July 30, 2010

Praise Adonai

I thought of this song after posting about Adonai.  I think you’ll find it beneficial to your praise time.

July 30, 2010

Changing Times

Ponder this.

July 30, 2010

God the Lord (Adonai)

Some time ago I saw someone I don’t know real well and called out her name.  I thought I got it right but as soon as I said it I realized that I had used a shortened form of her proper name, and she wasn’t too happy about it.  She corrected me quickly and told me what she prefers to be called.  I apologized and made a mental note to get it right next time. 

God has some strong feelings about what He goes by as well.  And He doesn’t want us to use names that are too casual or even commonplace.  I’m sure He’s not real impressed when we refer to Him as the “big guy in the sky” or the “man upstairs.” 

We learned yesterday that the first name He wants to be called is “Elohim.”  He is creatively powerful, completely sovereign, and gloriously great and because of who He is, we can draw four conclusions.

1.  He is eternal…therefore His existence is established.
2.  Creationism is correct…therefore evolution is in error.
3.  The Trinity is true…therefore redemption can be received.
4.  Every person has a purpose…therefore the preborn must be protected.

The name we’re going to get to know today is “Adonai.”  It’s used over 300 times in the Old Testament, and is a bit difficult to see in our English Bibles because many translations use two different renderings of the same name to make a distinction between “Yahweh” and “Adonai.”  Yahweh appears with capital letters: “LORD” and Adonai is “Lord” with one capital and the rest in smaller case.  When this word is used of God it is almost always plural and possessive.  Like the name Elohim, this name also supports the doctrine of the Trinity. 

In the singular, the word Adon often refers to “Master” and is also defined as “Lord” or “Owner”  and is used for how slaves speak to their masters and subjects to their kings.  When we say that God is Adonai, we are stating that He is Lord of all and that He is supreme over His subjects.  Deuteronomy 10:17 uses three names for God and captures His majestic supremacy: “For the LORD [Yahweh] your God [Elohim] is God [Elohim] of gods [Elohim] and Lord [Adonai] of lords [Adonai], the great God [Elohim], mighty and awesome…”

In order to help us capture the meaning of Adonai, let’s turn to the world of pets.  How many of you have a dog?  Do any of you have both a cat and a dog?  We have counselors set up in the back of the auditorium for you!  In his book called, “Cat and Dog Theology,” Bob Sjogren describes the different attitudes between a dog and a cat.

• A dog says: “You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, and you love me… you must be God.”
• A cat says: “You pet me, you feed me, you shelter me, and you love me…I must be God.”

In a humorous way, this book captures how we often approach God.  Both cats and dogs want obedience in their lives.  Dogs want to obey God; cats want God to obey them.  Dogs worship God primarily for who He is; while cats enjoy what He’s done for them.  Dogs study “Theology” and cats study “MEology.” 

Isn’t it easy to think that life is all about us?  God does not exist for our benefit; we have been given good gifts for His glory.  Let’s do a selected Scriptural survey of “Adonai” to help us get our priorities and purposes back on track so that we become more like canines instead of cats. 

Adonai in the Old Testament

We’ll look at two Old Testament individuals who struggled to fully surrender and then at two who got it right.

1.  Abraham argues with Adonai.  Adonai is first used by Abraham in Genesis 15:2: “O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?”  The NIV translates Adonai as “Sovereign,” while other versions use the name “Lord.”  This interaction should encourage us since it shows us that Abraham was a real person.  He had left his country in Genesis 12 and at Bethel “called on the name of the LORD” (12:8).  He obeyed the Lord but then he resorted to a lie to protect his wife when they were in Egypt.  In chapter 13, Abram and Lot separate, and then Abram experiences the blessings of God in verse 17 when God tells him, “Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”  In chapter 14, Abram rescues Lot from some trouble. 

Things are going along pretty well and then we come to chapter 15.  Abram knows God as Creator and God Most High (see 14:22), but now he questions Adonai in verse 2.  He calls him “Sovereign” with his lips but in his heart he is filled with doubt.  God had promised him a son but all he has is a servant.  Do you ever feel like that?  In order to expand Abram’s view of Adonai, God takes him outside in verse 5 and declares, “‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them.’  Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” God is really saying, “Abe, since I placed the stars in the heavens, do you think your childlessness is an insurmountable problem to me?”  Once he is reminded of the bigness of God, Abram “believed the LORD…”  But then he yo-yos again in verse 8: “O Sovereign [Adonai] LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”  Abram is acknowledging his own insufficiency in light of God’s sufficiency.  He doesn’t understand, but he does use the name Adonai to communicate his commitment to live under the leadership of the Lord, while at the same time, he has questions.  God then confirms His word by entering into an irrevocable covenant with Abraham.

Abraham was suffering from “MEology.”  When he didn’t understand something or when things started getting difficult, in essence he hissed like a cat at the Creator.  God was taking him through a process so that he could eventually learn that He is Lord, not Abram.  Likewise, we have to come to the point of realizing that God is the Lord of all we own, all that we are, and all that we do.

Adonai was teaching Abraham two truths that run through the entire Bible.

• Adonai owns everything.
• We must obey Adonai.

We could say it this way.  Because God has possession of me, I must be in submission to Him.  Since He is Lord, I must live under His leadership.  He is majestic and mighty; I am but a manager of the resources He has given me.  I need to become more like a dog and less like a cat.  I exist for Adonai; He doesn’t exist for me, myself and I.  This is summed up beautifully in Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.”  He’s the owner and I must obey Him.  Peter Forsythe was right when he said, “The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but it’s Master” (as quoted by Warren Wiersbe, “The Integrity Crisis,” p. 22).

In one of his recent books Larry Crabb writes this: “There are two basic approaches to life-two pathways.  One creates pressure, the other provides freedom.  In the Old Way of life, ‘you’ve decided that what you most want out of life is within your reach, and you’re doing whatever you believe it takes to get it.’  But in the New Way of life, ‘you’ve realized that what you most want is beyond your reach, and you’re trusting God for the satisfaction you seek.  You want Him.  Nothing less, not even His blessings, will do” (From the back cover of “Pressure’s Off,” Waterbrook Press, 2002).

When Queen Victoria had just ascended to her throne, as is the custom of Royalty, she went to a performance of “The Messiah”  Her advisors told her that she must not rise when the others stood at the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus.  When the choir belted out, “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth…” she stayed seated with great difficulty.  But when they proclaimed the Messiah as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” suddenly the young queen rose and stood with her head bowed, as if she would take her own crown and cast it at His feet.  She had learned the lesson of the lordship of Adonai much like Abram eventually did (Illustration from David Elvery, www.sermoncentral.com).  By the way, do you know how President George W. Bush began the official first day of his second term?  He started his day with his head bowed in prayer at the National Prayer Service, following a tradition begun by George Washington. 

2.  Moses rejects His Master.  Moses also came face-to-face with Adonai.  When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3, He did so as Yahweh (which we will study in three weeks).  Moses seems to understand that God is the self-existent One but still struggles to submit to His sovereignty.  God has given him an assignment and Moses doesn’t want to do it.  His response is very candid in Exodus 4:10: “Moses said to the LORD [Yahweh], ‘O Lord, [Adonai] I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant.  I am slow of speech and tongue.’”  Ken Hemphill points out that this is really a curious contradiction.  Moses addresses God as Lord and acknowledges that he is a servant, “but then attempts to excuse himself from obeying his Lord based on his supposed inability” (“The Names of God,” p. 28).

In verses 11-12, the Lord responds to Moses by reminding him that since He is the Creator who made him, He can certainly put words in his mouth.  Don’t you wish Moses would have just surrendered at this point?  But he doesn’t.  Once again, he tries to avoid obedience.  He’s acting more like a cat than a dog.  Look at verse 13: “But Moses said, ‘O Lord, [Adonai] please send someone else to do it.’” God’s anger then burns against Moses because on the one hand, he confesses Him as Lord, but on the other, he contradicts this confession with his lack of obedience.  We do the same thing, don’t we?  We call Him Lord and live the way we want.  God will not tolerate this.  Jesus put it this way in Luke 6:46: “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”  Friends, if we affirm His ownership, than we better obey Adonai.

3.  David is devoted to Adonai.  One of the most frequent names used by David for God is the name Adonai.  In 2 Samuel 7:18-20, it appears four times and is translated “Sovereign” in the NIV: “Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far?  And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign LORD, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign LORD?  ‘What more can David say to you?  For you know your servant, O Sovereign LORD.’”  David recognizes God’s Sovereignty and his role as a servant.  Even though he is king, he acknowledges that Adonai owns everything and as a result he must obey Him.  David understands the awesome power of Adonai when he writes in Psalm 114:7: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord…”

4.  Daniel addresses Adonai in confession.  In Daniel 9, we come to a chapter of contrite confession, where Daniel addresses Adonai ten times in seventeen verses.  He owns up to the fact that he and his people have not been serving the Sovereign Lord and instead have been selfishly serving their own interests.  They were more like cats than dogs.  Notice verse 19: “O Lord, [Adonai] listen!  O Lord, [Adonai] forgive!  O Lord, [Adonai] hear and act!  For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”

In the Old Testament, those who called on Adonai were acknowledging His right to reign supreme and the resultant responsibility all believers have to serve the Sovereign Lord.  Since God owns everything, I must obey Him.  If we’re going to call Him Lord, than we better be living for Him.

“Lord” in the New Testament

The meaning of Adonai as Sovereign Lord is carried over into the New Testament and is used of Jesus with the Greek word kurios no less than 747 times.  In the Book of Acts, Jesus is referred to as Lord 92 times, while He’s called Savior just twice.  I’m afraid that in the evangelical church we’ve overemphasized His role as Savior at the expense of His Lordship.  Actually, we’ve often created a false dichotomy by saying that someone can accept Jesus as Savior and not submit to Him as Lord.  In order to help us understand the centrality of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, I’m going to lean on some insights I’ve gleaned from John MacArthur’s book called, “The Gospel According to Jesus” (Zondervan, 1988).

Let’s chew on some verses. 

Acts 2:21: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 
Acts 2:36: “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”
Acts 16:31: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved-you and your household.”
Romans 10:9: “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’”

The Lordship of Jesus Christ means that He has dominion, authority, sovereignty and the right to rule over His creation, including you and me.

MacArthur spends some time discussing the common phrase, “Making Christ Lord” of our lives: “Jesus is Lord of all, and the biblical mandate for both sinners and saints is not to ‘make’ Christ Lord, but rather to bow to His lordship” (page 203).  In Matthew 7:21-23, Jesus Himself says that a verbal use of “Lord” is not enough: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.  Away from me, you evildoers!’”

Grace is not cheap and we must resist the urge to spread the gospel of “easy believism.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who was surrounded by lukewarm church leaders and cultural Christians who supported Hitler.  He was imprisoned for his faith and while in prison he wrote these words: “Christianity without discipleship is Christianity without Christ.  It remains an abstract idea, a myth…there is trust in God, but no following of Christ…If we would follow Jesus we must take certain definite steps.  The first step, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence” (“Cost of Discipleship,” pages 64, 66).

I’d like to suggest some steps we can take right now because it’s certainly easier to call Him Creator (Elohim) than it is to accept Him as Adonai and live under His Lordship. 

1.  Serve sacrificially.  Are you holding back in any way?  Do you just serve when it’s convenient?  It’s time to give your all to Adonai because He has given His all for you.  Remember the words of Joshua, who didn’t care if others decided to live for the Lord or not: “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).  If you’re not in a ministry right now, determine to find one and begin serving.

2.  Watch your words.  Be careful about using the name “Lord” if you’re not interested in obeying Him.  The very mention of His name should cause us to shudder if we’re serving our own interests.  Some of us “overuse” His name even when we pray.  Remember, to call Him Lord means that we are serious about living in light of His Lordship.  See if these words challenge you like they do me (www.bible.org):

Ye call Me Light and see me not,
Ye call Me way and follow me not,
Ye call Me Life and desire me not,
Ye call Me wise and acknowledge me not,
Ye call Me fair and love me not,
Ye call Me rich and ask me not,
Ye call Me eternal and seek me not,
Ye call Me gracious and trust me not,
Ye call Me Noble and serve me not,
Ye call Me mighty and honor me not,
Ye call Me just and fear me not,
Ye call Me Master and obey me not,
If I condemn you, blame me not.

3.  Give generously.  One of the best ways to remind yourself that you belong to the Lord is to make sure He is Master over your money.  Some of us are not fully devoted in our discipleship because frankly we’re more committed to cash than we are to Christ.  Jesus stated in Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money.”  It’s an impossibility to adore Adonai and be devoted to dollars.  Augustine once said, “Jesus Christ is not valued at all until He is valued above all.”

Let me make a suggestion.  If you’re not experiencing the joy of tithing at least 10 percent of your income to kingdom purposes, may I encourage you to take God up on His challenge?  Because He knows how difficult it is for us to give, He actually tells us to put Him to the test in Malachi 3:10: “’Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house.  Test me in this,’ says the LORD Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.’”  Take the tithing challenge and you will experience innumerable blessings, and even more than that, you will grow in your love for the Lord and bring glory to God.  We will then learn that we give not to get blessings but to grow in our love for the Giver of those blessings. 

4.  Surrender to His Sovereignty.  The litmus test in determining if you are following Adonai is to ask yourself these questions: “Have I surrendered everything to Him?”  “Since He owns everything, am I obeying Him?”  “Am I a devoted dog or a cranky cat?”  Imagine that I want to purchase an expensive pearl.  Here’s how the dialog might go between me and the seller (adapted from David Elvery, www.sermoncentral.com).

Buyer: “I want this pearl. How much is it?”
Seller: “Well, it’s very expensive.”
Buyer: “But, how much?”
Seller: “Well, a very large amount.”
Buyer: “Do you think I could buy it?”
Seller: “Oh, of course, everyone can buy it.”
Buyer: “But, didn’t you say it was very expensive?”
Seller: “Yes.”
Buyer: “Well, how much is it?”
Seller: “Everything you have,” says the seller.
Buyer: (Thinking for a while and then making up my mind) “All right, I’ll buy it.”
Seller: “Well, what do you have?  Let’s write it down.”
Buyer: “Well, I have ten thousand dollars in the bank.”
Seller: “Good—ten thousand dollars.  What else?”
Buyer: “That’s all.  That’s all I have.  Well … I have a few dollars here in my pocket.”
Seller: “How much?”
Buyer: “Well, let’s see—thirty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred dollars.”
Seller: “That’s fine. What else do you have?”
Buyer: “Well, nothing.  That’s all.”
Seller: “Where do you live?”
Buyer: “In my house.  Yes, I have a house.”
Seller: “The house, too, then.”
Buyer: “You mean I have to live in my camper?”
Seller: “You have a camper?  I’ll take that, too.  What else?”
Buyer: “But I’ll have to sleep in my car!”
Seller: “You have a car?”
Buyer: “Three of them.”
Seller: “They become mine.  What else?”
Buyer: “Well, you already have my money, my house, my camper, my cars.  What more do you want?”
Seller: “Are you alone in this world?”
Buyer: “No I have a wife and four daughters…”
Seller: “Oh, yes, your wife and daughters, too. What else?”
Buyer: “I have nothing left!  I am left alone now.”
Seller: Suddenly the seller exclaims, “Oh, I almost forgot!  You yourself, too!  Everything becomes mine—wife, children, house, money, cars—and you too.”  After the seller pauses for a bit, he concludes: “Now listen—I will allow you to use all these things for the time being.  But don’t forget that they are mine, just as you are.  And whenever I need any of them you must give them up, because now I am the owner.” 

It was Abraham Kuyper who said, “There is not an inch of any sphere of life of which Jesus Christ the Lord does not say, ‘Mine.’”  Jesus is Lord and everything I have belongs to Him.  Have you ever surrendered completely to Him?  Are you afraid to give yourself fully to Adonai?  I love what Andrew Murray said in this regard: “God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.”  God is ready…are you?

