Gods thoughts in bold

Fervour

2010-08-03T17:49:00.000-07:00

Romans 12:11- Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord.

We are justified through faith in Christ alone. I hope we all understand that. But I also hope that we do not use this glorious truth of ‘justification through faith in Christ alone’ to justify disobedience of any sort.

So let’s be really clear on this. A person is saved by faith and trust in Christ alone, and not by works and good deeds. We are sinners by nature and by choice, so our righteous works and good deeds if not accompanied by faith and trust in Christ are unfruitful and insufficient for justification from sin and for salvation. The good news of the Gospel is that it is ‘the power of God for the salvation of all who believe, for in it a righteousness from God is revealed’; in other words, we are saved by the grace and the righteousness of God and our salvation is a gift from God, not a consequence of any righteousness of our own. A person is saved by faith and trust in Christ alone, and not by works and good deeds.

However, in saying that;

James 2:14-17- What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

So, while works and good deeds should not be the point, they should serve as evidences of the reality of the point and the authenticity of your fellowship with the point.

Jesus is the point.

The deeds themselves do not justify, but they are a fruit of, and an evidence of the authenticity and the life of the faith that does justify. And our faith is suffocated when it is not given the opportunity to express itself in good deeds.

So, Paul wrote to the Colossians, ‘whatever you do, in whatever context you do it in, (work, study, family, recreation…whatever) do it as service to the Lord’. (my paraphrase). Because Christ is Lord of all, we have opportunity to worship and serve Him in everything that we do and to do so is to ‘offer our bodies as a living sacrifice’.

Paul commands that we ‘never be lacking in zeal, but that we keep our spiritual fervour’. This is a hard teaching.

That word ‘fervour’ is a very good translation- it means ‘very hot; glowing’, ‘exhibiting or marked by great intensity of feeling’; that’s exactly what the original language of this text conveys and commands. So, Paul is commanding us that we keep our love for God glowing hot at all times; seeking and serving Him with great intensity of feeling. Do not resign yourself to passionless and half-hearted spirituality and empty, meaningless religion- be on fire for God, always.

‘Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour’- What Paul is saying here is that though there are times and seasons, trials and circumstances in life which can make being zealous and fervent in seeking and serving the Lord very difficult, there is not a time or a season, a trial or a circumstance, where being ‘lukewarm’ in your seeking and service to the Lord should be acceptable to you.

‘Keep your spiritual fervour’.

This is one of the reasons why the fellowship of the church is so vitally important for the believer- because there will be times in life where you feel like shrinking back and giving up and drifting into lukewarmness and you need people to ‘spur you on towards love and good deeds’.

Because He gave His all to secure freedom for us, let’s give our all for Him, serving Him in all of the strength that He provides.

Love without Hypocrisy

2010-07-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

Romans 12:9- Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

Let's look at the second part of this verse first

Romans 12:9- “…Hate what it evil; cling to what is good’’

There is an objective, universal and defined good and an objective, universal and defined evil.

What is actually and truly good and what is actually and truly evil does not differ from person to person, from culture to culture, from generation to generation- God defines.

Good and evil is not defined individually, and relatively, by us- it is defined by God.

What this means is that good is not necessarily what you like or what you want to be good. Evil is not necessarily what you don't like or want you want to be evil.

In fact, we are inclined in our sin to hate what is good and to cling to what is evil.

John 3:19-20- This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

That's our inclination; our nature; in sin we love the darkness; we cling to evil; we hate the light.

Romans 12:9- ‘’Hate what is evil…’’

Don’t make the mistake of making a distinction between evils in your mind that you use to rationalize and justify your own personal collection of evils. Don’t suppose that some kinds of sin are self-destructive, but do not affect others. That’s false. Evil of any kind dishonors God and hurts people. There is no victimless sin or sin where there is but one victim. So, let’s be convinced of this; that evil of any and every kind is bad for us, and we would benefit to flee from it.

Paul chose his words very carefully and deliberately in verse. 9.

He does not say in this verse merely 'choose good over evil'- so it's not about your willpower- your resolve to come into the light, overpowering your will. He says 'hate what is evil (other translations say 'abhor' or 'loathe' what is evil) and cling to (cleave to; embrace with the deepest intimacy) what is good'.

In other words, and I find this to be incredibly good news, it is not that you find the strength within yourself to overpower your will and to choose good over evil, it is that God acts and God helps and your heart changes in such a way that you desire the goodness of God and you run to it; you loathe the evil of sin and you flee from it.

God works in us to draw us to Himself.

Earlier in chapter 12 of Romans;

Romans 12:2- Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world (loving what is evil, living in darkness), but be transformed (how?) by the renewing of your mind. (that is the work of the Holy Spirit on the believer). Then you will be able to test approve what God's will is- His good, pleasing and perfect will.

So, we ask, ‘Holy Spirit, work in us and help us to feel the same way as you do about that which is good and that which is evil. Renew our hearts and our minds in order that our lives might be transformed for your glory’.

That renewal doesn’t happen instantaneously. It’s not that God ‘snaps his fingers’ and all of a sudden we, as lovers of darkness and haters of light, become haters of darkness and lovers of light. Renewal is a life-long process that God initiates in us and completes in us. But hopefully, if you are born again, you can recognize evidences of this process taking place in your life- dissatisfaction with sin and darkness and a longing for Jesus and the light- a change of heart and a change of mind.

Now, to the first half of the verse- Romans 12:9- ‘'Love must be sincere…’’

(The New American Standard Bible says ‘Let love be without hypocrisy’- that’s a better translation, I think)

So, what is hypocrisy? And what would love look like without it?

Simply put, hypocrisy tries to make the outside look better than the inside. So, hypocrisy puts forward what looks like loving behaviors that do not really actually and accurately represent, and even hides, what we are feel inside.

Jesus said to the religious leaders; Matthew 15:7-8- ‘’You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘'These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.’’

The outside is not complimented by the inside. That’s hypocrisy.

Be warned- ‘man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart’.

It’s great that you’re singing; it’s great that you’re serving; it’s great that you’re giving- but where is your heart? Because singing, serving, giving etc is only worship when it comes out of the overflow of a Christ-exalting heart. Otherwise, it's just works.

So, we ask, ‘Holy Spirit, help us to love you and to love others without hypocrisy Renew our hearts and our minds in order that our lives might be transformed for your glory’.

Now, if you've read this far, let me point out that ‘let your love be genuine’ and ‘hate what is evil, cling to what is good’ are not two separate, detached thoughts. On the contrary, there is a clear, distinct relationship between our love for God proving to be sincere and without hypocrisy and our hatred towards that which is evil; our desire for that which is good.

Our hatred towards what is evil and our desire for God and that which is good is what proves our love for God to be sincere, genuine; authentic; without hypocrisy.

Jesus said;

John 14:15- If you love me, you will obey what I command

That isn’t a manipulative statement. I know that’s how you read it. But this isn’t Jesus manipulating you in order to get you to obey what he commands. It’s a statement of truth and consequence. The truth is that the consequence of a genuine love for God that comes from Him drawing us near to Him is obedience, in that we hate the evil that He hates and we cling to that which is good, because our desires have changed on account of Him. Then, our attitude becomes like David in Psalm 40:8- ‘’I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

A change of Heart

2010-07-12T23:52:00.000-07:00

Proverbs 4:22- Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

Your life is like a river and everything that flows down the river of your life comes down-stream from your heart. So, just as if there’s pollution flowing down a river, you need to go upstream to find its source in order to clean it up, so it is with sin in our lives; we need to go upstream to our hearts and deal with it there.

Jesus taught this explicitly.

Matthew 23:25-26- Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

Mark 7:20-23- "…What comes out of a man is what makes him 'unclean. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'"

Jesus taught that we sin because our hearts are sinful and upstream from every area of our lives; sin comes out of the overflow of our heart and manifests itself in various ways. We sin because our hearts are sinful and because our hearts are sinful we love and desire sin.

