Don't Worry About the Secret Things, Live in the Light

Gen 42:36  And Jacob their father said to them, "You have bereaved me of my children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and now you would take Benjamin. All this has come against me."

Act 23:11  The following night the Lord stood by him and said, "Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome."

You might be wondering what these two verses have in common other than they are both in the Bible.  What they have in common is that they both speak of what God calls all Christian to experience in this life.  A lot of people, especially those who speak on TV seem to think that once you decide to become a Christian God is so happy to have you in the family he will do whatever it takes to make you happy and trouble free in this life as long as you have faith. 

What the Bible actually teaches us is that the call to serve the Lord as Christians is to live in weakness so that the power of God can be seen in us, 2Co 12:9  But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2Co 12:10  For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.  Paul is a good example of this in that while he served and glorified the Lord as well as anyone before or after his time, he did it through primarily suffering, not comfort.

With that in mind the above two texts start to come together for us.  In Jacob’s case he couldn’t seem to fathom why the Lord was taking his sons away from him.  He seems to have resigned himself to this and is willing to accept it from the Lord but he is missing something very important in his thinking.  The Lord is not just being cruel; he was actually putting his family through all this in order to supply food for them so that they would not starve to death.  He didn’t have Romans 8:28 to read like we do so we should expect more of our faith since we have more revelation to believe in.  We know that all the hardships and trials and what to us seems like needless suffering is actually God working in us an opportunity to display his glory and teach us that he is better than what this world offers. 

Paul’s case teaches us this also.  The Lord tells him that he is going to eventually get to go to Rome and preach the gospel.  But Paul isn’t told immediately that the way to Rome is the way of hardship, not glory.  The Lord gets the glory when in our weakness we succeed and in suffering we are faithful, joyful and content.  So while Paul is fully in God’s will, it is clear that God’s will is trial not comfort.

Let me say it like this: we must not live by his providence but by his precepts.  By his providence I mean what seem to us as circumstances.  We many times can’t put his providence together to make any sense.  It seems like random circumstance even though we know that is not the case.  The lost live by “happenstance” of everyday life, unable to make any sense of it, having no direction as to what is going on and what to do about it.  We can’t understand his providence but we can understand his Word.  Only his Word provides a foundation for living.  We can easily misinterpret circumstance just like Jacob did and get depressed or fearful or worried.  But if we keep in mind what God says about life we will realize that suffering is what we have been called unto and be patient and joyful in tribulation because we have the light of God’s Word to explain what is really going on and how it is all going to end. 

So we live by the Word and watch God do his work and not fall apart in the mean time because this is the way he works.  We leave providence to the Lord and worry about what he has revealed to us, Deu 29:29  "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.  Why worry about what we cannot know when the Bible is there to guide our way?  

Psa 119:104  Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Psa 119:105  Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

Working Up a Thirst

Joh 19:28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst." 

Far from being merely an historical account of Jesus’ death, the Gospels recount these events in such a way to explain what is going on spiritually.  John alone omits the three hours of darkness as Jesus hung on the cross but he is the only to tell us that Jesus said “I thirst” after the three hours of darkness.  Why does Jesus call out only minutes before he gives up his life that he is thirsty?  Was it necessary for him to get a drink and then die?  I think the word “thirst” is significant.

When someone is thirsty we might say that it is because they have exerted some sort of work and are weary because of it.  I think this is the point here.  He was doubtless thirsty three hours before but it is here that he proclaims his thirst.  His thirst right after his great work of making atonement for sin, of bearing the wrath of God, of suffering the effects of the curse points to the fact that he has done some great work and is therefore thirsty.  This comes right after the three hours of darkness when he suffers the separation from the Father as the Father’s wrath is poured out on him.  This is specifically the work of substitutionary atonement in which he does the work that we could not do for ourselves. 

He told the woman at the well that if she would believe in him or drink from spiritual water she shall never thirst again.  How can he keep this promise?  Because he in his death has provided eternal life, he became thirsty by doing a work that we could not do so that we would never thirst like he did that day.  He took our shame, pain, death, punishment, abandonment, Hell, burden, all the futility and all the unfilled desires that sin brings.  He suffered the abandonment of God so that we never will have to.

