A great choice

Thirty nine years ago today my mother in law was given a choice by her doctor: it is either you or your baby. She told the doctor, please save my baby and wow, I am so thankful she did.

I wonder if God believes in grace?

A murderer.

An adulterer.

A man married to over six hundred women.

A man who married a prostitute.

A traitor to his country.

A disappointment to his colleagues.

A man who threw innocent people into prison and delighted in torturing people who believed differently than he did.

A coward.

A self-righteous hypocrite.

A man who betrayed his closest friend at his moment of greatest need.

Another who at one point wondered if Jesus might be crazy.

What do these men have in common?

They are all authors of God’s Word.

When we look at God in His holiness and His majesty, it is easy for us to wonder if God would ever use people like us. And that’s a good thought as a start. It means we are at least getting a glimpse of how much better than us God really is. At the same time however, it is important we don’t use our weakness and insignificance as an excuse. Because God has made it very clear that His grace is big enough to forgive us when we really repent, to transform us into someone different than we were and to use to accomplish more than we ever thought we could.

There’s no one besides Jesus who ever had a significant ministry for Christ who actually deserved it. For the rest of us, any impact, any avenue of service, any opportunity to make Jesus look great, like the authors of Scripture, it is pure, one hundred percent, amazing grace!

Seeking sinners in Christ’s name to call them home

“The missionary character of Christ’s church does not issue only from the command of Christ. It flows from the revel­ation of the Father that Christ provided. He sends the disciples into the world as the Father sent him into the world (Jn. 17:18; 20:21). How did the Father send him? With authority, of course, but also in grace and love.

In the teaching of Jesus, the astounding love of God is set forth. Jesus is the Beloved Son, but the Father has not spared him; instead he has sent him to give his life a ransom for many. In the parable of the welcoming Father, Jesus tells of the joy that his Father has in receiving lost sinners home again (Lk. 15:11-32). The story shows God’s amazing grace, for­ – as the prodigal confesses – he does not deserve to be called the son of his father, or even to be made one of his servants. But the father receives him as a son and welcomes him with a feast. The older brother is furious because he knows well his brother’s sin, but does not know at all his father’s love. The key to the parable is the contrast between the older brother and Christ himself. Jesus told the story as one of three parables after he had been criticized for eating with publicans and sinners. In each story he shows the joy, and the feast, that accompanies the finding of the lost. ‘There is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents’ (Lk. 15:7, 10). Jesus understands heaven’s joy, and the love of the Father that rejoices in finding the lost. Jesus is the seeking shepherd of the first parable; he is like the woman of the second parable, who turned her house upside down to find a coin. The shepherd sought one sheep of a hundred, the woman one coin of ten; but the older brother would not seek one brother of one. In fact, not only did he fail to go to the far country to seek him, he even refused to eat with him when he came home. Not so Jesus. He, the true older brother, knows his Father’s heart. He goes seeking publicans and sinners. He eats with them, and calls them to come home to the Father.

The gospel is the message of God’s redeeming love in sending his own Son into the world. Those who understand that love will be driven to share it. They will not only rejoice to sit down with other redeemed sinners in heaven’s feast: they will seek other sinners in Christ’s name to call them home. As Christ was sent, so he sends them, and the dynamic of mission is the heart of the love of God. Again we see that mission is not an addendum. Rather, it is evidence that the church understands the gospel. The love that fulfils the law, as Jesus taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan, is the love of compassion, love modelled on the love of God.”

Edmund Clowney

A right and wrong sectarianism

“The gospel of Jesus Christ is a very fearless gospel. It is the very reverse of that pretty thing called ‘modern charity.’ The last created devil is ‘modern charity. ‘Modern charity’ goes cap in hand round to us all, and it says, ‘You are all right, every one of you. Do not quarrel any longer; Sectarianism is a horrid thing, down with it! down with it!’ and so it tries to induce all sorts of persons to withhold a part of what they believe, to silence the testimony of all Christians upon points wherein they differ.