So, the verdict is in- and it's not the one that we wanted. Our inclination; our nature, the orientation of our heart in sin, is that we are darkness-loving and light hating. And if we are to come ‘out of the darkness and into the light’; if we are to ‘hate what is evil and cling to what is good’; we need a change of heart.

That’s why this work of regeneration is so wonderful and so important.Because aside from the work of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit in us to give us a new heart and a new mind with reformed desires, we will not come into the light- we love the darkness too much.

Jesus plainly teaches this in John 3, and then he goes on to say in verse. 21- ‘But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done (i.e. living by the truth, coming into the light) has been done through God.’

So we come out of the darkness and into the light because God begins and will complete a work in us to draw us to Himself.

That this work in us has begun is assumed in Romans 12, where Paul says;

That renewal doesn’t happen instantaneously. It’s not that God wriggles his nose and all of a sudden we, as lovers of darkness and haters of light, become haters of darkness and lovers of light. Renewal is a life-long process.

But hopefully, if you are born again, you can recognize evidences of this process taking place in your life- dissatisfaction with sin and darkness and a longing for Jesus and the light- a change of heart and a change of mind.

Paul calls for our heart and it’s feelings and our mind and it’s attitudes to come into conformity with God’s word and will in such a way that can only be achieved by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 12 calls us to live and think and act and feel in a way that goes far beyond superficial deeds and towards the radical outworking of a transformed heart- and only God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can truly and totally change our hearts in this way.

A quick lesson from my first leader, Phil Hutchinson

2010-07-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

Romans 12:10- Be devoted to one another in brotherly love….’’

He does not say ‘in view of God’s mercy, tolerate each other…put up with each other’- he commands us to do much more than that.

1 Peter 1:22-23- Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

So, the will of God for his children is not just to do good things for each other, and not just to pray for each other or speak decently of each other or to tolerate each other- but to love each other from the heart.

Some of you will be thinking; ‘’I see that God wants to me love my brothers and sisters in Christ, but there are some that I honestly don’t love. I want to be obedient to God in loving them but I know that God sees my heart and I don’t want to be a hypocrite. What do I do?’’

First and foremost, pray.

Pray that God, the Holy Spirit would move in power on your heart and work the miracle that neither you nor I can work on our own. Pray that God would change your heart. Pray that you would see your brother or your sister through your Father’s eyes.

I still remember this lesson that I learnt from my first leader; Phil Hutchinson. I had just become a Christian and He discipled me early on. He had his work cut out for him.

I remember I had a major problem with a girl in the church. I hated her. To me, she was the problem with the church- the reason that it wasn’t growing. I told Phil about my feelings and I was sure that he was going to agree and expel her from the church. To my surprise and to my disappointment, he instructed me to ‘pray for her’.

Pray for her??

Not pray about her??

Not pray against her??

Not to pray that she would change, but to pray for her good??

So I did and the most miraculous thing happened; she didn’t change at all, but my heart towards her did.

Prayer works- if there is somebody who you are struggling to love, particularly if they are your brother or your sister in Christ, pray for them and pray for the Holy Spirit to help you to love them in the way God calls you to.

Parameters for gifts

2010-07-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

Romans 12:3-8- For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to hisfaith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

Here’s the big picture- in view of God’s mercy, serve one another with your gifts with humility. That is what Paul is trying to achieve in this passage; that, having tasted grace and mercy from God, we would all extend grace and mercy from God to each other in various ways.

In this passage, Paul identifies the parameters for the operation of gifts of all kinds in the church- humility. Verse. 3 sets up and carries through the entire passage.

Romans 12:3- For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment…’’

In another conversation about the operation of gifts within the church in 1st Corinthians, he identifies these parameters more broadly as being ‘love’.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3- If I speak in the tonguesof men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,but have not love, I gain nothing.

As soon as we step outside of the parameters of selfless humility and love in the operation of any gift, pride threatens to spoil the act of using our gifts and the outcome of our using our gift. Gifts operating outside of the parameters of selfless humility and love often lead to spiritual abuse. So, Paul says, ‘to every one of you: begin to operate in gifts; but before you do, and as you do, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment’.

A person with sober judgment acknowledges that they are fallen, but doesn’t stop there; they ultimately rejoice in Christ and exalts Christ and lives by faith in Christ. Sober judgment consents to do great things for the Kingdom of God, yet in the knowledge that the strength to do these great things comes from God and we are utterly dependent on Him to do them. So, Paul says ‘keep in the front of your minds always and in all that you do who you live by faith in, who you depend on and where your gifts come from’

James 1:16-17- ‘’Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…’’

Paul continues in verse 6; ‘’…We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.’’

God, in His grace, gives gifts to you, not for you, but for others.

1 Peter 4:10- Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.

So, amazingly, we have the opportunity to be used by God to ‘administer His grace in various ways and forms’ in, though not limited to, the church.

Paul continues;

Romans 12:4-5- Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

Paul also uses this analogy of the church being a body whose members belong to each other and depend on each other in 1 Corinthians 12, which, remember, is also a conversation about the exercising of gifts within the church.

1 Corinthians 12:14-21- Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"

The simple point of this is that as members of His body we belong to Him and we belong to each other; and that we need each other, in order for the body to function, as it should.

We are all different. Paul call’s for diversity in this passage in verse 17 ‘If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?’

So, we all, who belong to the one body, have different functions and different gifts according to and governed by God’s grace and arrangement And the idea of God’s arrangement is for our various functions and gifts to operate in such a way that the body is served, cared for and built up.

Old Jewish men don't run

2010-06-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

Luke 15:1-2- Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."

Catch the tone of their ‘muttering’- it is not as observation, it is an accusation. It is one of outrage, condemnation and contempt. They are speaking out of the overflow of a hard heart towards the lost- one that finds it completely unacceptable that Jesus would socialize with lost sinners and receive them as friends.

Jesus responds by telling 3 parables to teach them and us about the Kingdom of God; the third of which being the famous ‘Parable of the Lost Son’. In this parable, the elder son represents these religious leaders.

Luke 15:11-16- Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. (that’s sin and rebellion- where we turn our back and God and separate ourselves from him). After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. (What a fall from grace for a Jewish boy to covet pig's food- sin leads to slavery and bondage) When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.'

Luke 11:20- ‘’So he got up and went to his father …’’

That repentance- that we turn away from sin and our slavery to sin and go to the Father.

But how will the Father, whom we have sinned against, receive us?

Luke 11:20- ‘’…But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.’’

Now, a little cultural nuance here- it is considered outrageous and shameful in Jewish culture for an older Jewish man to run.

This from the commentary on this parable from Kenneth Bailey, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem-

‘’The prodigal son is on his way back home! What can he expect from the people of the village? They will mock him, laugh at him, scorn him. The children will throw stones at him or spit at him. Some will turn their backs. This young man who brought so much shame on his family will never again find his place in the village. But suddenly the people of the village see something totally unexpected. The father who was so scorned by his younger son, does something himself that will make him a laughingstock. He picks up his garment and runs! He is making a fool of himself. That is unheard of for a man his age in that culture. Now the children will mock him, too! And so these two, father and son, come together, both objects of scorn, back into the village. The father was willing to sacrifice his own honor, so that his son would not have to come home alone in disgrace.’’

So when the father runs, this is outrageous, humble, impressions-be-damned grace extended towards undeserving sinners like us.

Luke 15:21-24 "The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ "But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

Now, here the older son enters the parable;

Luke 15:25-30- "Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. 'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.' "The older brother became angry and refused to go in. (that is precisely the attitude demonstrated by the muttering religious leaders) So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders (that’s what a religious attitude will do- it will turn this loving father into a slave-driver and his loving guidance into grievous orders in your eyes) Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends (as if the father owed him something). But when this son of yours (notice that he does not say ‘this brother of mine’) who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

The tragedy is when a lost son turns from sin and slavery and comes to the church or to the Christian, where they should be greeted by outrageous, humble, impressions-be-damned grace extended towards undeserving sinners by undeserving sinners and instead they meet the condemning, contemptuous, hard-hearted religious elder sons.

