God’s Weekly Gift

In the Old Testament, violating the Sabbath day was a capital offense.  Evidently, God took honoring His day very seriously.  Aren’t we glad to be under grace and to know that Law has been satisfied by the offering of Christ’s righteousness for us sinners?  I know I am.  But, we also recognize that the “Big Ten” still apply to us.  The Ten Commandments reflect God’s unchanging moral character and still shape the heart and intention of those under grace in the new covenant.   It means God still takes his “Day” seriously.  The reason is because the people he bought at a price have been given a great gift.  The Lord’s Day is a gift and a welcome respite in a crazy world and the insane schedule many of us are oppressed by.   Missing it and neglecting it is in effect killing us.  Consider the following quote from a retired Presbyterian missionary in his book,  The Day God Made (in our library).

“No nation has been permanently blessed and prospered that has disregarded the Fourth Commandment.  In 1944 Prof. John Murray of Westminster Seminary preached a sermon, later judged one of the best preached that year, entitled ‘God and the War’.  His text was: ‘When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness’ (Isa. 26:9b[KJV]).  Murray said that, evil as the Hitler regime was, the war was also a judgment on the Allied powers, America included.  He cited some of the sins for which America was being judged, among them the neglect of the Sabbath Day.  Then the preacher made the amazing statement, ‘One well-kept Sabbath would end this war.’ 

What can one person, one family, one church do? We can begin with the law of love and spare the Sabbath or the Lord’s Day for other people so that they may have the freedom to enjoy this gift of God.  If they do not make use of the Day as God intended, that is upon their own consciences, but if you or I take from them the precious privilege of meditating upon God and resting in His good providence on that Day, we shall answer for that to Him who is the Lord of the Sabbath.”    (The Day God Made, by Glen Knecht, pg. 57-58).

Our motivation now for worship under Christ’s gracious rule, is both love and gratitude.  It is these two pulses of the heart that drive us from the worldly propensity to feel that we know best in how to tend to our restless and spent spirits.   Love for God, who has given us redemption and yearns to give us more grace is the drive to want to worship Him.  Gratitude for the mercy and forgiveness that is never deserved drives us to embark on the happy labor of attending a structured design of gathered individuals into a single voice of praise in the glorious concert of biblical worship.   This once a week discipline, that regulates our hearts in a world of time wasting chaos, is the chief and paramount event that sets us apart as a redeemed community, of which outside of it, as our confession states, “is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WC,Ch. 25:2).  No pious “I’ve got Jesus in my heart” religion that doesn’t square with the regular living and confessing the faith of Jesus in public worship is optional.   In the now 30 % of the American population that are regular church goers, our participation in the Lord’s day, as design of creation and a gift of redemption is indeed a counter cultural protest in our destruction bent world.   And you thought, I imagine, that going to church was just for traditional middle-class humdrums, which one could take or leave.  Think again.  Nothing like worship will cure the heart, give witness to the world and bring stability to your living.  I don’t know if honoring the Lord’s Day will bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, but it will bring an end to the war in your heart and grant peace in our life.   Why refuse the gift?   In heaven’s name, why?

WORLD | From protester to penitent | Tiffany Owens | Feb. 20, 2013

WORLD | From protester to penitent | Tiffany Owens | Feb. 20, 2013

A very interesting story about a young woman caught in the bondage of an oppressive cult/family church in Kansas who found grace - at least a beginning of understanding the nature of redemption.   I know this group well, having served as a pastor in the same town.   I have written about their views in previous places - they claim to be Calvinists, but in truth reflect the most hideous version of hyper-calvinism (a term I dislike) ever to appear in recent times.   Grace sends us out, in a humble gratitude of repenting and believing disciples, into a hurting sinful world with a message of "truth in love."  