If you’re ready to give everything to Him, I want you to just bow your head.  While you’re doing that, would you also take your hands and form a fist?  If you’re ready to give Him everything, will you now slowly open your fists to indicate that you are surrendered before Him and that you will serve Him with everything you’ve got? 

Let’s pray now to Adonai.

Psalm 16:2 says, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”  That’s the confession of our hearts today.  You are Lord and we are not.  You are owner of everything; we are but managers of what you’ve given to us.  You are Sovereign; we are servants.  We are your possession; therefore we live in submission to you.  Do with us what you may and what you must in order to make us more like your Son that we might serve you more fully this day and forevermore.  Amen.

July 29, 2010

God the Creator (Elohim)

Because I have three first names, people often don’t know what to call me.  I can see the hesitation on their faces.  Is his name Brian or is it Bill?  My middle name is John so I like to say when you use my full name three guys come running!  I’ve gone by many names in my life…

• Ibam – This is what one of my little sisters called me when she couldn’t pronounce my name.  Unfortunately, all my sisters still call me this today…
• Brian John Bill – This was my mom’s favorite name for me when I did something to make one of my sisters cry.
• Buckshot – I loved it when my dad would call me this name, particularly after I shot my first buck when I was 12.
• Billsy – This is what I was known by in high school.
• Billsky – This is what people would call me when I would do something dumb.
• Mr. Bill – When people use this name, they inevitably follow it up with “Oh, no!”
• Cheesehead – When individuals call me this, they’re really wishing that they too could be from the other side of the Cheddar Curtain.
• Pastor Brian – This name reminds me that I am a shepherd of God’s flock.
• Reverend – My girls like to call me this when I share a sermon idea with them.  It’s not usually used as a compliment, “Thanks for sharing that, Reverend.”
• Bri – I love it when Beth calls me this.
• Daddy – This name is reserved for my four daughters and when they use it, I melt.

I’ve been called other names that I can’t repeat here, and I’m sure I’ve been given some monikers behind my back as well.  While I can’t always control how people refer to me, I do love it when someone asks, “What do you want to be called?”  Most of the time, I just give my first name: “Feel free to call me Brian.” 

In an even greater way, God has given us some names to use when we refer to Him.  Yesterday we learned that God loves it when we call on His name.  And today we’re going to look at His very first name as found in the very first verse in the very first book of the Bible.  It’s the name “Elohim.”  I’ve inserted this name in the verse:  “In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of Elohim was hovering over the waters.  And Elohim said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.  Elohim saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  Elohim called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’” 

This first name for God is used more than 2,500 times in the Bible, 32 times in the first chapter of Genesis alone.  Most scholars believe Elohim derives from the word El, which in turn comes from the word for “strong.”  Specifically, this name means that He is the strong Creator God.  When we pray to Elohim we remember that He is the One who is creatively powerful, completely sovereign, and gloriously great.

Four Forceful Facts

The Book of Genesis gets its name from the Hebrew – It’s the book of “beginnings.”  This book is also a battleground today because many in our culture reject its clear teachings.  We don’t have time this morning to dig into its depths but suffice it say that you have a choice.  You can either believe what the Bible teaches, and swim against the current of our culture; or you can follow the crowds, and be at odds with Elohim.  Because God calls Himself Elohim, there are at least four foundational facts about this name that will fortify our faith. 

1.  Elohim is Eternal (Genesis 1:1a).  Some men were trying to answer the question, “Where did the earth come from?”  After compiling their data and feeding it into a sophisticated supercomputer, they pushed the answer button with great anticipation.  Lights flashed, buzzers sounded, and finally the computer spit out the answer: “See Genesis 1:1.”  Let’s do that right now.  Look again at the first four words: “In the beginning God [Elohim]…”  By the way, this is the first instance of baseball in the Bible – “in the big inning.”  This is a declaration that God has always been; He’s had no beginning and He will have no end.  This is stated strongly in Deuteronomy 33:27: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”  Augustine was once asked what God was doing before He created the world.  He thought for a moment and replied, “He was creating it for people who ask questions like that.”

Did you notice that Genesis 1:1 is a simple declaration that Elohim exists, and does not provide an explanation for His existence?  That Bible just assumes that He is.  Several years ago, in his unforgettable style, E.V. Hill spoke for 40 minutes at a Promise Keepers event in Chicago.  He preached on just two words: “God is.”  He repeated this phrase over and over, whispering it and shouting it and daring anyone to deny it.  Friends, God is.  He is eternal.  That reminds me of the boy who once prayed, “Dear God, please take care of my daddy and my mommy and my sister and my brother and my doggy and me.  Oh, and please take care of yourself, God.  If anything happens to you, we’re gonna be in a big mess.”  Aren’t you glad that nothing will happen to the Holy One?  He is here today.  He was here yesterday.  And He will be here tomorrow.  He was, He is, and He will be.  You can count on Him.  As Psalm 14:1 says, only those who are foolish doubt God’s existence: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

2.  Creationism is Correct (Genesis 1:1b).  Because God alone is eternal; that which is created is not.  Look at the last part of Genesis 1:1: “…created the heavens and the earth.” The Hebrew word for “create” means “to create out of nothing.”  Elohim brings design out of disorder; He created the cosmos out of chaos; He birthed beauty out of barrenness, and He continues to do the same in lives today.  Let’s look at just a few more phrases from Genesis 1:

“So God made the expanse…” (7)
“…He also made the stars.” (16)
“So God created the great creatures of the sea…” (21)
“God made the wild animals…” (25)
“God saw all that He had made and it was very good…” (31)

It is no accident that the first thing God wanted us to know about Himself is that He is the Creator.  The whole revelation of Scripture is rooted in this fact, from Genesis to the Book of Revelation. 

Psalm 95:6: “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker…”
Psalm 121:2: “My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Ecclesiastes 12:1: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth…”
Isaiah 45:9: “Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker…”
Acts 17:24: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.”
Revelation 4:11: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

The early church viewed the doctrine of Creation as the beginning point of theology, and a bedrock biblical belief.  Its importance is summed it up at the very beginning of the Apostle’s Creed: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth…”  Former Atheist Lee Strobel, in his outstanding book called, “The Case For a Creator,” concludes that when he researched the central pillars of evolutionary theory they “quickly rotted away when exposed to scrutiny” (Page 279).  I wish I had the time to share with you all the exciting recent developments in the world of science as scholars are discovering what the Bible has always said: The universe was made by an intelligent designer!  Students, remember this: Evolution is just a theory and many of those who have argued for it are now declaring that it doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny.  Let me briefly mention a few flurries of what is really an avalanche of compelling information.

• DNA evidence.  Anthony Flew, who for half a century, has been a leading champion of atheism, and perhaps the most famous, has recently said that a super intelligent being is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.  In a new video entitled, “Has Science Discovered God?” Flew states: “DNA has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved” (Chicago Sun Times, 12/10/04.  Also, see my 1/11/05 blog: www.pontiacbible.org/brian).
• The anthropic principle states that the physical structure of the universe is exactly what it must be in order to support life.
• The evidence of cosmology points out that whatever begins to exist must have a cause.
• The evidence of consciousness.  This refers to our sensations, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs and choices.  Even Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse candidly concedes that “no one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have any answer” to the consciousness issue (Strobel, Page 283).

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 circled the dark side of the moon and headed for home.  As their tiny capsule floated through space, they gazed on planet earth.  What do you think they did?  They did not quote Einstein, Shakespeare or Darwin.  There was only one statement that could capture the magnificence of that moment.  As billions of people all around the world listened, an astronaut acknowledged Elohim as Creator as he read these words: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Illustration from Ray Pritchard).

Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”  His fingerprints are everywhere.  The earth is marked, if you will, by a sign that declares in bold letters: Made by God.  Romans 1:20 states that the evidence for Elohim’s creative power is clearly evident:  “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”  If you’re willing to look, you will see.  And because He is the Creator, He is greater than that which He has created.  That means you can trust Him because there is nothing in your life that is greater than He is.  He can solve whatever problem you have, if you will but trust Him by faith.  Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

3.  The Trinity is True (Genesis 1:26-27).  The third application from the name Elohim is actually an allusion to the Trinity.  The “im” ending of Ehohim is a plural suffix.  This is similar to cherub becoming cherubim, and the plural of seraph being seraphim.  Here’s the cool part.  Although the name Elohim is plural, it is often treated as a singular noun.  Look at Genesis 1:26-27: “Then God [Elohim, plural] said [singular], ‘Let us [plural] make man in our [plural] image, in our [plural] likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’  So God [Elohim, plural] created man in his [singular] own image, in the image of God [Elohim, plural] he [singular] created him; male and female he [singular] created them.” 

While this verse alone doesn’t fully develop the doctrine of the Trinity, here we see that God is one and yet is somehow plural.  God, who is eternal in nature, has always existed in three persons.  This concept is found throughout Scripture.  At the baptism of Jesus, we see God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 3:16-17).  When Jesus gave the Great Commission to the church, He called on all three members of the Trinity in Matthew 28:19: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  Baptism is to be in the name [singular] of three persons [plural].  One of the clearest passages is found in 2 Corinthians 13:14: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  God the Father sent the Son to save us from our sins and now the Holy Spirit has sealed our salvation.  The Trinity makes redemption possible.

Have you picked up yet that all three of our points so far are hot button issues?  The name Elohim establishes that God exists, that He is the Creator, and that He is three-in-one.  While these three truths have their detractors, and stir up considerable controversy, there’s still one more application that flows out of Elohim, and this one generates even more heat.

4.  Every Person Has a Purpose (Genesis 1:26-27).  Simply put, every person is made in the image of God and therefore has dignity, worth, and purpose.  Look again at Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”  The word “created” is used three times and we’re told twice that humans are made in the image of a holy God.  The late Francis Schaeffer, the noted apologist, once said, “If I had an hour to spend with a person on an airplane who didn’t know the Lord, I would take the first 55 minutes and talk about man being created in the image of God.  And the last five minutes on the presentation of the gospel of salvation that can restore man to that original intended image” (as quoted by John MacArthur, “Creation: Believe it or Not”).

On the third Sunday in January we take some time to reflect on issues of life, marking the awful anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion in this country.  God as Elohim leads us to the uncompromising conclusion that life is a gift given by the Creator and therefore must be protected.  I love what President George W. Bush has said about this topic: “We share a great goal, to work toward a day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law…to build a culture of life, affirming that every person at every stage and season of life, is created equal in God’s image” (Sandra Sobieraj, Associated Press, as quoted by Troy Borst, SermonCentral.com).

Ecclesiastes 11:5: “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”  With the advent of ultrasound, we can now see pictures of the preborn and watch their development, as if there was a window into the womb.  Amazingly, Psalm 139 paints a vivid picture thousands of years before technology: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.  When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”  David, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is allowed to take a peek into God’s prenatal care unit.  The “you” in verse 3 is emphatic – You created.  God is the creator and He is intimately involved with us because He made us.  It’s that simple.  His constant concern for us is simply the natural interest that a maker would have in a very special product.  He is the owner of the preborn – they belong to Him.

Randy Alcorn, in his book called, “Why Pro-Life?” points out three stunning statistics (Multnomah Press, 2004). 

• Abortion is America’s most frequently performed surgery on women.
• More babies are aborted each day (3,753) than all the lives lost on 9-11.
• And, here’s some good news.  Today, more young people than their parents oppose abortion.  A recent Gallup survey of teenagers found that 72% believe abortion is morally wrong. 

Now here’s some even better news.  Just as many evolutionists are now admitting that an Intelligent Designer created the world, so too, most honest people now admit that life begins at conception.  Just a short time ago, one of the arguments in favor of abortion was that because no one knew when life began, than it must be OK to terminate a pregnancy.  That’s changing.  Listen to what the owner of Oregon’s largest abortion clinic testified to under oath, “Of course human life begins at conception” (Alcorn, Page 27).  An honest survey of scientific evidence will lead to a recognition of the existence of God and that life begins at conception.  Randy Alcorn writes, “It’s an indisputable scientific fact that each and every surgical abortion in America stops a beating heart” (Page 30).

In 1999, an unborn child named Samuel was operated on for spina bifida.  His photograph in Life magazine captured the entire world’s attention.  During surgery, Baby Samuel reached out and grabbed the surgeon’s finger.  What I didn’t know until this week is that photojournalist Michael Clancy went from being pro-abortion to being pro-life as he witnessed this procedure and recorded it with his camera.  As he put it, “I was totally in shock for two hours after the surgery…I know abortion is wrong now—it’s absolutely wrong”  (Alcorn, Page 39).

In another award-winning photo, a preborn baby named Sarah Marie Switzer, had a similar procedure done (see www.forerunner.com/fyi/news/lm1299.htm).  This has been called “the world’s most pro-life photo.”

Friends, if wombs had windows, the vast majority of people would confess that God is the Creator and then would do all they can to preserve the life of the preborn.  Here are some some amazing 4D Ultrasound images: www.firstsightultrasound.com/4d_liveSA.htm and www.gehealthcare.com/usen/ultrasound/4d/virtual.html.

Since God is the Creator of life, and life begins at conception, we’re called to be advocates for those voices that can’t be heard.  Proverbs 31:8-9: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.  Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”  I’m glad that we remember Martin Luther King’s impact on human rights, but let’s also recognize that we still have a long way to go to protect the greatest of all human rights – the right to life for the preborn. 

Because God’s first name is Elohim, He is there for us.  As such, we can trust Him with four “therefores.”

1.  He is eternal…therefore His existence is established
2.  Creationism is correct…therefore evolution is in error
3.  The Trinity is true…therefore redemption can be received
4.  Every person has a purpose…therefore the preborn must be protected

I am so grateful that Elohim continues to recreate today.  He loves to forgive.  He loves to wipe away guilt and shame.  And today, He can give you a fresh start if you will turn to Him in faith.  Claim the promise of 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

July 28, 2010

School Supplies Drive

We would like to do a school supply drive to help out children who need school supplies. Last year LOTS of kids came to school without needed supplies.
The school supplies will be donated to families in need through hosting a free cookout at a local park and by taking donations directly to the local schools for teachers to give to children in need.

Drop off your donated school supplies from Aug 1st through Aug 22nd in the bins located outside Pastor Brian’s office. Supplies will also be collected at the Back to School Prayer Night and Praise in the Park. Copies of the local school supply required items will be on a table outside the sanctuary between Jeff and Brian’s offices.

Questions? Call Christi Ucherek (815-674-1773), Beth Bill (815-844-4471) or Kara Hinds (217-971-9780).

July 28, 2010

Gripped by the Greatness of God

Beth is planning to have her Women’s Bible Study go through “Gripped by the Greatness of God” by James MacDonald this fall.  This morning we watched the first session together.  It’s really powerful.  Here’s a review if you want to learn more.

This got me to thinking that it would be helpful to me, and maybe to those of you who read this blog, if I started another series that will focus on us getting to know God better.  I’m going to call it, “What God Goes By” and we’ll focus on the different names for God.  This is based on a sermon series I did some time ago.  I hope you find it to be helpful.

We’ll begin by laying some groundwork that will help us understand the names of God. 

During a job interview, a woman was asked to give her name.  She replied, “My name is Lilly.”  When the boss wanted to know why she was named after a flower, she told him, “My parents gave me that name because when I was born a lily fell on me from the sky.”  A couple days later, the boss interviewed a man for the same job.  He wasn’t much to look at and had a very rough appearance.  The boss asked, “What’s your name?”  He gave a crooked smile and said, “Piano.”

Names are important to us because they often do more than just identify an individual; they can actually reveal who a person is, and what he or she is like.  God goes by many different names in the Bible.  One commentator has counted over 63 found in Scripture.  That seems like a lot but God is so awesome that the number of names we could use to describe Him is as endless as He is.  These names provide us with at least two helpful truths.

• They help us identify the one true God.  The pagan nations worshipped false gods and so one reason God gave us His name is so we can know how He is different.
• His names describe His character.  When we study what He goes by, we will actually get to know what He is like.