I believe that that thing called Sectarianism nowadays is none other than true honesty. Be a Sectarian, my brother, be profoundly a Sectarian. I mean by that, hold everything which you see to be in God’s Word with a tighter grasp, and do not give up even the little pieces of truth. At the same time, let that Sectarianism which makes you hate another man because he does not see with you – let that be far from you! but never consent to that unholy league and covenant which seems to be rife throughout our country, which would put a padlock on the mouth of every man and send us all about as if we were dumb: which says to me, ‘You must not speak against the errors of such a church,’ and to another, ‘You must not reply.’ We cannot but speak! If we did not, the stones in the street might cry out against us. That kind of charity is unknown to the gospel.

Now hear the Word of God! ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not “-What? “shall get to heaven some other way?” – ‘shall be damned;’ that is the gospel. You perceive how boldly it launches out its censure. It does not pretend, ‘you may reject me and go by another road, and at last get safely to your journey’s end!’ No, no, no; you ‘shall be damned’ it says. Do you not perceive how Christ puts it?

Some teachers come into the world and say to all others, ‘Yes, gentlemen, by your leave, you are all right. I have a point or two that you have not taught. You just make room for me; I will not turn you out; I can stand in the same temple as yourself.’ But hear what Christ says:- ‘All that ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but, the sheep did not hear them.’ Hear what his servant Paul says, ‘Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, – what then? “Let him be excused for his mistake?” No; but, “Let him be accursed”‘ Now, this is strong language, but mark you, this is just how the Christian ought to live. As the gospel is very fearless in what it has to say, so let the Christian always be. It strikes me that a ‘living’ which becomes the gospel of Christ, is always a bold and fearless kind of living.

Some people go crawling through the world as if they asked some great man’s permission to live. They do not know their own minds; they take their words out of their mouths and look at them, and ask a friend or two’s opinion. ‘What do you think of these words?’ and when these friends censure them they put them in again, and will not say them. Like jellyfish, they have no backbone. Now God has made men upright, and it is a noble thing for a man to stand erect on his own feet; and it is a nobler thing still for a man to say that in Christ Jesus he has received that freedom which is freedom indeed, and therefore he will not be the slave of any man. I will live as in the sight of God, as I believe I should live, and then let man say his best or say his worst, and it shall be no more than the chirping of the grasshopper, when the sun goes down. ‘Who art thou that thou shouldst be afraid of a man that shall die, or the son of man that is but a worm?’

Quit yourselves like men! Be strong! Fear not! for only so will your conversation be such as becometh the gospel of Christ.”

C.H. Spurgeon

Questions of Questions

I had plans for this week. Plans that I thought were good plans. Plans that I thought were God honoring plans. But then I found myself laid out on my back sicker than I had been in months.

God?

Is going to the toilet this often really the most effective use of my time?

I know, I know, bring out the violins. This was such a small difficulty in light of the kind of pain that people are experiencing throughout the world right now, but I guess it just reminded me of how tempting it is in the middle of circumstances that aren’t not going the way we planned or think best to look up and begin to argue with God.

At least it is tempting for me.

But the thing about arguing with God is that He knows everything and He loves you completely.

I mean really, think about it, how do you win an argument with someone who:

1. Knows exactly what is going to happen in the future ten years from now? A hundred years from now?
2. Knows exactly what is best for you and for the person next to you and for everyone around you?
3. Knows you better than you know yourself?
4. Knows the correct answer to every single question that has ever been asked?
4. Knows exactly what is happening in the thoughts of every single other person on the planet?
5. Loves you with such an overwhelming, unending love that He created the universe so that He could adopt you into His family and proved that love through sending His own Son into the world to die in your place so that you could be forgiven of your sins and be brought into a relationship with Him?

You don’t.

Still life can be so painful that it sometimes feels like your heart is going to burst into a million pieces and because of that, thoughts like these don’t always stop you from attempting to argue with God anyway but, perhaps, I don’t know, but maybe, hopefully they help the way you speak to Him.

Because yes, we do hurt and we do ask questions; but there are different ways to ask the same questions and going back and deliberately thinking about these kinds of truths may help you ask questions of God in your pain like a child would with a parent instead of like a judge lecturing a criminal he’s found guilty.

I am not saying all of that so much as if I were God’s defense attorney, He doesn’t need one; instead I am saying that for your good and mine.

