True Love Has Feet

Jas 2:14  What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? Jas 2:15  If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, Jas 2:16  and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? Jas 2:17  So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Jas 2:18  But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

1Jn 4:10  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.

1Jn 4:20  If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

The above verses are well known teachings on Christian love.  James doesn’t use the word love, instead he uses faith but it is obvious he is teaching that genuine faith is proven by love.  We use the word love so often that it is easy for Christians to use it without thinking through what true love is.  When we do this we can assume we love but can fall into the trap of not thinking of love by its biblical definition.  So we assume that since I like someone and care about them and like being around them and pray for them that I am exercising Christian love toward them when, in fact, I am not loving them very well at all.

What the above verses remind us of is that love is shown by actions not so much by feelings.  Perhaps another way to say it is that love ministers to its objects.  Yes, love cares for the good of others but it also puts feet to it by a willingness to do something to meet their needs.  Love is willing to be inconvenience and to sacrifice of itself so that our love can be expressed to the ones we say we love. 

If we are not careful, we can examine ourselves and assume we pass the test of love because when we think of our church family, for instance, we like their fellowship and we care enough about them to pray for them if they happen to let us know of a prayer request. So we smugly cross off love from our checklist of Christian virtues to work on and thank God that we aren’t as bad as we could be.

But the problem is that we have lowered the definition of love so low that we can easily step over it.  When I see church members willing to spend a couple of hours with each other on Sunday but have nothing to do with the people they “love” until the next Sunday then I wonder if we are really being honest with ourselves.  Is caring enough to pray for someone really a demonstration of Christian love?  Is it not a little like standing on the shore while a “loved one” is drowning and praying for their deliverance instead of jumping in and getting wet and doing what needs to be done?  We care for each other as long as you don’t come over to my house and don’t invite me over to yours.  We are willing to pray for whatever needs they have but not get our feet dirty by getting involved with them and being close enough to them so that you can actually do something beyond mentioning them in passing while you pray for all of your wants and needs.

We don’t want to get to know them to the point that we might have to offer some advice or rebuke and we certainly don’t want them to see our weaknesses and offer to help us.  We reduce love to warm feelings but we don’t do what James tells us to do in the above verses.  We don’t want to get close enough to someone so that they might actually show up on our door step and ask us to be inconvenienced for their sake.  I don’t think that is biblical love and I wonder if sometimes we are fooling ourselves because we are unwilling to examine ourselves in the light of God’s Word instead of our watered down version of it.

Before we dismiss this as applying to the church down the street let’s remind ourselves of Rev 3:1  "And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: 'The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. "'I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Rev 3:2  Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Rev 3:3  Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.

Every church has a reputation of following the Bible and of being alive, even the ones that don’t believe it anymore; people just assume it.  Vs. 2 says that their problem is incomplete works.  Perhaps they talked about how much they loved and prayed for people but they never got around to actually proving it; it was an incomplete work in the sight of God. 

1 John 4:10 above shows how God demonstrated his love by subjecting himself to crucifixion for those he claimed to love.  He practiced what he preached, his actions matched his words, to use some clichés, and if we are going to honestly examine whether we love, we are going to have to see some actual ministry to the needs of others.  Not just you physical family but your brothers and sisters in Christ; those that you can help.  We have to become vulnerable, open, humble, willing to get dirty and inconvenienced for the sake of Christ.  If we are unwilling we have no right to claim to love as Christ as loved us.

Saving Faith

Jas 2:17  So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 

Jas 2:18  But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 

Jas 2:19  You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder! 

Jas 2:20  Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 

Jas 2:21  Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

The following is an excerpt from last week's sermon:

We need to understand how this faith which is saving faith is different from the natural faith that all men have.  There is a natural faith and a most unnatural faith.  It is impossible for us to lead normal lives without faith.  We trust people will keep our appointments, travel (you trust the pilot), buying a ticket shows you believe they will schedule it when they say, etc.  Phobias are a result of not trusting people or things to do what they are supposed to do.  There are so many phobias today because so few people know a sovereign God.  Think about it, if you are afraid of leaving your house, will you be willing to die for Christ?  Do you not fear some physical danger more than you fear and love God and want to serve him?  But as we think about this natural faith it is clearly built on experience is it not? 