While names are important in our culture, they were even more so in biblical times.  Proverbs 22:1 tells us that a good name is more to be desired than great riches.  Names didn’t just distinguish or label a person; they were often thought to reveal the very nature of an individual.  For example, Nabal, whose name means “fool,” lived out what his name meant in 1 Samuel 25:25: “He is just like his name-his name is Fool, and folly goes with him.”

The term for name in the Old Testament means “individual mark” and communicated an individual’s essence.  In the New Testament, the word for name comes from a verb that means “to know.”  To know the name of God means to personally know His personality.  During this new series, it’s my prayer that we will not just know who God is, but that we will actually get to know Him much more than we do right now.

As we begin our study, let me state four foundational principles:

• These names are given by God, not thought up by people.  God is not some abstract thought or nameless power.  He is personal and knowable.  And one of the ways His personality is known is through the giving of His names.
• Each name of God reveals one of His qualities or characteristics.  We’ll focus on one of these attributes each week, and like studying a multifaceted diamond, when we’re finished we’ll appreciate His beauty like never before. 
• These names were given to God’s people in order to help them through a moment of need.  It’s my prayer that this series will not just be academic, but deeply personal and heart-changing so that you will call out to Him when you are in crisis or need.  These names are like miniature portraits filled with promises, given by God as a gift to us so we can actually know Him.
• Use these names when you call out to God in prayer.  While we will learn the Hebrew names for God, I encourage you to also memorize the English attributes and then use these titles in your praise and in your prayer times.  As we go through each name, ask yourself this question: “Do I know God in this way?”

I have chosen ten names for our study that I think will help each of us grow deeper in our knowledge of God:

• God the Creator (Elohim)
• God the Lord (Adonai)
• God our Peace (Jehovah Shalom)
• God our Provider (Jehovah Jireh)
• God the Covenant Keeper (Yahweh)
• God the Almighty (El Shaddai)
• The God Who is There (Jehovah Shammah)
• God the Healer (Jehovah Rapha)
• God of Power (Jehovah Sabaoth)
• God is my Banner (Jehovah Nissi)

Our study today will focus on the actual phrase, “Name of the Lord.”  This is really a summary statement that refers to God’s whole character.  As Judges 13:18 states, God’s name is “wonderful.”  We’re going to look at what the Bible teaches about the recognition of His name, our response to His name, and then we’ll conclude with some results of knowing His name.

The Recognition of His Name

In his book called, “Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth,” Walter Brueggermann prays, “You are not the God we would have chosen.”  In commenting on this statement, Michael Card writes: “That troubling prayer resonates in my heart.  For the truth is, most often I would have chosen (and indeed do choose) a god other than Him.  Most often, I would rather not learn the hard lessons the hard way.  I would rather not have to worship in the wilderness, where God continuously calls me to find and be found by Him.  I would rather God simply meet my expectations, fix my problems, heal my hurts, and be on His way.  I want a God who is faithful to me in ways I understand and expect, who expresses faithfulness in the ways I choose” (Discipleship Journal, Jan/Feb, 2005, 25-29). 

One of the most helpful correctives to our selfish desires and egocentric expressions of prayer is to focus on who God actually is, not necessarily who we want Him to be.  Let’s begin by listing 6 statements that will help us grow in recognition of His wonderful name.

1.  His name is good.  Psalm 52:9: “I will praise you forever for what you have done; in your name I will hope, for your name is good.” Friends, never forget this: God is good, even when bad things happen!

2.  His name is great.  2 Samuel 7:25-26: “…Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever…”  There is no greater name than the name of God.

3.  His name is majestic.  Psalm 8:1: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”  This means that His name, which stands for all that He is, is excellent and famous in the earth.  There is no one else like Him.  He is omnipotent and incomparable.  Exodus 15:11: “Who among the gods is like you, O LORD?  Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” 

4.  His name is glorious.  Psalm 115:1: “Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to your name be the glory…”  The word “glory” encompasses all of His attributes.  The word literally means, “heavy” and refers to the fact that God is weighty, or awesome.  Sometimes we try to make a name for ourselves as we crave credit for what we’ve done.  We need to remember that His name alone deserves the glory.

5.  His name is holy.  When Jesus taught His disciples to pray he told them to begin like this in Matthew 6:9: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” His name must be set apart because He is holy.

6.  His name is near.  God is high and holy and yet, amazingly, He is also close to us.  Theologically speaking, He is both transcendent and He is immanent.  Allow this truth to penetrate you.  He is not distant, but has instead come close to each one of us so that we can get to know Him.  Psalm 75:1: “We give thanks to you, O God, we give thanks, for your Name is near; men tell of your wonderful deeds.” God is powerful and He is also personal.

Our Response to His Name

Once we recognize His name, we can’t help but respond to Him.  Here are some ways from Scripture that we are to respond.

1.  Praise His Name.  The number one reaction to recognizing His name is to break out into praise.  The main reason we should focus on what He goes by is so we can give Him what He deserves.  Daniel 2:20: “Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever…”  Psalm 7:17: “I will give thanks to the LORD because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.”  One of the clearest expressions of people praising the name of God is found in Psalm 113:1-3: “Praise the LORD.  Praise, O servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD.  Let the name of the LORD be praised, both now and forevermore.  From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised.”

Job models for us that we are to praise Him even when our lives are full of problems and our minds are mixed up with emotions.  Listen to Job 1:21: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.  The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” Let’s see if we can apply this verse to the Tsunami disaster.  Because Job knew the name of the Lord, he could praise Him even though a natural disaster had destroyed his ten children.  Unbelievably, he was able to make an incredible statement of faith in Job 2:10: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Friend, the only way to praise God is to know His name.  If you don’t know Him personally, you may end up cursing Him when troubles come.  If you’d like to study more about how God’s sovereignty allowed this tsunami, we have printed copies available of John Piper’s article called, “Tsunami, Sovereignty, and Mercy” (I’ve included a link to this article in my 1/3/05 blog: http://www.pontiacbible.org/brian/).

2.  Honor His Name.  God’s name is so weighty that we must do all we can to honor it.  Leviticus 19:12: “Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God.  I am the LORD.”  We are to praise His name, not profane it.  Someone told me recently about a meeting where an individual was using God’s name in vain with almost every other word.  A Christian stood up and said, “God’s a close personal friend of mine and you must also know Him well because you sure use His name a lot!”  The guy cleaned up his language in a hurry.  We should tremble whenever we hear His name used in a way that does not honor Him, and we should make sure we are not throwing His name around lightly ourselves.  This is serious business because one of the 10 Commandments says: “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name” (Exodus 20:7).

3.  Call on His Name.  God desires for us to use His name as we call out to Him.  Don’t hesitate to hearken to Him.  As you read through the Book of Genesis, it doesn’t take long for people to call out to the Lord.  We see this in Genesis 4:26: “At that time men began to call on the name of the LORD.”  Has it been awhile since you’ve called out to Him in prayer? 

4.  Proclaim His Name.  When we praise, honor and call on His name, we can’t help but share His name with others.  Don’t keep it to yourself.  I talked to someone this week who told me that sometimes she is so filled with the joy of the Lord that she just has to tell others about Him.  I encouraged her to let loose!  Deuteronomy 32:3: “I will proclaim the name of the LORD.  Oh, praise the greatness of our God!” 

5.  Trust His Name.  One of the best responses you can make to God is to decide to trust Him completely with your life.  Is there something you’re holding back?  Are you afraid to fully surrender because you don’t want to let go of some things?  Perhaps you feel like the prophet did when he wrote in Isaiah 50:10: “Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.”  Sometimes God knocks out props in our life in order to get us to totally trust Him.  Stop walking around in the dark and transfer your trust to Him right now.  Psalm 9:10 says that if we know God in a real and personal way, we will trust Him: “Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.”

6.  Love His Name.  There are many things in life that we can love, but we are to love His name above all.  Isaiah 56:6: “…to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him.”  Can you honestly say that you love His name this morning?  Do you love His name more than anything else?  If not, what needs to change?

Results of Knowing His Name

We must first recognize His name and then respond accordingly.  When we do, we can expect at least 10 results.  I’ll go over these quickly.

1.  Our hope will grow.  Psalm 52:9: “I will praise you forever for what you have done; in your name I will hope, for your name is good.” If you struggle with discouragement, determine to put your hope in His name.  You won’t be disappointed.

2.  Our joy will increase.  Psalm 5:11: “But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for joy.  Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you.” Once we know His name, we can’t help but be filled with joy.  Conversely, if you aren’t very joyful it could be because you don’t really know Him.

3.  Our worship will deepen.  Nehemiah 1:11: “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name.  Give your servant success today…” When we grow in God, we will find incredible delight in worshipping Him, by the way we live, and by the way we commit ourselves to corporate worship every Sunday.

4.  We will be fully satisfied.  John Piper has stated it well: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  Do you feel unsatisfied today?  It may be because you don’t know God as well as you need to.  If you’re trying to stuff yourself with things that can’t satisfy, you will be constantly needy.  Get to know His name and your needs will be met.  Ask God to make Isaiah 26:8 true in your life: “Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.” 

5.  We will experience power.  There’s power in the name of God, and He wants to unleash it in your life.  Jeremiah 10:6: “No one is like you, O LORD; you are great, and your name is mighty in power.”  He loves to show Himself strong when we are weak and He loves to demonstrate His power by accomplishing that which we think is impossible.  David understood this truth when he came before a giant problem named Goliath.  Listen to what he declared to the frightening Philistine in 1 Samuel 17:45: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.”

6.  We will become wiser.  All of us can stand to grow in wisdom.  One of the byproducts of knowing the Name of God is increased wisdom.  Micah 6:9: “…To fear your name is wisdom…”

7.  We will receive help.  Do you need any help today in a situation you’re facing?  Take heart and meditate on Psalm 124:8: “Our help is in the name of the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”  Others may be able to provide assistance and counsel, but the help you really need is only found in the Name of the Lord.

8.  We will be protected.  When you’re in trouble, claim the promise of Psalm 91:14-15: “Because he loves me, says the LORD, I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.”  One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 18:10: “The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.” God’s name is like a fort of protection for the believer.  Run to Him for safety.

9.  We will be granted forgiveness.  Forgiveness comes through His name and His name alone.  Psalm 25:11: “For the sake of your name, O LORD, forgive my iniquity, though it is great.”  Psalm 79:9 gives another aspect of this: “Help us, O God our Savior, for the glory of your name; deliver us and forgive our sins for your name’s sake.”  We can appeal to God for forgiveness because at His very nature, He is a forgiving Father.

10.  We will be saved.  Ultimately to call on the name of the Lord brings salvation.  Psalm 116:4: “Then I called on the name of the LORD: ‘O LORD, save me!’”  This is picked up by Peter in Acts 2:21 and Paul in Romans 10:13 when they quote from the prophet Joel: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Have you ever called on Him for salvation?  In John 17:3, Jesus expands our understanding in this regard when He prayed: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” In order to be saved, you must know God and you must know Jesus Christ.  Do you?

If you’re ready to begin a relationship with the God who knows your name, call out to Him right now.  Tell Him that you’re a sinner and that you can’t save yourself.  Repent from the way you’ve been living.  And then ask Him to personally apply the work of Jesus on the Cross to your account, where His blood was shed for forgiveness of sins.  Receive the free gift of eternal life and surrender to His name everyday.  And then, confess with your lips that you now know Him.  Proclaim His wonderful name to others and determine to know all you can about Him.  To help you begin a relationship with the God who knows you and wants to make Himself known to you, you could pray something like this: “In the Name of Jesus, I come before you right now.  I confess that I have been living for my own name.  I am a sinner and I can’t save myself.  I now turn away from the way I’ve been living and turn toward you in faith.  I call out to your name for salvation.  Save me from my sins.  I believe that you died in my place and that your blood covers my sins.  I gratefully receive the free gift of eternal life.  And now I surrender to you.  Your name is what matters, not my own.  Do with me what you will for the rest of my life for I now belong to you.  Amen.”
Knowing God or Knowing About God?

If you’re already a believer, let me ask you a question.  Are you geared up to really know God, or are you content to just know a few facts about Him?  I love what Charles Spurgeon wrote: “No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it.  The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity” (Quoted in the Introduction to “Knowing God” by J.I. Packer).

I came across a list of questions from Don Whitney which will help us as we consider how this year can be different from last year (for a list of all thirty-one questions, see: http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=17372).

1. What’s one thing you can do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
4. In what spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
5. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
6. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
7. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in 10 years?  In eternity?
8. What’s one thing you could do this year to enrich the spiritual legacy you will leave to your children and grandchildren?
9. What single blessing from God do you want to seek most earnestly this year?
10. In what one area of your life do you most need to change, and what will you do about it this year?

As I look at this list, it strikes me that I can make progress in all ten of these areas if I will go after knowing God like I never have before.  Are you with me?  Will you commit to roll up your sleeves as we study the Scriptures together?  Let’s not take this lightly. 

I love the book of Job.  With all its pain and agony, it’s full of faith and hope.  At the end of the book, after God recites a litany of His powerful acts, Job becomes literally speechless.  When he’s finally able to formulate some words, listen to what he says in 42:5: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”  Some of you are in the same place this morning.  You’ve heard about God, but now you really want to see Him in His fullness.

Prayer of Commitment

Will you pray this prayer that originally appeared in A.W. Tozer’s book called, “The Knowledge of the Holy” (Page 18)?

“O majesty unspeakable, my soul desires to behold Thee.  I cry to Thee from the dust.  Yet when I inquire after Thy name it is secret.  Thou art hidden in the light which no man can approach unto.  What Thou art cannot be thought or uttered, for Thy glory is beyond comprehension.  Still, prophet and psalmist, apostle and saint have encouraged me to believe that I may in some measure know Thee.  Therefore, I pray, whatever of Thyself Thou hast been pleased to disclose, help me to search out as treasure more precious than fine gold: for with Thee shall I live when the stars of the twilight are no more and the heavens have vanished away and only Thou remainest.  Amen.”

 

July 28, 2010

The Word and the Will

G. Campbell Morgan once observed, “The preacher should never address a crowd without remembering his ultimate citadel is the citadel of the human will. He may travel along the line of the emotions, but he is after the will. He may approach along the line of the intellect, but he is after the will.

“When preaching becomes merely discussion in the realm of the intellect, or—forgive my use of the word—fooling in the realm of the emotions, and when preaching ends in the intellectual or emotional, it fails. It is successful only when it is able to storm the will under the will of God. The preacher comes with good news; but he does not come with something to be trifled with. His message has an insistent demand, because he comes from a King.” (from Preaching by G. Campbell Morgan, 1955)

July 27, 2010

Our Loving God

A young couple invited their aging pastor over for Sunday dinner.  While the parents were in the kitchen preparing the meal, the minister asked their son what they were having for dinner.

The little boy replied, “Goat.”  The pastor was surprised and said, “Goat?  Are you sure about that?”  To which the boy responded, “Yep, I heard my dad tell my mom that we might as well have the old goat for dinner today as any other day.”

Today we’re concluding our series called, “Getting to Know God.”  While we certainly haven’t exhausted the depths of who God is, I trust that you’ve gotten to know Him better during these past days.  To know God is the highest aim of our Christian life and should be a life-long pursuit.  Hopefully this series has primed the pump for you so that you will continue in your knowledge and service of God for the rest of your life.

I purposely decided to share about the topic of God’s love at the end of this series because love is an essential attribute of God, the capstone of His personality.  Having said that, I feel overwhelmed and challenged by the task of trying to put into words this incredible doctrine. 

A.W. Tozer, who forgot more about God than I will ever know, struggled to explain God’s love as well: “I can no more do justice to this awesome and wonder-filled topic than a child can grasp a star.  Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it.  And so, I stretch my heart toward the high, shining love of God so that we may be encouraged to look up and have hope.”

As we look up this morning, we learn that love is the supreme expression of God’s personhood and flows out of His goodness.  It affects all His other attributes. 

When you think about it, God’s love is the only reason we exist.  His power is the how of creation and His love is the why.  Love demands an object – you and I are that focus of God’s affection.  Love flows from Him as a pure river of grace and mercy without detracting in any way from His holiness and righteousness.  As we understand and experience His love, we find that this attribute is a doorway to knowing God intimately.