The Knowledge of God by Herman Bavink

God is the highest good of man-that is the testimony of the whole Scriptures. The Bible begins with the account that God created man after His own image and likeness, in order that he should know God his Creator aright, should love Him with all his heart, and should live with Him in eternal blessedness. And the Bible ends with the description of the new Jerusalem, whose inhabitants shall see God face to face and shall have His name upon their foreheads.
Between these two moments lies the revelation of God in all its length and breadth. As its content this revelation has the one, great, comprehensive promise of the covenant of grace: I will be a God unto thee, and ye shall be my people. And as its mid-point and its high-point this revelation has its Immanuel, God-with-us. For the promise and its fulfillment go hand in hand. The word of God is the beginning, the principle, the seed, and it is in the act that the seed comes into its full realization. Just as at the beginning God called things into being by His word, so by His word He will in the course of the ages bring into being the new heaven and the new earth, in which the tabernacle of God shall be among men.
That is why Christ, in whom the Word became flesh, is said to be full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
He is the Word which in the beginning was with God and Himself was God, and as such He was the life and the light of men. Because the Father shares His life with Christ and gives expression to His thought in Christ, therefore the full being of God is revealed in Him. He not only declares the Father to us and discloses His name to us, but in Himself He shows us and gives us the Father. Christ is God expressed and God given. He is God revealing Himself and God sharing Himself, and therefore He is full of truth and also full of grace. The word of the promise, I will be a God unto thee, included within itself from the very moment in which it was uttered, the fulfillment, I am thy God. God gives Himself to His people in order that His people should give themselves to Him.

God's End Game Romans 8:28-30

God's End Game Sermon

Here's the sermon that takes a look at the big three P's of grace:  Providence, Predestination, and Perseverance.  

I wrote a paraphrase of Rom. 8:28-30 :

“ There is a lot we don’t know, but God is working in all that happens for the good of those that love him, because those that love God have been appointed for the fulfillment of his plan.  This is what we do know. 

God’s knowledge of us, was intimate and personal, so that he chose us and then drew us to Himself so that we might then reflect the same character of his Son, who being sinless and perfect and having all rights of Sonship,  now share  in that right.  

Those that God predetermined to love he has also drawn to himself, and those who been chosen he also declares right on the basis of His Son, which in the end, will reveal the full glory of that new relationship.”

Romans 8:21-22 (ESV)


[21] that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [22] For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.


(Introduction to Pastor Todd's sermon on "Creation Groans")


In this passage Paul connects groaning with suffering. The word itself conveys the deep sort of pain that expresses itself in the inward groan that cannot be expressed in words.

Paul actually speaks of three types of groaning – the groaning of the Christian, The groaning of creation and the groaning of the Spirit. First there is the idea that following Christ will also involve a type of suffering - along with the grace of forgiveness and new life, comes the grace of identifying with his suffering. All who want to live a godly life will have persecution.
This is what Peter speaks about as the normative and typical experience of Christian living – we don’t live in the world in its present form as a place of ultimate hope and comfort.


1 Peter 1:6 (ESV)

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, as was necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,

There is also the groaning of creation. Here Paul is personifying creation as though it too feels the weight of sin, - it too is looking with hopeful expectation of the final victory of our redemption in Christ.
This is a forgotten blessing of our redemption. We tend in evangelical circles to think of our salvation in just personal terms. This however is a glimpse in the cosmic implications of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Another truth of our redemption is that it gives us hope in regard to the future. There are great promises in relation to our salvation that is rooted in


Our Past - Christ’s death and resurrection – the surety of our sins paid for.

Our Present – the promise of the Spirit who applies the benefits of our salvation - The gospel is not simple an objective truth – we can right down and explain. It is also, by God’s mercy, a subjective and transforming reality. Is this real for you? Do you believe, merely with your mind? Has the Holy Spirit made the truth come alive and bring power and new freedom in your life – a growing freedom from your old habits and sinful ways?

There is of course groaning in the personal struggle as we wait the “full redemption of our bodies”For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us
- The groaning expressed repeatedly in this section is a groaning that is always pictured in the Bible with the pains of childbirth.

So, it is a pain that has the end result of something great. In childbirth there is the promise of great joy that comes with a new life that a woman, who endures great suffering, but later forgets the pain for the joy of her child.