As we see people stepping off a plane, we are convinced that the pilot and airplane will do what it promises.  I see other long-term workers going about their jobs so I believe that I will get a paycheck at the end of the week if I get hired there.  Faith is the most natural thing in the world and if we will believe men it is the most natural thing that we would believe God who cannot lie and can do all he promises. 

But there is a big difference; natural faith is based on experience, saving faith is not.  In human terms saving faith is quite unreasonable for it calls us to do what our experience has taught us cannot work.  It calls us to quit trusting in all that this life has taught us to trust in and work for.  Saving faith is not unreasonable of course, but it is not going to come naturally.  It comes as God reveals himself to us spiritually.  Not by doing physical acts to convince us or Israel would have believed.  It comes as we see by faith in the Word a sovereign God who created and sustains all things and thus is able to do all that he says.  Then it becomes the most rational thing in the world to believe on him.  Of course, this happens only after he has broken our rebellion through regeneration.

I hope that this is the God you know for if it is then I know you will follow him.  There is another who tries to get us to follow him and he uses experience to call us.  He says, "God helps those that help themselves, your duty is to provide for yourself in this life anyway you can".  Or he might be saying to you, “God will never do anything to you that hurts, he is too merciful for that”, and so you are unprepared for real life.  He might tell you the Bible is a nice book but somewhat out of step with the times and cannot be taken literally.  

It is deceivingly like Jesus’ words, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest".  One kind of faith is based on what we see with our eyes; the other is concerned with things as they really are.  Saving faith then is a gift from God.  Not that he imparts the ability to believe to us but reveals to us what in the flesh we cannot see; the glory of God.  Naturally we have faith it is just directed at everything but God.  You cannot believe in what you don’t understand.  All hear, but few trust in who they hear about.  So when God gives us the ability to believe, it is to cause us to stop trusting in things that can’t help and trust in the One who alone can save.

This is why we preach a sovereign God.  How can faith grow unless we grow in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?  Abram’s life is not pie in the sky theology; it is a faithful account of saving faith.  It begins and grows according to how big our God is in our hearts.

The Promises to Abraham, Part 2

Gal 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3:29  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

Col 3:11  Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Genesis is the book of beginnings; it tells us where the material universe originates and most importantly where mankind originates.  In giving us human history it records some genealogies of Adam’s descendants but then something happens at the end of chapter 11.  From that point on the only genealogies we read of are those that came from Seth’s descendants.  It takes us to Abram and then from there the genealogies are only about Abram’s descendants.  The Gentile population is only mentioned as it relates to the Jews. 

And then once we get to the ultimate Jew, Jesus, all genealogies stop and the focus changes from the Jewish people back to the general population both Jew and Gentile.  The verses above speak of this change so that we see that the focus is not who came from Abraham or who did not but now what matters is who is in Christ. 

I think of lot of Christians have been fooled somewhat by the focus on the Jews in the OT.  It seems their theology sprang up long before they got to the NT.  They tend to forget that the point of Jewish history is not because God’s plan for the world revolved around having some sort of eternal relationship with the Jewish nation but the point of his relationship with the Jews was in order to bring about the incarnation of the Son so that he could have an eternal relationship with sinners. 

I think it is significant that not only are there no genealogies after the Lord did his redemptive work, but the Temple and all the genealogical records were destroyed as if God was saying that all that is of no consequence any more.  The old relationship he had with Israel is over because it was only temporary in order to bring about that one Jew who can take away that which separates us from the love of God.   

