20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
The link between Jesus’ resurrection and our justification seems to have many facets:
- Raised to Give Us a Future Resurrection: Because of Jesus’ resurrection, one day our physical bodies will also return to life.
- Raised to Prompt Faith in Us: It is the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, following his sin-defeating death, that will inspire us to believe in, trust, obey, and worship this man who lived two thousand years ago in a small country in the Middle East. Justification is “by grace . . . through faith” (Ephesians 2:8), and our faith itself requires the resurrection of Jesus. Unless Jesus had defeated death, we could never have the faith in him that is necessary for our justification. Jesus’ resurrection is in this sense the source of the faith that is the grounds of our justification: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).
- Raised for His Own Justification: It may sound strange to talk about Jesus’ need for justification. But justification is a declaration, a vindication. The resurrection of Jesus has evidencing power. Jesus is declared to still be righteous by his resurrection, just as he was declared to have become sin by his death. God’s wrath has been satisfied.
- Justified So We Can be Justified: Despite our usual understanding that the cross alone is responsible for our forgiveness, Paul is elsewhere very clear. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). We share in the justification of Jesus. Because of his right standing with God, his people are made righteous too.
- Raised So He Can Apply Justification to Us: Faith is putting our trust in the person Jesus and in the fact that he died and rose again for us. How does Jesus apply salvation to us? Jesus himself saves us in the present. Edwards comments on Romans 4:25, “That is, delivered for our offenses, and raised again that he might see to the application of his sufferings to our justification, and that he might plead them for our justifying.” Jesus is before the throne of God pleading for us, no doubt on the grounds of his death and resurrection. “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).
We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is “of him.” If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth…If we see redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.
Having grown up in evangelical churches all my life, I had always taken for granted the truth that Christ died for me. That truth was emphasized again and again, and it had gripped my heart long ago. What was becoming more glorious to me was the truth that Christ died for us. I was beginning to see in Scripture how Christ's death purchased his church as a bride. Furthermore, this action for us was ultimately for God and his glory ….
I'm afraid we often take the glorious for me and separate it from the for us and the for God. We shrink the gospel down until it is a message about the individual standing before God that no longer contains the gospel community at the heart of God's plan. Instead, we need to see the for me wrapped up in the for us, which is wrapped up in the for God. It all goes back to God and his glory being made manifest through the church that he has bought with the blood of his Son.
Emphasize the for me to the exclusion of everything else, and you wind up with an individualistic message about personal salvation; the church becomes an optional side effect of the gospel message. Emphasize the for us and for God aspects of the message and you never bring the good news down to the personal level; you don't challenge someone to trust in Christ …. Once you grasp all three aspects, your personal salvation story is given eternal significance because it is caught up in the great, unfolding drama dreamed up in the heart of our good and loving Creator.
We strongly reject, therefore, every explanation of the death of Christ which does not have at its centre the principle of ‘satisfaction through substitution’, indeed divine self-satisfaction through divine self-substitution.
The cross was not:
a commercial bargain with the devil, let alone one which tricked and trapped him;
nor an exact equivalent, a quid pro quo to satisfy a code of honour or technical point of law;
nor a compulsory submission by God to some moral authority above him from which he could not otherwise escape;
nor a punishment of a meek Christ by a harsh and punitive Father;
nor a procurement of salvation by a loving Christ from a mean and reluctant Father;
nor an action of the Father which bypassed Christ as Mediator.
Instead, the righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character.
The theological words ‘satisfaction’ and ‘substitution’ need to be carefully defined and safeguarded, but they cannot in any circumstance be given up. The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" —Mark 15:33-34, ESVHere Jesus speaks a word we could have spoken. Not always, not everywhere. But there are times when this word has become our word, words he may have taken right out of our mouths: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Sometimes this word remains unspoken, but the sentiment is a steady reality. There is no great anguish. There are no tears. There is just the daily, ongoing experience of God's absence. We don't feel God's presence in prayer or worship, but we still go through the motions. We read the Bible faithfully, but gain no flashes of inspiration. This reality has become such a part of our lives we don't panic. We recognize that extraordinary spiritual experiences are few and far between and that we live in vast stretches of between. We wouldn't quite say we're forsaken, but neither would we say God is a living reality. But at the end of another dreary day of divine absence, when we turn out the bed lamp and lie still in the dark, waiting for sleep to overtake us, we wonder, Why don't I experience God more?
Click here to read the rest. It's solid stuff.