Summary of Series

Each of the topics we’ve discussed in this series are fully expressed by God’s love:

• Our Loving Knowable God – His love reaches down to us so that we can actually get to know Him – He initiates the process.
• Our Loving Holy God – His holiness is linked to His love so that we can be overwhelmed by His majesty, drawn to His mercy, and motivated to be involved in His mission.
• Our Loving Omnipresent God – We can count on God’s love to be with us no matter where we are because God is everywhere present at the same time.
• Our Loving Omniscient God – God knows all things and knows everything about us – and is still totally and unconditionally committed to us.
• Our Loving Omnipotent God – God’s absolute power is unleashed and motivated by His love on our behalf.
• Our Loving Faithful God – God’s faithfulness is linked to His love so that we can always count on Him to be there for us.
• Our Loving Just God – God’s justice and God’s love are fully expressed by the sacrificial death of Christ.
• Our Loving Sovereign God – God’s control over all things is motivated by His love for us so that we can lovingly submit to His lordship in our lives.
• Our Loving Unchanging God – Because God does not change in His love for us, we can be changed from the inside out.

Scriptural Survey

In the New Testament, there are three primary words for love:

• Eros – romantic love
• Phileo – brotherly love
• Agape – unconditional love

Our culture today is primarily focused on romantic or brotherly love – but God’s love is agape, the purest, deepest and most unconditional kind of love.  If you were to do a search for the word “love” in the Bible, you would come up with over 550 references.  Here are just a few of the verses:

Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

Psalm 36:7: “How priceless is your unfailing love!”

Isaiah 38:17: “Surely it was for my benefit that I suffered such anguish.  In your love you kept me from the pit of destruction; you have put all my sins behind your back.”

1 John 3:1: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!  And that is what we are!”

Psalm 63:3: “Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.”

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Sense and Nonsense

Without a doubt, there is no attribute of God that is so widely believed as the love of God.  At the same time, there is no attribute of God that has been so badly misunderstood as God’s love. 

Here’s a very common – but wrong take on God’s love: God’s love means that everyone will go to heaven.  Many non-Christians have the idea that when they get to the gates of heaven, God will smile and say, “Oh, you’ve been a pretty good person, come on in.”  This is the heresy of universalism – while this sounds attractive, it’s completely at odds with what the Bible teaches.  Only those who put their complete faith and trust in Christ will be saved.

What Love Is

So what is the love of God?  How do we define it?  Human love is generally a response to the conditions and circumstances around us.  We love because someone pleases us or because they’re good looking or because they make us laugh.  By contrast, God loves us because that’s the kind of God He is.  Period.  Nothing in us causes Him to love us.  Matthew Henry has said that, “The great God not only loves His saints, but He loves to love them.”

One of the clearest passages in the New Testament on God’s love is Romans 5:6-8.  Could you go find your Bible and turn to this section of Scripture?

In these three verses, Paul focuses on the death of Christ as the supreme manifestation of God’s love: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

Let’s break down this passage by looking at 4 truths about who we are:

1.  Verse 6 says that we were “powerless.”  To be “powerless” means that we can’t change our basic nature on our own.  This word in the New Testament is usually applied to the sick and feeble, to those who have been wiped out by some kind of disease.  It’s also used in the moral sense to denote an inability with regard to any undertaking or duty.  Specifically it means that we have no power to come up with a plan of justification on our own – left to ourselves, none of us is able to do even one small thing to please God or achieve salvation.

2.  The phrase “ungodly” in verse 6 means that we had no desire to change in the first place.  We are not only helpless, but also vile and obnoxious.  The word “ungodly” indicates that we were both irreverent and impious, and have deliberately withheld from God what is rightfully His.

3.  The third truth is seen in verse 8 – we are “sinners,” meaning that we were desperately in need of a change that we couldn’t make and didn’t want to make.  We were neither righteous nor good when Christ died for us.  We had totally missed the mark.

4.  The fourth phrase is even stronger and is found in verse 10: we were “enemies” of God.  Because of our powerlessness, our ungodliness, and our sinning ways, we were considered to be enemies of God – not a very popular teaching, especially when we’re focusing on God’s love this morning.  Ephesians 2:3 adds that we were by “nature objects of God’s wrath.”  The truth of the matter is that we have rebelled willfully against God’s commands, broken His moral law, and acted in total defiance of His known will for us.

You may wonder why I’ve hit on our condition so hard today.  Let me tell you why:

• That’s what the Bible teaches
• It helps us see the depth of God’s love
• It helps us see that we don’t have any claim on His love – we don’t deserve it.  God’s love is not dependent on anything in you because there is nothing in you that forces God to love you.

There is no reason for God to love us.  You are not a naturally lovable person – and neither am I.  Sin has infected our lives so much that it has distorted even the parts we think are beautiful.  Sin “uglyfies” everything it touches.

And so, there is no reason for God to love us, except this: That’s the kind of God He is.  He loves us because God is love and He can’t help loving us even when we are His enemies.  His love is greater than our sin – and He loves us in spite of our sin.

If you find all this discouraging, remember this: If God loved you only when you were lovable, then when you stopped being lovable, then God would have to stop loving you!  It’s better to admit the truth, isn’t it?  God loves us in spite of our unloveliness.  We can count on His love because it doesn’t depend on anything we say or do.

God’s Unconditional Love

Now that we’ve established the truth about who we are, let’s look at God’s incredible solution to our impossible problem.  Romans 5:7-8 reveals the unconditional nature of God’s love. 

1.  He Went Far Beyond What We Would Do.  Take a look at verse 7: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.”  As I’ve thought about this passage, I’ve wondered how many people I would be willing to die for.  It’s actually just a handful.  Each of us is probably willing to die for a couple people, but certainly not for a bunch of people, especially those we don’t know.

This verse is telling us that God’s love is not like that.  You’ve heard of examples of someone covering up a grenade in order to save a few other people, but God’s love is much greater.  God went far beyond what we would do.  We would never think of doing what He did.

2.  He Did What We Would Never Do.  “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (verse 8).  The emphasis in this verse is on the fact that we were still sinners when Christ died for us.  The wonder is not that Christ should die for us – but that He should do so while we were powerless, while were ungodly, while we were rebellious sinners, and while we were enemies of God!  He didn’t die for his friends.  He died for his enemies.  He died for those who crucified Him.

Friends, any time we are tempted to doubt God’s love for us, we need to go back to the Cross.  If you don’t really believe that God loves you, think about this: If God loved me enough to give His Son to die for me when I was His enemy, surely He loves me enough to care for me now that I am His child.  Having given such a priceless gift as His Son, He will most definitely give all else that is consistent with His glory and my good.

Look at it this way.  “Lord, how much do you love me?”  “This much,” he said.  Then He stretched out His arms, bowed His head, and died.

Our Response to God’s Love

Biblical love always leads to action.  Love is always incomplete alone – it requires some kind of movement.  It’s impossible to just say you love someone without demonstrating that love in tangible ways.  God loves you so much that He was moved to action – He did something on your behalf.  Remember John 3:16 —“God so loved the world that He gave …” What are we to do in response to His initiative?

1.  Love Him Wholeheartedly.  Matthew 22:37-38 raises the bar for us.  If we say we love God, we need to demonstrate it with everything we’ve got: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.”  The Bible makes it clear – if we say we love Him, then we better put Him first by obeying Him.

2.  Love Others.  1 John 4:11: “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”  Our love for God should lead us to love others who have been created in His image and who are the objects of His affection.  This involves serving those we claim to love.  Husbands, are you serving your wives and loving them as much as Christ loves the church?  Wives, are you looking for ways to put your husbands first?  Do you love your kids unconditionally – regardless of how they behave?  Teenagers, do you love and honor your parents?  Do you love your co-workers and neighbors like Christ does?

3.  Love Ourselves.  Matthew 22:39: “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”  God loves you and accepts you as you are – there is no reason to dislike yourself when your Creator has demonstrated unconditional love for you.  You are complete and have tremendous value and breath-taking dignity as a child of God.  You really do matter to the Almighty!

Friends, on the authority of the Bible, you need to know that God loves you!  God loves you!  God loves you!  Or in the words of Bill Hybels, “You matter to God more than you will ever know.”  Or, in my own words: “He’s crazy about you – even if you’re an old goat!”

4.  Love our Enemies.  Matthew 5:44: “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  Some time ago I read about a Baptist pastor who was a friend of George Washington and lived in a small Pennsylvania town during the American Revolution.  In that same town there was also a man who constantly opposed and humiliated the pastor.  His name was Michael Wittman, and he was an evil kind of guy.  One day Michael Wittman was arrested for treason and sentenced to die in Philadelphia.  When the pastor heard about it, he traveled 70 miles on foot to plead for the life of the traitor.

The minister went up to George Washington and asked that Mr. Wittman be set free.  Washington said, “No, Peter, I cannot grant you the life of your friend.”  The preacher shouted out, “My friend!  He’s the worst enemy I have.”  Washington was flabbergasted and said, “What?  You walked 70 miles to save the life of an enemy?  That puts the matter in a different light.  I’ll grant your pardon.”

The pastor took Michael Wittman back home that day – no longer an enemy but as a friend.  What about you?  Is there anyone that comes to your mind who is difficult for you to love?  Anyone in the church you have a conflict with?  Anyone in your job or at school that you would consider to be an enemy?  The Bible is clear – you are called to unconditional love.  Just as Christ loved us when were at war with Him, so too we are to love our enemies.

5.  Love Compels us to Tell Others.  2 Corinthians 5:14 and verse 20: “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died…we are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”  Because we have been the recipients of His incredible love, we are called to be ambassadors of that love and share it with others.

That’s why we partner with missionaries who take the gospel around the world and why we look for ways to serve peopel in our community.

Have you been so moved by God’s love for you that you can’t help but tell others about Jesus?  If not, don’t just try to fire yourself up to do more evangelism.  Instead, look for ways to fall more deeply in love with our loving God.  When you do, you will want to tell others – and you will tell others.  Remember, as Joe Aldrich says, “Evangelism is what spills over when we bump into someone.”  Allow God’s love to fill you up then spend time with lost people, and watch His love spill over into their lives!

6.  Love calls people to salvation.  In the passage from Romans 5 that we looked at earlier, the word “for” is used 4 different times.  The meaning is so broad that no one English word can convey what it really means.  Here’s how it should be translated, “for the benefit of” or “on behalf of” or “instead of.”  When the Bible says that Jesus died for you, it means that He died on your behalf, in your place, so that you can enjoy all the benefits of His work. 

Let me paraphrase Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died instead of us – for our benefit, and on our behalf.”

Bruce Davis, a follower of Charles Manson, and dubbed Manson’s “right-hand man” has been behind bars for 4 decades for his part in the murders of several people.  While in prison, Davis came to the point where he recognized his need for forgiveness.  For many years, however, he held out fully surrendering to Christ.  Here’s what he said in a recent interview: “I wanted to reject God’s moral demands, especially that His [love] required my submission to the Lord Jesus Christ.” 

He finally came to the point of surrender and said this to God: “Okay, God, you say you love me and we both know that I don’t love you.  You say you want to help me, but I don’t believe it.  I’ve never done anything for you.  But if you still love me, and still want to help me, then do whatever you can.”

Bruce Davis was saved at the age of 32 because God’s love broke through his hard heart.

How about you?  Do you have a hard heart?  As we wrap up this series on the attributes of God, in reality the first step in getting to know God is to respond to Him in salvation.  You won’t know Him until you’ve received the free gift of Jesus Christ.  There’s no way you can earn God’s love because it’s not for sale – nothing we do can make God love us any more than He already does and there is nothing we can do to make Him love us any less.

I want to close by asking you to read a very moving paraphrase of Scripture.  Let’s drink deeply from the truth of Romans 8:31-39:

“So, what do you think?  With God on our side like this, how can we lose?  If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son, is there anything else He wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?  And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen?  Who would dare even to point a finger?  The one who died for us – who was raised to life for us! – Is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.  Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us?  There is no way!  Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture…none of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.  I’m absolutely convinced that nothing – nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable – absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” Amen.

July 27, 2010

Faith Important for Only a Few

A new study shows that the vast majority of Christians still identify with Christianity, but only a fraction say their faith is a “top priority” in their life. The Christian Post reports that almost 90 percent of Americans identify as Christian, but just 12 percent call it their highest priority, compared with 45 percent who say their family is most important. “The gap is vast between self-described affiliation with Christianity and ascribing highest priority to that faith,” commented David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, in a statement. “When it comes to why so much of American religion seems merely skin-deep, this gap between what people call themselves and what they prioritize is perhaps most telling.” Other popular answers included health or a balanced lifestyle (20 percent) and financial or career success (17 percent).

July 26, 2010

Communion Hymn

We’ve sung this several times before but thought I’d post it now to help you prepare for communion this Sunday.

July 26, 2010

Our Unchanging God

I turned the big 5-0 a couple months ago and that made me reflect on another milestone when I turned 40.  90% of the cards I received made some kind of crack about how old 40 is – but a few people were kind to me – very few.

The staff gave me a little party complete with a black balloon that says, “Happy Birthday, you old buzzard!”  We also celebrated with 40 candles on a chocolate covered donut.  As a gift they gave me an oversized magnifying glass with the caption, “Midlife Crisis Magnifier” on the package.

One card I received said this on the outside: “Happy Birthday.  I wouldn’t exactly say you’re old…but in some third world countries, you’d qualify as a tribal elder.”

One of my sisters sent me a card and then wrote on the inside, “You’re as old as dirt.”

Another one said, “Turning 40?  Your face and body still look twenty-five.  But there’s something in your eyes that says, ‘forty’—tears, I think they’re called.

I don’t think I’ve changed a bit from when I was young. 

The elders gave me a hard time about losing my memory.  Apparently that happens when you hit 40.  That reminds me of two elderly gentlemen who were playing cards.  Max, the older gentleman, was having a hard time remembering what cards were what, and usually needed help from his wife.

At the end of the game Ed said to Max, “You did very good tonight and didn’t need any help.  What happened?”

Max replied, “Ever since my wife sent me to memory school, I haven’t had any problems at all.” 

“Memory school?  What memory school?”

Max furrowed his brow for a minute and then asked Ed, “Oh, what’s that flower that’s red with thorns?  It’s a really pretty flower…”

“A rose?”

Max then said, “Yeah, that’s it!”  He turned to his wife and mumbled, “Hey, Rose!  What’s the name of that memory school you sent me to?”

Immutability

As humans, we are always changing.  Ever since the fall of Adam, when sin was introduced, change has been part of life.  The moment we are born, we begin to age.  We grow, develop, and then deteriorate – and our memory is one of the first things to go.

Our only hope in life is this: God never changes.  He is the one constant we can count on while everything around us radically changes. 

Our topic today, in theological terms, is referred to as the immutability of God.  Something is mutable if it is subject to change in any degree.  To be immutable means to be unchanging and unchangeable.

Here’s a working definition: “God does not, and cannot, change in His basic character.”  Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded.  His immutability guarantees this.

Here’s another definition that captures the depth and the beauty of God’s unchanging character: “All that God is, He has always been; and all that He has been, and is, He will ever be.”

You can also use the word “always” to express this truth about God.  God is always wise, always sovereign, always faithful, always just, always holy and always loving.  Whatever God is, He always is.  There are no “sometimes” attributes of God.  All of His attributes are “always” attributes.  He always is what He is.

Biblical Survey

There are many verses in the Bible that teach this truth.  Here’s just a sampling:

1 Samuel 15:29: “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man, that He should change His mind.”

Malachi 3:6: “I the Lord do not change.  So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

Numbers 23:19: “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change His mind.  Does He speak and then not act?  Does He promise and not fulfill?”

Psalm 102:25-27: “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.  They will perish, but you remain; they will wear out like a garment.  Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded.  But you will remain the same, and your years will never end.”