What all men need, both Jew and Gentile is not an arid rock over in the Middle East and certainly not a temple to make animal sacrifices on any more.  The only thing any of us need is to get right with God and live in his presence forever. 

Now I said most of this in the previous blog article but I wanted to add this: A lot of Christians don’t think the OT is particularly important and if they study it at all it is primarily to get some moral principle out of it to live by.  But it is actually a study of the Christian’s history.  It is a study of how God worked out his plan to glorify himself by redeeming a people from sin.  When we study the history of the Jews we are studying our own history and it has eternal consequences.  If this is true then we shouldn’t find it dry and remote to our lives today because everything we are and do is rooted in it. 

Today many people spend a lot of time and money trying to find their roots.  They want to understand where they came from, how they connect to the past and how that makes them who they are today.  I guess I don’t have a big problem with that as long as they realize how little any of that matters.  Unfortunately a lot of people think who they are related to in the not too distant past matters far too much.

Look, we are all related; we all came from Adam which means we all are ruined sinners.  That alone explains why we think the thoughts we do and why we act the way we act.  You don’t have a temper problem because you are Irish or have red hair; you have a temper problem because you are a human being.  And what ethnic group you belong to should not have near as much influence on your life style as whether you belong to Christ’s family or not.  Notice in Colossians above where he mentions barbarian and Scythian, slave or freeman.  Paul says that none of that is particularly important because if we are in Christ we are not who we once were and we are not headed where our kinsmen in the flesh are headed.  And certainly our lifestyle has much more to do with what we read in the Bible then what land your parents came from.

The OT explains who you are and how it was going to be fixed in the coming Messiah.  And you don’t have to pay a website online to find it out.  God had several men write it down for us so we can study it whenever we want.  Making distinctions between Jews and Gentiles causes us to lose focus on what we all have in common.  Paul points this out in the verses above.  He is telling us how to read the Bible.  Don’t read it as if the Jews have some kind of future and the NT church has a different one.  Read it as all men are one in sin and that the promise made to Abraham was not really about the Jews it was about Christ who would save us from our sins.  

Notice that the word for promise is singular.  The many promises of Gen. 12 had a lot to do with the nation of Israel but they were only to bring about the one promise which was Christ.  The OT isn’t about the Jews and the NT about the Church.  The Bible is about Christ and all those who are in him, not in Abraham.  

To Whom Were the Promises to Abraham Made?

Gal 3:8  And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."  Gal 3:14  so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. Gal 3:19  Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made…  Gal 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3:29  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

One of the great debates in the church is Israel’s relationship to God and the church after the cross.  You have two basic positions I guess.  One side believes the promises made to Israel haven’t been fulfilled and so will be in the future.  The other position is that all the promises made to Israel were fulfilled either in the OT times and ultimately in Christ and so now the Jews are no different than the Gentiles and are under the same covenant as the Gentiles which is the New Covenant.  All men are under the bondage of sin and must be saved the same way and the only thing that awaits any of us is the eternal state. 

An example of the first group, and there are many variations, is John Hagee.  The following quote was taken off his website some years ago.  “I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, which is the word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption. As Christians, we must recognize the critical importance of the Jewish people in God’s plan for us all. We must, in direct fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy, help bring God’s people home to Israel. We invite you to help us continue to raise funds to build a beautiful new dormitory that will house many more children who will be raised in their Jewish traditions according to the Torah. “  Some even join Judaism to be on the winning side when Christ comes back.

Now not all Dispensationalists believe that the Jews don’t need the gospel but this thinking is a result of not realizing that the covenants made with Israel were part of the redemptive plan to bring in the Messiah and are only “eternal” in relation to Christ.  The Jews were never supposed to be some sort of eternal special people above the rest of mankind. 