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
In my nightly Bible readings with my family, I read a selected narrative in the canon, but every night my children beg me to read “the one about the snake.” For some reason they love to hear about Moses combating the fiery serpents in the wilderness with the bronze serpent on the poleand about the afflicted finding healing when they look at the emblem of the very curse that’s killing them. My little boys don’t simply have a morbid fascination with venomous snakes among the wandering Israelites. In fact, they are never satisfied to end the story there.
They wait in silence until we turn to what they call “the other pole,” the picture of the cross of Christ. That’s when I tell them how mysteriously this seemingly helpless, executed man confronted the snake of Eden right there on “the other pole” and finally did what God had promised since the beginning of history. He crushed its head. He went out beyond the gates of Jerusalem to “where the wild things are”—and he conquered wildness forever. They seem to sleep better hearing that.
And so do I.
Danger doesn’t keep Jesus awake; the judgment of God does.
The disciples are just the opposite, and I fear I am too. They are worried about relatively meaningless things, things that need only to be given over to the attention to Jesus. But they are oblivious to the cross that overhangs the cursed world around them, and within them.
I lose sleep quite often over the things Jesus tells me I should not worry about: my life, my possessions, my future. Such is not of the Spirit. Why is it easier for me to worry about next week’s schedule, and to lose sleep over that, than over those around me who could be moments away from judgment? Why am I more concerned about the way my peers judge my actions than about the Judgment Seat of Christ?
Rabbi Duncan was a great old Reformed teacher in New College, Edinburgh, a hundred and more years ago. In one of his famous excursions in his classes, where he would move off from the Hebrew he was supposed to be teaching to theological reflections on this or that, he threw out the following question: “Do you know what Calvary was? What? What? What? Do you know what Calvary was?” Then, having waited a little and having walked up and down in front of them in silence, he looked at them again and said, “I’ll tell you what Calvary was. It was damnation, and he took it lovingly.” The students in his class reported that there were tears on his face as he said this. And well there might be. “Damnation, and he took it lovingly.”
This is a truly alarming development, but it is actually in keeping with the periodic repression of Christians that has been demanded by the Chinese Communist Party. The church has maintained a steadfastly nonpolitical stance, but the Chinese government clearly sees this church — and the thousands like it — as a threat.
As the paper reports, China has been cracking down on dissent in recent months. Churches in Guangzhou have had their facilities taken away. The advocacy group China Aid claims that at least 3,343 Chinese house church members were detained or beaten in 2010. Some experts estimate that two-thirds of China’s Christians worship in house churches.
Hebrews 3:13 says, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Sin is an expert in propaganda. It skillfully crafts lies and half-truths. Our hearts are trying to deceive us into believing lies. Discontentment starts when we believe sinful lies—lies about God, lies about ourselves, lies about the world, and lies about others. If we’re going to defeat the sin of discontentment, we need to be able to spot its lies. We need to be able to recognize propaganda.
For starters, the following are some of the most common lies:
- God is withholding from me. If we don’t have something we desire, it’s not because God is withholding good from us. God didn’t spare his Son one stroke of misery. He won’t withhold any good thing from us.
- God owes me. The discontented man complains because he isn’t getting what God “owes” him. The contented man is astonished that God would bless him for doing his duty.
- If I get it, I’ll be happy. We won’t be fully satisfied when we get what we want. Because God loves us and wants us to find our satisfaction in him, he won’t allow us to be satisfied. To believe that we’ll finally be happy when we get what we want is a lie.
- I know what’s best for me. God is the one who restores our soul. Sometimes he restores us by giving us what we desire, and sometimes he restores us by withholding it. In either case we can be assured that God knows the best path for us and that he’ll lead us on that path.
Just to be clear: the crowd on Palm Sunday welcoming Jesus with shouts of “Hosanna!” is by and large not the same crowd on Good Friday that demands his death with shouts of “Crucify!”
This is a popular point preachers like to make, and I’ve probably made it myself: “Look at the fickle crowd. They sing songs to him on Sunday and five days later on Friday they want to kill him. How quickly we all turn away.” But read all four gospel accounts carefully (and check some good commentaries). The excited throng on Palm Sunday was filled with Galilean pilgrims and the larger group of disciples, not the Jerusalem crowd in general (see Luke 19:37; Mark 15:40-41).
R.T. France summarizes:
There is no warrant here for the preacher’s favourite comment on the fickleness of a crowd which could shout ‘Hosanna’ one day and ‘Crucify him’ a few days later. They are not the same crowd. The Galilean pilgrims shouted ‘Hosanna’ as they approached the city, the Jerusalem crowd shouted, ‘Crucify him.’
Have a blessed Holy Week that sticks closely to all sorts of glorious texts.