James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

Another Old Buzzard

The truth of God’s immutability is seen very clearly in the life of another person who was probably given some black balloons on his birthday.  Abraham was as “old as dirt” and had passed the time in life when it was possible to have children.  If you have your Bibles, please turn to Hebrews 6:13-20. 

I see four truths in this passage related to our topic this morning.

1.  God’s Promises Never Change.  Verses 13-15: “When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’  And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.”

Abraham was given a promise in Genesis 15 that his descendants would outnumber the stars in the sky.  Genesis 15:6 tells us that, “Abraham believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”  Now, why did Abraham believe God’s promise?  It certainly wasn’t because it was fulfilled right away! 

Romans 4 tells us that Abraham believed against all hope.  He knew the odds were against him – he was almost 100 years old!  I love Romans 4:21: “Being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.”  Abraham dialed in to God’s promise – He knew that God would never change what He had promised to accomplish.  You and I break our promises all the time and let each other down.  God can always be counted on to keep His promises because He is our unchanging God.

2.  God’s Purposes Never Change.  We see this in verse 17:  “Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath.”

God wants us to understand that His purposes are never subject to change.  When Abraham was asked to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22, Abraham obeyed and was about to slay his son when the Lord stopped him.  After Abraham is found to be obedient, God took an oath.  Listen to what Genesis 22:16-17 says: “…I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you…”

Why does God need to take an oath to show that His purposes never change?  Isn’t His word enough?  Yes, it is enough.  Actually, that is in fact, what an oath is.  It’s a confirmation of the integrity of God’s Word.  God’s purpose will never change – you have His word on it.

You and I change our plans all the time.  You might start your day with a plan in mind but it often goes haywire when a child gets sick, you receive a phone call, or you suddenly turn 40 and spin out of control for a few days!  God’s purposes never change.  Isaiah 14:24: “The Lord Almighty has sworn, ‘Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will stand.”

3.  God’s Personality Never Changes.  Take a look at the first part of verse 18: “God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie…” Abraham’s faith rested on the unchanging character of God.  You and I can count on God’s personality to be the same today as it was yesterday and what it will be like tomorrow.  He does not change who He is.

Abraham believed that God told the truth about Himself, and God was true to His personality, which he expressed in two unchangeable ways – one was the original promise, the other was the oath He took to fulfill that promise.  Without a baby in the crib for 25 years, Abraham hung on to the character of God.  Since it is impossible for God to lie, His promise and His oath are secure.

God is not fickle in his feelings, nor does He experience mood swings.  He never has bad days or good days.  He doesn’t treat us according to the whims of the moment.  He is always completely consistent with Himself.

What would happen if God’s personality changed?  How would we approach Him if His character was in a constant state of flux?  We would never pray.  We would never trust Him or venture out in faith.  We would never ask for His help.

Friends, God’s personality is the same today as it was during the time of Abraham.  That’s why the Bible calls Him the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”  Even though people come and go, God remains the same.  He’s the same today that He was then, which means that He is absolutely reliable and completely consistent with His personality. 

4.  God’s People Can Change.  Look at the last part of verse 18 and verses 19 and 20: “…We who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.  We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.  It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.”

Because God’s promises, God’s purposes, and God’s personality never change, God’s people can change!  It’s great that God never changes, but wouldn’t it be awful, if you and I could never change?  It is precisely because He is immutable that you and I can experience the hope of lasting change – from the inside out.

This hope of change is an anchor for your soul.  This implies at least two things. 

• Your soul needs an anchor
• Your soul is prone to drift

An anchor is a steadying force and prevents drifting in the choppy seas of our lives.  It keeps us from sliding away and helps us not be swept away by the winds of temptation.  An anchor is like an immovable rock that we can hold onto. 

A story is told of a shipwrecked sailor who clung to a rock until the tide went down.  After he was able to make it to safety, a friend asked a question, “Didn’t you shake with fear when you were hanging on to the rock?”  The sailor simply smiled and said, “Yes, but the rock didn’t.”  Life and its uncertainties may shake us, but God – who is the Rock of Ages – does not move.  If we cling to Him, His strength will sustain us.

In taking a close look at this passage, the anchor serves another purpose as well.  The biblical image here is one of moving ahead in safety and confidence by casting our anchor forward and then, as the New English Bible translates it, “grasping the hope set before us.”  This is a strange metaphor for most of us – that of casting an anchor into the future and winching one’s way forward.

This ancient sailing practice is called “kedging.”  When storms or turbulent seas would threaten a ship that was docked in harbor, a crew of sailors would jump into a smaller boat and haul the ship’s anchor out into the sea as far as the chain would allow them to go.  The anchor would then be let down and the ship pulled itself forward into deeper water on the anchor chain.

Friends, that’s exactly what Jesus has done for us.  He is the anchor for our soul that verse 19 says is “firm and secure.”  Our anchor is in heaven, but our ship is on earth.  And, Jesus provides us with the stability and power we need so that our lives can change now.  Hebrews 13:8 says that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

We are not to just drop an anchor so that we can “hold on” during life’s difficulties.  No.  Because we are anchored to Christ, who pulls us along and changes us on a daily basis, we are to “move ahead.”  As Max Lucado has put it: “God loves you as you are but He loves you too much to let you stay that way.”

God is all about changing lives.  Because He does not change, you and I can change.  Because His promises, His purposes, and His personality never change, we can change – or better yet, we must change!  Once we know God through Christ we will change.  Our unchanging God delights in changing His people.

Note: I highly recommend a book by Ray Pritchard called, Anchor for the Soul.  The title for this book comes right from the passage we just studied and communicates the gospel clearly and concisely.

July 25, 2010

Our Sovereign God

I came across a couple children’s prayers recently.

Johnny had been misbehaving and was sent to his room.  He emerged a couple minutes later and informed his mother that he had thought things over and had even said a little prayer.  The mother was very happy and said, “If you asked God to help you not misbehave, He will help you.”  To which Johnny replied, “Oh, I didn’t ask Him for help with that, I asked Him to help you put up with me.”

A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Sunday School.  As she ran she prayed, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late!”  As she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress.  She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again.  This time she prayed a little bit differently: “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be late…but don’t shove me either.”

This girl understood our topic for today very clearly.  She knew that God is in control of everything!

The word “sovereign” is both a noun and verb.  As a verb it means, “to rule,” and as a noun it means “king” or “absolute ruler.”  To say that God is sovereign is to say that God is in charge of the entire universe all the time.  The Westminster Confession puts it like this: “He ordains whatsoever comes to pass.”

In a nutshell, God’s sovereignty means that He is absolutely free to do as He pleases and to demonstrate His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures.  Or, to put it another way, He permits, for reasons known only to Himself, people to act contrary to His revealed will, but He never allows them to act against His sovereign will.

This is seen clearly in the following verses:

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21)

“Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?”  (Lamentations 3:37)

“You ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’”  (James 4:15)

“I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.” (Job 42:2)

“Our God is in heaven; He does whatever pleases Him.”  (Psalm 115:3)

What Sovereignty Is

Let me give you 5 practical truths related to God’s sovereignty. 

• The sovereignty of God is a very humbling doctrine.  Sovereignty reminds us that God is God and we are not.

• It’s an exalting doctrine because it gives us a big view of God.  Many of us struggle because our view of God is too small.

• It’s also a mysterious doctrine because it brings us face to face with the problem of evil and free will.  If God is sovereign, why is there evil in the universe?  If humans have free will, how can God be in control?  These questions have been debated for centuries and perhaps I’ll preach on them in the future.  For our purposes, suffice it to say that God is sovereign and you and I are fully responsible for all the choices we make.

• It’s a clarifying doctrine because it teaches that there is no such thing as luck, chance, fate or coincidence.  You can have God or chance, but you can’t have both.  It reminds me of the cowboy who applied for health insurance.  The agent asked him if he had had any accidents during the previous year.  The cowboy replied, “No.  But I was bitten by a rattlesnake, and a horse kicked me in the ribs.  That laid me up for awhile.”  The agent said, “Weren’t those accidents?”  “No,” replied the cowboy, “They did it on purpose.”  He recognized that there is no such thing as an “accident.”  How about you?  Do you believe that some things catch God by surprise? 

• Finally, this is an empowering doctrine.  Since God is in charge, no mere human can intimidate you.  You can live your life with boldness and confidence, without fearing anyone or anything.  Since God is sovereign, we can trust Him with our lives.

A Press Release

I want to read part of a press release to you this morning.  Please turn in your Bible to Daniel 4, where we find one of the few chapters in Scripture written by someone considered to be on the outside – he was neither a Christian nor a Jew.

Nebuchadnezzar was the guy who led the Babylonian army to Jerusalem and conquered it.  This all took place during the time of Jeremiah the prophet.  Once Jerusalem was destroyed, and many people were deported to Babylon, Jeremiah sat down with tears in his eyes and wrote the book of Lamentations.  Now, we come to the Book of Daniel.  The events of this book take place in Babylon and describe how God’s people fared in this foreign country.

In Chapter 4 the King decides to clear up some vicious rumors that have been circulating in his kingdom about some events surrounding a very tough time in his life. 

The King with the impossible name learned the truth about God’s sovereignty the hard way.  He wanted the whole world to know what God had done for him.  Specifically, he wanted to explain why the mightiest man in the world was now worshipping the God of a small, conquered nation.  Look at verses 2-3:  “It is my pleasure to tell you about the miraculous signs and wonders that the Most High God has performed for me.  How great are His signs, how mighty His wonders!  His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; His dominion endures from generation to generation.”

He then describes how his life was going in verse 4 – he was “contented and prosperous.”  He had the four things that everyone in the world desires:

• Palace
• Peace
• Prosperity
• Power

Outwardly, everything was going great.  And then, like what happened in chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar had another dream.  Another nightmare pounced on him.  Verse 5 says that he was afraid and terrified.  Even though he has everything, he is fearful and can’t sleep.  He first calls in his wise guys who can’t figure out the meaning of the dream and then, he remembers the “dream-buster,” Daniel.

A Weird Dream

His dream was of a vast tree that stretched to the sky and was visible to the ends of the earth.  The birds rested on the branches and animals found shade on the ground.  In the barren desert-like landscape of Babylon, which today is Iraq, a tree like this would have been a magnificent sight.  It was the grandest tree the world had ever seen – Nebuchadnezzar was probably thinking, “That’s just like me.”

The dream turns to a nightmare just then as he sees a messenger from heaven come down and give orders to have the tree chopped down in verse 14.  Interestingly, the stump is to remain and be allowed to live.  Then, the fatal words: “Let him be drenched with the dew of heaven, and let him live with the animals…let him be changed from that of a man and let him be given the mind of an animal, till seven times pass by for him.”  (4:15-16)

Nezzar (that’s what he’s called in a Veggie Tale video!) is starting to break out into a cold sweat.  He then hears this pronouncement in verse 17: “…the holy ones declare the verdict, so that the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes…”

The King, like us, needed a lesson in God’s sovereignty.  It is God, not a man who is in control.  God is in charge of everything.

Daniel, who must have had a good relationship with the King, is greatly perplexed when he hears the dream.  Daniel tells the King in no uncertain terms that he is the tree and that he will be driven away from his people, to live with the wild animals.  He would even eat grass like a cow!  He is told in verse 24 that this will last seven years until he “…acknowledges that the Most High is sovereign…” Daniel then pleads with him to renounce his sins and to do what is right.

As we learned yesterday, God always warns us before He sends judgment.  Nezzar had one year to turn his life around but he didn’t.  And then, one day, as he was walking on the roof of his royal palace, surveying his beautiful city, pride flooded his heart and spilled out of his mouth in verse 30: “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”  He started mooing like a cow almost immediately when he heard a voice from heaven say in verse 32: “…Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone He wishes.”

One moment he was a bright, handsome, thriving man with a sharp mind.  And then, because of his arrogance, he was reduced to an animal.  He was probably so ugly that the people must have been repulsed by his appearance.  He was no doubt covered with slime as he scratched his filthy, tangled hair with his claw-like nails.

I heard recently about a man who desperately wanted to work at a zoo and answered an ad to be a veterinarian assistant.  When he went to the zoo office, he was told that the position had already been filled.  He was really bummed out and was starting to leave when the receptionist suddenly became very secretive, whispered to him to sit down and got up and locked the door.

She then told them that they had an opening – their gorilla had recently died and the zoo had no more money to buy a new one.  So she offered him a chance to be the zoo’s monkey for a month.  He readily agreed because he needed the money.

The monkey suit was hot and made him itch in places he could not reach but he enjoyed his new job.  He’d perform for the kids by beating his chest and eating bananas.  Days turned into weeks and he became the star of the zoo.  One day, while swinging on the rope in his cage, he went higher and higher as the kids cheered him on.  At the top of his swing, he took one hand off the rope to beat his chest and landed with a thud into the neighboring cage – the cage of a Siberian Tiger!

All the kids rushed to the next cage and began yelling, “Mommy, mommy, monkey with tiger.”  The tiger woke up and stretched.  He went over to the gorilla and sniffed him.  The gorilla didn’t move.  The man in the monkey suit began to whisper, “Good kitty, nice kitty, don’t hurt me kitty” while trying to figure out a way to get out of the cage.  The tiger then pounced on him and put his front paws on the gorilla’s shoulders, pinning him to the ground. 

At this point, the man began to scream, “Help!  Help!  I am a man in a monkey suit and I’m about to be eaten.”  A little boy said, “Mommy, mommy, monkey talks.”  The Siberian tiger came closer to the monkey and whispered, “Shut up!  Are you trying to get us both fired?”

You know, there’s a little bit of gorilla in all of us.  God made Nebuchadnezzar become outwardly what he already was in his heart – he was filled with pride and acting like an animal.  You might not look like an animal, but have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered, “What’s happening to me?”  You might look attractive on the outside but some sinful, ugly, prideful behavior is eating you up on the inside.  You don’t like the animal you see in there.  This beast is affecting your relationship with God, your marriage, your friendships, your kids, your service in the church, and your career

Friend, do you want to become beautiful again?  Do you want that beast to go away?  Then, you need to do what Nezzar eventually did. 

Do you see the recurring theme in this chapter?  God is determined to teach each of us about His sovereignty – that He is God and we are not.

Taming the Beast

Sometimes God has to put someone on their knees for an extended period of time in order to get their attention.  I want you to notice something here.  King Nezzar chewed his cud for 7 long years and ate grass pie until he “raised his eyes toward heaven” in verse 34.  We might say that he had a paradigm shift – he started to see things differently.  Instead of saying “me and mine,” he started to say “He and His.”  Immediately after this, his sanity was restored and he praised the Most High by honoring and glorifying the One who lives forever.

As someone has said,

• He looked up
• He woke up
• He spoke up

If we want to tame the beast within, we must keep raising our eyes to heaven.  We must look up so we can wake up in order to speak up.  If we don’t, we’d better look out!  When I raise my eyes to heaven, what do I see?  I see the Most High!  Verses 34-37 give us six fast facts about our Sovereign God.

• He rules and reigns eternally.  Verse 34b: “His dominion is an eternal dominion; His kingdom endures from generation to generation.”

• He is greater than the greatest. Verse 35a: “All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.”

• He does whatever He pleases. Verse 35b: “He does as He pleases with the powers of Heaven and the peoples of the earth.” 

• He defends Himself to no one. Verse 35c: “No one can hold back His hand or say to Him, ‘What have you done?’”

• He never makes any mistakes. Verse 37b: “Because everything He does is right and all His ways are just.”

• He deflates those who are puffed up. Verse 37c: “And those who walk in pride He is able to humble.”

Dropping to our Knees

Friends, understanding God’s sovereignty causes us to focus on Him, not ourselves.  Our response should be to fall at His feet and to give Him everything we are and everything we own.  Pride is not the sole possession of the powerful, the rich, or the famous.  It controls each of us if we’re not careful.  David Jeremiah says that of all the personal and church problems he has seen in his years of ministry, most of them are the result of pride.

Pride creeps into our lives in subtle ways.

• When we do something bad, we are quick to blame others.  When we do something good, we want to take all the credit.  That’s pride.

