"The only way to be blessed is to be a blessing and to be a blessing we must leave our comfort." - Tim Keller
Today I started my new volunteering gig at Sunshine Ministries in downtown St. Louis. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but simply prayed yesterday for grace, love and wisdom for the men I encountered.
The spiritual battle started even before I got out of bed. A big thunderstorm hit around 6 AM which cut my night of sleep short. As I laid there hoping to fall back asleep in a dark room with the rain falling outside, the temptation to simply stay in bed was strong. It had been a tough week where things hadn't gone the way I had hoped. Part of me really wanted to simply shut off the alarm and hibernate for the day.
But I also know spiritual warfare when I see it...especially this morning. I knew God couldn't use me to serve others for Him when I was lying in bed. I also knew that I had told many people I was volunteering this morning and I want to live a life of accountability and integrity. But most of all, I have learned, and continue to learn, that life is best lived when it is ultimately lived out of love for God and for others. To be self-centered is to miss God's purpose for my life.
So I got out of bed and made it on time. There wasn't a lot to it. About a dozen guys from the community come every 3rd Saturday for a time of Biblical teaching, as well as food and clothing. My job was to help check in the guys and give them their name tag and then help them with their shopping. They were all friendly and appreciative. It really didn't even feel like I was serving all that much. It was certainly a more relaxed job than the Hope Ministries' volunteering I do with my family in Des Moines every Christmas. So, of course, Satan's word for me as I was driving home, was that being there didn't make much of a difference because there wasn't that much for me to do. So predictable.
We are starting a book in my men's care group entitled "It's Your Call: What Are You Doing Here?" by Gary Barkalow. One of the most persistent questions I have heard from Christians surrounds the lack of clarity they feel from God on what they are supposed to do with their lives. Some don't even want to really know because then they will feel forced to abandon their plans and follow God. To better understand God's purpose for our lives would mean to live each day with greater meaning and intent. That would certainly entail an even greater focus on God and others at the expense of ourselves.
But the truth is that there is no greater blessing than to know that the Creator of the universe has chosen you and I to help advance the Kingdom of God. We may not know exactly how to do that all the time. However, you can always start by blessing others for the glory of God. Take a step in faith and leave your comfort zone behind. The blessing you receive will not be found in wealth or health. It will be found in knowing that your will is aligned with God's will and that you are catching a glimpse of why God created you in the first place. There is no greater blessing than that.
"Trying to be happy without a sense of God's presence is like trying to have a bright day without the sun." - A.W. Tozer
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Faith as Understanding
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)
Tim Keller preached a sermon on 2/1/11 called "Noah and the Reasons of Faith: Faith as Understanding." I listened to it 3 times on my recent trip to Des Moines and back. I felt there were a lot of great points made that would be especially helpful in talking with a skeptic or non-believer. Since there is no transcript, I have decided to go through it again and jot down the highlights here.
Faith has 3 elements: It begins with understanding which leads to conviction and completes itself in commitment. Unless all three are present, it isn't Christian faith.
Faith begins with thinking and reasoning. Thinking is the foundation of faith.
"By faith we understand (i.e. think) that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." - Hebrews 11:3
"And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." - Hebrews 11:6
This is not the popular conception. People think Christians would rather accept what they are told and rely on tradition. Faith, in the popular mindset, is pitted against thinking. The Bible teaches that not only is faith compatible with thinking but faith consists of, requires and stimulates the most profound thinking, reasoning and rationality. You can't be a Christian without using your brain to its utmost. In fact, the reason there isn't much faith today is because there isn't much thinking today.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) says there are 3 great questions that all people must wrestle with and come up with a working answer for:
How can I know what is real?
What ought I to do that is right, i.e. what is right and wrong?
What can I hope/live for?
But many of us have been taught from childhood that these are the questions for philosophers. We have been told that what really matters is our standard of living, career, appearance and our psychological needs. So, we come to the conclusion that those three questions aren't really important. That isn't doubt on the basis of thinking. That is doubt due to the absence of thinking.