The Samaritan woman’s thirst, not just physically but spiritually would be continuous because she had no way to gain life in herself.  Hell is eternal for this very reason.  Sin will always leave us wanting because to be separated from God is to never be fulfilled, never happy, never satisfied, totally ruined.  Only in Jesus’s work can sin be atoned for and our “thirst” be satisfied. 

I am glad that one day Jesus was thirsty so that someday I never will be in need of anything again.

The Scene At Calvary

Mat 27:39  And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads Mat 27:40  and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." Mat 27:41  So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, Mat 27:42  "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. Mat 27:43  He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'"

Matthew has recorded the events of Jesus’s crucifixion with little scenes in which the way it is played out teaches us of what is really going on during this time.  For example as Jesus is forced to wear the crown of thorns there are a couple of things we see.  First of all by accepting the mockery and suffering of the cross he is actually doing what is necessary for him to receive a kingdom and wear a true crown.  As he stands before them bearing a crown of thorns, the irony is that he is their king whether they realize it or not; by pushing that cruel crown upon him they were helping him get a better one.  Secondly thorns speak of the curse of sin that came upon us at the fall in the Garden of Eden.  The crown of thorns on his head was a picture that he was bearing the curse for us so we could escape the effects of the fall.

In the verses quoted above we have more irony that depicts what is going on at the cross in a spiritual sense.  In vs. 40-42, they say to come down off the cross and save himself.  In vs. 42 they make a statement that rings throughout history, “He saved others; he cannot save himself”.  Actually this is a completely true statement.  If he came down off the cross and saved himself he would not be able to save anyone.  To save others he could not save himself!  They might have believed something about him if he came down off the cross but they would not be able to believe on him as their savior because saving himself would have made him an unsuitable sacrifice for sin.  If he came down off the cross we would not be saved.

Then in vs. 43 they unwittingly make another true statement.  “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now”.  He did in fact trust in God and the Father delivers him through the sufferings of the cross.  Ironically this is exactly true of anyone who will trust in God for salvation through Jesus Christ.  If you trust in his sacrifice on the cross as your only hope God will deliver you in the Day of Judgment. 

Surely Matthew 27 is the focal point of human history!

Examining Our Prayers

Jas 4:2  Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Jas 4:3  Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

Sometimes those of us who correctly stress the sovereignty of God can fall into a trap of thinking, at least subconsciously perhaps, that the means to God’s decreed ends are not all that important.  Hyper-Calvinism tends to think like this by assuming that just because the Lord has elected some unto salvation, it doesn’t matter whether we take the gospel to them or even if they believe; they must be saved regardless.  But this is unbiblical thinking since the same God also decreed the means in which he saves which is through repentance of sins and faith in the finished work of Christ. 

The same can be said of the means by which God often works in our lives which is through the prayers of the saints.  To simply not pray or be lax in praying because you assume that God’s will is going to be done regardless misses the point of why we are to pray.  There are some things to keep in mind here:

1. While God has determined all things from the beginning to the end and none shall stay his hand, he has graciously chosen to bring about much of his purposes by allowing us to share in his work by praying for them to come about.  Another way we put this is that he has chosen the means to the end just as surely as he has chosen the ends themselves. 

2. God loves to respond to our asking and our caring and our pleading.  He does not respond lovingly to apathy.  The reason for this should be obvious.  He is too glorious and his work too important and wise for us to be apathetic towards him or what he is doing.  Apathy in prayer means we don’t consider his work to be overly important and there is no burning desire to see his will done.  One cannot show love with apathy.  God is glorified by our coming to him because there is no one else to go to and because we have a heartfelt desire to see his will done.  The lack of prayer demonstrates little love for the things of God and he is not going to bless coolness in our love for him. 

I can prove this biblically from Ezekiel 36.  After promising that he will establish a new covenant by giving us new hearts and his Spirit will indwell us and no hint that there are any conditions left for us to fulfill, he then makes an interesting statement in vs. 37,  "Thus says the Lord GOD: This also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them: to increase their people like a flock.”.  It is going to happen as sure as there is a Sun in the sky but it won’t happen without us asking for it. 

Let me make one more application from this.  If the blessings of the Lord towards us come in part through our faithful prayers it might do us good to examine how we pray and what we pray for.  Examine your prayers for the church, for your children, for the lost, for your marriage, etc.  Do these look pretty cold and uninterested when compared to your finances or health or material desires?  Are we more passionate in our prayers for temporal things than we are for our spiritual needs and the work of God?  And perhaps when we start putting it all together it is no surprise at some of the things going on in our lives.  Let’s show the Lord that his glory is our greatest desire and see what he will do.