• When we magnify our accomplishments and minimize our errors while magnifying the sins of others and minimizing their accomplishments.  That’s pride.

• When we put our needs and concerns ahead of others. That’s pride.

• When we’d rather live our life our way, instead of God’s way.  That’s pride.

As we wrap up this message, let me see if I can help you flesh out this important doctrine of God’s sovereignty.  As we’ve been thinking about God’s rule and power, it would be easy to just nod in doctrinal agreement without really thinking about how it should impact our life.  I can think of at least two action steps.

• Renounce your sins and do right.  This is what Daniel urged the King to do in verse 27.  This word means, “to separate or make a division” between yourself and sin.  Nebuchadnezzar was given 12 months to repent – I don’t know how long you have! 

• Submit to His Lordship and Leadership.  Totally and irrevocably submit to His lordship in your life.  Worship Him by giving Him everything you own.  Ask Him to take down that monument of pride to your own abilities and talents.  Give Him your fears and insecurities.  Ask Him to control your checkbook.  Tell Him that you’re willing to do anything and go anywhere at any time in response to His leading.

Theodore Roosevelt is considered by many to be one of our greatest presidents.  He knew how to keep himself small.  Some nights, before going to bed, Roosevelt and his friend the naturalist William Beebe, would go out and look at the skies, searching for a tiny patch of light near the constellation of Pegasus.  When they would find it, they would chant together: “This is the spiral galaxy of Andromeda.  It’s as large as our Milky Way.  It is one of a hundred million galaxies.  It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.”  Then Roosevelt would turn to his buddy and say, “Now I think we are small enough.  Let’s get some sleep.”

C.S. Lewis has said, “The proud man always looks down; as long as you look down, you can’t see what’s above you.”

Like the little girl who believed that God pushed her to the ground while she was running to Sunday School – God will either push us to our knees – or we can choose to do it voluntarily.

Philippians 2:10-11 says, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

In order to help you tame the “beast” within, and to help you put into practice your submission to the Lordship and Leadership of our Sovereign God, I’m going to ask you to kneel right now.  This might be a bit awkward to do, but if you’d like to demonstrate your commitment to God’s sovereignty in your life, why don’t you drop to your knees right now as we pray this prayer of surrender to God?

If you are not able to kneel because of physical difficulties, bow in your heart to God as we pray.

O Most High, I kneel before you and raise my eyes toward heaven.  I bless and honor you.  Your rule is everlasting and your kingdom is eternal.  All the people of the earth, including me, are nothing compared to you.  You have the power to do as you please. No one can hold back your hand or say to you, “What have you done?”

Please tame the beast within me. I renounce my sins and repent of the way I have been living.  I surrender myself to your Kingship and to your Leadership in my life. 

I now praise, exalt, and honor you, the King of Heaven, and my Sovereign God, because everything you do is right and your ways are just and you are able to humble those who walk in pride.

I pray this prayer though Jesus Christ, my Lord.  Amen.

July 25, 2010

Something Big is Happening Here

This sermon by Ray Pritchard will shed new light on the problems you’re facing today.

July 24, 2010

Our Just God

About ten years ago I had the opportunity to play “Mr. Mom” while Beth attended a conference in Chicago.  There is no doubt in my mind that Beth has a more difficult job than I do! 

My greatest challenge came late morning when I was trying to give our baby Megan a bottle.  Since Beth was nursing her, Megan had no interest in artificial leche – that’s the one word I know in Spanish.  Being the resourceful person that I am, I decided to sit down on the couch, and watch “Judge Joe” on TV while I tried to figure out how to get some formula down Megan’s throat.  I was worried that she was going to dehydrate on me!  Whenever I put the bottle in her mouth, she would just smile at me and push it away with her hands.

Finally, I came across a plan.  I took the Playtex bottle in one hand and used my other hand to push the little bag of formula up into the bottle so the milk would spray out the nozzle – or whatever it’s called.  Whenever Megan opened her mouth, I just aimed, and squirted.  She didn’t get much in her mouth but I did hear her swallow a couple times.

While Judge Joe was berating a young man in his TV courtroom, and Megan was wiping milk off her chin as it drooled down her neck, our 5-year-old Becky came into the room.  She observed what I was doing, frowned a little bit and said, “Dad, do you really know what you’re doing?”

Just then Judge Joe was lecturing the criminal on TV by asking him a similar question, “Son, did you really know what you were doing?”  I was afraid that Becky and Megan were going to call their mom so I quickly put the bottle down and listened intently to the judge conclude his remarks by saying, “I’ve seen your types before.  Even if you didn’t know what you were doing, I know what you’re all about.  You’re guilty as charged.  Now pay up!”  I don’t know how this guy got up the courage, but he yelled out at Joe the Judge, “That’s not fair!  I don’t deserve that kind of punishment – it was my fiancée’s fault!”

Like Judge Judy on a different channel, Judge Joe seemed to enjoy dispensing justice – maybe a little too much!  I couldn’t help but wonder the same thing – his ruling didn’t seem all that fair. 

As we continue in our series called, “Getting to Know God,” our focus today is on “Our Just God.”  Justice is not an external system to which God tries to adhere.  He didn’t have to go to law school or get a TV courtroom to learn how to apply the law.  His justice comes out of his inner being and is based on His holiness, His truthfulness, and His righteousness.  Moses put it this way in Deuteronomy 32:4: “He is the rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just.  A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He.”

God always acts in a way consistent with the requirements of His character as revealed in His law.  He rules His creation with honesty.  He keeps His word.  He renders to all creatures their due.

The word justice in the Bible refers to conformity to a rule or norm.  God plays by the rules.  The ultimate norm of justice is His own Holy character.  There is a consistency in God, a straightness about Him.  This is in contrast to humans, who are referred to as being unrighteous, or crooked.  We refer to criminals as crooks because they are crooked—they’re not straight.  Only God is.  In all eternity, God has never done a crooked thing.

Biblical Survey

Let me give you a brief overview of some key passages that deal with God’s justice:

Psalm 9:16: “The Lord is known by His justice.”
Psalm 75:7: “But it is God who judges.”
Proverbs 29:26: “Many seek an audience with a ruler, but it is from the Lord that man gets justice.”
Daniel 9:14: “For the Lord our God is righteous in everything He does.”

Our fascination for fairness is found not only in court and in real life, but also in the Bible.  A case in point is a parable Jesus tells in Luke 18, which describes an incredibly corrupt legal system.  It’s a simple story with only two characters, a crooked judge and a desperate widow.  Jesus told this story to show that God is the exact opposite of this type of judge.  This profound parable touches on at least four points about God’s justice:

• We want it
• We don’t want it
• We’re going to get it
• We may have to wait for it

We Want It

The first point, when it comes to justice is this: we want it.

Notice the picture Jesus paints in Luke 18:2-3: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men.  And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’”

Judges during the time of Jesus were notorious for being crooked.  Unless a plaintiff had influence and money to bribe his way to a verdict, he had no hope of ever getting his case settled.  This widow didn’t have a chance since she probably had little influence and even less money.  She didn’t measure up to the judge’s standards—crooked though they were.  So she used the only weapon she had—persistence!  She knew she could never receive justice from this crooked judge unless she persisted.

What a contrast!  He was the epitome of power and social status.  She was on the lower rung of the cultural ladder.  Widows back then had no clout, no cash, and no connections.  They were easy prey for predators.  And one day a thief came and robbed her blind.  The widow then appeals to the judge for some justice.  She doesn’t seek vengeance; all she demands is justice.  And so do we.

In New York City, 4 police officers were found not guilty in the death of Amadu Diallo, an African immigrant.  Many minority groups were outraged.  At the end of the lead story on the NBC Nightly News, the reporter said this, “There’s a bitter feeling that justice has not been done.”

Injustice leaves a bitter taste in our mouths.  At school, when some bully shoves us or ridicules us, we demand justice.  At work, when an employee lies to us, or when an employer falsely accuses us, we demand justice.  In marriage, when a partner cheats on us or abandons us, we demand justice.

I’ve really enjoyed watching PCS volleyball games over the years.  I admit I didn’t know many of the rules at the beginning, but now I’m an expert.  I’ve been intrigued by how the two referees call the game.  One climbs a ladder and stands perched above the net so he or she can scan all the lines and keep an eye out for all infractions.

I remember one game when a ball was called out that sure looked like it was in.  I remember thinking, “that’s not fair – you didn’t even see where it landed!”  Later, between the games, one of the refs who was perched on the ladder, turned to the crowd and asked us if we had any questions about volleyball.  I was going to ask when he last had his eyes checked, but thought better of it!

Why was I so upset about a call?  It’s because I want justice – I want things to be fair – and if they’re not, I at least want the calls to go in our favor…

Are you upset with any blown calls in your life?  Are you angry with anyone today?  Who is your adversary?  How has he or she offended you?  In what area of your life are you like this desperate widow?  The truth is, when it comes to justice, we all want it.

We Don’t Want It

The second truth about justice may sound contradictory when you first hear it: We Don’t Want It. 

R.C. Sproul recounts an experience he had teaching a freshman Old Testament course to 250 students at a Christian college.  On the first day of class he went over the assignments very carefully, explaining that the course required three short term papers.  He made it clear that the first one was due by noon on the last day of September – no extensions would be given.  If the paper was not turned in on time, the student would receive an F for the assignment.

On September 30th, 225 students turned in their paper, while 25 students stood quaking in terror, full of remorse.  As they cried out for mercy, Dr. Sproul decided to give them a break.  He then said, “Remember, the next assignment is due the last day of October.”  The students were very happy and promised to have their next assignment in on time.

On the last day of October, 200 students came with their papers.  50 students came empty-handed.  They were nervous, but not in a panic.  They told the professor, “We’re sorry.  Please give us one more chance.  We promise it will never happen again.”

The professor relented one more time but said, “This is the last time.  If you are late for the next paper, it will be an F.  No excuses and no whining.  Is that clear?”  They all nodded their heads in agreement. 

What do you think happened on the last day of November?  Right.  Only 150 students came with their papers.  The other 100 strolled into class utterly unconcerned.  Dr. Sproul shouted out, “Where are your term papers?”  One student replied, “Oh, don’t worry, Prof, we’re working on them.  We’ll have them in a couple days.”

The professor then picked up his lethal black grade book and began taking down names.  “Johnson!  Do you have your paper?”  “No sir,” came the reply.  “F,” the professor said as he wrote the grade in the book.  The students reacted with unmitigated fury.  They howled in protest, screaming, “That’s not fair.”

Sproul then looked at one of the complaining students and asked, “Do you think this is unfair?”  The student courageously responded, “Yes this is not fair at all.”

The teacher then said, “I see.  It’s justice you want?  I seem to recall that you were late with your paper the last time.  If you insist upon justice you will certainly get it.  I’ll not only give you an F for this assignment, but I’ll change your last grade to the F you so richly deserved.”

The student was stunned.  He had no more arguments to make.  He apologized for being so hasty and was suddenly happy to settle for one F instead of two.

In God’s court, you and I have a flimsy defense.  Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and Romans 6:23 reminds us that “the wages of sin is death.”  There’s no possibility of a plea bargain or of God grading on a curve.  Because God is a just God, He will judge accordingly.  Friends, be careful of demanding that justice be done—God may give you the “F” you deserve!

We’re Going to Get It

In thinking about God’s justice, we’ve established two things so far.  First, We Want It. Second, We Don’t Want It.  Let’s come back to the parable that Jesus told.  Here we see point #3: We’re Going To Get It.

This widow eventually gets her day in court.  This judge, though corrupt, finally caves in.  Jesus tells us why as he continues the parable in verse 4.  Referring to the judge, he says: “For some time he refused.  But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’ ”

He gets tired of her hounding, and so reluctantly renders a decision.  This judge finally responds, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the convenient thing to do.  Jesus then presses home his point. 

Notice verses 6-8: “And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.  And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?  Will he keep putting them off?  I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.”

Think about it.  This unjust judge had no respect for absolutes.  He probably cheated on his exams for law school!  He may have become a judge by bribing other officials.  What’s worse, he has no compassion for people.  He is indifferent to the needs of the poor plaintiffs who have to appear before his corrupt court.  All he cares about is himself.

By contrast, our just God is the author of absolutes.  His standards are not arbitrary, but are completely consistent with his perfect character.  And his standards are not for sale. He cannot be bribed.  He cannot be fooled.  He accepts no plea-bargains.

God will judge the world; God must judge the world.  This means that he must judge you and he must judge me.

The Law News Alert reported about a story about a police lineup. Each suspect was asked to repeat the words, “Give me all your money or I’ll shoot.”  This was to help witnesses make a positive identification.  Suddenly, one of the suspects yelled out, “Hey, that’s not what I said!”

We’re all a bit like this guy.  We know we’re guilty and it’s tough to keep quiet about it.  In God’s court of law, we’re all busted.  The good news is that God is not only passionate about truth—He is compassionate toward people.  The unjust judge did not care about men.  But our just God became a man.  Jesus is God’s gift of forgiveness to a world that didn’t just demand justice; we all deserved justice.  John 3:17 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  Are you trusting in the Son to save you from judgment? 

We Can Be Pardoned

Because God is a just God, He must judge everyone who does not meet his standards for perfection.  That means you.  That means me.  Sin has to be paid for.  Time must be served.  God’s justice requires that there be payment for the penalty of sin. 

There really is no tension between God’s love and God’s justice.  Jesus is the fusion of divine love and divine justice.  Picture a line drawn vertically—that’s God’s justice.  And another line drawn horizontally—that’s God’s love.  Where they meet is the cross.  There is dissonance only if your view of love requires that God forgive sin without any payment being made.

Actually, the offer of Jesus as our sin substitute shows a greater love on God’s part than simply releasing us from the consequences of sin without payment being made.  To fulfill his justice, God’s love was so great that He gave His Son for us.  Love and justice are not two separate attributes competing with one another.  God is both righteous and loving, and has himself given what He demands.

God sent His Son Jesus to die in our place.  Romans 3:26 says that “he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.” 

The cross was at once the most horrible and the most beautiful example of God’s wrath.  It was the most just and the most gracious act in history.  With the concentrated load of sin that Jesus carried to the Cross, God poured out His wrath—the penalty for the sins that every one of us have committed—on Jesus.  It was with this act that God’s holy justice was completely satisfied.  It was done for you.  It was done for me.

In other words, the sacrifice of Jesus demonstrates God’s justice.  When you put your faith in Jesus for forgiveness of sins, according to Romans 3:26 you will be declared just in His sight—and you won’t have to pay the price.

I read about a burglar from Belgium who was surprised while he was robbing a house.  When he heard the homeowners returning, he fled out the back door, clambered over a 9-foot wall, dropped down on the other side, and found himself in the city prison!  As we’ve already learned in this series, it is impossible to run from God because you’ll eventually be imprisoned by your own sins.

For those of you who have been acquitted by a just God due to the sacrifice of his Son, there is a fourth principle in this parable.  When it comes to justice, we want it, we don’t want it, we’re going to get it, and finally, we may have to wait for it.

We May Have to Wait For It

The context of this parable is the Second Coming of Christ.  That is how Luke 17 ends and how Luke 18 begins: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”  Jesus concludes this story in verse 8 with this question: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

The implication is that He may not.  The danger is that God’s apparent delay in dispensing justice may cause some to doubt, or to despair, or even to depart from the faith.  When evil goes unpunished, when good is not rewarded, some may be tempted to walk away.

I don’t know how many times you’ve been wronged.  I don’t know how many ways you’ve been victimized.  I don’t know how long you’ve waited for justice to be served.

But I do know that God is not deaf to your cries.  Unlike the widow, you don’t have to pester a reluctant God to act on your behalf.  He will not keep putting you off.  Genesis 18:25 asks, “Will not the Judge of the all the earth do right?”  The answer is a resounding “Yes!”  But our question is “When?”

This parable refers to the interval between Christ’s first Advent and his final Advent.  2,000 years ago, he came as an unrecognized babe in a manger.  One day, he will come as the inescapable Judge of all the earth.  We now live in the interim between these Advents.  And these interim days are ones that call for patient, persistent, waiting faith.

