern had been to stay up late at night I realized that for me, the hours between 9–12 p.m. were not very productive. I reasoned that if I used those hours to sleep I might secure more time for more productive things. Since then my habit has been to retire between 8–9 p.m. when possible and rise at 4 a.m. This has effected a wonderful revolution for my schedule. The early hours of the day are a time free from distractions and interruptions, a marvelous time for study, writing, and prayer….
Sixth, use drive-time for learning. Driving a car is another mechanical function that allows the mind to be alert to more than what is happening on the roadway. The benefits of audio tape can be put to great use during these times. I can listen to lectures and instructional tapes while driving, thereby redeeming the time.
Finally, in most cases a schedule is more liberating than restricting. Working with a schedule helps enormously to organize our use of time. The schedule should be a friend, not an enemy. I find it freeing in that the schedule can include time for leisure, recreation, and avocation. It helps us find the rhythm for a God-glorifying productive life."
----------- side note by me - I am positive that posting this much of an article infringes some sort of copyright law... However, I am fairly certain that no one reads this blog... SO I think it is an opportune time to STICK TO CORPORATE AMERICA! Boo Ya!!
[The article “Time Well Spent: Right Now Counts Forever” was written by Dr. R.C. Sproul and published in Tabletalk magazine (September 1997, pp. 4–7).]
Missionary/martyr Jim Elliot once said, “I think the devil has made it his business to monopolize on three elements: noise, hurry, crowds... Satan is quite aware of the power of silence.”
Is it possible to go through one's life without ever experiencing silence? Yes. Was this the example that Jesus set for us? No.
Luke 5:16 says that “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places."
The Bible describes multiple benefits of purposeful silence, including: hearing from God (1 Kings 19:11–13), waiting patiently for the Lord to act (Lamentations 3:25–28), worshiping God (Habakkuk 2:20), knowing God better (Psalm 46:10), praying effectively (Luke 5:16)
Without silence, will we be able to hear God speak? I don't think so.
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—————————————————– PRECIOUSNESS OF SILENCE “But Jesus was silent.” Mt 26:63 —————————————————–
The Silence is Meekness. When you do not defend yourself against offenses; When you do not claim your rights; When you let God defend you; The Silence is Meekness.
The Silence is Mercy. When you do not reveal the faults of your brothers to others; When you readily forgive without inquiring into the past; When you do not judge, but pray in your heart; The Silence is Mercy.
The Silence is Patience. When you accept suffering not with grumbling but joyfully; When you do not look for human consolations; When you do not become too anxious, but wait in patience for the seed to germinate; The Silence is Patience.
The Silence is Humility. When there is no competition; When you consider the other person to be better than yourself; When you let your brothers emerge, grow and mature; When you joyfully abandon all to the Lord; When your actions may be misinterpreted; When you leave to others the glory of the enterprise; The Silence is Humility.
The Silence is Faith. When you keep quiet because you know that the Lord will act; When you renounce the voice of the world to remain in the presence of the Lord; When you do not labor yourself to be understood; because it is enough for you to know that the Lord understands you; The Silence is Faith.
The Silence is Adoration. When you embrace the cross without asking “Why?”; The Silence is Adoration. ---From the Missionaries of Charity prayer book
1 Corinthians 15:54-57 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The word sting comes from the word that we get poison from. A bee sting. It is not a bee's sting that hurts, but the poison in the sting. Death is bad, but there is a sting attached to death. What is the poison of death? Sin and its power: the Law (1 Cor 15:56).
The Law is internal (an oughtness - a conscience) AND external (God's commands). The law collectively is a mirror showing us our shortcomings, showing us where we are law-LESS. The law shows that there must be justice, an accounting. The STING. This 'sting' is previewed when we feel distant from God... when we think about death... "If we can be sure that death was extinction or annihilation, then we should not have fear of it." -- a philosopher. There should not be near the fear we have of death. This is the sting. You cannot be sure of an accounting after death.
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else. It is the end all goal of denying that this is the final destiny of man. The sting... and the poison after the sting...
Jesus died in our place for our sins. He came to bear the judgment and account for sin. Your sin must be accounted for! Are we trying to make the debt up on our own or we trusting God's provision for it?