The above passages in Galatians are just a few that could be used to bear this out.  Notice in vss. 8 and 14 that Paul explains to us that when God made his covenant with Abraham he was preaching the gospel which is that all the nations will be blessed in his coming offspring.  In vs. 16 he says that ultimately this wasn’t about the many offsprings of Abraham in the flesh but one Offspring, Jesus, Gal 3:16  Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, "And to offsprings," referring to many, but referring to one, "And to your offspring," who is Christ. 

It seems to have escaped the attention of many as it did many Jews in Jesus’ day that being descended from Abraham did not necessarily mean anything.  It bought some advantages as Paul speaks about in Rom. 9, but to miss Christ means the judgment of God for the Jew just as a Gentile.  Paul also addresses this in Gal 3:24  So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. Gal 3:25  But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.  Hebrews says as much in Heb 8:13  In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.  .  The physical fulfillment was how God would provide the “Offspring”.  Once he came, Israel’s purpose and the Old Covenant were served and now there is no Jew or Gentile.

There is another point in Gal. 3 to consider also.  In vs. 16 “promises” is plural as he includes some specific promises made to Israel that were needed so they could become a nation and provide a place for the Messiah and his work; these were temporary.    Through Moses, Joshua, and David.  Jos 23:14  "And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed.  1Ki 8:56  "Blessed be the LORD who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant.  All these physical blessings were received in the OT.

But in vs. 17 we see a change from plural to singular, Gal 3:17  This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.  It is pointing to the “big” one, the Big Promise.  The big one was Christ in which the nations shall be blessed.  All the other promises were given to bring about the “big one”.  So Galatians helps keep before us the purpose of this Abrahamic covenant and not get sidetracked by the means to the covenant which was through the Jews.  Hagee has gotten sidetracked into heresy.

With this in mind, everything that happens from Gen. 12 on must have Christ in view in order for it to make any sense.  If Israel is an end in itself then grace takes a back seat to the works of the flesh.  The whole history of Israel concerns and illustrates Christ and was never meant to be anything more than that.  They have no more meaning outside of Christ than any other people.  The highest meaning you can give to an OT passage is as it concerns Christ.  Paul says as much above when he says there is no more Jew or Gentile but all are heirs of Abraham’s promise by faith.

If we read through Galatians 3 with this in mind the passage flows very logically and makes perfect sense in relation to the cross of Christ.  God’s relationship with Israel was temporary in order that the Offspring or Seed (KJV) might be born under the law and become our “blessing” of life.  The gospel was being preached to Abraham as Galatians says, not Israel being established as God’s all time chosen people with no relation to the cross of Christ.  And so I ask you, do you rejoice in Christ today or someone else?  Union to him is all you need in this life to overcome this world.  There is safety in Christ, not Judaism or the Ten Commandments.  He is the winning side, not being Jewish.  Will we exalt Christ alone or the flesh as well?  This truth will affect how you watch the news!  You won’t be upset that the Israelis gave back some of the land that is supposedly given to them by God; who cares!  We look for a new heavens and new earth.  If my big inheritance was that rock we call Palestine, then I don’t have much to look forward to! 

What we need is salvation from sin, not being relocated to Palestine.  Even Abraham knew that Canaan wasn’t what God was talking about.  Heb 11:8  By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. Heb 11:9  By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. Heb 11:10  For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.  Let’s not make the Bible complicated when the NT clears it up for us.  Jesus is Abraham’s offspring and no one else is unless they are united to Christ; born form above.

When Should We Stop Praying?

2Co 12:7  So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.

2Co 12:8  Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.

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.

Of course, this is one of the most well-known and loved passages in the Bible as it explains some of the whys and hows of suffering for saints.  I want to focus on verse 8 for the moment.  Paul has been taught that what he thinks of as a weakness and as something that would therefore hinder his service is actually how the Lord is going to use him and at the same time be the one who receives the glory for what Paul does.  His enemies were saying that his suffering and seeming inability to speak as well as they do and whatever thorn in the flesh he is speaking of in these verses were signs of God’s displeasure but the Lord told Paul that his sufferings and physical weaknesses were actually a sign that he was being used by the Lord. 