Why does God delay?  Two reasons come to mind. 

• He delays in order to fortify the faith of those who demand justice.  He wants believers to keep praying and not give up. 

• Second, he delays in order to give those who deserve justice time to trust in his Son.  Each day of postponed judgment is an extended day of grace.  Will you receive Him? 

Closing Challenge

All you need to do is ask and He will erase all your sins.  He will pay your debt by charging your sins to Christ’s account. 

When our daughter Becky was born, we accumulated a mountain of medical bills and some family members offered to pay for some of them.  We were very thankful but didn’t send any bills to them for a while.  A couple weeks later they called and wondered why we hadn’t taken them up on their offer.  We assured them that we would as soon as we got the next bill.

You see, they couldn’t pay our debt unless we gave it to them—and we’d have been stupid to not take advantage of their generous offer. 

Friends, the same is true for your spiritual bills.  Jesus has already paid for them—but you need to submit your claims.  It’s not automatic.  If you haven’t surrendered your life to Him and asked Him to forgive you for your sins, His payment will not be applied to your account.  And, if Jesus doesn’t pay for your sins, guess who will? 

Let me ask you a question.  How are you going to pay for your sins?  How are you going to do it?  Someone has to.  You have 2 choices:

1.  Either you choose to pay for your sins in Hell—and justice will prevail.
2.  Or, you receive Christ as your sin substitute—and justice will prevail.

Are you ready to charge your sins to Jesus’ payment plan?  If you are, you will spend eternity with Him on the merits of what He did on the cross.

Some of you are ready to make that commitment right now.  You want Jesus to cancel your sin debt.  You’re ready to surrender yourself to His leadership in your life.  If you are, then there’s no better time than now to do it. 

Thousands of cars are stolen every year in California, but in 1981, there was one car theft that made all the local papers and was the lead story on the evening news.  The police issued an all-points bulletin to find the missing car and tried to make contact with the person who stole it.

Why all the excitement?  The owner of the car had informed the police that on the front seat of the car was a box of crackers laced with a deadly poison.  The car owner had planned to use the crackers as rat bait.  So the police were desperately trying to find the thief – not to punish him, but to save his life.  They were afraid he would eat one of the crackers and die.

In the same way, our just God pursues us – not because He wants to punish us but because he wants to save us.  You may be running away from God because – like the car thief – you are a sinner. You have broken God’s law.  But what you may not realize is that God is trying to rescue you, not condemn you.  Jesus has paid the penalty for your sin, and God wants to give you your freedom.  So stop running away from Him and turn yourself in.  Run to Jesus, not away from Him.  Your life is at stake!

 

July 23, 2010

Let Your Light Shine

Megan I were just listening to Pandora and heard a song by Bethany Dillon called, “Let Your Light Shine.”  We both wanted to hear it again so I just found it on YouTube.  See what you think.

July 23, 2010

Our Faithful God

In the country of Armenia, in 1988, Samuel and Danielle sent their young son, Armand, off to school.  Samuel squatted before his son and looked him in the eye.  “Have a good day at school, and remember, no matter what, I’ll always be there for you.”  They hugged and the boy ran off to school.

Hours later, a powerful earthquake rocked the area.  In the midst of the pandemonium, Samuel and Danielle tried to discover what happened to their son but they couldn’t get any information.  The radio announced that there were thousands of casualties. 

Samuel then grabbed his coat and headed for the schoolyard.  When he reached the area, what he saw brought tears to his eyes.  Armand’s school was a pile of debris.  Other parents were standing around crying.

Samuel found the place where Armand’s classroom used to be and began pulling a broken beam off the pile of rubble.  He then grabbed a rock and put it to the side, and then grabbed another one.

One of the parents looking on asked, “What are you doing?”  “Digging for my son,” Samuel answered.  The man then said, “You’re just going to make things worse!  The building is unstable,” and tried to pull Samuel away from his work.

Samuel set his jaw and kept working.  As time wore on, one by one, the other parents left.  Then a firefighter tried to pull Samuel away from the rubble.  Samuel looked at him and said, “Won’t you help me?”  The firefighter left and Samuel kept digging.

All through the night and into the next day, Samuel continued digging.  Parents placed flowers and pictures of their children on the ruins.  But, Samuel just kept working.  He picked up a beam and pushed it out of the way when he heard a faint cry.  “Help!  Help!”  Samuel listened but didn’t hear anything again.  Then he heard a muffled voice, “Papa?”

Samuel began to dig furiously.  Finally he could see his son.  “Come on out, son!” he said with relief.  “No,” Armand said.  “Let the other kids come out first because I know you’ll get me.”  Child after child emerged until, finally, little Armand appeared.  Samuel took him in his arms and Armand said, “I told the other kids not to worry because you told me that you’d always be there for me!” 

Fourteen children were saved that day because one father was faithful.

Friends, how much more faithful is our heavenly Father!  Whether trapped by fallen debris or ensnared by life’s hardships and struggles, we are never cut off from God’s faithfulness.  He is true to His character.  He is reliable and trustworthy and can be counted on always. 

Here’s a simple definition: “God’s faithfulness means that everything He says and does is certain.”  He is 100% reliable, 100% of the time.  He does not fail, forget, falter, change, or disappoint.  He says what He means and means what He says – and therefore does everything He says He will do.

Key Passages on God’s Faithfulness

Let’s look at some of the key passages on God’s Faithfulness.

Exodus 34:6: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”

Deuteronomy 7:9: “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations…”

Deuteronomy 32:4: “He is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just.  A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He.”

Joshua 21:45: “Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.”

Psalm 25:10: “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful.”

And, as Psalm 89:8 reminds us, “O Lord God Almighty, who is like you?  You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you.”

These verses, when taken together, establish that God’s faithfulness is not some minor or secondary part of His character.  To say that God is faithful goes to the very core of who He really is.  If He didn’t keep His Word, He wouldn’t be God.

Faithfulness Like an Engine

Bill Bright, former President of Campus Crusade for Christ, once compared the attributes of God to an automobile engine.  Pistons, fan belts, water pumps, and thousands of moving parts all whirl around within a small space, making power for us to drive our car.  The parts all work together harmoniously as components of the whole engine.

That’s the way God’s attributes function too.  If you took away love, God’s character would be incomplete.  God’s love works with all the other attributes, like His justice, to produce the right kind of results.  We can compare God’s faithfulness to the oil in the engine that keeps the internal parts running smoothly.  God’s faithfulness means that each attribute in His character is working at full capacity at all times.  When does God’s love fail?  Never, because He is faithful.  When is God less than holy?  Never, because His character is pure and He is always faithful to who He is and to what He says. 

A.W. Tozer puts it this way: “All of God’s acts are consistent with all of His attributes.  No attribute contradicts any other, but all harmonize and blend into each other in the infinite abyss of the Godhead.”

God’s faithfulness is at the core of His very nature.  He is knowable, holy, the creator, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, just, sovereign, unchanging, and loving because He is faithful to His own character.  He never changes any of His attributes.  Paul drew on this truth when he wrote to the Thessalonians, “the one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:24)

A Song of Lament

Yesterday, as we focused on God’s power, we camped in the book of Jeremiah.  You’ll recall that Jeremiah was not very popular because He was urging His people to surrender to the King of Babylon.  Now, we come to the book of Lamentations, which is really a collection of sad songs, or laments.  It’s a mournful postscript to the Book of Jeremiah. 

Through the use of five dirges, or funeral laments that correspond to the five chapters, Jeremiah reminds us that sin, in spite of all its allurement and excitement, carries with it heavy weights of sorrow, grief, misery, barrenness and pain. 

The title of the book is taken from the first word in verse 1, “How.”  It could also be translated, “alas!”  which was a characteristic cry of lament or exclamation.  Jeremiah is wondering how all this happened – everything was going so well and then this.  Jerusalem has now been destroyed and Jeremiah, who is known as the “weeping prophet,” is in the dumps.

As we come to Lamentations, chapter 3, we see that Jeremiah bares his heart, not holding back the depths of his despair.  No prophet ever pleaded with a people in a more impassioned manner.  And no one, except Jesus, was treated with more contempt than he was. 

9 Laments

In the first 20 verses, the weeping prophet lets it all hang out.  His language is real and raw.  Let me summarize his 9 complaints:

1. God is angry.  Jeremiah has seen trouble and he knows it’s because God is upset with His people: “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.” (3:1).

2. Jeremiah is in the dark.  Instead of seeing things clearly, Jeremiah feels the loneliness of darkness: “He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light…He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.” (3:2, 6)

3. Feels like God is against Him.  Because of God’s judgment, Jeremiah feels like God “has turned his hand against him again and again, all day long.” (3:3).  In verse 10, Jeremiah compares God to a bear lying in wait, or like a lion ready to pounce on his prey.  Verses 12-13 are very graphic: “He drew His bow and made me the target for His arrows.  He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.”

4. He is tormented mentally and physically.  Jeremiah’s pain is both acute and chronic.  He feels his pain intensely and he can’t find a remedy for it.  Look at verse 4: “He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones.”  In verses 15-16, he describes how his life is filled with bitterness, how his teeth have been broken, and how he has been trampled in the dust.

5. He can’t find release.  Jeremiah can’t figure out how to escape the pain and anguish he feels.  He is “besieged and surrounded with bitterness and hardship” in verse 5.  Verse 7 says, “He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains.”  He feels like a man trapped in a maze.

6. His prayers are unanswered.  Notice verse 8: “Even when I call out or cry for help, He shuts out my prayer.”

7. People make fun of him.  People tell jokes about Jeremiah and make fun of him all the time.  We see this in verse 14: “I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long.”

8. He is ready to give up.  After all that he has been through, he just wants to bag it, to throw in the towel, and to hang it up.  We see his honest cry of despair in verse 17, “I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.”

9. His hope is gone.  He can’t forget his troubles because they ambush him at every turn.  In verse 18, he says, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”  As much as he tries to minimize his problems he can’t help but think about his affliction and his wandering, and the bitterness that floods through his life in verse 19.  When he remembers all that he has gone through he understandably gets bummed out in verse 20: “I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.”

While Jeremiah experienced a lot of pain and agony, my guess is that some of you have the words to his song already memorized.  Perhaps you are experiencing many of these same things and secretly wonder if God is really faithful:

• You feel like God is mad at you.
• You feel like you’re in the dark.
• You feel like God is against you.
• You have mental and physical pain.
• You can’t find release.
• Your prayers are not being answered.
• People don’t understand you.
• You are ready to give up.
• Your hope is gone

Yet This I Call to Mind

Friends, while it’s OK to be honest with God and express your real feelings like Jeremiah did, it’s not OK to stay there.  Jeremiah had every reason to sing the blues and just pitch his faith, but he didn’t.  He forced himself to think about God’s character – in particular he grabbed onto His faithfulness.

Some of you may think that you can’t help what you’re feeling.  I don’t mean for this to sound harsh but you don’t have to allow what you’ve gone through to keep you emotionally entangled and spiritually sidetracked forever.  Jeremiah understands your pain.  Let’s look now at what Jeremiah latched on to when his world was falling apart.

Verse 21 is really the “hinge” on which the book, and Jeremiah’s life turns: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:” While his outward affliction and inward turmoil pushed him toward despair, Jeremiah forces himself to bring truth to the forefront of his mind.  Like a computer that “defaults” to certain settings, each of us have a “despair default.”  If we don’t reconfigure our minds, we will slide down the slippery slope of discouragement and lament. 

Here’s how it works.  If Jeremiah just focused on those things that were filling his mind, he was going to be bummed out.  Look again at verses 19 and 20: “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.  I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.” 

In order to break out of this pattern and cycle of despair, Jeremiah needed to be vigilant about what he allowed himself to think about.  He brought other things to mind – He called them up from his hard drive and made himself think about what was true in verse 21: “Yet this I call to mind…” 

Friends, what Jeremiah did was something we need to do as well.  We need to engage our will, and purposely and deliberately focus on things other than our problems.  Force yourself to remember truth.  Recall a verse.  Remember a time when God demonstrated his grace and mercy to you.  Push God’s faithfulness to the front of your mind, even when you don’t feel like doing it.  When you do, God will begin to restore hope to your life by crowding out the hopelessness that threatens to shipwreck your life.

What to Call to Mind

Now, what did Jeremiah call to mind?  What did he focus on while he was hurting?  What did he lock onto when he was trapped by all the rubble in his life?

Verses 22 and 23 contain four phrases.  Each one raises and answers an important question that we need to consider.

1.  Why doesn’t God destroy me?  This is not a theoretical question.  We all walk closer to the edge than we think.  There is a thin line between disaster and prosperity, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, life and death. 

Here is Jeremiah’s answer: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed” (3:22a).  Why doesn’t God destroy us?  He could and He should.  He could because He is God and He should because we are sinners.  Our sins would consume us if it were not for His great love. 

The Hebrew word for “love” is hesed, a word rich with meaning.  It has within it the idea of “loyal love,” of love that will not let go because it does not depend on emotion but on an act of the will.  God was sticking by the people He had chosen.  God loves us because He promised to love us and nothing can cause Him to break His promise.

My pastor friend Ray Pritchard makes the following point: “As bad as things are, if it weren’t for God, things would be much worse.”  That seems obvious, and perhaps it is, but we need to hear it again.  If it weren’t for God, and for God’s love, no matter how bad things are in your life right now, they would be much worse without the Lord.

2.  How do I know God will keep on loving me?  The second half of verse 22 gives the answer to this question: “for his compassions never fail.”  I want you to notice the word compassions is plural.  That’s very unusual in English – in fact; my grammar checker didn’t like the word because it had an “s” on it.  But, God’s compassions are plural because his mercy is intense and limitless.  It comes in rolling waves from the very presence of God.  The rivers of mercy run fully and constantly, and never run dry.

The word compassion comes from the Hebrew word “womb” and shows us the gentle feeling of concern and care that God has for us.  The word literally means, “to be moved in the heart out of love for another.”  God’s compassion emanates from deep within Him and floods our lives.  He is moved in his heart when He thinks about you.

3.  When will God give me what I need?  Verse 23a gives a word of hope for each of us to latch onto: “They are new every morning.”  What if you woke up every morning to find your purse full of money, your car full of gas, your refrigerator full of food, and your youth and vitality fully restored?  That’s the way it is with God’s compassions and mercies.  You can never use them up. 

Do you remember the story of God providing manna for His people when they were in the wilderness?  God sent it every day (except on the Sabbath).  The people were instructed to gather as much as they wanted because it would never run out.  However, they weren’t allowed to store it (except on the day before the Sabbath).  In order to drive home his point, God told them that if they tried to save it, the maggots would come and spoil the manna.  They were to gather just enough for each day, eat it that day, and then gather more the next day.  This is how God taught His people to trust Him day by day to meet their daily needs.

This means at least two things:

• We never have to live on yesterdays’ blessings.  They are “new” every morning.
• God’s blessings are never early but they aren’t late either.  They are “new” every morning.

Brothers and sisters, let’s learn this lesson – God’s mercies come day by day.  They come when we need them – not earlier and not later.  God gives us what we need today.  If we needed more, he would give us more.  When we need something else, He will give us that as well.  Nothing we truly need will ever be withheld from us.

4.  What is my hope for living?  This question is answered in the last part of verse 23: “Great is your faithfulness.”  Jeremiah was rocked by the limitless supply of God’s grace offered to him.  Whatever hard things we go through, we must never doubt God’s faithfulness.  We are to celebrate His great faithfulness every day!

God’s Faithfulness Fleshed Out

Before we wrap up, I want to give you 3 practical ways that you can experience God’s great faithfulness in your life:

1.  When you struggle.  All of us experience hard times in our lives.  Some of you are struggling with sickness, financial pressure, grief, or even depression.  Friends, do what Jeremiah did when your mind is flooded with difficulties.  Choose to focus on God’s love, mercy and faithfulness.  He does not promise to prevent problems from coming into our lives, but He does promise to go through them with us.  Can you do that right now?  Call to mind what you know to be true.  God is faithful – He will always be there for you.