This elder son lived in the Father’s house, by the Father’s rules, but never knew the Father’s heart- which rejoices for His son that ‘was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.'

And he is deceived, and deceiving, if he is professing to not be lost, but be found, and to know the Father- He is a liar.

1 John 4:19-21- We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

How does God feel about this attitude? God is angry and deeply grieved by the hard-hearted, merciless attitude of the religious who look at the lost with contempt. Let me show you this in Scripture- remembering that Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being.

Mark 3:1-5- Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Stand up in front of everyone." Then Jesus asked them, "Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored.

If we love God, we must love others- we must share His heart for the lost and reach out to them on His behalf. And when one lost sinner repents, and turns their back on sin and comes home, heaven shakes with delight.

Luke 15:3-7- Then Jesus told them this parable: "Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

So, this says something of the ‘attribution of value in heaven’- and therefore what we should value on earth, in the church.Jesus loves the 99. He cares for the 99. He rejoices in the 99. He does not neglect the 99. But He will not rest while one of His lost sheep, called by His name, is lost.

I love serving a God that refuses to cut His losses.

And when He finds that 1 wayward, rebellious, lost person, and puts them on His shoulders, the shoulders that bore their sin, to carry them home- the Bible says ‘that heaven rejoices’.And hopefully, we as the 99 will not only rejoice with Him, but we will involve ourselves in His search and rescue effort as we have been commanded.

Dividing Pride, Uniting Humility

2010-06-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

If you’re new to the Gospels, the disciples, though they had unparalleled first-hand access to Jesus, got it completely wrong a lot of the time because they were ordinary, fallen people like you and I. We ought to find that encouraging because we are often the same way- despite walking with Jesus, being in His presence, hearing His words, we have an astounding capacity to get Him and His way completely wrong sometimes.

I love that Jesus perseveres with us despite us.

Mark 10:35- Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. "Teacher," they said, "we want you to do for us whatever we ask."

What an astonishing statement of sinful pride- ‘God, I want you to do for me whatever I want’ In pride, whether we express it or not, that is our view of God- that He exists for us. Wrong. We exist for Him. We ought to do for Him whatever He asks.

Jesus probes-

Mark 10:36-37- "What do you want me to do for you?" he asked. They replied, "Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory."

What we see in motion here is a pride-fuelled power-play from James and John to gain a position elevated above the other disciples. They covet a position of prominence and glory. They are, in effect, grasping at equality with God.

This, in reality, is a complete contrast to the attitude of Jesus, which His disciples are to emulate. Philippians 2 tells us that Jesus, though ‘being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant’. Pride covets the position of Jesus rather than the person of Jesus. It sees Jesus as a means to an end, rather than ‘glorifying Him’ the chief end. It desires Jesus for what He can do for us, rather than for Himself.

James and John momentarily fell into the snare of foolish, sinful pride.

In verse. 41, we see that when the disciples heard about the power play of James and John, they were indignant with them. An argument broke out among them, as to who was the greatest. That’s what pride does; it divides, one against the other

In the Corinthian church, they were essentially having the same argument; which teacher was the greatest? Look at this;

1 Corinthians 1:11-13- My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, "I follow Paul"; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Cephas"; still another, "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?

1 Corinthians 3:4-5- For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.

Humility is happy for Jesus to get all of the glory. Pride wants a share it does not deserve. Paul labored for the church and demanded none of the glory for it.

Paul concludes;

1 Corinthians 3:21-23- So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephasor the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

and in;

1 Corinthians 4:7- ‘’….What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?

Humility recognizes that everything it has is a gift from God and therefore there is no basis for them to boast, except to ‘boast in the Lord’. And that attitude unites people where pride divides.

It says in verse. 41- ‘So Jesus called them together…’

Then, in verse. 42, he says;

Mark 10:42-44- …"You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.

Jesus is in no way anti-authority. Jesus did and Jesus does institute authority among us in His church, and the Bible tells us in Hebrews that we are to ‘obey those leaders and submit to their authority’.But the difference between a proud shepherd and a humble shepherd is that a proud shepherd uses the authority that they have been given to be serve themselves; a humble shepherd uses the authority that they have been given to serve others.

The church needs humble shepherds who will be examples to them in the way that they love and serve Jesus and others and lead the way in humility. The world needs humble Christians who will be examples to them in they love and serve Jesus and others and lead the way in humility.

We all have good reason and a great commission to humble ourselves.

Let’s conclude with verse. 45;

Mark 10:45- For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

He came, not to be served. He came to give his life a ransom for many. Think about this act of humility. Let’s consider that this act of giving his life as a ransom was intentional. It says that ‘he came to do it’. He came to die.

Look back a few verses in Mark 10:32-34-

Mark 10:32-34-They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. "We are going up to Jerusalem," he said, "and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise."

So Jesus is knowingly walking into the jaws of suffering and death because He came to give his life a ransom for many. He is choosing to suffer; He is choosing to die; to ransom us from sin and death.

Where Pride Ends

2010-05-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Philippians 2:3-11- Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very natureGod, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

When you image Jesus, what do you see? Jesus asked His disciples essentially the same question- who do you see that He is? Pride ends and humility begins when we see Jesus as He truly is.

He is not;

a ‘baby in a manger’. It is true and it is significant that Jesus entered into this word as a baby in a manger. But he left that manger a long time ago. When you see Jesus face to face, you will not come face to face with a baby.
a ‘man on a cross’. It is true and it is very, very significant that he hung on a cross as penalty for our sin. But he left that cross a long time ago. When you see Jesus face to face, you will not come face to face with a man on a cross.

Jesus is the King on the throne.

He is Holy.

He rules with sovereignty and He reigns in unparalleled glory.

He’s not a baby; He’s not a man; He is God.

He was God and has always been God. God became a man so that he might act as a savior to mankind and in his death we were rescued and redeemed from slavery to sin and death. Then, when He was resurrected, He ascended and He resumed his seat on the throne, which He will occupy into all of eternity- that’s Jesus.

You’ll see that chronological progression in that passage in Philippians.

He was on the throne; verse. 6 says that He was ‘in very nature, God’
He left the throne, humbling himself and becoming a man so that through Him, our sins could be atoned for; verses. 7 and 8 says that He ‘made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross!
He then rose from the dead, ascended and returned to the throne; verses. 9-11 rightly states that he has now been ‘exalted to the highest place and has been given the name that is above every name; that at His name, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that He is Lord.

I love the song ‘Holy’, written by Ps. Phil (Pringle) and others. We sing that song not so much to tell Jesus that he is holy, but to stir us into a desperately needed awareness that He is holy; that we might see Jesus as He truly is.This helps us in our pride because when we see Jesus as He truly is- holy and glorious- then we see ourselves as we truly are- unholy and sinful- and then if we are wise enough to embrace that uncomfortable truth, we will humble ourselves.

Let me show you a couple of examples of this happening in Scripture.

Isaiah

John 12:41 speaks of Isaiah and says that ‘he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him’. This occurred hundreds of years before Jesus walked the earth as a man when the Prophet Isaiah had an incredible vision of Jesus, as He was and as He is and as He is to come.

Isaiah 6:1-4- In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

That’s Jesus- glorious and Holy.

When Isaiah saw Jesus as He is, he also saw himself as He was in the light of the glory of Jesus and he humbled himself.

Isaiah 6:5- "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty."

Simon Peter

For much of Jesus’ life on earth, His glory that Isaiah saw was veiled. Occasionally, however, the veil was taken away and people saw Jesus not as a humble man, but as glorious Lord. Luke’s Gospel tells us in chapter 5 of Jesus teaching by a lake. He saw two fishermen, one of whom was Simon Peter.