He also says that he asked the Lord three times for him to remove this supposed hindrance but that the Lord told him no because it is working great things in Paul.  I was reading someone who was speculating as to why Paul only asked three times.  He thought perhaps Paul was following the Lord’s example in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked for the cup to be removed three times and then asked no more.  Perhaps, but let me speculate some as well.  There is no doubt that after the third prayer Jesus perfectly accepts the Father’s will and moves on to the cross.

As far as Paul is concerned it is quite possible that it wasn’t until after the third time that the Lord gave his answer to Paul thus making any more prayers for deliverance to be sinful rebellion.  To continue to ask for it to be removed when the Lord told him plainly that he was not going to do so and why would be to refuse to be content in the Lord’s will.  Certainly Paul gives us an example of full acceptance of God’s will even in trials.

I would imagine that Paul prayed more than three times about this but these three “pleadings” were perhaps special times of prayer and fasting, but we don’t know that.  What I find significant is that there were a specific number of times that he prays and then he no longer needs to pray.

Afflictions, embarrassments, troubles are unpleasant and there is nothing wrong with asking for relief.  But there is a much greater thing to be concerned about other than relief and that is usefulness.  The Bible speaks about being able to accept suffering when the Lord doesn’t see fit to take it away soon, if at all.  Here we see Paul learning this lesson.  I don’t think we must assume that because Jesus prayed only three times and Paul did as well that the Bible is teaching us that we can only pray three times for something and if we don’t get it then we shouldn’t ask anymore because the answer is final.  I think all that goes beyond the main purpose of the passage.

But in both cases it was a short time before they realized it was time to focus on serving and not relief.  Prayer might continue but the willingness to accept the situation and see what the Lord will do with it became the focus, 9-10.  Whether Paul ever prayed for relief or not after these three times isn’t as important as him rejoicing in his weaknesses and being content in them because they made him an effective servant in the Kingdom of God. 

And so the practical application is that too often we might spend years and years and much time and money trying to get out of an affliction.  We might spend much time in prayer and asking others to pray for us but we don’t spend nearly as much time and energy looking for ways to use the affliction for the Lord’s glory.  In other words, the three prayers of Paul and only three prayers lets me know that he had learned to move on and accept the situation and make the best of it and not assume that it wasn’t the Lord’s will and so focus on relief and not service.  He doesn’t tell the Corinthians that he continues to pray for relief and ask them to pray as well; he is rejoicing that his suffering has a glorious purpose even if it continues until death. 

I think about the health and wealth “ministries” that spend all their time trying to alleviate suffering and actually telling the gullible that the Lord doesn’t want you to suffer when Paul was told the exact opposite.  Afflictions are painful and we are told to come to Christ for relief but very often the “relief” will be strength to endure the trial, not the end of the trial.  Pray for relief and help but very soon pray for opportunities to use the pain for the glory of our Lord.

God Remembers Noah

Gen 8:20  Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

Gen 8:21  And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

Gen 8:22  While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease."

One of the blessings of studying through the account of Noah is the different ways he and the ark teach about Jesus and his work of redemption.  The account above refers to when Noah walks out of the ark after all living things have been destroyed.  I think the inference is that in the back of Noah’s mind was the nagging question as to what would stop the Lord from sending another flood to destroy sinful man.  Noah knew that the sin in his heart had survived the flood and so in a sense, nothing had changed inwardly.

And this is the very first question the Lord deals with and it comes right after Noah had made a blood sacrifice to the Lord and it says that the sacrifice pleased God. The Lord promises to never curse the earth with a flood that destroys all life as he did in the days of Noah.