Paul says, "If Christ is not raised from death then our faith is futile!" It is the cosmic receipt the God has dealt with our two main problems: sin and death...
But what about tomorrow (on earth and not just the later reward)?? God has not only dealt with the penalty of sin, taking us out of this sinful world and giving us a new body in the coming age (bringing us to be holy (set apart))... BUT God also has dealt a decisive blow to the power of sin in our life right now...
Becoming a Christian is not just deciding to be good.
This is what most people think. That is NOT what it means to be Christian! What it means is to give up control to the ONE who is good. It is not going to work, us being good. Sin is our fatal flaw... We are dieing! We are trying to be our own savior, but yet have absolutely ZERO capacity to do so. We are trying to take our 'goodness' and have him accept it as our atoning worth -- the opposite of Christianity!!
Christianity says you cannot save yourself, you are not good enough. You need a leader. You need forgiveness... When you get this, you trust Christ and He becomes your savior... In this God doesn't just give you a nice place in Heaven. He LITERALLY gives you Himself through the Holy Spirit.
He begins to move through you and activate the Resurrection power that is within us. An inside out deal! Most American religion is outside - in. 'If I do such and such externally, it will transform me on the inside'... Simply this is duty... obligation... God literally, through the Resurrection, is coming form the inside out in the regenerated believer. The dominate value here is delight. There is a place for duty. Visit this place, but do not live there. Live in delight.
"God's work in us does not eliminate our work, it enables it. We work because He is the one at work in us. Our fight is only possible because He is fighting in us and through us." -- John Piper
The Resurrection power living through us does not just want to work in our will, but wants to work in your motivation.
Obedience is usually dealt with two ways. One: LAZINESS - ignoring motivations and continually looking back and pointing to a prayer to claim Christian status. Two: Legalism - A pattern in obeying God without desiring God. This is what we are when we are bored Christians! Boredom is how you can be certain that this is the case with most American Christians. A lot of us are entertaining our selves to death because this is the case. The Christian Church impact is minimal on the lives of others. The Divorce rate is the same as compared to others. Kids in the Church get eaten alive in the world...
Both laziness and legalism both have to do with DESIRE. Rarely do you hear a Christian asking for God to intervene in their desire. We don't pray that way! We mostly pray that He will make us to do something we SHOULD do. Please HELP ME. This is okay to pray. BUT there is a deeper prayer -- To ask God to intervene in your very desire. God wants to help us to where we want to obey. Externally "Christians" act, but internally it is not real. We all know it because we are BORED! All the right stuff and it is boring! No joy, no excitement -- most of the CHURCH!
Romans 8:11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
The same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is in YOU (the Christian)! The Resurrection is applicable for ALL. Those looking forward and back. Community and counseling is often needed within the Church, but they will tap into that Resurrection power that is within you, the Christian. To help you live a new identity in Christ.
It is ALL about the Resurrection! It is not try harder, do better. Don't clean up your act.. Get impassioned by GOD!! Get a hold of what raised a dead body!!!
'I am not saying smile and be nice' and do nice church things. We need less of that stuff! The Church has niceness issues! We say we are fine when we are not! Some spend an hour getting ready for Church...
What are we doing? This is not going to help us with life. We need God. If you are a Christian you have Him... rather He has you!
Christianity rises and falls on the Resurrection. 1 Corinthians 15:18-19 -- We are all crazy if we are following Christianity AND Jesus did not rise again! We are fools if this is the case!!
If you are not tapping into the Resurrection power as a Christian then you are missing the boat. You are then tapping into duty, BUT not delight. Full of boredom and not adventuresome.
Keller writes about responding to concerns, 'I like Christianity BUT... I like this but I don't like this...' Usually he would respond similar to, 'IF Jesus rose from the dead then you are going to have to accept all that He said. IF He didn't rise from the dead then why worry about anything. The issue that everything hangs upon is not whether you like the teaching, but whether or not He rose form the dead.'
Did Jesus rise form the dead? -- it stops all problems with Christianity dead in their tracks
IF we are just following a dead guy, you can stay in control and pick and choose... IF the Resurrectiion is true, THEN God broke into our world and conquered the thing we are deathly afraid of. He is telling us that we do not get to be Lord. He proves it by getting up form the grave and emptying the tomb. Christianity rises and falls with it. It is not just important, without it Christianity does not exist!!