Before we approach God with our questions, if we can, we should try to ask ourselves some questions as well:

Do the questions I am asking of God reflect the fact that I am talking to someone who knows all things?

And

Am I asking these questions of God the way I should to someone who crucified His own Son for me? To someone who loves me enough to take my hell and who is presently preparing an eternity of joy for me and is going to spend billions and billions and billions of years on end giving me blessings and kindnesses that I absolutely one hundred percent don’t deserve?

And the reason asking those kinds of questions of ourselves is so important is not so much for God’s sake but for ours, because those are the kinds of questions that are based on reality whereas the other kinds of questions that we are tempted to ask in our pain often aren’t.

When I ask questions of God as if He didn’t know all things or as if He didn’t love me, I am asking questions that because of my circumstances may feel true but no matter how true they feel, they aren’t.

God does know all.

God does love me.

Those two facts have been proved in so many different ways. Look at the universe. Look at the cross. They are rock solid realities and obviously if I am asking questions of God that are not based on those realities, then it’s going to be hard for me to ever get true answers or find real comfort in the end which is exactly what God wants for believers in the middle of their pain.

God wants us to be comforted, He wants us to know He loves us and part of finding the comfort and assurance and answers we need is by remembering the one we are asking questions of.

A Means to an End

Here are two very different ways of looking at the world:

1. I am a means to an end. God’s glory is the end and my life is a tool He is free to use however He likes to accomplish that great goal.

2. God is a means to an end. My comfort is the end and God is the tool I try to use to get what I want.

The second way of looking at the world is a foolish man’s fantasy. The first approach is reality and when embraced brings great satisfaction and peace.

God is God. His glory is the goal of everything that exists and that is a good thing because as God He completely deserves that place. Trying to live as if that were not true will only lead to frustration because when you live as if you were the center of the world you are not living in the real world.

Determine that God will be God to you today. That your life will begin and end and center on a vision of God in His glory and make a choice to give God what He deserves in every area of your life.

Putting up with those who put you out!

I am convinced that Christians should have a generous spirit towards others.

By generous I don’t only mean willing to give people who need money. Instead I mean willing to give people who need it a break. Unfortunately, sometimes people who are Christians have a very difficult time being patient with others. The first irritation, the first sin, the first mistake and that person is written off as not measuring up. We may not literally cast him out of the church, but if he talks too much or if he talks too loud or if he is struggling with a particularly socially unacceptable sin, we avoid him and when we do get in conversations with him, we look for ways to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible, and keep them on the outs of the church until they leave on their own and we don’t have to feel like it’s our fault.

I decided to do a quick run through the New Testament and mark down several reasons we find there why we should be willing to forgive sin, put up with a lot of irritants and personality quirks in others and what’s more, actively reach out and do good to people like that.

1. God is patient with a world of people who are doing the exact opposite of His revealed will. (Mt. 5:33-36)
2. Jesus tells us that way we forgive others who sin against us is the way we want God to forgive us. (Mt. 6:14)
3. Jesus who reveals God was incredibly patient who often did irritating things. For example, when he would want to get alone they often followed him in great crowds without even thinking that they wouldn’t have enough to eat. And yet, how did Jesus respond? He felt compassion for them. (Mt. 14:13,14)
4. Jesus tells his disciples they should be willing to forgive a person the same offense in the same day an endless amount. (Mt. 18:22)
5. God promises that He will take care of vengeance. (Romans 12:19)
6. Every single person will have to give their own account to God for their actions. (Romans 14:12)
7. Jesus did not please himself. (Romans 15:2)
8. If I am not loving, I am nothing and love certainly includes patience. (1 Corinthians 13)
9. I could easily fall into a similar kind of sin or a different but just as serious sin apart from God holding me back. (Galatians 6:1ff)
10. I have many personality quirks myself and if people aren’t patient with me then I won’t have any long term relationships.
11. I could grieve the Holy Spirit by not being patient. (Ephesians 4:30)
12. Jesus will return soon and He will reward us for patiently enduring the evils that are done against us. (James 5)
13. God has proved over and over throughout history that He has a plan to accomplish His people’s good even right in the middle of strange and difficult and terrible and irritating kinds of things being done to them. (James 5)
14. Trusting God enough to do the right thing when there aren’t any tangible benefits or visible reasons to do so finds favor with God and follows in the footsteps of Jesus. (1 Peter 2 and 3)