Hebrews 11:6 says that you can't come to God unless you believe He is real. You must reach that conclusion. For example, say you have heard of a beautiful island in the ocean that you would really like to visit. Do you just go there? Of course not. You research it. You look at maps. You talk to people who have been there. After gathering all of this information, you are assured that the island exists, you know where it is at and you know the best route to get there. Any other approach is irresponsible. Yet, people often come to church in the midst of a great need or crisis and when asked whether or not they think Christianity is true, they often say, "Well, it is true for me. I can't speak for other people. I just know it fits me. I know that it's connecting right where I am." Keller says to them you can't skip over verse 6. You must not just think it is true for you. You must think it is true period.
When Paul says, "We walk by faith not by sight," he doesn't contrast faith with reason. Keller uses the example of going into the doctor's office for a minor outpatient procedure. Beforehand, he has talked with the doctor and with others who have had a similar condition. He has researched it online and come to the conclusion that all will be well based on reason and thinking. But when he gets to the office and sees the knives and smells the smell and notices the straps on the bed, he begins to experience doubt. Why? Sight leads to reactions and feelings that have no grounding in reason. How does he get his faith back again? He renews his thinking and remembers the doctor's words and the evidence he has seen. Doubt comes when rational thinking is suspended. Things that are absolutely true don't always FEEL true.
Jesus in Matthew 6 tells people how to overcome anxiety and worry. He says, "Consider the lilies of the field..." He's not saying "Just believe!" He is saying, "Consider, think, deduce."
Hebrews 11:3 is saying that Christians look at the physical world and say that what is seen is not self-explanatory. It takes a lot of thinking to reach that conclusion. By faith we start off saying, "If there is a God then the universe makes sense. What I see is explainable. But if there is no God and all I see is matter it doesn't make sense." Christians have looked at the universe and decided that if all we can see empirically (using all five senses) is all that exists then it doesn't make sense.
Philosophers of science say that when a scientist observes a phenomenon, he/she must ask, "What causes this? What governs this? The way to find out is you posit a premise, you pose a theory. Then you try out the theory. Scientists determine which theory is right/true by finding the one with the greatest explanatory power. It's the only one that makes sense. It's the only one that explains what I see. So, a Christian believes in faith because every other way of explaining the universe has far more problems, contradictions and incoherence. A Christian doesn't say there are no intellectual problems with their belief. A Christian says that every belief system is vastly inferior.
There are two faith premises: There is no God and therefore the universe is self explanatory and ultimate. There is nothing but the physical. The other premise says God created it. So, a Christian can ask the person holding the first view the following question..."OK, so if there is no God, if the world is an accident and therefore all my thoughts and all my feelings and everything about me is just the chance collocation of molecules, if everything I think and everything I feel is really just explained in terms of chemistry and physical laws, why be rational? You are arguing with me but on the basis of your view, weeds grow because they are weeds and minds just do whatever minds do. You are acting as if we are free to think about different kinds of ideas and listen to different arguments and then choose the best one. On the basis of your view, that's impossible. Your mind is just a bunch of atoms vibrating around. You will do whatever you have been programmed to do. There is no freedom. When you use language and logic, when you assume the world is orderly, when you assume that there is a uniformity of nature (i.e. that if the fire burns you once it will burn you again), there is no basis for these assumptions in your view."
Modern philosophers know that if there is no God and this visible universe is all we have got, there is no reason to trust reason. There is no logical basis for logic if there is nothing besides what we see. Why should I trust my mind if it is just the product of evolution? The Christian would say, "Ah, you do trust your thinking and you do trust reason though you have no basis for it. You have no explanatory power to explain why reason works and that we know it works."
Furthermore, the Christian can say to the skeptic, "You have no ability to talk about moral obligation at all. You have no way to appeal to people and you have no basis on which to work for freedom and justice in the world." The Christian can say, "But we know some things are always wrong. We know genocide is wrong. But, if this world is all there is, than all moral feelings are the product of atoms and molecules. In the end, everything is an accident. The fact that you feel these things is purely an accident because the universe is an accident."