Skeptic go to the Resurrection. Study it!
Believer - Are you tired of feeling bored? Something is wrong if we do not feel joy in walking within the commands of God. Legalism has overtaken us. Walking in this duty-laden spirituality without any delight, comes about by serving God in our own strength. Trying to do the right thing with the wrong power. We have a cosmic power source (the Holy Spirit). The same power that raised Christ form the dead! We don't have to be defined by our passed and freaked out about our future. We can be assured that Jesus, empowering us with His Spirit, is emboldening us to do exactly what He has asked us to do in His sovereignty. And nothing is above what He has given the power for us to do so... if you trust Him... It really is about control. Religion makes us use God and make him a means to our own end. The Resurrection breaks into that with Jesus saying 'you are not in control and things work a lot better when I am in control. I have power, energy, delight, joy... Give up control!'
When Christ died He purchased for His people the forgiveness of all our sins and completed for us a life of perfect obedience (even through death on a cross) that we can count as our own obedience when we are united with Him by faith.
The death of Jesus is THE ultimate act of love, THE ultimate act of salvation. It is the ONLY way we can be saved for our sins and escape the wrath of God! Those hours of suffering on the cross are the apex of God's love, my salvation, my deliverance, my triumph over sin (partially now and fully later)...
The weird thing is that sin made this happen. Sin both murdered the Son of God and delivered us from sin in the same act. Sin killed itself when it killed Jesus. Suicide! (at least the sin of those who welcome THIS real Jesus and HIS forgiveness)
Satan knew that when He led Judas to betray Jesus, he would be defeated by it. #1 Satan desperately tried to make Jesus take the route of the NON-cross power move in the wilderness, but Jesus was zeroed in on His end goal. #2 When Peter said, "No they're not! Not while I'm alive!" to Jesus and His claim of a future death on the cross, His response was, "Get behind me Satan!" The effort to keep Jesus off the cross is satanic. Satan knew what He was about to do. His first tactics were trying to keep Him from the cross and then He sent Him to the cross... WHY?!
Satan is irrational as is sin. He did his very best to divert Jesus from the cross and he saw the absolute resolve of Jesus towards His death. Satan admits defeat and decides to make it AS HORRIBLE AS HE CAN! ... Satan was despairing... He commits suicide with the mindset, 'This will really make them miserable!' - common mindset to those suicidal.
Satan knew he was done for... and he decides to take as many people with him to his damnation as he can... as well as making the death of the Son of Man as horrible as he can.
Introductions 1. The Purpose Driven Death. An awesome title for this conference!! (Piper was ticked off that people were bent out of shape by the title...) At the end of John, Jesus showed Peter by what death He would glorify God. A purpose driven death. Of course their is a purpose driven death along with the rest. Praise God their is purpose in my death! 2. Matthew 24:14 --> This Gospel will be proclaimed to all the nations... then the end will come. Join up or miss out. But also V. 9 You will be hated by all the nations for His name sake. Lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold... Cold people don't finish the Great Commission. But it will be finished! Things will get bad, but those who endure to the end will be saved... A 'spiritual glacier' will come at the end of the age and spread over the world. One city does not necessarily have freeze. Many will! But there will be pockets of fire all over the place. People with torches making holes in it all over the place! The glory of God will be shone through. 3. John the Baptist was SENT to be a witness to the light, and was NOT the light...
THE MESSAGE Will you choose to suffer... if it were offered to you as a gift (Phill 1:29)? ... If you knew that God had appointed for your neighbor or you, to have a child who was profoundly disabled, would you choose to be the one? ...
There was a Roman Catholic Abbott (one who doesn't talk all their life except when singing or confessing). An interviewer asked: What if you were to learn that atheism were true? Even without the promise of reward, my sacrifice was worthwhile and beautiful. To the same question Paul said that we would the people most to be pitied in the world. What a fool I would be if Christ was not raised!! Paul's life was a life of consiously embraced suffering.