Luke 5:4-7- When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let downthe nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

In the wake of this miracle, he saw Jesus as Isaiah did; as He was, and is, and is to come- holy and glorious. Consequently, he also saw himself as he was in the light of the Lord’s glory and he humbled himself

Luke 5:8- When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!"

Pride ends and humility begins when we see Jesus as He truly is.

The point is this- Jesus is Lord. He’s not baby on a manger; he’s not man on a cross; He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.And He set an example for us when he voluntarily came down from the highest place, and made himself nothing; he made himself like us; in order to serve us; even to the point of death. He accommodated us, in His mercy.

So, in light of that, what should our attitude be?

The same as the attitude he demonstrated in His humility. Pride has no basis once we see Jesus, and we see ourselves in the light of his glory- because what do we have to boast about aside from Him?For us to accommodate each other and to bear with and forgive each other and to serve each other comes nowhere close to comparing to and repaying Him for what He has done for us.

Philippians 2:3-4- Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

This attitude flies directly in the face of our pride.

In pride, we act on selfish ambition and vain conceit all the time. We consider ourselves to be better or to be more important than others. We look out for #1, rather than looking out for the interests of others.

That is not the Jesus way.

Resurrection

2010-04-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, as I was collecting my thoughts for our Easter services, I received some bad news. My nephew, Ethan, was driving a car which collided with a truck and, sadly, he was killed instantly at around 5am on Wednesday. As I was contemplating his funeral, I wondered whether there would be hope in the air? In the midst of all of the tears and all of the tributes, would there be the hope of the coming resurrection that belongs to the one who has put their faith in Jesus for salvation from sin and death? I’ve been at those funerals- though solemn and attentive to the proper commemoration of the death, the solemnity is ultimately and wonderfully overwhelmed by the sure hope of a glorious resurrection.

I guess that's what Easter is like- a solemn and attentive commemoration of the death of Jesus, which ultimately gave way to an overwhelming sense of hope in His resurrection. The grand truth that we celebrate at Easter is that though Jesus died; death could not hold him down; for He has risen. And, for that reason, there is hope in the air.

Easter brings us some bad news

Romans 3:23- All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

This scripture is the correct diagnosis of the fundamental problem of us all- our sin. Our problem is the disparity between the righteousness of God and the righteousness of humanity, the separation that this disparity causes between God and us, and the natural consequence of that separation- deserved condemnation from a just God leading to eternal wrath.

This is the gravest of crises.

It is a snare that only has one way of escape.

All humanity is in desperate need of a savior from sin.

Now, we shouldn’t rush on to quickly from the word- ‘all’.

‘All have sinned and (all) fall short of the glory of God’

It’s not that ‘some have sinned and some fall short’- that in judgment, mankind will be measured against each other and separated into categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, according to their comparative righteousness and works. How we measure up against each other in righteousness and works will play no part in determining whether we will inherit eternal life or eternal wrath. ‘All have sinned and (all) fall short of the glory of God’.

All may fearfully anticipate just condemnation on account of their sin. You and I, apart from Christ, are a part of this ‘all’.

And it was because we all found ourselves in this snare of sin and death that Jesus came.

This is the good news.

That God became flesh and was born- Jesus.

Though subjected to every kind of temptation, he lived an unblemished life; a life without sin, so that in His death, all of our sin, past, present and future, may be heaped upon Him.

He was falsely accused of wrongdoing; wrongfully condemned to die; cruelly appointed to be crucified on a cross; to suffer a bloody, violent and painful death.

As horrifically painful as the cross was, the physical pain paled in comparison to the agony of the last moments of his life, as he hung on the cross, the Bible records that he screamed a cry of dereliction- ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

At that moment, Jesus experienced, for the first time, the separation from God that comes as a result of Sin- the separation that we deserve, and He did not.

In His death, He took our place and died so that we might have newness of live; salvation from sin.

Romans 8:1- Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The result of the death of Jesus on the cross, there is ‘now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

Now, if this result was achieved by Jesus in his death, why is the resurrection important?

Because if Jesus had not risen from the dead, none of anything that he achieve in his death would have been of any value at all. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is ultimate and divine confirmation that Jesus was indeed the Savior Messiah, who can justify us from sin, redeem us from death and offer us eternal life. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, he died on the cross in vain. But, he did rise.

1 Corinthians 15:13-20- If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

Evidently, what was happening in the church in Corinth that prompted Paul to write these words is that there were some people within the church who were denying that a resurrection from the dead takes place, thus denying that Jesus rose from the dead.

Today, there are many people who would say that Jesus was ‘a good man’, ‘a great moral teacher’; but would deny many of His claims, such as the claim that He would rise from the dead.

Here’s a great excerpt from C.S Lewis from his classic book ‘Mere Christianity’.

‘’I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.’’

The resurrection of Jesus is the validation of Jesus as God, from God; therefore, it is essential to the Christian faith that Jesus rose and that Jesus is alive. If he did not rise and if he is not alive, Paul teaches that this is of major consequence. Let me show you these from 1^st Corinthians 15-

If he did not rise and if he is not alive, our preaching is useless (verse. 14). In other words, the proclamation of the message of the Gospel is of absolutely no consequence

If he did not rise and if he is not alive our faith is futile (verse. 15). Our trust in Jesus is of no consequence and it is powerless.

If he did not rise and if he is not alive, you are still in your sin. (verse. 17). In other words, If Jesus did not rise from the dead, his death was not sufficient atonement from our sin and we can still anticipate judgment and wrath on account of our sin.

If he did not rise and if he is not alive, all of those who have died perish. (verse. 18) To perish is not merely to die physically. All of us will die physically, whether we are in Christ Jesus or not. Some will perish on account of their sin; that is they will suffer just penalty for their sin and experience eternal wrath. But in Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection, there is no hope that we will rise as He rose and that we will not perish, rather we will enjoy eternal life.

If he did not rise and if he is not alive, we are to be pitied above all men (verse. 19). Why? Because we are wasting our lives in false hope. If Christ did not rise, then we will certainly not rise, and there is no hope considering anything beyond today. Paul alludes to this rationale in verse. 32- ‘If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

So, all of that to say that the resurrection of Christ is a big deal. It is one of those doctrines that if we were to remove, Christianity as a faith would collapse. If death could hold Jesus down, the Christian faith is of no consequence at all.

Now, let’s turn those points into an affirmation to accommodate for the truth of the resurrection.

Because He rose and because He is alive, our preaching of the Gospel is powerful.

Romans 1:16-17- I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

Because He rose and because He is alive, our faith is not futile. It is powerful, even for the forgiveness of sin.

Romans 3:22-26- This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Because He did rise and because He is alive, all of those who have faith in Jesus will not perish; instead of eternal wrath, they will be free to enjoy eternal life.

John 3:16-18- "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son.

Because He did rise and because he is alive, we have a living hope.

1 Peter 1:3-9- Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

The bad news of Romans 3:23 is hard to swallow- like medicine. But the good news of the Gospel heals us from the plague of humanity- our sin.

He is risen indeed.

Easter

2010-03-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

God created us to reflect Him.

Genesis 1:26-27- Then God said, ‘’Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

That's the account of creation in Genesis 1. Genesis chapter 2 zooms in to give a closer account of the creation of mankind.

Genesis 2:7- The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

All other life, including the animals, was formed by the spoken command of God and created according to its own kind. But here, God Himself gets personally and intimately involved in creation, forming man and breathing the breath of life into his nostrils. This is a differentiation that separates mankind from all of other created life; that we are not created in the mere image of our kind; rather, we are created in the image of the creator.

Psalm 139:13-14- For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

In the same way that God was personally involved with the creation of Adam, he was personally and intimately involved in our creation. We too were created as image bearers of God. And it is very important that, like the Psalmist, we know that full well- because I can’t think of another factor that will define you more than your understanding of your origin and your subsequent identity.

Anyway, in creation, mankind, both man and woman, fully alive, reflected fully, the glory of God, as we were intended to.

Then, we fell.