(the rest of the sermon will be uploaded for listening next week....for the audio version - stay tuned)

Lessons in Idol Smashing

   

He removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it (it was called Nehushtan).        2 Kings 18:4 (ESV) 

Hezekiah was one of Judah’s greatest kings; in fact, he is recorded in Scripture as being in the same league as David in spiritual devotion to God (2 Kings 18:3). From the beginning of his reign he showed both courage and zeal in his love for God and the purity of worship. Unlike previous administrations, he did not give half-hearted lip service to the Lord, but went so far as to remove every idol and pagan altar in the land. In a bold venture of smashing religious icons and relics, like Cromwell’s army in 17th Century England, Hezekiah was not content just to eradicate pagan influence, he honed in on home territory. The old bronze serpent, Moses fashioned had also become an obsession and favored idol. It, in a sense, was more troublesome than the fertility poles of Asherah. Those distasteful monuments were bold in-your-face pagan. Make no mistake about the pagan quality of so much of the idolatry in the open air of Judah. What was less obvious, and in many ways, a silent offense, was the work of art created by Moses at the very command of God (Num. 21:8). Yet centuries later, that sacred object became a spiritual stumbling block to true faith. Instead of worshiping and praising God who delivered his people both from Egypt and from poisonous snakes, they were attributing power and glory to a manmade object. It never takes that long, however, to move from Creator to creation in a sad descent into idolatry. We are capable of doing such a thing in minutes. That is why Hezekiah’s iconoclasm, which included the radical measure of smashing the bronze snake of Moses, is an important lesson for us to heed. Idols lie all around us, crop up almost daily and have the ability to illicit silent approval in our lives. I am not adept enough to name the ones in your life, but God is able by his Word and Spirit to probe your heart. There is a word of caution, as we look at Hezekiah’s spiritual reform. While, there is no mention of an immediate backlash against Hezekiah (being a monarch and all), you can bet your piggy bank on the wager that some folks were not happy at the destruction of such a time-honored family relic. They must have felt that Moses himself was dishonored. Of course, the whole matter was one in which God was not honored, by the false use of something once used by God for good.

Secondly, we learn that we can take good things and use them or abuse them into idols. The serpent on the pole was a picture of the Gospel, where even in John 3, Jesus said was a pointer to the great rendering of God’s mercy for us sinners and God’s hot wrath on his Son in the Cross of Christ. Don’t think that the veneration of the object was no small thing, for it missed the forest through focusing on the trees. Like, the ones who opposed Jesus in his day, there might have been a gathering of “concerned men” who were worried about the direction Hezekiah was heading. But, the spiritual renewal, however short-lived, was evidence that he was on the right path. When the Holy Spirit moves and the Gospel is being made known, the idols of our lives will have to be demolished and made history. It is an unending job, until, one day the glory of Christ himself will be known and the whole earth filled with its brilliance.

Superheroes and Christ the Victorious Hero

In the last decade several movies have been made (some with many sequels) based on the old superheroes of comic books and TV cartoons.  Some of us were kids when we got hooked on watching Batman and Robin beat up the bad guys or Spiderman help little old ladies from getting mugged.  There seemed to be a moral quality about these superheroes from the comics that reflected a boundary about goodness and evil and the need for justice.   Yet today with the sophistication of computer generated “virtual reality” and the postmodern quest for complexity of character, the Superheroes now have a dark side.  Complexity is not a bad thing or unchristian.  We know the nature of the human heart and that even among believers we do not deal with cardboard characters.   The Bible gives us the prayers of King David as well as his private lusts and public scandals.   Paul does not hide his physical weakness or his discouragement in ministry (1 Cor. 2:3).   Whitewashing heroes to make them something unreal or comical is not what biblical truth is about.  Our heroes in faith are not people with unblemished records or superhuman powers, but showed remarkable complexity of personalities.  They were very much ordinary men and women who in the midst of testing did something rather extraordinary; they believed in God (Heb.11) and they trusted in the One who save them, a righteous Redeemer. 

They were counted righteous by faith in the One who is victorious over all evil and sin.  Our redeemer, Jesus Christ is not a hero like the comic book variety, he is true and righteous.   The human longing for heroes, finds true fulfillment in the grace of Christ our Lord.