2 Cor. 11:23b (Paul is listing off his accomplishments) - imprisonments, countless beatings (he could not count them there were so many), often near death. five times with four lashes (trained executioner - opened lacerated back, thrown on the ground, infected for weeks on end!, heals all wrong, scar tissue all knotted, healed months later all wrong... and then it happens again, and again, and again, again... 3 times beaten with rods, shipwrecked, he was never out of danger! Every night he went to bed wondering if it would be his last... Daily the anxiety of the church... How would you answer the question: What if Christ did not rise from death?
Why did Paul embrace suffering? Col. 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh (his suffering flesh), I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body, the Church... It almost sounds heretical.
What is missing in Christ's afflictions? Nothing in their atoning worth. Paul cannot add anything to the atoning value of Jesus Christ. Nothing is missing from it. Paul taught us that...
So what's missing? The presentation of those afflictions to the people for whom He died. The personable, touchable, visible, seeable presentation of His afflictions. There are those who have never seen His afflictions. Making a presentation, not adding. Paul's suffering as a visible reenactment of Christ's love for them... The idea comes from Pill 2:27-30 --> Apaphraditus took gifts to Paul, risking his life, almost dieing. Paul tells the Phill church how amazing the man was. 2:30 he came close to death TO COMPLETE, WHAT WAS LACKING in your service. What was lacking? There was distance between Paul and the Phill church. There is distance in time from Christ and the Cross to us. A representative (Apaphraditus) was SENT! So that the love of the Phill church for Paul could be supplied, complete, could be filled up in the person of Apaphraditus.
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And for your sake I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's sufferings. His purpose is that ALL tribes of people will be with Him. He could have appointed angels on completing what was lacking. He appointed people to fill up what was lacking. To take the sufferings of Christ to the world. The afflictions are there for someone. They must be taken somewhere.
I rejoice in my sufferings! for your sake! and in my suffering flesh I fill up! The greatest love is for someone to lay down their life for their friends. Persecutions, sufferings are a design, a strategy for the completion for the Great Commission.
When Jesus bids a man to follow him, he bids for him to come and die! - Detreich Bonhoeffer
The world gives us momentary, mirroring glimpses of eternity... It was an honor that my dad was counted worthy to die for Jesus (a 13 year-old missionary kid)... Things here are all about something else. Sex is real good! But it points to something else one-thousand times better! ... In Heaven we probably will say - 'How could we have overeaten so much.. fornication... how did we make gods out of all of those insignificant pleasures?!'
"now I rejoice in my sufferings..." We cannot take that lightly. 17 year-old in a coma in his church. He does not lightly say to her parents, 'rejoice!' You dont blather about "Praise God anyhow!" ... Paul put it this way 2 cor 6:10 "Sorrowful, but always rejoicing" ... That's how it always will be in this world. ALWAYS! If it is not always then you are not connected to enough people. We weep with those weep. We rejoice with those who rejoice. There are always people weeping, rejoicing. and so Christians have this miracilous life of crying all the time and being happy all the time. It is a miracle. Outsiders think it is mumbo jumbo because they don't know how it is to weep, but not as those without hope.
SO Paul is rejoicing in his sufferings as he is completing his work... When you are called to the "calvary road" - It is not joyless. Painful? Absolutely! ... You cannot escape pain anyhow, why not make it meaningful. Hebrews 4 - for the joy set before him at the cross. It was joy that carried him through. The joy of the future was streaming into the present. There is a miracle there. Yes it is way out there, it is just over the horizon. It comes over like the dawn and holds you. It is present joy... It is a call to the deepest, longest satisfactions the world has ever known... Every missionary will testify to the pain AND to the peace they have falling to sleep at night, even without "fruit"... How peaceful do you feel in your American securities?
An indigenous missionary was preaching in India. He came to a certain village and was driven out of town. He slept from exhaustion at the edge of town. When he woke up he saw the whole town hovering over him. The town came to look him over and saw his blistered feet. They concluded that he was a holy man and that they had been evil to have rejected hum. They wanted to hear the message that he was willing to suffer so much to bring them. And so the missionary filled up in his feet what was lacking in the afflictions to Christ.
But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his hands.
I like making music and bands to play that music; I like sports teams from San Francisco; I am substitute teaching in the Oakland Public School District and I hope I will get a job as a teacher someday; I have a wife who is beautiful, smart and compassionate; I have this blog to wrestle with, make sense of, and heartfully worship Jesus who was foretold about in Isaiah 53.
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