In the fall, both Adam and Eve, the mother and father of humanity, wilfully disobeyed God in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one tree that they were commanded to not eat from. In doing so, through their rebellion, sin entered into the world and it is sin that causes us to not fully reflect God as we should.

Romans 3:23 declares- ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. In sin, and because of sin, we fall short of the glory of our intended creation and we do mirror God as we should.

Romans 6:23- For the wages of sin is death….

But there is one that has reflected God perfectly. His name is Jesus.

Perhaps the most well known verse of scripture in the world proclaims that the reason for Jesus was that ‘God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but would have eternal life’’ In that 'the wages of sin is death' and 'all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God', all of us found ourselves in need of a saviour. And Jesus came to be that saviour. Jesus came because without his intervention, we were on a pathway to perishing and because of His great love for us, He was compelled to come to our aid. This isn’t what we should remember at Easter- this is what we should remember every waking moment of our lives.

Romans 5:6-8- You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God became flesh and was born.

Jesus.

He lived a life without fault; without sin, so that when he went to the cross, he was completely innocent, not carrying the weight of His own sin, so he could take the weight of our sin upon himself.

Jesus didn’t smile on the cross.

There wasn’t a chocolate bunny or hot cross bun in sight.

The cross was bloody, violent and painful for Jesus.

But the physical pain paled in comparison to the agony of the last moments of his life-as he hung on the cross, the Bible records that he cried out ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’

At that moment, Jesus experienced, for the first time in his life, the separation from God that comes as a result of Sin.

Not long after, He breathed his last breath- but death could not hold him down.

Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead.

If death was sin’s ultimate victory, than the resurrection was the ultimate evidence of the victory won for us by Jesus over Sin.

And now, on account of Him, we, though deserving of death on account of our sin, can live on account of his righteousness.

So what then?

Romans 8:29- For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

So we, as Christians, are to seek in life, by God’s empowering grace, to become more and more like Jesus. As we become more like Jesus, we reflect God’s image more and more, as we originally were intended to when we were created. Ultimately, this takes place in death.

1 Corinthians 15:49- And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the man from heaven.

What that means is that in sin, we bear the image of Adam. But in Jesus, as we become more and more like Him, we are able to reflect God better and better. And eventually, we will die and we will rise and Jesus died and rose; and we will be restored to our intended state, perfect reflections of God’s image.

Fear God?

2010-03-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

1 Peter 1:13-21-Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

There are three interlinked commands in this passage of scripture.

First, that we would live in the living hope- that we put our hope, our confident expectation, in Jesus and in his grace, for salvation.
Secondly, that we would live in holiness- that by His grace, we would learn to ‘say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.

The third is this;

that we would live in ‘reverent fear’.

What does Peter mean by this? What does it mean for the believer in Christ to live in ‘reverent fear’?

The whole idea of ‘fearing God’ is something of an ‘elephant in the room’- it is an important and obvious topic that we see in the Word of God that is hardly discussed, because the discussion can make us feel uncomfortable. But the Bible teaches us that God is to be feared; and so we need to wrestle with what it means for us as believers to reverently fear God in the way that this passage of scripture commands.

There is a difference between reverently fearing God and being afraid of God. God wants you to reverently fear Him; He does not want you to be afraid of Him.

Parents will understand the difference. You want your children to not be afraid of you; to know that you desire a close relationship with them; to know that you love them deeply. But you also what them to revere you enough to obey you; that when you say ‘don’t run out on the road’, they take heed of what you say. You do not want them to be afraid of you, but you want them to revere you and live with a healthy fear of the outcome of their disobedience of you. Not a fear that cripples, but a fear that protects and preserves- a fear that will keep them off the road.

So, Peter tells us to live out our lives as believers with a reverent fear. A reverent fear that will keep us off the broad road of sin that leads to our destruction. The evidence as to whether we are full of or lacking in this reverent fear of our Heavenly Father is best revealed to us by our obedience or disobedience in that moment of temptation- in the moment when we are faced with the choice to turn towards God and away from sin or turn away from God and towards sin.

This is how these 3 commandments of this passage of 1st Peter interlink. He wants us to reverently fear Him in a way that causes us to put our hope in Him and His grace and to abandon sin that we may draw nearer to Him, desiring to be with Him and to be as He is- holy. These three commandments are as one.

Peter gives us this reason to live in reverent fear in verse.18;

1 Peter 1:18-19- For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

To reverently fear God is to treat the blood of Christ and the grace it brings to us as being precious by choosing God over sin.

To do the opposite is the opposite.

Hebrews 10 picks this up;

Hebrews 10:26-29- If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?

There is a difference between reverently fearing God and being afraid of God. God wants you to reverently fear Him so that you would not have cause to be afraid of Him.

The story of the ‘fall of man’ in Genesis is a perfect example of this. God put Adam into the Garden of Eden, and commanded him, as we read in Genesis 2:16-

Genesis 2:16-17-You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Evidently, Adam did not reverently fear God enough to keep His commands; he disobeyed and rebelled against God, eating from the fruit of the tree that God commanded Him not to eat from. It was at this point that Sin entered into the world. And as a consequence of this Sin, Adam became afraid of God. He heard the Lord God coming and he tried to hide from Him. We read from verse 9 of chapter 3;

Genesis 3:9-10- But the Lord God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid…’’

When we disobey and rebel against God, which is what sin is; we demonstrate a lack of that healthy type of fear towards God that causes us to shun sin and unrighteousness.

The difference between one who reverently fears God and one who has cause to be afraid of God is the one who reverently fears God runs to Him, away from sin, and the one who has cause to be afraid runs from Him, towards sin.

Fear God. Come into the light.

The Big Pile

2010-03-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

What I aim to do in this blog is to help you to see in Scripture that if you are a Christian, to be anything other than a generous giver is unacceptable.

2 Corinthians 9:6-7- Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

When we first come to faith in Christ, we come in a state of opposition to him; meaning that we are quite the opposite of him.

When I first came to Jesus, one of the most attractive things about him to me was that he was so unlike me; he was so radically different to me, in so many ways. Then I found out that He had given up His life for me so that I could follow him ‘through a small gate and down a narrow road that led to life’.

So I began following Him and I made it my aspiration in life to become like Him. That’s what being a Christian is all about. I looked at Him and I looked at me, and I realized that if I wanted to be like him, I needed to change. And so I invited the Holy Spirit to speak to me and to work on me to help me to change and to be more like Christ in various ways. This is an ongoing work that takes place in the life of the Christian- it’s called ‘sanctification’.

When I first met Jesus, I was really unkind. Then I discovered that Jesus was kind. So I set my sights on becoming kind, like he was, and he is kind. And by God’s grace, I am now kinder than I was, and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me kinder.
When I first met Jesus, I was really impatient. Then I discovered that Jesus was patient. So I set my sights on becoming patient, like he was, and he is patient. And by God’s grace, I am now more patient than I was, and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me more patient.
When I first met Jesus, I was really uncompassionate. Then I discovered that Jesus was compassionate. So I set my sights on becoming compassionate, like he was, and he is compassionate. And by God’s grace, I am now more compassionate than I was, and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me more compassionate.

This is sanctification.We need to allow this process of sanctification to work on us and in us to become more like Jesus.

There are two types of people in the world; givers and takers. When I became a Christian and came into the church I was a taker. I was very selfish in the way that I used my money.

Then I discovered that Jesus is not a taker, he is a giver.

I discovered that Jesus is not selfish, he is selfless.

And so if Jesus was, and is, generous; and I am following Jesus, I wanted to become generous like him. So I set my sights on being generous. I began tithing and giving and practicing being generous any opportunity I got. And by God’s grace, I am now more of a giver than I was; I am now more selfless than I was; I am now more generous that I was; and I pray that He would continue to work on me to make me more generous. By God’s grace, He has made less of a taker and more of a giver- that’s sanctification.