After 200 years, the brightest thinkers are realizing that if the universe is all there is, there is no basis for reason or moral obligation. But we do know that our thoughts work and we do know some things are wrong. So, someone says, "I don't know if there is a God," but they go home and kiss their wife and kids as if love was real. But on the basis of their view, there is no such thing. Love is really just chemical reactions. If everything you experience is based on natural law and physics then your feelings, plans, trusts, choices and achievements are not really real.
If your premise leads you to a conclusion that is obviously wrong then you have to go back and look at your premise. To argue that there is no God is to implicitly agree that language, logic and your mind work, which means you are inherently admitting that there is a God.
Many people say you can live a full life without God or Christianity. But a life full of what? It isn't integrity because you will not be able to take what you believe and apply it to what you do. You believe one thing but you act in another way. You have to because the theory that the universe is ultimate has no explanatory power. You know your mind works. You know some things are true. You know some things are wrong. You know that love is real. But you can't account for it. But Christians don't have this contradiction. They don't have to assume the very thing they are trying to deny in order to deny it.
To disbelieve takes a lot of faith and it is faith not based on thinking.
So why does thinking lead to faith? The God who invented the universe is not impersonal. He is a person. He rewards those who diligently seek Him. This is someone who wants you to come into His presence, who wants a relationship with you. Thinking will lead you to understand that love is real because there is a personal God who loves you. Right and wrong exists because there is a God behind everything who cares about how we live. So, thinking about these things ultimately leads to faith and faith leads to a desire to want to please a God who has created you for a purpose within His creation. You'll want to find Him and have a relationship with Him.
Finally, your thinking will inevitably lead you to Jesus Christ. Martin Luther's thinking led him to belief in God and wanting to obey and please God but he quickly came to the conclusion that he couldn't on his own. He couldn't even obey the Golden Rule, which almost everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike holds to be instinctively true. So, Luther is thinking, "How in the world can I please this God?" The Bible tells us there is only one way. A voice came down from heaven when Jesus was baptized and said, "This is my son in whom I am well pleased." Well pleased. Jesus is the only person in the history of mankind to live a perfect life and to be found pleasing to God on his own. Romans 8 tells us that when we accept Christ as our Savior and the Holy Spirit comes down on us, we too become pleasing in God's sight.
That is worth thinking about.
http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/is-the-bibles-definition-of-faith-opposed-to-logic-and-evidence-3/
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/19/12299214-atheist-blogger-leah-libresco-converts-to-christianity?lite
Tim Keller preached a sermon on 2/1/11 called "Noah and the Reasons of Faith: Faith as Understanding." I listened to it 3 times on my recent trip to Des Moines and back. I felt there were a lot of great points made that would be especially helpful in talking with a skeptic or non-believer. Since there is no transcript, I have decided to go through it again and jot down the highlights here.
Faith has 3 elements: It begins with understanding which leads to conviction and completes itself in commitment. Unless all three are present, it isn't Christian faith.
Faith begins with thinking and reasoning. Thinking is the foundation of faith.
"By faith we understand (i.e. think) that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." - Hebrews 11:3
"And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." - Hebrews 11:6
This is not the popular conception. People think Christians would rather accept what they are told and rely on tradition. Faith, in the popular mindset, is pitted against thinking. The Bible teaches that not only is faith compatible with thinking but faith consists of, requires and stimulates the most profound thinking, reasoning and rationality. You can't be a Christian without using your brain to its utmost. In fact, the reason there isn't much faith today is because there isn't much thinking today.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) says there are 3 great questions that all people must wrestle with and come up with a working answer for:
How can I know what is real?
What ought I to do that is right, i.e. what is right and wrong?
What can I hope/live for?
But many of us have been taught from childhood that these are the questions for philosophers. We have been told that what really matters is our standard of living, career, appearance and our psychological needs. So, we come to the conclusion that those three questions aren't really important. That isn't doubt on the basis of thinking. That is doubt due to the absence of thinking.
Hebrews 11:6 says that you can't come to God unless you believe He is real. You must reach that conclusion. For example, say you have heard of a beautiful island in the ocean that you would really like to visit. Do you just go there? Of course not. You research it. You look at maps. You talk to people who have been there. After gathering all of this information, you are assured that the island exists, you know where it is at and you know the best route to get there. Any other approach is irresponsible. Yet, people often come to church in the midst of a great need or crisis and when asked whether or not they think Christianity is true, they often say, "Well, it is true for me. I can't speak for other people. I just know it fits me. I know that it's connecting right where I am." Keller says to them you can't skip over verse 6. You must not just think it is true for you. You must think it is true period.