Do you have the Spirit of God in you? You have some religion, most of you. But what kind is it? Is it a home-made article? Did you make yourself what you are? If so, you are a lost man up to this moment. If you have gone no further than you have walked yourself, you are not on the road to heaven yet, you have got your face turned the wrong way. But if you have received something which neither flesh nor blood could reveal to you, if you have been led to do the very thing which you once hated and to love that which you once despised and to despise what your heart and your pride were once set on, then, if this is the Spirit’s work, rejoice, for where he has begun the good work he will carry it on.
And you may know whether it is the Spirit’s work by this. Have you been led to Christ, and away from self? Have you been led away from all feelings, from all doings, from all willings, from all prayings, as the ground of your trust and your hope, and have you been brought nakedly to rely upon the finished work of Christ? If so, this is more than human nature ever taught any man. This is a height to which human nature never climbed. The Spirit of God has done that, and he will never leave what he has once begun. . . .
But if you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you are not his. May the Spirit lead you to your room now to weep, now to repent, and now to look to Christ, and may you now have a divine life implanted which neither time nor eternity shall be able to destroy.
Several times in Scripture we’re told of negative actions directed against the Holy Spirit. Stephen said the Israelites were resisting the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51), and Paul warned the Church not to grieve or quench the Spirit (Eph. 4:30; 1 Thess. 5:19). What does those actions entail?
To resist the Spirit is to set oneself against the Word of God whether heard or read. In Acts 7 it is a sin of the outsider. Those who heard Stephen were furious at what he said and gnashed their teeth against him. What a contrast with the crowd at Pentecost in Acts 2. When they heard Peter they were cut to the heart and asked Peter, “What shall we do?”
To grieve the Spirit quite simply in the argument of Ephesians 4 is to act like a pagan. The Spirit’s sorrow at this is real. The living God is no frozen absolute but is perfectly personal. Persons grieve when appropriate. Such grief is a sign of divine perfection and not divine weakness.
To quench the Spirit is a sin of the insider. It is to despise the word of God. Disregarding how that Word is engaging our conscience is an example of such quenching. As Calvin has taught us, the Lord relates to us by his Word and Spirit. How do we hear that Word today? We hear when the Scriptures are read publicly in the church, faithfully expounded from the pulpit, and privately read in our homes. To be biblically illiterate or unexposed to faithful Bible preaching and teaching is a tragedy for God’s people.
The difference between a Christian and non-Christian: When a non-Christian is convicted of sin, he sides with his sin. When a Christian is convicted of sin, he sides with God, against himself.
As you consider how to share the gospel with your family and friends, first review how Scripture describes God’s work in salvation as a miracle.
- He ‘makes alive’ what was once ‘dead’ (Eph. 2:1–5)
- He delivered us from the domain of darkness (Col. 1:13)
- He explained that with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible (Matt. 19:26)
Once we realize that evangelism occurs in the realm of the miraculous, we can start praying more faithfully, trusting more wholeheartedly, and proclaiming more gently. When we relinquish trust in our ability to persuade and latch onto God’s power to save, we find hope beyond explanation.
Going forward, here are a few very practical steps you can take:
- Develop a system for prayer for your family. Perhaps you can set aside a section in a prayer journal. Or maybe you can insert photos of your family members in a place where you look for prayer prompters.
- Begin your prayers for your family with thanksgiving. This may be more difficult for some people than others. Regardless of your family’s well-being, thank God for the family you have and all the accompanying benefits you can identify. Thank God for his love for each family member and all the gifts he’s given them.
- You may need to include prayers of confession as well—confession of your lack of love for your family, your idolatry of control in trying to change them, your reliance on your ability to convict them of their sin instead of trusting the Holy Spirit to do that, your coldheartedness, haughtiness, and self-righteousness, etc. Ask the Holy Spirit to shine his light of truth on your darkness of sin.
- If you haven’t already done so, “come out of the closet” as a Christian to your family. Pray for gentle words and a gracious demeanor mixed with bold confidence. Decide who would be the safest person to tell first. (I do not advise a group announcement at a holiday dinner table!) Aim for your announcementto be informational rather than evangelistic. You can trust God to open evangelistic doors later. For now, it’s time to couch things in sentences like this: “Mom, there’s something I think you should know about me. I’ve come to the place where I’ve decided to embrace Christianity as my faith.” Or, “Dad, I’ve become a Christian and it’s beginning tohave some good effects in my life. It’s all rather new, but I thought I’d tell you early on, just so you’d know what’s going on.”
Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them but they are talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment [in Psalm 42] was this: instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says, “Self, listen for moment, I will speak to you.”
No therapist, no psychiatrist can relieve you of guilt. He or she may help you to resolve feelings of false guilt that can arise for a variety of reasons. Prescription drugs may provide certain kinds of ease. But no therapy, no course of drugs, can deliver you from real guilt. Why? Because being guilty is not a medical condition or a chemical disorder. It is a spiritual reality. It concerns your standing before God. The psychiatrist cannot forgive you; the therapist cannot absolve you; the counselor cannot pardon you.
But the message of the gospel is this: God can forgive you, and He is willing to do so.
First, however, you need to be brought to the place where you say, “I am guilty.”
Is your response one of self-justification, even of anger? “How dare anybody say to me, ‘You are guilty’!”
Does that apply even if the one saying so is God?
Until we acknowledge our sin and guilt, we will never come to discover that it can be forgiven. But when we do, actual forgiveness begins to give rise to an awareness of forgiveness psychologically, spiritually, mentally, inwardly. With that comes an increasing sense that the bondage of guilt has been broken. At last, we are set free. Wonder of wonders, we discover that at the very heart of the gospel is this fact: God has taken our guilt upon Himself in His Son Jesus Christ.
It is a dreadful truth that the state of (as you say) ‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. But trouble goes so far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to him as long as he leaves us anything else to turn to. I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and the day of judgment, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwittingly) to begin practicing it here on earth. It is good of him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.
So what constitutes a successful meeting? First of all, it was successful if you cared enough to approach your pastor and have this conversation with him. And it was successful if your pastor took the time to listen to you and to consider your observations. Do not expect or require that he immediately agrees with all your comments or that he immediately responds to them. Allow him the time necessary to pray, reflect on your correction, and talk with his wife and his friends about it.
But if you find yourself offended if your pastor doesn’t immediately respond or if he disagrees with you, then it could be that your own heart has been revealed, and maybe your motives weren’t as pure as you might have thought. You then have an opportunity to humble yourself before God and to entrust your pastor to God.
So meet personally with your pastor, humbly offer him your observations, but do not require an immediate response from him. As long as you have communicated your correction clearly and in love, you have served your pastor and honored God in the process.
He is much happier that is always content, though he has ever so little, than he that is always coveting, though he has ever so much.
Know the other person well enough to be able to pray for him or her.
That’s biblical counseling in miniature. Be personal. Study and know the person. Then, together, consider how the promises and wisdom of God, especially as they meet their zenith in Jesus Christ, overtake, compel and lead us in how to live and pray. And prayer, by the way, is a tangible expression of rising hope. Hope is what most of us dream about when we are stuck in our troubles.
There are details that lie behind these general guidelines. There are plenty of how-to’s in biblical counseling. But they all serve to place wisdom in its apt setting – the knowledge of God and love.
In 1836 Judge William Gould led a movement at First Presbyterian Church, Augusta, Georgia, to buy their first organ. It was a break with tradition. In a congregational meeting, one member rose and demanded chapter and verse where the Bible authorizes “the worship of God with machinery.” But the members voted for the organ, and Judge Gould was appointed to raise the money.
Soon after the Judge ran into Robert Campbell, a member who had opposed the organ. Mr. Campbell asked the Judge why he had not asked him for a donation. Gould replied, “I knew you did not wish to have the organ.” “That makes no difference,” said Campbell. “When the majority of the members of the church have decided the matter, it is my duty to put aside personal feeling and assist as well as I may.”
Narrated in David B. Calhoun, Cloud of Witnesses
People who are content with the avoidance ethic generally ask the wrong question about behavior. They ask, What's wrong with it? What's wrong with this movie? Or this music? Or this game? Or these companions? Or this way of relaxing? Or this investment? Or this restaurant? Or shopping at this store? What's wrong with going to the cabin every weekend? Or having a cabin? This kind of question will rarely yield a lifestyle that commends Christ as all-satisfying and makes people glad in God. It simply results in a list of don'ts. It feeds the avoidance ethic.
The better questions to ask about possible behaviors is: How will this help me treasure Christ more? How will it help me show that I do treasure Christ? How will it help me know Christ or display Christ? The Bible says, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). So the question is mainly positive, not negative. How can I portray God as glorious in this action? How can I enjoy making much of him in this behavior?
Oh, how many lives are wasted by people who believe that the Christian life means simply avoiding badness and providing for the family. So there is no adultery, no stealing, no killing, no embezzlement, no fraud--just lots of hard work during the day and lots of TV and PG-13 videos in the evening (during quality family time), and lots of fun stuff on the weekend--woven around the church (mostly). This is life for millions of people. Wasted life. We were created for more, far more.