So there are givers and takers in the world, but Paul isn’t writing to the world; he’s writing to the church.He doesn’t write to takers; he writes to givers. In his mind he could not reconcile that somebody would claim to be a follower of Jesus and not be a giver. The biggest point of this passage; 2 Corinthians 9; is not that you should give. It is that God gave; and God gives; and that we should be like God. And if you struggle to want to give, it’s probably because your image of God is wrong; you view Him as a taker and not as a giver.

Why should we give? Because God gave and God gives and God is a giver.

The question for us as Christians, and the one that reading Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians should have us asking ourselves as Christians, is not ‘should I give’? It is ‘how am I giving?’ Am I giving like Jesus gave? Am I following his example in my generosity?

So Paul talks about two types of giving; how to give and how not to give.He instructs us not to give sparingly and reluctantly, but instead to give generously and freely.

The one who gives sparingly and reluctantly is one who gives some, but withholds. They approach God with their money like this;

‘’God, I will give to you what I will give to you and I will hold the rest back for myself. What’s the least that I need to give to follow Christ? 10%, I heard? Deal. Lock me in on those terms. I will give you 10%. I will keep 90%. This small pile is yours. This big pile is mine.’’

What if God wants some from that big pile?

What if God wants all of the big pile?

The question that we are asked by scripture is this; who is the master of our lives- God, or the big pile? Either the big pile belongs to God, or the big pile is our God.

To not be ‘sparing’ and ‘reluctant’ in our giving is to not ‘withhold any of our pile’ from God, in the same way that He did not hold withhold or spare His son, but rather He gave Him completely over for us as a sacrificial offering, so that by His offering we could receive forgiveness of sin and liberty from death, not by our merit, but by His grace.

His pile/your pile?

What an insult!

What a spit in the face in our crucified king.

Tithing is great, but it is the bottom rung of New Testament generosity. Following Jesus begins with the total and complete surrender of your whole pile.

Trust in an Eternal God

2010-02-22T20:17:00.000-08:00

Isaiah 26:4- Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.

The picture of God that the Bible paints is one of a steadfast, faithful and trustworthy God. However, despite this, those of us who profess to knowing Him often times seem to find it easier, more convenient, even preferable, to put our hope and out trust in less deserving parties and in less deserving places.

Paul instructs Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 6:17 to ‘command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God’.

That we, as people, ‘put our hope in wealth’, is merely one example of our tendency to put far too much of our hope and far too much of our trust into places and people that are so uncertain. When these places and people prove their uncertainty, our misdirected, (meaning we never should have put our trust there), or undue trust, (meaning we put too much to our trust there) can lead to disappointment, disillusionment and discouragement.

Unfortunately, I’m sure that there is not one person will read this that does not know what it feels like to have had their trust broken, even their trust abused. The pain that often results from these negative experiences can often stay with us and can become a stumbling block to us, especially when we are called on to trust again. I know many people who have a very difficult time trusting people who have given them no reason not to trust them, on account of people in their past who have abused their trust.

What’s the saying? ‘Once bitten, twice shy’? How about ‘twice bitten’? How about ‘five times bitten’? How about ‘it seems like whenever I give trust somebody, I get bit’- what then? Shy? No. Terrified.

The world conspires, it seems, to erode your ability to trust anybody, or anything. The pain of the disappointment that results from broken and abused trust is crippling, in that it hardens us, and hinders us from trusting even those who deserve to be trusted.

God calls on us for our complete trust.

Proverbs 3:5, a much loved Proverb, calls on us to - ‘Trust in the Lord with all of our heart…’

The tragedy is that often times, we struggle to put our complete trust in God, even when we want to, because of those negative experiences of our past that we have endured as a consequence of our misdirected or undue trust. And I don’t believe that God is unsympathetic to this dilemma. That’s likely why one of the most determined and constant messages of God to His people throughout scripture is ‘trust me’- because He, unlike anybody or anything else, is completely trustworthy.

In Isaiah 49:23. He makes this bold promise- ‘’those who hope in me will not be disappointed’’.

Many of the many times where the Bible appeals to us to put our trust in God, it references God as an eternal God. The scripture mentioned at the top of this blog is a great example of this.

Isaiah 26:4- Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.

So, the scripture appeals to us to trust in God and then gives us reason as to why we can- that He is ‘the Rock eternal’.

God is eternal. But how does that help to establish His trustworthiness? Because it is helps us to put our trust in God to know, and to be reminded, that God is not uncertain, that He is not liable to collapse, rather, He is eternal and He is everlasting.

And not only is He eternal, but He is eternally the same. It’s hard to trust somebody who is one way one day and another way the next. God’s not like that! He is eternally the same. God declares, in Malachi 3; "I the Lord do not change…’’

It is said of Jesus in Hebrews 13:8; Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

God is eternally the same- which means He is eternally trustworthy.The Psalms constantly talk of God as a refuge; a safe haven, where we can find shelter in times of distress.

Psalm 62:8- Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Selah

Pour out your hearts to him….give over your whole heart to Him…because He is our refuge...under the shadow of His wings, we are safe…as He is completely trustworthy, at all times, and with all things, and for all time.

Selah.

The church is a stage...

2010-02-14T15:19:00.000-08:00

Ephesians 4:7-16- But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why itsays: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

This is the blueprint for Christ’s living temple- the description of how the church must work in order for it to fulfill it’s God-ordained purpose.

The foundation of the church is this; Jesus Christ descended, rescuing us and ransoming us from sin and death.

Ephesians 4:8-10- This is why itsays: "When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men." (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

Here, Paul references Psalm 68- a victory Psalm that David composed to celebrate the conquest of a Jebusite city and the triumphant ascent of God, represented by the Ark of the Covenant, up Mount Zion. After a King had won such a victory, it was customary that he would have a victory parade, parading the spoils of the battle and the enemy prisoners before his people.

Another feature of the parade is that there would be a parade of the King’s own soldiers who had been captured by the enemy and recaptured by their King in his victory. They were often referred to as ‘recaptured captives’- prisoners who had been taken prisoner again by their own king (and it’s interesting that Ephesians 4 begins with Paul identifying himself as ‘a prisoner of the Lord’)- recaptured, and given freedom.

This is the case with us;

Christ descended to wage war against sin and death. As He was victorious, we are ‘recaptured captives’- God’s own people who once were prisoners to sin and death but now have been freed on account of our King’s victory.

Spurgeon puts it this way;

‘’As great conquerors of old led whole nations into captivity, so Jesus leads forth from the territory of his foe a vast company as the trophies of his mighty grace. From the gracious character of his reign it comes to pass that to be led into captivity by him is for our captivity to cease. The Lord Jesus puts death to death.’’

So Jesus Christ descended, securing victory for us from sin and death; He then ascended into glory. However, just before His ascension, He gave this commission to the church.

Matthew 28:18-20- Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

So on account of Christ descending and ascending, we have been rescued from sin and we have a commission to reach those who need rescuing, as we have been rescued. The church’s commission is a rescue mission. And vitally, each of us, whether you were aware of this or not, have been assigned by God a part to play in the fulfillment of the church’s commission. It is vital to the realization of this church’s call that all of those who have been assigned by God a part to play do play their part.

For this reason, Jesus gave, as we read in verse. 11,

Ephesians 4:11-13- ‘’…some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Earlier, in Ephesians 2:20, Paul establishes that the church is built on the foundation of Christ Jesus, who is the chief cornerstone, and also on the foundation laid by the Apostles and Prophets.

To build on this foundation today, God in His grace gives to the church some to be evangelists for the purpose of reaching out to those who are God’s own, but still in sin’s captivity. Now, all of us do have the opportunity to be involved in evangelism; simply by sharing with those around us the good news of Jesus and His gospel. But God does call and gift some by His grace specifically to and for the setting aside of their lives for the proclamation of the Gospel as Evangelists.