When Paul says, "We walk by faith not by sight," he doesn't contrast faith with reason. Keller uses the example of going into the doctor's office for a minor outpatient procedure. Beforehand, he has talked with the doctor and with others who have had a similar condition. He has researched it online and come to the conclusion that all will be well based on reason and thinking. But when he gets to the office and sees the knives and smells the smell and notices the straps on the bed, he begins to experience doubt. Why? Sight leads to reactions and feelings that have no grounding in reason. How does he get his faith back again? He renews his thinking and remembers the doctor's words and the evidence he has seen. Doubt comes when rational thinking is suspended. Things that are absolutely true don't always FEEL true.
Jesus in Matthew 6 tells people how to overcome anxiety and worry. He says, "Consider the lilies of the field..." He's not saying "Just believe!" He is saying, "Consider, think, deduce."
Hebrews 11:3 is saying that Christians look at the physical world and say that what is seen is not self-explanatory. It takes a lot of thinking to reach that conclusion. By faith we start off saying, "If there is a God then the universe makes sense. What I see is explainable. But if there is no God and all I see is matter it doesn't make sense." Christians have looked at the universe and decided that if all we can see empirically (using all five senses) is all that exists then it doesn't make sense.
Philosophers of science say that when a scientist observes a phenomenon, he/she must ask, "What causes this? What governs this? The way to find out is you posit a premise, you pose a theory. Then you try out the theory. Scientists determine which theory is right/true by finding the one with the greatest explanatory power. It's the only one that makes sense. It's the only one that explains what I see. So, a Christian believes in faith because every other way of explaining the universe has far more problems, contradictions and incoherence. A Christian doesn't say there are no intellectual problems with their belief. A Christian says that every belief system is vastly inferior.
There are two faith premises: There is no God and therefore the universe is self explanatory and ultimate. There is nothing but the physical. The other premise says God created it. So, a Christian can ask the person holding the first view the following question..."OK, so if there is no God, if the world is an accident and therefore all my thoughts and all my feelings and everything about me is just the chance collocation of molecules, if everything I think and everything I feel is really just explained in terms of chemistry and physical laws, why be rational? You are arguing with me but on the basis of your view, weeds grow because they are weeds and minds just do whatever minds do. You are acting as if we are free to think about different kinds of ideas and listen to different arguments and then choose the best one. On the basis of your view, that's impossible. Your mind is just a bunch of atoms vibrating around. You will do whatever you have been programmed to do. There is no freedom. When you use language and logic, when you assume the world is orderly, when you assume that there is a uniformity of nature (i.e. that if the fire burns you once it will burn you again), there is no basis for these assumptions in your view."
Modern philosophers know that if there is no God and this visible universe is all we have got, there is no reason to trust reason. There is no logical basis for logic if there is nothing besides what we see. Why should I trust my mind if it is just the product of evolution? The Christian would say, "Ah, you do trust your thinking and you do trust reason though you have no basis for it. You have no explanatory power to explain why reason works and that we know it works."
Furthermore, the Christian can say to the skeptic, "You have no ability to talk about moral obligation at all. You have no way to appeal to people and you have no basis on which to work for freedom and justice in the world." The Christian can say, "But we know some things are always wrong. We know genocide is wrong. But, if this world is all there is, than all moral feelings are the product of atoms and molecules. In the end, everything is an accident. The fact that you feel these things is purely an accident because the universe is an accident."
After 200 years, the brightest thinkers are realizing that if the universe is all there is, there is no basis for reason or moral obligation. But we do know that our thoughts work and we do know some things are wrong. So, someone says, "I don't know if there is a God," but they go home and kiss their wife and kids as if love was real. But on the basis of their view, there is no such thing. Love is really just chemical reactions. If everything you experience is based on natural law and physics then your feelings, plans, trusts, choices and achievements are not really real.