I beg of you, don’t go after the next generation with mere moralism, either on the right (don’t have sex, go to church, share your faith, stay off drugs) or on the left (recycle, dig a well, feed the homeless, buy a wristband). The gospel is not a message about what we need to do for God, but about what God has done for us. So get them with the good news about who God is and what he has done for us.
Some of us, it seems, are almost scared to tell people about God. Perhaps because we don’t truly know him. Maybe because we prefer living in triviality. Or maybe because we don’t consider knowing God to be very helpful in real life. I have to fight against this unbelief in my own life. If only I would trust God that God is enough to win the hearts and minds of the next generation. It’s his work much more than it is mine or yours. So make him front and center. Don’t preach your doubts as mystery. And don’t reduce God to your own level. If ever people were starving for a God the size of God, surely it is now.
Give them a God who is holy, independent, and unlike us, a God who is good, just, full of wrath and full of mercy. Give them a God who is sovereign, powerful, tender, and true. Give them a God with edges. Give them an undiluted God who makes them feel cherished and safe, and small and uncomfortable too. Give them a God who works all things after the counsel of his will and for the glory of his name. Give them a God whose love is lavish and free. Give them a God worthy of wonder and fear, a God big enough for all our faith, hope, and love.
The New Testament without the miracles would be far easier to believe. But the trouble is, would it be worth believing?
The kind of God that appeals to most people today would be easy-going in his tolerance of our offenses. He would be gentle, kind, accommodating. He would have no violent reactions. Unhappily, even in the church we seemed to have lost the vision of the majesty of God. There is much shallowness and levity among us. Prophets and psalmists would probably say of us, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." In public worship our habit is to slouch or squat; we do not kneel nowadays, let alone prostrate ourselves in humility before God. It is more characteristic of us to clap our hands with joy than to blush with shame or tears. We saunter up to God to claim his patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that he might send us away. We need to hear again the Apostle Peter's sobering words, "Since you call on a father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives. . in reverent fear." (1 Peter 1:17) In other words, if we dare to call our judge our Father, we must beware of presuming on him. It must even be said that our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won only after we have first cried, "Woe is me for I am lost." In Dale's words, "It is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God."
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
Light after darkness, gain after loss,
Strength after weakness, crown after cross;
Sweet after bitter, hope after fears,
Home after wandering, praise after tears.Sheaves after sowing, sun after rain,
Sight after mystery, peace after pain;
Joy after sorrow, calm after blast,
Rest after weariness, sweet rest at last.Near after distant, gleam after gloom,
Love after loneliness, life after tomb;
After long agony, rapture of bliss,
Right was the pathway, leading to this.
My grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart, and to heal the broken one.
On nearly every page of the New Testament, God sovereignly reminds us that everything He has done, is doing, and will do is in accordance with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The common refrain of the New Testament, “according to the Scriptures,” is by no means to be taken lightly but is to drive us over and over again to behold the faithfulness of God, the trustworthiness of His revelation, and the beautiful harmony of the testaments as God shows forth His sovereignly woven scarlet thread of redemption from creation to glorification, all according to the covenant of redemption of our triune God. In each of the three portions of the Old Testament — the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings — the Lord majestically sets forth that which Jesus Himself set forth when He was with the two men on the road to Emmaus interpreting to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Jesus is hiding under every stone in the Old Testament, nor does it mean that we need to overturn every stone in our pursuit to find Him at the cost of sound exegesis. Nevertheless, it does mean that every stone points to Christ and beckons us to examine the manifold ways in which Christ is in the foreground and background of the landscape of every stone in all the Scriptures, by God’s sovereign orchestration and for our redemption in Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
In Acts 2:47 we read:
And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.And in Acts 11:24 we read:
And a great many people were added to the Lord.John Stott comments:
In the New Testament it is the Lord who does the adding (2:47), not human missionaries. We might also comment that the additions are not just to the church but to the Lord (11:24). When we see 'the Lord adding to the Lord', so that he is both subject and object, source and goal, of evangelism, we have to repent of all self-centred, self-confident concepts of Christian mission. (The Message of Acts, page 204)
Passionate, Persistent Prayer
Small churches need to stop looking at megachurches and their pastors as role models. They can learn from them, but they must not copy them. In a world that devalues the small, listening to God in prayer and stepping out in obedience are much more important than the latest magic bullet that often misfires in smaller churches.That attitudinal change can and does happen through intentional prayer for renewal. As we looked a little deeper at survey results, it was interesting to note that the comeback leaders of smaller churches highlighted the need for prayer even more than those at larger churches. When asked, "To what degree did the following [areas] change during your church's comeback?" leaders of the churches under 200 rated prayer as the area most changed.