When Trying to be Like Jesus is Sinful!

Rom 10:13  For "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

Rom 4:4  Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. Rom 4:5  And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

I have been reading Tim Keller’s book, “A Reason For God”.  I thought he made a point interesting enough and important enough to relate it on my blog site.  So while I generally try to only blog thoughts mostly original with me, much of what I am about to say I owe to his book as I think he offers a fresh way to compare true Christianity with all false religions.

Any faithful preacher is quick to relate that there are only two religions and there has always only been two; grace or works.  Either one tries to do something to earn God’s favor or as the Bible teaches, we trust in what Christ has done and not our own works.  It is also no secret than many have tried to twist Christianity into a system of works for salvation rather than the gift of God in Christ Jesus.  The Roman Catholic Church would be perhaps the prime example of this but certainly not the only one. 

Many in modern times have tried to do away with the need of the cross altogether as an atonement for sin or tried to make it just an example of God’s love.  To them the important thing is to follow Christ’s examples and teachings instead of seeing the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for sin received by faith.  One can only think like this if one has no idea of how holy God is, what sin is and how sinful man is.  In this scheme of things Christ’s value is not in his righteousness given to us as a gift but in that he has set an example for us to follow.  In other words what Christ did was give us a law to follow and if we do our best, and in reality nowhere near our best, God will say, “All is forgiven, come on up to Heaven”.  Once again it is just another system of law.

So what is going on here is that the Gospel has been twisted into just another false religion of human origin.  In this system it then becomes possible to avoid Jesus as Savior by keeping biblical rules as much as by breaking them!  In both cases one has completely missed out from taking advantage of what Christ actually did on the cross and so remains in one’s sins. 

Another way of saying this is that there are two ways to sin and be self-righteous, by doing evil things or by trying to be righteous to earn God’s favor.  Both actions are sinful because both disobey the command by God to believe solely in the finished work of Jesus Christ for your justification.  To attempt to merit God’s favor and thus take some of the credit for your salvation is as much as a sin as murder.  Thus one can be a sinner as much by trying to keep God’s laws as he is by breaking God’s laws.

Let me finish by quoting from Flannery O’Connor, “The best way to avoid Christ is to avoid sin.  If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model, and helper but you are avoiding him as Savior.  You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God.  You are trying to save yourself by following Jesus.”

Ironically this is a rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I trust no one reading my blog has confused the saving power of Jesus’ substitutionary work on the cross with trying to follow his example.  One is Good News, the other anything but.  It is not good news it is the worst possible news.  To offer up your sin laden works instead of the righteousness of Christ will only offend God and make matters worse.

Better news is that once God saves us through faith by grace, he imparts a new nature so that we can do good but for all the right reasons.

Convinced But Not Converted

Mat 27:41  So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, Mat 27:42  "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.

It is funny how even Christians can think a lot like those who stood around and mocked Christ as he was being crucified.  They assume that believing in Christ is as simple as being convinced that he was who he said he was.  But no one has ever been saved by being convinced that there is a God or that Jesus died for them or that they are sinners, etc.  All are saved by the proclamation of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit to give them a heart to believe, repent and trust in Christ.

If Jesus had come down off the cross in response to their mocking I think we can assume that they would have had a change of mind, but not a change of heart.  Now they had seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead and most if not all did not even have a change of mind, so it is no guarantee.  But it is very probable that some there would have been convinced that he was indeed the Messiah.  The problem is that they still would have remained lost in their sins.  The same could be said if God appeared in Heaven and said, “Here I Am!”.  This is what many say must happen for them to be convinced.  Without doubt all who saw that would be convinced that God exists; so what? 

The one thing missing from convincing someone that there is a God is a changed heart.  They might believe in him and they might fear him; many in false religions do right now.  But their hearts have not been changed to love God above all else and to trust in him alone for their needed righteousness.  They might try to obey him either in fear or in some sort of self-righteous attempt to please him and earn his favor but without love all obedience is so much religious activity as 1 Cor. 13 tells us.