If your premise leads you to a conclusion that is obviously wrong then you have to go back and look at your premise. To argue that there is no God is to implicitly agree that language, logic and your mind work, which means you are inherently admitting that there is a God.
Many people say you can live a full life without God or Christianity. But a life full of what? It isn't integrity because you will not be able to take what you believe and apply it to what you do. You believe one thing but you act in another way. You have to because the theory that the universe is ultimate has no explanatory power. You know your mind works. You know some things are true. You know some things are wrong. You know that love is real. But you can't account for it. But Christians don't have this contradiction. They don't have to assume the very thing they are trying to deny in order to deny it.
To disbelieve takes a lot of faith and it is faith not based on thinking.
So why does thinking lead to faith? The God who invented the universe is not impersonal. He is a person. He rewards those who diligently seek Him. This is someone who wants you to come into His presence, who wants a relationship with you. Thinking will lead you to understand that love is real because there is a personal God who loves you. Right and wrong exists because there is a God behind everything who cares about how we live. So, thinking about these things ultimately leads to faith and faith leads to a desire to want to please a God who has created you for a purpose within His creation. You'll want to find Him and have a relationship with Him.
Finally, your thinking will inevitably lead you to Jesus Christ. Martin Luther's thinking led him to belief in God and wanting to obey and please God but he quickly came to the conclusion that he couldn't on his own. He couldn't even obey the Golden Rule, which almost everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike holds to be instinctively true. So, Luther is thinking, "How in the world can I please this God?" The Bible tells us there is only one way. A voice came down from heaven when Jesus was baptized and said, "This is my son in whom I am well pleased." Well pleased. Jesus is the only person in the history of mankind to live a perfect life and to be found pleasing to God on his own. Romans 8 tells us that when we accept Christ as our Savior and the Holy Spirit comes down on us, we too become pleasing in God's sight.
That is worth thinking about.
http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/is-the-bibles-definition-of-faith-opposed-to-logic-and-evidence-3/
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/19/12299214-atheist-blogger-leah-libresco-converts-to-christianity?lite
Friday, June 10, 2011
Ambassador for Christ
"The usefulness of your ministry depends in large measure on the depth of your spiritual life." - Colin Smith, Senior Pastor of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church in Arlington Heights, Illinois
How aware are you throughout each and every day that you are an ambassador of Christ...that God is making His appeal through you? Every Christian has this ministry every single day whether they know it or not. It is incredibly freeing to know that it is God working through us. It is incredibly humbling that the perfect God of the universe reaches others through our fingertips. It is incredibly convicting that I have a responsibility to be walking closely with God in order that I may be most effective in the advancement of His Kingdom.
Far too often, I view my spiritual walk as my spiritual walk...as if it starts and ends with me and is ultimately for my growth and edification. How short sighted of me. My spiritual growth and sanctification ripples through the sphere of influence in which God has placed me. If I am finding a comfort level with sin and neglecting my daily time with God, I have not only hurt myself but those around me. Yes, God can still work through me because He is God regardless of the status of my heart. After all, He worked through the Assyrians and Babylonians. But if I have taken my eyes off of Him, I am going to be far less willing and open to being used by Him. Ultimately, I am impeding His will and His ministry of reconciliation with the world.
I am very thankful for the ministry God has given me as a care group leader. Over the years, I have certainly noticed the differences in my preparation and effectiveness as a leader when my life is saturated with God. I have more wisdom and a greater ability to connect the dots for guys between their lives and God's Word. Of course, this wisdom isn't mine. It is just flowing more freely through me from the Spirit as this vessel of clay is more willing to be shaped by its potter.
I need to remember that the unopened Bible on my nightstand isn't an issue just between God and myself. It reaches much further than I will ever know.
"Ministry is not what we do for God, it's what God does through us. Be Spirit-filled like Jesus." - Mark Driscoll http://jesus.to/ky2Qzc
How aware are you throughout each and every day that you are an ambassador of Christ...that God is making His appeal through you? Every Christian has this ministry every single day whether they know it or not. It is incredibly freeing to know that it is God working through us. It is incredibly humbling that the perfect God of the universe reaches others through our fingertips. It is incredibly convicting that I have a responsibility to be walking closely with God in order that I may be most effective in the advancement of His Kingdom.