Smaller comeback churches are often praying churches. Comeback leaders of smaller churches believed even more strongly that real, intentional, strategic prayer made a significant difference in their revitalization process. God can change attitudes in your church through passionate, persistent prayer for renewal.
An Outward Focus
Small churches are not exempt from the call to reach people because they are small. Too many churches of all sizes spend too much time moaning about what they don't have that other churches do have or about what they can't do that other churches are doing. No, you may not be able to do everything that other churches are doing. But that doesn't mean your church can't do something of purpose.If smaller churches are going to thrive, they must focus their attention on reaching the lost in their communities. Again, delving deeper into our survey results reveals another important point. When asked the same question above, the leaders of churches under 200 rated evangelism as the second area that changed the most during the comeback.
Christians sing together during corporate worship gatherings. Colossians 3:16-17 helps us understand why. Paul tells us that worshiping God together in song is meant to deepen the relationships we enjoy through the gospel. This happens in three ways (or three R’s):
1. Singing helps us remember God’s Word.
Paul says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly…singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” The “word of Christ” mostly likely means the word about Christ, or the gospel. Songs whose lyrics expound on the person, work, and glory of Christ tend to stay with us long after we’ve forgotten the main points of the sermon.
2. Singing helps us respond to God’s grace.
While no one is exactly sure what “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” refers to, we can at least infer some kind of variety in our singing. No singular musical style captures either the manifold glories of God or the appropriate responses from his people.
We’re also told to sing with “thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Singing is meant to be a whole-hearted activity. Emotionless singing is an oxymoron. God gave us singing to combine objective truth with thankfulness, doctrine with devotion, and intellect with emotion.
3. Singing helps us reflect God’s glory.
Doing “everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,” implies bringing God glory. Worshiping God together in song glorifies God for at least three reasons. First, it expresses the unity Christ died to bring us. Second, because all three persons of the Trinity sing (Zeph. 3:17; Heb. 2:12; Eph. 5:18-19). Finally, it anticipates the song of heaven when we’ll have unlimited time to sing, clearer minds to perceive God’s perfections, and glorified bodies that don’t grow weary.
Worshiping God in song isn’t simply a nice idea or only for musically gifted people. The question is not, “Has God given me a voice?” but “Has God given me a song?”
If you trust in the finished work of Christ, the answer is clear: Yes!
So remember His Word, respond to His grace, and reflect on His glory.
I called on one of our older people today at a rehab center which is also a nursing home. Pop music was playing over the sound system and the first song that caught my attention was John Lennon:
Image there’s no heaven . . .
It didn’t seem to me like “Imagine there’s no heaven” was a popular thought at the nursing home.The next song spinning on the nursing home juke box was, “I had the time of my life,” and that one didn’t look like it was going to climb the nursing home charts either.
I understand that people loved I had the Time of My Life in Dirty Dancing. Imagine went platinum for all I know. But, neither song works very well in the nursing home. I didn’t interview the people sitting about in wheel chairs, but my guess is that not a lot of them are dreaming that there’s no heaven. Nobody looked to be having the time of their life. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey were nowhere in sight.
So. I decided to go with the Apostle Paul rather than a meditation on John Lennon. I read aloud to the person I was visiting 2 Cor 4:16-18, “Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all . . . For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Whatever cultural shifts take place around us, whatever socio-political concerns claim our attention, whatever anxieties we may feel about the church as an institution, Jesus Christ crucified, risen, reigning, and now in the power of his atonement, calling, drawing, welcoming, pardoning, renewing, strengthening, preserving, and bringing joy, remains the heart of the Christian message, the focus of Christian worship, and the fountain of Christian life. Other things may change; this does not.
"Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down..." Isaiah 64:1
Ray Ortlund:
When God rends the heavens and comes down on his people, a divine power achieves what human effort at its best fails to do. God's people thirst for the ministry of the Word and receive it with tender meltings of soul. The grip of the enslaving sin is broken. Reconciliation between believers is sought and granted. Spiritual things, rather than material things, capture people's hearts. A defensive, timid church is transformed into a confident army. Believers joyfully suffer for their Lord. They treasure usefulness to God over career advancement. Communion with God is avidly enjoyed. Churches and Christian organizations reform their policies and procedures. People who had always been indifferent to the gospel now inquire anxiously. And this type of spiritual movement draws in not just the isolated straggler here and there but large numbers of people. A wave of divine grace washes over the church and spills out into the world. That is what happens when God comes down. And that is how we should pray for the church today.