True righteousness is to love the Lord so much that everything we do is so that he might receive all the glory.  Obviously we are a long way from that and will only be fully righteous in glory.  But this also helps us understand the righteousness of Jesus that we need in order to be justified before God. 

Jesus is completely unlike any religious leader that has ever been.  They can only point to some way of salvation.  But Jesus never pointed to anything other than himself.  There is no system to follow because Christ is the system although he isn’t a system but a person.  And we need to understand that Jesus didn’t merely follow the Law while he was on earth as if it was a system he had to follow in order to be righteous.  He didn’t get up each morning, read the Law and then make sure he obeyed it.  He couldn’t help but live the Law because he perfectly loved the Father and could only do what pleased the Father.  This is true holiness, not trying to obey but a perfect love that can’t help but please him in everything. 

This is the holiness that we will only fully get in glory.  Even though we have been given a heart to obey, we love ourselves too much to even begin to live like Jesus did.  But one day we will love the Lord with a perfect love and be perfectly happy and fulfilled in delighting in God alone.  This is the message of the Bible; that through Christ we can be restored to what God intended us to be. 

Salvation is being given this new nature, not being convinced by strong arguments and compelling evidence that God exists.  I am all for using strong arguments and evidence to show the skeptic that they are not thinking rightly, but at the end of the day the church’s commission is to preach the gospel because it alone is the way the power of God is used in the conversion of the lost.  It alone is how the Holy Spirit turns a rebel into a lover of God.  Even if Jesus comes off the cross, they might be convinced but they will not be converted.  

Christian Liberty

Rom 8:2  For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Gal 5:1  For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Gal 5:13  For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. Gal 5:14  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The meaning of Christian liberty and how it relates to OT Law and obedience to Christ has been debated ever since Christ started the church.  While I image there will never be a full consensus on all the particulars, the subject is treated fairly often in the NT and is important for a Christian to have a general idea of what Christian liberty means.  So let me add my two cents worth.

I see the topic covering three main areas.  First of all we are free from the condemnation of the Law through faith in Christ alone.  The OT proves that man cannot obey God because of the fall and is therefore in a state of enmity with God and condemned and is powerless in himself to do anything about it.  The Good News is that Christ has kept the law for us and so we are free from the futile work of trying to please God on our own.

Secondly, we are free from the Mosaic Law with all its restrictions because most of them were types and shadows that are fulfilled in Christ.  Paul says more than once that all things are ours but goes on to say that they are ours to serve the Lord with not fleshly desires.  So we are no longer under the restrictions of the Mosaic Law as a system of living because there is a better way, “a new and living way”, that serves the Lord better.  Briefly this new way can be summed up as follows.

The third and perhaps most important thing to consider especially for a Christian wanting to know how to serve the Lord is that one must always keep before him that Christian freedom means that he has been freed from the dominion of sin so that he can serve Christ.  We have not been freed from sin’s dominion so that we can continue to sin (read Romans 6); that would ruin the very reason God saves us to begin with.

Let me illustrate this kind of freedom in a way I find helpful.  Because my sins are forgiven in Christ and he has promised that they will never be held against me and I will enjoy the Lord forever and nothing can change this, I am free in the following ways:

I am free not to retaliate but to love instead when someone does me wrong, treats me unfairly, steals from me or abuses me in any number of ways.  I am free to do this because God has promised to make all things right.  He has promised to give me infinitely more than anyone can take away from me in this life.  Therefore I can let such things pass just like I wouldn’t care if someone stole a rock from me when I have a warehouse full of gold.

I am free from having to be addicted to the things of this life that please the flesh but hurt me and dishonor the Lord because I have Christ which satisfies much more and much longer than anything this world has to offer. 

I am free not to get angry when things don’t go the way I would like because God has promised me that it is all going to work out for my ultimate good, so be patient. 

I am free to give you whatever I have if you need it because my God shall supply all my needs in Christ Jesus my Lord. 

I am free to be patient in suffering because joy comes in the morning and because God has promised that I shall be made a better child of God through these difficulties.

For these same reasons I can be free from worry, free from depression and despair, and free from having the miserable relationships with others that those who live only for themselves are destined to have. 

You get the idea; we have been freed from all the misery of sin’s dominion so that we can use all things to enjoy Christ and enjoy one another and enjoy true life.  If we think of Christian liberty like this the rest will take care of itself.