Far too often, I view my spiritual walk as my spiritual walk...as if it starts and ends with me and is ultimately for my growth and edification. How short sighted of me. My spiritual growth and sanctification ripples through the sphere of influence in which God has placed me. If I am finding a comfort level with sin and neglecting my daily time with God, I have not only hurt myself but those around me. Yes, God can still work through me because He is God regardless of the status of my heart. After all, He worked through the Assyrians and Babylonians. But if I have taken my eyes off of Him, I am going to be far less willing and open to being used by Him. Ultimately, I am impeding His will and His ministry of reconciliation with the world.
I am very thankful for the ministry God has given me as a care group leader. Over the years, I have certainly noticed the differences in my preparation and effectiveness as a leader when my life is saturated with God. I have more wisdom and a greater ability to connect the dots for guys between their lives and God's Word. Of course, this wisdom isn't mine. It is just flowing more freely through me from the Spirit as this vessel of clay is more willing to be shaped by its potter.
I need to remember that the unopened Bible on my nightstand isn't an issue just between God and myself. It reaches much further than I will ever know.
"Ministry is not what we do for God, it's what God does through us. Be Spirit-filled like Jesus." - Mark Driscoll http://jesus.to/ky2Qzc
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Don't Give Up
3 tweets today from Mike Donehey of Tenth Avenue North are excellent reminders and encouragement for all of us:
Hebrews 12 in my brain this morning. We fix our eyes on Jesus and run this race with witnesses cheering us to the finish.
Witnesses on the sidelines. David yelling, "I committed adultery, get back up!" Peter crying, "I denied Christ! "Keep running, He redeems!"
God's redemption is running underneath the fall today. Wherever you are, whatever you've done, get back up.
"God thinks of every separate child of His as much as if He had only that one." - Charles Spurgeon
Hebrews 12 in my brain this morning. We fix our eyes on Jesus and run this race with witnesses cheering us to the finish.
Witnesses on the sidelines. David yelling, "I committed adultery, get back up!" Peter crying, "I denied Christ! "Keep running, He redeems!"
God's redemption is running underneath the fall today. Wherever you are, whatever you've done, get back up.
"God thinks of every separate child of His as much as if He had only that one." - Charles Spurgeon
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Too Good To Be True
From Pastor Tullian...
Having concluded a fourteen week sermon series on the book of James the week before (you can access that entire series for free here), I began a new six-week sermon series this past Sunday entitled “Pictures of Grace.” We’re going back to the Gospels and looking at various events in the life and ministry of Jesus where the shocking, counter-intuitive nature of amazing grace is on display. Each week we’ll look intently at how Jesus wrecks people with his grace, turning everything that makes sense in our conditional world upside-down.
I began the series by pointing out that there’s nothing more difficult for us to get our minds around than the unconditional grace of God; it offends our deepest sensibilities. A conditional world is much safer than an unconditional world because a conditional world keeps us in control, it’s formulaic–do certain things and certain things are guaranteed to happen. We understand conditions. Conditionality makes sense. Unconditionality on the other hand is incomprehensible to us. We are so conditioned against unconditionality–we are told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment precedes acceptance; that achievement precedes approval.
Society demands two way love. Everything’s conditional: if you achieve only then will you receive meaning, security, respect, love and so on. But grace, as Paul Zahl points out, is one way love: “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.”
Like Job’s friends, we naturally conclude that good people get good stuff and bad people get bad stuff. The idea that bad people get good stuff is thickly counter-intuitive. It seems terribly unfair. It offends our sense of justice. Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace– “don’t take it too far; keep it balanced.” The truth is, however, that a “yes grace but” posture is the kind of posture that perpetuates slavery in our lives and in the church. Grace is radically unbalanced. It has no “but”: it’s unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated. As Doug Wilson put it recently, “Grace is wild. Grace unsettles everything. Grace overflows the banks. Grace messes up your hair. Grace is not tame. In fact, unless we are making the devout nervous, we are not preaching grace as we ought.”