To build further on this foundation, God in His grace gives to the church some to be pastors and teachers for the purpose of building up God’s people into maturity and equipping them for the task of reaching out to others and building up others. All of us do have the opportunity to be involved in the process of building each other up and ‘spurring one another on towards love and good deeds’. But God does call and gift some by His grace specifically to and for the setting aside of their lives as Pastors and Teachers, for the building up of God’s people into maturity and the equipping of the saints for good works.

That, Biblically, is the role of the pastor.

Acts 6:1- In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Grecian Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

So, there’s a practical ministry task in the church that is being neglected; a group of people who are being overlooked. This task evidently brought to the fore a philosophical question about the functionality of the early church; which was this- how could the pastors of the church, the Apostles, continue to fulfill their responsibility to the ministry of the Word of God and to prayer, without these practical ministry tasks being neglected?

Acts 6:2-6- So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, "It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

This is the way that it is to be.

It’s not that some things are beneath some people; it’s that each of us have parts to play and the church function bests when each person plays their part.

Have you ever seen a stage play where an actor is playing more than one part? Dialoguing with himself, portraying 3 characters simultaneously? The church often is that stage play. I have seen this too often- churches become stagnate when the pastor ends up doing too much of what he shouldn’t be doing and not enough of what he should be doing.

So the Apostles wisely turned various responsibilities of the church’s ministry over to the people, in order that they could then focus fully on their part, the ministry of the Word and prayer, for the equipping and building up of the people. And look at the result

Acts 6:7- So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

My prayer, and my ambition as a Pastor, is that we would remain in Christ, and bear fruit as we remain in Him; and that as we are strengthened in unity and maturity, our church would grow and build itself up in love, as each part does it work.

What I ask of you is that you would play your part and you would allow me to play mine.

God suffers with us

2010-02-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

1 Peter 1:3-6- Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

Let me attempt a paraphrase of that. Peter is saying to us here, ‘praise and worship God and greatly rejoice in God, because He has given you new birth into a living hope and eternal life, even though now, in your life, you may have had to suffer in various ways’.

One of the major themes of the writing of Peter is suffering. Peter understands that even though we have been given ‘new birth into a living hope’ and even though we have been given ‘eternal life’, on this side of glory, there is suffering. That’s an important point.

Paul wrote this to his protégé Timothy;

2 Timothy 4:2-5 ‘’…preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.

What I would say is that the time when people ‘will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires’ that time is not coming- it has come.

Some people teach the Bible in a way that causes believers to believe what they want to believe; that the Christian life is supposed to be free of suffering; that the Christian life is free of grief. They teach that Jesus came and suffered and was grieved, so that you don’t have to suffer or be grieved and that a life on earth, lived with God, will be free of suffering and free of grief. People flock to this sort of preaching and teaching. Who wouldn’t want to follow a God who offers and delivers life, right away, completely free of suffering and completely free of grief?

But there’s an obvious flaw in this teaching- it’s untruthful.

The Christian life is not, and was never promised to be free of suffering.To teach that is ear tickling. It is a myth. Its false teaching and it’s destructive.

Let me quickly give you just a couple of reasons why it is destructive.

First, if you swallow the lie that when God is in our lives, grief and suffering is not, when life doesn’t go well and when we suffer and are grieved, we rationalize the advent of suffering with destructive and faulty lines of reasoning. Let me give you a couple of examples of what that might look like.

If I believe that when God is with me, I will not have to endure suffering or combat feelings of grief, when times of suffering and grief do come through no attributable fault of my own, I might come to the conclusion that God is no longer with me- that God has abandoned me. Typically then, what can happen is that God gets blamed for the failure of promises that He never made.

Or maybe, if I believe that when I live in faith and abide in Christ, that this will shield me from suffering and grief, when times of suffering and grief do come through no attributable fault of my own, I might arrive at the superstitious conclusion that I am doing something wrong. I am doing something I shouldn’t be doing. I’m not doing something I should be doing. Because if the hallmark of the Christian faith was the absence of suffering from our life on earth, when I suffer, I would be right to conclude that perhaps Christianity is not working because I am not doing it properly.

If you’ve been lead to believe that suffering is not a normal part of the life of the believer, you’ve been lead to believe a lie. It may be a blissful ignorance when things are going well, but it will be a destructive and confusing point of contention when things are not going so well.

Secondly, for the believer to go on believing the lie that when Jesus is in their life, grief and suffering and hardship is not, they will have to ignore the witnesses of the evident truth, which testify to the contrary.

For example, they’d need to

dull the conviction of the Spirit,
read the Word of God selectively,
turn a blind eye to the suffering of their fellow believers

All of which testify to the reality that a life free of suffering is not promised to believers on this side of Christ’s return.

Where does that lead? Now you’ve got a believer who

has habitually ignored the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the point of desensitivity.
has turned the Bible into a collection of half truths
is blissfully ignorant to those that they ought to be yoked to

Yeah, they’re believers all right- but believer in what?

Like Paul foretold, they’ve ‘turned away their ears to the truth to turn aside to myths’- that’s idolatry.

I’d love to follow a Jesus who promises that in this world we would have no trouble- but that’s the precise opposite of what Jesus actually promises. If the Jesus that you’re following is offering a starkly different deal than the Jesus that we read about in the Bible, perhaps you need to ask ourselves whether we are actually following the Jesus of the Bible, or just some invented idol of our own desires that we’ve anointed with a name it isn’t fit to carry.

The Bible talks a lot about suffering because it is an honest text and it acknowledges that a lot of life is suffering- all of us, in life, experience difficulty and hardship. It’s part of life. But in these words of Peter, we find that Jesus gives us cause to have a great ‘living hope’ despite of and in the midst of our suffering- in the understanding that the suffering that we endure in this fallen world, where life isn’t always right, will not compare to the glory of our inheritance in heaven, where God will right every wrong and where suffering will be no more. So we greatly rejoice in what God has done in redeeming us and giving us new birth into a living hope and while this does not remove suffering, it outweighs our suffering in its glory.

1 Peter 1:6-7- ‘…for a little while (there, he’s talking about life on earth) you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These (trials) have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Whenever I read this verse, I think of the story of Job. God himself declared that Job was ‘blameless and upright; a man who feared God and shunned evil’ Satan accused Job’s faith of not being genuine; he told God that if he ‘stretched out his hand and struck everything he had, that Job would curse Him’ And so God allows Job to go through a trial and suffering; and it was this process of trial and suffering that proved Job’s faith genuine.

In talking about trial, Peter picks up this analogy of refinement- a process where, by intense heat, precious metals are made more pure and more valuable. He teaches that God uses trials to refine our faith, in order that it would ultimately be proved genuine. Just like our friendships are refined and our love for our friends is proved genuine when we stand together through hard times. Just like our marriages are refined and our love for our spouse is proved genuine when we stand together through hard times together. So too our faith in God is refined and our love for God proved genuine when we stand with and for God through trials.

So God allows even fiery trials in the anticipation that we would emerge from them with a refined faith that will endure, and not perish, to the end. That is that on that day that Jesus returns and His eternal kingdom is fully revealed, we would be found, though having suffered grief in all kinds of trials, to be praising, glorifying and honouring Him with a faith, hope and love proved genuine by fire.

1 Peter 1:8-9- Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I love this.

My understanding is that happiness is circumstantial. If things are going well, we’re happy. If things aren’t going well, we’re unhappy. It’s alright to be happy. It’s just not enough to be happy. Because life will throw curveballs at you that happiness won’t be able to bunt. Happiness is not enough. Happiness will fade in hard times, but joy can be present, and even thrive, during times of deep suffering and difficult trial.

I believe that God want us to know what it is to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy from the Lord that sustains and strengthens us in our time of need. For example, the day that Jesus went to that cross was not a happy day for Jesus. Happiness was not enough for him to endure the cross- it was ‘for the joy set before him’ that he endured. I believe that God wants to give us joy, glorious, inexpressible in the midst of our suffering, so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. And this joy can weather and suffer this world’s circumstances without losing its hope, because it knows that you are receiving the goal of your faith- the salvation of your souls.