1. Make sure your faith is only something you live out in public
Go to church... at least most of the time. Make sure you agree with what you hear the preacher say, and affirm on the way home what was said especially when it has to do with your kids obeying, but let it stop there. Don’t read your bible at home. The pastor will say everything you need to hear on Sundays. Don’t engage your children in questions they have concerning Jesus and God. Live like you want to live during the week so that your kids can see that duplicity is ok.
2. Pray only in front of people
The only times you need to pray are when your family is over, Holiday meals, when someone is sick, and when you want something. Besides that, don’t bother. Your kids will see you pray when other people are watching, no need to do it with them in private.
3. Focus on your morals
Make sure you insist your kids be honest with you. Let them know it is the right thing for them to do, but then feel free to lie in your own life and disregard the need to tell them and others the truth. Get very angry with your children when they say words that are “naughty” and “bad”, but post, read, watch, and say whatever you want on TV, Facebook, and Twitter. Make sure you focus on being a good person. Be ambiguous about what this means.
4. Give financially as long as it doesn’t impede your needs
Make a big deal out of giving at church. Stress the need to your children the value of tithing, while not giving sacrificially yourself. Allow them to see you spend a ton of money on what you want, while negating your command from scripture to give sacrificially.
5. Make church community a priority. As long as there is nothing else you want to do
Hey, you are a church going family, right? I mean, that’s what you tell your friends and family anyways. Make sure you attend on Sundays. As long as you didn’t stay up too late Saturday night. Or your family isn’t having a big bar-b-que. Or the big game isn’t on. Or this week you just don’t feel like it. Or... I mean, you are church going family so what’s the big deal?
Keith and Kristyn Getty are offering three free MP3 downloads through the end of March: "Behold the Lamb (Communion Hymn)," "The Power of the Cross," and "Come, People of the Risen King." Just follow this link.The most famous statue in the United States is the Statue of Liberty. Many Americans are unaware that the image atop the base is the Roman goddess Libertas.Now we may not worship this goddess in the traditional manner. But it is not too much to say that our radical allegiance to self and independence is idolatrous worship, nor that such worship manifests itself in extravagant offerings of money spent and relationships sacrificed—even the sacrifice of the unborn. And if we worship freedom, we may become the personification of Libertas, unable to experience healthy dependence on God and others, even as others find they cannot depend on us. Freedom can ironically enslave us, crippling our service to God and others.
You are no longer a slave, but a son. Galatians 4:7
Sonship is conspicuously and radiantly free. The sons of God ought to fascinate and win the world by the range and grandeur of their freedom. Where others are bound, they must reveal themselves to be free. Is our freedom obtrusively prominent? Are we revelling in ‘the glorious freedom of the children of God’?
The real son is free from the bondage of sin. His life is delivered from the haunting wail of sunless and hopeless dejection.
The real son is free from the tyranny of self. He is not imprisoned by a small, exclusive, all-absorbing, egoistic, enslaving self. He has ‘a heart at leisure from itself to soothe and sympathize.’
The real son is free from the enslavement of the crowd. He is not daunted by the presence of the great and threatening multitude. God’s sons are free and bold and stand alone!
Have you ever heard of anyone in history being imprisoned or executed for distributing copies of Grimm’s fairy tales? What would you say if you’d heard that copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey had been banned in Saudi Arabia and North Korea? Imagine people trying to smuggle copies of Hans Christian Andersen’s works into China? Such ideas are comical, but the Bible, which has been called a mere collection of myths and fairy tales, has suffered all of these fates. Throughout history and even today, copies of the Bible are banned and burned, and those possessing it are persecuted and imprisoned. There’s something about this ancient book that threatens and frightens those in power, especially those who use power to oppress people weaker than themselves. And they have every reason to be frightened.
From Everything You Always Wanted to Know about God
Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16 ESV)
But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:3-4 ESV)
A friend recently posed these two verses to me and asked, “So when do you tell others about your good deeds and when do you not?”
It’s a good question.
I believe the contexts of these verses give us the clues. Jesus is addressing the two-sided coin of human pride.
In Matthew 5:16, Jesus is addressing our fear of man. The context is that we are blessed when reviled and persecuted (v.11). The good works Jesus has in mind here are the kind that the prophets did (v.12). They testified to God’s word openly. In other words, don't be ashamed of the gospel (Romans 1:16) or any acts of love that testify to it, even when the threat of persecution is present.