With this in mind I decided to begin with Luke 7:36-50. This is the famous account of the sinful woman (most likely a prostitute) barging into a party of religious leaders and washing the feet of Jesus with her tears of repentance. I pointed out that two rescues are happening in this passage: the obvious rescue of the immoral person but also the rescue of the moral person.
Normally when we think of people in need of God’s rescuing grace, we think of the unrighteous and the immoral. But what’s fascinating to me is that throughout the Bible, it’s the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person; it’s the prostitute who gets grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. What we see in this story is that God’s grace wrecks and then rescues, not only the promiscuous but the pious. The Pharisee in this story can’t understand what Jesus is doing by allowing this woman to touch him because he assumes that God is for the clean and competent. But Jesus here shows him that God is for the unclean and incompetent and that when measured against God’s perfect holiness we’re all unclean and incompetent. Jesus shows him that the gospel isn’t for winners, but losers: it’s for the weak and messed up person, not the strong and mighty person. It’s not for the well-behaved, but the dead.
Remember: Jesus came not to effect a moral reformation but a mortal resurrection (moral reformations can, and have, taken place throughout history without Jesus. But only Jesus can raise the dead, over and over and over again). As Gerhard Forde put it, “Christianity is not the move from vice to virtue, but rather the move from virtue to grace.”
Wrecking every religious category he had, Jesus tells the Pharisee that he has a lot to learn from the prostitute, not the other way around.
The prostitute on the other hand walks into a party of religious people and falls at the feet of Jesus without any care as to what others are thinking and saying. She’s at the end of herself. More than wanting to avoid an uncomfortable situation, she wanted to be clean–she needed to be forgiven. She was acutely aware of her guilt and shame. She knew she needed help. She understood at a profound level that God’s grace doesn’t demand that you get clean before you come to Jesus. Rather, our only hope for getting clean is to come to Jesus. Only in the Gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love.
I closed the sermon by recalling a story that Rod Rosenbladt told me when we were together at the recent Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago. It’s a story about a middle-aged woman who needed help from her pastor.
She went to her pastor and said, “Pastor, you know that I had an abortion a number of years ago?” “Yes,” the Pastor replied. “Well, I need to talk to you about the man I’ve since met.” “Alright,” replied the Pastor.
“Well, we met a while back, and started dating and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then things got more serious between us and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. A while later we got engaged and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then we got married and I thought, I really need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. So I needed to talk to someone, Pastor, and you’re it.”
The Pastor replied, “You know, we have a service for this. Let’s go through that together.” So they did – a service of confession and absolution.
When they were finished, she said to him, “Now I think I have the courage to tell my new husband about my abortion. Thanks, Pastor.”
And the Pastor replied to her, “What abortion?”
What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and all of us need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’”
I know this seems too good to be true, but it’s true. No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished.
What abortion?
"If grace doesn't cause you to say, 'Wait a minute, that can't be right', it's not grace!" - Pastor Tullian
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tullian/2013/08/01/liberate-2014/
Having concluded a fourteen week sermon series on the book of James the week before (you can access that entire series for free here), I began a new six-week sermon series this past Sunday entitled “Pictures of Grace.” We’re going back to the Gospels and looking at various events in the life and ministry of Jesus where the shocking, counter-intuitive nature of amazing grace is on display. Each week we’ll look intently at how Jesus wrecks people with his grace, turning everything that makes sense in our conditional world upside-down.
I began the series by pointing out that there’s nothing more difficult for us to get our minds around than the unconditional grace of God; it offends our deepest sensibilities. A conditional world is much safer than an unconditional world because a conditional world keeps us in control, it’s formulaic–do certain things and certain things are guaranteed to happen. We understand conditions. Conditionality makes sense. Unconditionality on the other hand is incomprehensible to us. We are so conditioned against unconditionality–we are told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment precedes acceptance; that achievement precedes approval.
Society demands two way love. Everything’s conditional: if you achieve only then will you receive meaning, security, respect, love and so on. But grace, as Paul Zahl points out, is one way love: “Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable.”