None like Him

“Little as I am acquainted with the Lord, I will leave it as my testimony that there is none like Him. God has been good to a soul that but poorly sought Him. Often on riding home on Sabbath evenings, I have felt, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee…’ Believer is He not all this to you? O sinner, O unsaved ones of my flock, He might be more than all this to you! Young people who I greatly long for, remember what James Laing said to one, ‘Remember, if I see you at the left hand, I told you to come to Christ.’ Shall I see any of these faces on which I have so often looked and those which have so oft looked up to me, on the left hand? Shall any one here gaze on an angry Judge? any hear Him say, Depart? I beseech you, receive Christ . . . today. I beseech you, by remembrance of past Sabbaths. by the many witnesses that the Lord sent among you from time to time, by the messages of grace so many and so varied, by the joy that your salvation would give above as well as here and to yourselves, by the thought of approaching death, by the thought of the Lord’s speedy coming, by the opening of yonder veil, when eternity shall receive you, and the time be for ever gone, receive Christ now.”

Andrew Bonar

Living Epistles

There are all sorts of different impressions you take away from a sermon.

Some you leave thankful that the preacher really did his exegesis. Others you leave impressed by the preacher’s rhetoric. Still others you are impressed by their extensive knowledge.

But I wonder how many you leave overwhelmed by Jesus and struck by their desire for Him?

Listen to the comment one person made after hearing Robert Murray McCheyne preach.

“There was something singularly attractive about Mr. McCheyne’s holiness. It was not his matter nor his manner either that struck me; it was just the living epistle of Christ – a picture so lovely, I felt I would have given all the world to be as he was, but knew all the time I was dead in my sins.”

May God raise up more preachers who are something more than good communicators, men who are also “living epistles of Christ…”

I wonder what that would look like?

Perhaps it would start with one’s motive for preaching. Is it to make much of Christ or self? Now, this question seems fairly obvious except of course if we remember that most of the time no one would answer that they are preaching to make much of themselves. But is there a longing, I am talking gut level, when you are alone and it is just you and God, is there a deep, overwhelming desire to see Christ lifted up?

It also has to do with one’s life outside the pulpit. Is the preacher known as a man who is sacrificially denying himself for the cause of Christ, as a man who desires Christ with deep affection, as a man who loves others the way Christ has loved him, as a man who fears God and hates sin? His own sins included? I don’t think we should underestimate the way God uses a godly life to help a congregation hear and be changed by messages. It can be very difficult to be impacted by calls to love God and love others from a person who doesn’t.

I’m sure all of this even has to do with one’s style of preaching. Style being not quite the right word, but I am not sure what other word to use. One of the things I have noticed in many of the older preachers that I sometimes find lacking in much modern preaching are examples of preachers expressing their own great desire and love for Christ and longing for their people to love and know Christ personally in their sermons. Some preachers seem to have the ability to take texts that were meant to impact people personally and transform those into academic subjects that are dissected and studied and then left there, unowned, unexperienced, outside, uninternalized. Others, you know this isn’t simply a passage that they have analyzed, this is a passage that has analyzed them. Of course, there are many different personalities and many different ways people express their love for others so we shouldn’t become legalistic and force every one into expressing their love for Christ in the pulpit in the same exact way, but if you really love someone, it seems to me that it’s going to pop out through your personality somehow, someway.

Yes, when it comes to preaching, I am convinced Herman Bavinck was one hundred percent correct when he wrote, ‘A man cannot only preach, he must also live. And the life that he lives, with all its little peculiarities, is one of two things: either it emasculates his preaching or it gives it flesh and blood.’

A Soul-Satisfying, Soul-Ravishing Consolation

“Oh who can utter the soul-satisfying, soul-ravishing consolation that there is in this, that the same God that is the God of Jesus Christ is my God, and the same Father that is the Father of Jesus Christ is my Father.”

Jeremiah Burroughs