In Matthew 6:3, Jesus is addressing our selfish ambition. The context is people (in this case, the rich) who were marketing their acts of charity to enhance their personal brand. In other words, they were seeking human admiration. That's not love of God or the poor. It's self-worship.
So a rule of thumb in shining and hiding: good works we are tempted to hide for fear of man’s disapproval are likely ones we should let shine. Good works we are tempted to do publicly for man’s approval are likely ones to keep secret. Both kinds of good works encourage humility and kill pride.
It is a dreadful truth that the state of having to depend solely on God is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. But trouble goes so far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to him as long as he leaves us anything else to turn to. I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and the day of judgment, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwittingly) to begin practicing it here on earth. It is good of him to force us; but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.
When it comes to killing my sin I don’t wait for the miracle, I Act the Miracle.
Acting a miracle is different from working a miracle. If Jesus tells a paralyzed man to get up, and he gets up, Jesus works a miracle. But if I am the paralyzed man and Jesus tells me to get up, and I obey and get up, I actthe miracle. If I am dead Lazarus and Jesus commands me to get up, and I obey, Jesus works the miracle, I actthe miracle.
So when it comes to killing my sin, I don’t wait passively for the miracle of sin-killing to be worked on me, I act the miracle.
For example, Paul says, “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13).
So he tells me to put my sin to death. I should not wait for God to kill it while I remain passive. But he tells me to kill it “by the Spirit." Sin-killing is a miracle of the Spirit. But I do not wait passively, I act the miracle.
Again Paul says, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
So Paul works hard to kill the sins of lethargy and distraction in his ministry. “I worked harder than any of them.” But the decisive animation of that work is the grace of God. It is a miracle. But Paul does not wait passively, he acts the miracle.
Or consider Philippians 2:12-13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12–13).
Paul commands me to work out my salvation, because God is the one who works this in me. My willing and working is God’s willing and working. It is a miracle. But I do not wait passively, I act the miracle.
The question is not, “Do you have a voice?” The question is, “Do you have a song?” If you’re redeemed by Christ’s cross then you do have a song.
First, Newton explains how we should listen to sermons. We should at all times listen with active biblical discernment:
As a hearer, you have a right to try all doctrines by the word of God; and it is your duty so to do. Faithful ministers will remind you of this: they will not wish to hold you in an implicit and blind obedience to what they say, upon their own authority, nor desire that you should follow them farther than they have the Scripture for their warrant. They would not be lords over your conscience, but helpers of your joy. Prize this Gospel liberty, which sets you free from the doctrines and commandments of men; but do not abuse it to the purposes of pride and self.
Well said.
Then Newton explains how we should not listen to sermons:
There are hearers who make themselves, and not the Scripture, the standard of their judgment. They attend not so much to be instructed, as to pass their sentence. To them, the pulpit is the bar at which the minister stands to take his trial before them; a bar at which few escape censure, from judges at once so severe and inconsistent.
In these few words Newton offers counsel that is biblically wise, balanced, and ready for us to practice on Sunday. At all times we should pray for our pastor and encourage him. At all times we should listen to sermons with discernment. And at some times it may even be appropriate to give our pastor feedback to help him grow.
But we should never listen to sermons with our proverbial arms crossed, as if our pastor were preaching on the American Idol stage, seeking to win the approval of autonomous judges.
I'm heading out of town tomorrow morning, and so I may not be on the blog here much between now and next Tuesday. In the meantime, download and enjoy this free audiobook-- The Holiness of God, by R. C. Sproul, from christianaudio.com.
As God opens your eyes to see how you have sinned against others, he simultaneously offers you a way to find freedom from your past wrongs. It is called confession. Many people have never experienced this freedom because they have never learned how to confess their wrongs honestly and unconditionally. Instead, they use words like these: "I'm sorry if I hurt you." "Let's just forget the past." "I suppose I could have done a better job." "I guess it's not all your fault." These token statements rarely trigger genuine forgiveness and reconciliation. If you really want to make peace, ask God to help you breathe grace by humbly and thoroughly admitting your wrongs. One way to do this is to use the Seven A's.
- Address everyone involved (All those whom you affected)
- Avoid if, but, and maybe (Do not try to excuse your wrongs)
- Admit specifically (Both attitudes and actions)
- Acknowledge the hurt (Express sorrow for hurting someone)
- Accept the consequences (Such as making restitution)
- Alter your behavior (Change your attitudes and actions)
- Ask for forgiveness
See Matthew 7:3-5; 1 John 1:8-9; Proverbs 28:13.