Like Job’s friends, we naturally conclude that good people get good stuff and bad people get bad stuff. The idea that bad people get good stuff is thickly counter-intuitive. It seems terribly unfair. It offends our sense of justice. Even those of us who have tasted the radical saving grace of God find it intuitively difficult not to put conditions on grace– “don’t take it too far; keep it balanced.” The truth is, however, that a “yes grace but” posture is the kind of posture that perpetuates slavery in our lives and in the church. Grace is radically unbalanced. It has no “but”: it’s unconditional, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and undomesticated. As Doug Wilson put it recently, “Grace is wild. Grace unsettles everything. Grace overflows the banks. Grace messes up your hair. Grace is not tame. In fact, unless we are making the devout nervous, we are not preaching grace as we ought.”
With this in mind I decided to begin with Luke 7:36-50. This is the famous account of the sinful woman (most likely a prostitute) barging into a party of religious leaders and washing the feet of Jesus with her tears of repentance. I pointed out that two rescues are happening in this passage: the obvious rescue of the immoral person but also the rescue of the moral person.
Normally when we think of people in need of God’s rescuing grace, we think of the unrighteous and the immoral. But what’s fascinating to me is that throughout the Bible, it’s the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person; it’s the prostitute who gets grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. What we see in this story is that God’s grace wrecks and then rescues, not only the promiscuous but the pious. The Pharisee in this story can’t understand what Jesus is doing by allowing this woman to touch him because he assumes that God is for the clean and competent. But Jesus here shows him that God is for the unclean and incompetent and that when measured against God’s perfect holiness we’re all unclean and incompetent. Jesus shows him that the gospel isn’t for winners, but losers: it’s for the weak and messed up person, not the strong and mighty person. It’s not for the well-behaved, but the dead.
Remember: Jesus came not to effect a moral reformation but a mortal resurrection (moral reformations can, and have, taken place throughout history without Jesus. But only Jesus can raise the dead, over and over and over again). As Gerhard Forde put it, “Christianity is not the move from vice to virtue, but rather the move from virtue to grace.”
Wrecking every religious category he had, Jesus tells the Pharisee that he has a lot to learn from the prostitute, not the other way around.
The prostitute on the other hand walks into a party of religious people and falls at the feet of Jesus without any care as to what others are thinking and saying. She’s at the end of herself. More than wanting to avoid an uncomfortable situation, she wanted to be clean–she needed to be forgiven. She was acutely aware of her guilt and shame. She knew she needed help. She understood at a profound level that God’s grace doesn’t demand that you get clean before you come to Jesus. Rather, our only hope for getting clean is to come to Jesus. Only in the Gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love.
I closed the sermon by recalling a story that Rod Rosenbladt told me when we were together at the recent Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago. It’s a story about a middle-aged woman who needed help from her pastor.
She went to her pastor and said, “Pastor, you know that I had an abortion a number of years ago?” “Yes,” the Pastor replied. “Well, I need to talk to you about the man I’ve since met.” “Alright,” replied the Pastor.
“Well, we met a while back, and started dating and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then things got more serious between us and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. A while later we got engaged and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then we got married and I thought, I really need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. So I needed to talk to someone, Pastor, and you’re it.”
The Pastor replied, “You know, we have a service for this. Let’s go through that together.” So they did – a service of confession and absolution.
When they were finished, she said to him, “Now I think I have the courage to tell my new husband about my abortion. Thanks, Pastor.”
And the Pastor replied to her, “What abortion?”
What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and all of us need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’”
I know this seems too good to be true, but it’s true. No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished.
What abortion?
"If grace doesn't cause you to say, 'Wait a minute, that can't be right', it's not grace!" - Pastor Tullian
http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tullian/2013/08/01/liberate-2014/
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Joplin
So short. So short. "What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (James 4:14)
"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:7
Heavenly Father, give them...Yourself.
"He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken." - Isaiah 25:8
"For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." - Revelation 7:17
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." - Revelation 21:4
Come, Lord Jesus. Come.
"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:7
Heavenly Father, give them...Yourself.
"He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken." - Isaiah 25:8
"For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." - Revelation 7:17
"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." - Revelation 21:4
Come, Lord Jesus. Come.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)