It would be great if it were true that God causes our life to be free of suffering- but it isn’t.

But even more wonderful, I think, is the truth- that God suffered for us. And God suffers with us.

Chosen for what?

2010-01-27T17:41:00.000-08:00

1 Peter 1:2- ‘’…. who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood

Peter reveals to us that God, the Father, had ‘foreknowledge’. What that means is that He saw and He knew everything that was going to happen, from beginning to end, from the beginning.

Peter says that you were ‘chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father’. What this means is that He saw and He knew that you would be born, that you would sin, that you would be separated from God and that you would need a saviour to reconcile you to Himself.

So, according to this that which He foreknew, before you were born, before you sinned and before you needed a saviour, He sent Jesus, God the son, to live without sin, to die in your place and to rescue you from all of your sin and from death by, as Peter says, ‘the sprinkling of his blood’.

Jesus was the chosen one of God to redeem those chosen of God.

If you are a Christian, it is not because you found God, chose God and made a way for God; it is because He foreknew you, He chose you and He made a way for you because He loves you.

When did He choose you? At what point are you chosen?

2 Thessalonians 2:13- ‘’from the beginning God chose youto be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.’’

God, at the beginning of time, looked from the beginning to the end, and saw everything, including all of your sin, past, present and future and having seen everything, because He loves you, He chose you.

What did God choose you for?

Two things.

According to Peter, those who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father have been chosen for ‘obedience to Jesus Christ’ and for ‘sprinkling by his blood’.

Sprinkling by His blood?

In Exodus, Moses mediates a covenant between God and man. This covenant was put into effect with a ceremony where Moses sprinkled the blood of sacrificed animals on to the people. Both the ceremony and the covenant were a shadow of that which was to come in Jesus.

Speaking of this ceremony, Hebrews 9:13 said that ‘the sprinkling of the blood of goats and bulls sanctifies one so that they are outwardly clean’.

Hebrews 9:14-15-How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences (in other words, wash us inwardly as well as outwardly) from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God. For this reason Christ (rather than Moses) is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance- now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. (the Law).

Hebrews 10:1-4- The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming- not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once and for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Hebrews 10:5-12- Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘’Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am- it is written about me in the scroll- I have come to do your will, O God. First he said, ‘’Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them.’’ (although the law required them to be made). Then he said, ‘’Here I am, I have come to do your will.’’ He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest (Jesus) had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

When Peter says that we have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father for ‘sprinkling by his blood’, what He is saying is that we have been chosen to be washed clean, once and for all, by the one sacrifice of Jesus and, as verse 22. of Hebrews 10 states, we can ‘draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having had our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience’.

So this is what Peter reveals and confirms;

God, the Father foreknew you; He loved you; He chose you. Accordingly, He sent Jesus, God the Son, to die for you, in your place, to pay your debt to sin. This means that if we believe in our hearts and confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord; it is as if your life is sprinkled with His blood, which washes away your sin and removes the separation from God that sin creates.

From the beginning of time, God, in His incomparable love for you, predestined you to redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus.

Secondly, Peter says that you have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father for ‘obedience to Jesus Christ’.

Romans 8 says in this way;

Romans 8:29-30 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

What this is saying is that God foresaw you, He chose you, He called you, He justified you, so that you would be ultimately be glorified by conforming to the likeness of His son.

In other words, He wants you to become more and more like Jesus.

How do we become like Jesus?

By trying harder? No.

Peter tells us that it is ‘through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit’.

Sanctification is the process of God the Holy Spirit working in us and taking us from justification to glory.

So this is what Peter sees-

That God, according to His foreknowledge and love, began a work in you when He chose you to be justified and redeemed from sin through the sacrifice of His son, Jesus.

Once, through repentance and faith in Jesus, we are adopted into the family of God, He sends His spirit to live in us as a seal of our adoption and by His Spirit, He dwells in us to work in us and on us that we would become more and more like Jesus, His son.

If you are a Christian, it is because you have been‘’….chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood’’.

An imperishable redemption for a perishing people!

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1 Peter 1:18-25- For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever."And this is the word that was preached to you.

When Peter talks about ‘the empty way of life’, he is talking about Sin.

Sin, in all of its expressions, is an empty way of life and we have inherited this empty way of life from our parents, as they did from theirs, so that we are born with a sinful nature.

In Psalm 51, where David is repenting of his adultery with Bathsheba. In verse. 5, he laments; (Psalm 51:5)- Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

In Ephesians, Paul speaks to those who have been redeemed and made alive in Christ. He talks about living in Sin as being; (Ephesians 2:3-) ‘’…gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature…’’.

And so all of us have had a sinful nature handed down to us.

In fact, this inheritance of sin can be traced back all the way to Adam. Romans says; (Romans 5:12-) ‘…sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned’

On account of our sin, we perish. Jesus taught this explicitly.

And all of humanity is fallen and sinful; our humanity is ‘perishable seed’. And the point of Jesus’ coming was to redeem us from this life of sin that leads to our perishing.

He was not born into sin.

This is the account of the conception of Jesus.

Luke 1:26-38- In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be calledthe Son of God.

If Jesus was not born of a virgin having been overshadowed by the Most High, and Joseph was his biological father, then Jesus was born of perishable seed, like us and He would have been impotent to save us from the outset. But as Jesus was born of a virgin having been overshadowed by the most High, so Jesus was born of imperishable seed.

So when Peter writes ‘for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers’, what he is saying is this; nothing perishable can redeem us from perishing. In order for us to be redeemed for perishing, the means of this redemption must be imperishable because only the imperishable can rescue us and ransom us and redeem us from this empty way of life that is sin, which leads to our perishing.

And Jesus is the imperishable redemption.

This is the passage that I want to be read at my funeral.

1 Corinthians 15:50-57- I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed- in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory.""Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the imperishable means through which, or rather through whom, we are rescued, ransomed and redeemed from our sin.

1 Peter 1:23- ‘’For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable (seed)…’’

John 3:16 is perhaps one of the most well-known and loved scriptures in the world. It is something of a mission statement from Jesus; where he declares why it is that He came into the world.

John 3:16-17- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him

This arose from a conversation that Jesus was having with a Pharisee named Nicodemus about what it meant to be born again.

John 3:1-3- Jesus declared, "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again."

Nicodemus was immediately confused. He asked;

John 3:4- "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!"

To which Jesus replied, to clarify;

John 3:5-6- Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spiritgives birth to spirit.

What does that mean- ‘to be born of water and the Spirit’? Commonly people think that Jesus is referring to Baptism here when He says to be ‘born of water and the Spirit’. He isn’t.

When Jesus said to Nicodemus ‘you need to be born of water and the Spirit’, Nicodemus would likely have known, like every Jewish teacher would have known, that Jesus was referring to a very famous passage of Messianic prophecy, which speaks of the Messiah that would come, in Ezekiel 36:25-

Ezekiel 36:25-27- ‘I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.’

So, when Jesus said ‘you need to born of water and the Spirit’, Nicodemus knew that what Jesus was saying is that He was the one that the scriptures that He had been reading and studying all of His life- Jesus was the one that they had been pointing to. Jesus was saying that He was the one that the prophet Ezekiel said would come into the world and ‘wash our hearts, wash our lives, wash our inner man. He was the one through whom, God was going to put a new heart and a New Spirit in us.’ He was the one who would, and has, completely changed everything!

To be born again is to fully respond to the intervention of Jesus and his invitation to let His precious blood wash your sin away.

Peter says that once you have been born again in this way, you ‘have been born again not of perishable seed, but of imperishable seed’.

What he’s saying is that in your first birth, you were born of perishable seed- the seed of Adam.

But in your second birth, we have been born of imperishable seed- the seed of Jesus.

Romans 5 explains this beautifully; let’s read verse 17-19;

Romans 5:17-19- For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.

Let his imperishable life clothe your perishing life today

Steve