I think this is fitting as it continues to teach of Christ.  There are many Christians who are confused and ask similar questions today.  They have trusted in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior; they have been saved from the wrath of God against sin but they have not been taught what that means to their future and their assurance.  Part of this is because their pastors refuse to accept what the Bible says about the eternal election unto salvation that the Bible clearly teaches.  One such verse is Act 13:48  And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.  From eternity God has appointed some for eternal life.  There is never any indication that he has appointed them to believe and then fall away; to have life and then to go back into death.  Such an idea takes election out of the hands of a sovereign God and make man’s will the determining factor.  But election is precisely  God determining to save some of fallen man lest all men perish.

Another reason that many suffer with the idea that even though they are believers they can be taken away from Christ is that they simply won’t accept the promises of God in this matter.  Let me list a couple of passages that parallel the account in Gen. 8:20-22.

Jud 1:24  Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy. 

Php 1:6  And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Joh 10:28  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Joh 10:29  My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

The study of the atoning work of Christ is deep and complex in many ways and good men have debated it for 2000 years.  But we need to be sure to not make complex what the Bible has clearly stated.  The above verses make it clear that our salvation is in the Lord’s hand and not ours.  We can’t sin away grace because it is a gift not merited to begin with.  Jude said that Jesus is able to keep us blameless until presented before the presence of God.  If he is able to do this, why does he let some supposedly lose their salvation when he could have stopped it? 

The worse thing about believing you can be separated from Christ is not the lack of peace and stability it brings in the lives of those who believe it but the worse thing is what is says about our Lord and his love for us.  It is to infer that he is a liar,

Rom 8:33  Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.

Rom 8:34  Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died--more than that, who was raised--who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Rom 8:35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

Rom 8:36  As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."

Rom 8:37  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Rom 8:38  For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,

Rom 8:39  nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

If God says no one can bring a charge against me if I am in Christ then I will hang my salvation on the peg of his promise and not on my ability to cling to Christ.

How Strong is Our Endurance?

Gen 5:22  Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Gen 6:9  These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. 

Early on in Genesis we are introduced to two men who are said to walk with God.  One of the things I was struck with was the length of time in which they walked with God.  Enoch lived another three hundred years after this was said of him.  It was said of Noah before he started building the ark and it is generally assumed it took him 120 years to complete it and then he lived another 350 years after the flood.

What I find interesting is that when we compare the length of our lives to theirs we live a very few years.  We only have to endure an extremely short amount of time of trials compared to what some of these men had to go through.  For 120 years Noah worked on a boat that made no sense to the people around him and there can be little doubt that he was ridiculed in some way for it.  It was a difficult task and many days he had to have wondered was this really necessary.  He faced all the challenges from within and without that we face today, yet he endured being faithful to the Lord for centuries.

We moderns, though, seem to fall apart at the least thing and have great difficulty patiently enduring trials without complaints, despair, depression, giving up and just general lack of contentment.  This is not to say that there aren’t many examples all around us of faithful endurance, but sometimes our inability to deal with difficulty says a lot about the strength of our faith. 

We go through difficulty that might last for a few weeks or a few months or even for many years and yet we will never have to endure for centuries.  But often it seems that one of our first reactions is why in the world would the Lord cause this to happen and we seem to think we are entitled to have trials pass quickly.  We immediately start praying that the Lord would remove the affliction long before we get to the point of praying that he would give us patience.  I have been impressed with these two men because they were faithful for centuries and I have asked the Lord to give me the same type of faith (patience) to endure for the short time of life I have on earth.

What I don’t want to do is at the first sign of problems just get depressed, sit at home and do nothing.  If I love the Lord and I love the church I will fight to the death to honor him and protect the church.  This takes an endurance that only comes from the Lord.  But we are not without examples in the Scriptures.

Paul said after at most three decades of suffering, 2Ti 4:6  For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 2Ti 4:7  I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 2Ti 4:8  Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.  I hope that I have the faith to say the same thing after a few months of trials and that I don’t collapse early on.  At the heart of faithfulness is walking with God as we see with Enoch and Noah.  We must make our lives about him and pursue him in his Word or we will not have the faith to endure dark days.