2.  When you are tempted.  Some of you are faced with some incredible temptations on a daily basis.  Did you know that because God is faithful, He will always provide a way out for you so that you do not have to give in to them?  1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

What tempts you?  What’s your fatal flaw?  In what ways are you drawn to do something that you know is not right?  Remember this: God’s faithfulness will give you a way out!  You do not have to give in – He knows exactly the limits of what we can bear.  God’s faithfulness is tied directly to providing us a way to say “no” to sin.  When we give in to sin it’s because our focus is on the attractiveness of the temptation, rather than on God’s faithfulness to deliver us from that situation.

3.  When you mess up.  Would you be ashamed for others to know everything you’ve said, done and thought in the last 7 days?  Or the last three months?  Or the last 5 years?  If you know yourself at all, you know how much you mess up and how desperately you need God’s mercy.

Many years ago, I took Emily and Lydia to the bus stop.  As we were driving, I reached over and tickled Lydia’s knee.  When she jumped, the seatbelt snagged her earring and pulled it out.  That might not seem too bad, but she had just had her ears pierced a couple days earlier and they were still sore. The earrings were supposed to stay in for 6 weeks until everything healed.  We looked everywhere for the fallen earring and eventually had to drive back down to Bloomington that morning to get a new one and have her ear re-pierced.

I felt terrible.  What kind of dad am I?  When I got home from looking for the earring, Lydia came up to me, wrapped her arms around me and said, “Dad. I love you and forgive you.  Don’t be mad at yourself.  Accidents happen.”  She then told me that she had just memorized Ephesians 4:32 for AWANA and quoted it for me: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

Lydia gave me a gift Thursday morning – the gift of forgiveness.  That’s the same thing God gives to us when we sin and confess it before Him.  Because He is faithful, He never tires of extending forgiveness to us.  I love 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

God’s Faithfulness Illustrated

To say that God is faithful is to say that God is committed to you.  He is steadfastly devoted to you and is looking to pull you out from under the rubble of your life.  Because He is faithful, He protects you as well.

The story is told of a young man who was an atheist and was training to be an Olympic diver.  The only spiritual influence in his life came from a Christian friend who tried to share the gospel with him whenever he could.  The diver wasn’t very interested in spiritual matters and made that known loud and clear.

One night the diver went to the indoor pool at the college he attended.  The lights were all off, but the moon was bright, so there was plenty of light to practice his dives.  The young man climbed up to the highest diving board and as he turned his back to the pool on the edge of the board and extended his arms out, he saw his shadow on the wall.  The shadow was in the shape of a cross. Instead of diving, he knelt down and finally asked Jesus to come into his life.

As the man stood up on the diving board, a maintenance man walked in and turned the lights on.  The diver gasped in horror – the pool had been drained for repairs!

Friends, God has been faithful to us in so many ways – even when we don’t see it.  Some of you are standing on a diving board today.  You’re headed for trouble unless you turn your focus to the Cross – where God’s faithfulness is fully demonstrated.

July 22, 2010

Our Omnipotent God

I heard recently about a 747 jetliner that was halfway across the Atlantic when the captain got on the loudspeaker and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have lost one of our engines, but we can still reach London with the three we have left.  Unfortunately, this will make us one hour late.”

An hour later the captain made another announcement, “Sorry, but we lost another engine.  No need to worry because we can still make it on two.  However, this will make us two hours late.”

A short while later, the passengers heard the captain’s voice again, “Guess what folks?  We just lost our third engine, but rest assured—we can fly with only one.  We will now arrive in London three hours late.”

At this point, one passenger became furious and shouted out, “For Pete’s sake, if we lose another engine we’ll be up here all night!”

Like a plane losing power, many of us are running on only one engine as well.  While we desire power in our lives, if we’re honest, we’d have to admit that we’re losing altitude and experiencing a power failure. 

We’re halfway through our series called, “Getting to Know God.”  I trust that you’ve gotten to know Him better as we’ve shined the spotlight on various aspects of His glorious character this week.

This is the third and final post on the “omni” attributes of God.  These attributes are a bit difficult of us to grasp because we have nothing to compare them with in our minds.  You and I are limited in space – but God is omnipresent.  Our knowledge is limited – but God is omniscient.  We are more aware of our weakness, than our power – and God is omnipotent, or all-powerful.

The word omnipotent is derived from Latin and refers to the fact that God’s power is infinite and unlimited – He never loses an engine or runs out of gas.  The word omnipotent is defined by the biblical word, “Almighty,” which occurs 345 times in the Bible, and is never used of anyone but God.  He alone is Almighty as Psalm 89:8 says, “O Lord God Almighty, who is like you?  You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you.”

God can do with power anything that power can do because He has the strength to do all He wills to do.  He has all the resources and the ability to work His will in every circumstance in the universe.  I love how A.W. Tozer puts it: “God possesses what no creature can: an incomprehensible plenitude of power, a potency that is absolute.”

Here’s an easier definition to remember: “Nothing is too difficult for God.” 

As a passing note, it may be helpful to know that there are at least four things the Bible says that God cannot do:

• He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13)
• He cannot lie (Titus 1:2)
• He cannot be tempted to evil (James 1:13)
• He cannot change His basic nature (Numbers 23:19)

Biblical Survey

The doctrine of God’s omnipotence is assumed everywhere in the Bible.  Although the word is not used in our modern translations, it is found in the King James Version of Revelation 19:6.  The Apostle John heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and loud peals of thunder shouting out: “For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”  Handel composed his majestic Hallelujah Chorus around this verse.

In 1983 I had the opportunity to serve as a summer missionary in Zimbabwe, Africa.  At the end of the summer, our team took a sightseeing tour to Victoria Falls.  If you’ve ever been to the Niagara Falls, you’ll have an idea of what I experienced.  When I got out of the bus, I heard a loud, thunderous noise that seemed to be coming from the sky and the earth at the same time.  As I walked closer to the falls, I could barely think.  My heart was racing within me, my head was pounding, and my ears were ringing.  It was deafening and breathtaking.

What John experienced was so much greater than that.  Job writes of a similar incident in Job 26:12-14: “By His power He churned up the sea…by His breath the skies became fair; His hand pierced the gliding serpent.  And these are but the outer fringe of His works; how faint the whisper we hear of Him!  Who then can understand the thunder of His power?”

That’s our today – to attempt to understand and experience the thunder of His power!  Psalm 68:28 is a good prayer to pray right now before you read any further: “Summon your power, O God; show us your strength, O God, as you have done before.”

Implications of Omnipotence

1.  No power or will can ultimately thwart His purposes.  No power in the universe can stop God or impede His plans.  No natural catastrophes.  No airplane crashes.  Not fate or luck or chance.  Nothing.

2.  What God starts, He always finishes.  When God starts to do something, He stays with the job until it is completed.  There is never a divine engine failure, never a black out, a brown out, or a meltdown.  Our eternal security rests on the truth of God’s omnipotence.  1 Peter 1:5 teaches that we are kept secure by His power, not ours: “Who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” 

And Philippians 1:6 reminds us that God won’t stop halfway through His work in our lives: “Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Nothing is Too Hard for God

Choosing a text this morning was difficult because there are so many rich passages that can help us better understand the depth and thunder of God’s power.  I wanted to find one that both establishes His power and one that will give us practical hope so that we can experience that same power in our lives.  If you have your Bibles, please turn to the Book of Jeremiah.  We’re going to focus on chapter 32.

Let me set the context.  The prophet Jeremiah, despite his initial reticence, was commissioned by God to proclaim a very unpopular message – that Judah was about to be destroyed by the powerful country of Babylon.  That was his job.  You can see why people didn’t want to have him around.

We know from reading the book of Jeremiah that he had a very timid nature and felt very inadequate for the task.  At first, he rejoiced when God spoke to him.  Take a look at 15:16: “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty.”  But soon these words of the Almighty and Omnipotent God became a source of pain and suffering for him.  He was put in stocks and thrown into a well. 

Jeremiah 15:17-18 give us some insight into how this made him feel: “I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation.  Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable?”

He then went through a time when he wanted to just be quiet.  He reasoned that it would be better to just keep his mouth shut.  Have you ever felt like that?  Shortly after I became a Christian 20 years ago, I memorized Jeremiah 20:9 in the New American Standard Version because I didn’t want to ever be quiet when God was telling me to say something. 

I remember being out on our patio and making a commitment to always speak about God when He nudged me.  Here’s the verse, which reveals a turning point in the prophet’s ministry: “But if I say, ‘I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,’ then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it.”

Beginning in chapter 30, Jeremiah looks beyond the impending judgment to Judah’s restoration and salvation.  God’s people will be conquered and then deported to Babylon – but they will return 70 years later!  Take a look at 31:10, “Hear the word of the Lord, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch his flock like a shepherd.’”

God will once again repopulate the united nation.  By the way, the survival of the Hebrew people, long after their neighbors have perished, can only be explained on supernatural grounds – the Almighty, Omnipotent God continuously has demonstrated His power on behalf of His people.

When we come to Jeremiah 32, we read that the prophet has been imprisoned again. The king was ticked off because Jeremiah was advocating that they surrender to the Babylonian army.  We see in verse 2 that Nebuchadnezzar and his army were right outside the walls of Jerusalem. 

Jeremiah Buys a Lot

Amazingly, in the midst of all this chaos and uncertainty, God tells Jeremiah to buy some property from his cousin.  This is strange when you think about it because the entire land was about to be subjected to years of desolation, filled with darkness and despair.  And yet, Jeremiah is told that his cousin would come to visit him and try to sell him a chunk of land.  God tells the prophet to buy it.

Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to buy property when the city was about to fall into enemy hands?  It would be like purchasing a lot in your hometown that flooded every spring, that had gasoline tanks buried under it, and was located right next to the railroad tracks.  To top it all off, when you were growing up, you remember that this chunk of land had a big fence around it, with a sign that read, “Keep out!  Condemned property!”

This lot was already in the hands of the enemy and Judah’s future was in jeopardy.  Faith often seems foolish, doesn’t it?  Many times it just doesn’t make sense.  There’s often a risk side to it.  Noah built an ark when there was no water.  Abraham went on a journey without a map.  Moses left the treasures of Egypt to wander in the desert.

I doubt if Jeremiah’s cousin was acting by faith.  He simply was taking advantage of the situation – it was a chance to unload his land before the city fell.  You can take money with you into captivity, but you cannot take real estate. 

So Jeremiah sends his buddy down to the title company and has him bring a deed to be signed.  God then makes it clear to Jeremiah that the land ultimately would be restored and the deed would once again be valid.  He was to then put it in a safety deposit box.

After making everything official and notarized, Jeremiah breaks out into prayer and praise in 32:17: “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm.  Nothing is too hard for you.”  Jeremiah knew that God was omnipotent – that He could do anything He wanted.  Since He created the heavens and the earth, He can literally do anything. 

He then recounts some highlights from history that demonstrated God’s omnipotence beginning in verse 18:  “…O great and powerful God, whose name is the Lord Almighty, great are your purposes and mighty are your deeds…you performed miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt and have continued them to this day, both in Israel and among all mankind, and have gained the renown that is still yours.” (32:18b-20)

Jeremiah reminds himself of the God of power who made the heavens and the earth – nothing is too hard for the One who has done great wonders among mankind, and whose miracles stand embedded in history. 

Not surprisingly, Jeremiah begins to have some doubts.  He’s probably thinking, “This is crazy!  What did I just do?  This makes no sense at all.”

In verse 27, God answers his prayer and addresses his doubts rather dramatically: “Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ‘I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?’”

With great kindness, God urges Jeremiah to greater faith by taking up the prophet’s own statement in verse 17: “Nothing is too hard for you” and asks it of Jeremiah in the form of a question, “Jeremiah, do you really believe what you have just said?  Is anything too hard for me?” 

This is what God said to Sarah when she doubted God’s promise that she would have a son.  She knew her body was past childbearing, so she laughed.  God said to Abraham in Genesis 18:13, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’  Is anything too hard for the Lord?”  Though it’s hard to find in the text, I think Sarah had a little plaque made and put up right over her kitchen sink.  And every time she did the dishes she looked at it: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

And so, as God said to Jeremiah, He also says to us today: “Is anything too hard for me?”  Let’s boil this down to where we live.  Most of us, if we were honest, would admit that God is all-powerful.  Our problem is more like Jeremiah’s: “Do we really believe it?  Do we live in light of His power?  Do we experience His power on a daily basis?”

God’s Power Fleshed Out

I want to take the rest of our time to help you flesh out the doctrine of God’s omnipotence in your own life: NOTHING IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR GOD – DO YOU BELIEVE IT?

1.  Power for Witnessing.  I want to start by reminding you of the mighty power that is available to believers when they are called to witness and share the gospel with those who do not yet know Christ.  Acts 1:8 says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

We are witnesses, who have been infused with Holy Spirit power, for the task of communicating the gospel in our community, our county, our country, and on the continents.  Friends, God equips us for the task.  He gives us His power.

Have you been accessing this power in your life?  Have you been mixing it up with non-Christians for the express purpose of sharing Christ with them?  Or, like me, do you sometimes think that some people are too hard and too set in their ways to come to Christ. 

Friends, we need this reminder:  NOTHING IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR GOD.  DO YOU BELIEVE IT?

2.  Power for Living.  We need power for witnessing.  Second, we need power for living.  Here’s the rub.  Many of us have settled for a mediocre Christian life.  We’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that we can never change.  We say things like, “That’s just how I am.  I just have a bad temper.  I can’t help myself.  Take me or leave me.”

Many of us give lip service to God but live our lives in our own strength.  We operate in our own energy probably 80% of the time.  That’s not the way God intends for us to live.  Listen to these strong words from Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18-20: “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.  That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms.”

Can I ask you some questions?  Do you experience that same power that raised Jesus from the dead in your life?  Do you access this power in your marriage, or do you believe that it can’t get any better?  Are you convinced that your kids will never change?  Do you assume that your parents will never understand you?  Have you lost hope that your finances will ever stabilize?  Do you need to trust our omnipotent God with a physical problem?

Friends, with God, all things are possible.  There is no circumstance, no attitude, and no person outside of God’s power.  Remember, you don’t need to necessarily have great faith in God, but rather faith in a great God who is omnipotent.

2 Timothy 1:7 says that we have been given “a spirit of power” and 2 Peter 1:3 reminds us that “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…” Let me say this strongly: The normal Christian life is to be characterized by power for living.  It’s normal to experience and tap into God’s power on a daily basis.  Conversely, it is abnormal to not access His power.

Here’s the good news.  You don’t have to be strong to get this power.  In fact, you need to be weak.  2 Corinthians 12:9 is written to people like you and me: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power my rest on me.”

Are you a candidate for God’s power this morning?  All you need to do is admit that you’re weak and needy.  When you do, God’s power will come flooding into your life.  When we get out of the way, and let God have control, His power will flow!

NOTHING IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR GOD.  DO YOU BELIEVE IT?

3.  Power for Salvation. Some of you are still checking Christianity out.  That’s good.  I hope you continue your search.  I want you to know this morning that your life can be radically changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I can remember when I was a teenager that one year my buddies and I got hold of some firecrackers.  We were having a blast.  We put them inside bottles to see what would happen and even experimented with an unfortunate frog.  The more we lit off, the more daring we became.  I’ll never forget what happened.  I was holding an M-80 in my hand; with my arm cocked ready to throw it after my friend lit it.  Unfortunately for me, it was a windy day and when he held the lighter up to the wick, it started burning right next to the M-80 and it exploded in my hand.  My ears were ringing, and I couldn’t feel my fingers for a while.  Those things are really powerful.

Romans 1:16 refers to the gospel as the “power of God.”  This word power is from the Greek dunamis, from which we get the word, dynamite.  The Gospel is the dynamite of God.  It can blow away sin and bad habits.  It can knock off those hard edges.  It can burst through a hard heart.

Are you ready to be dynamited by God?  You see, you can’t really experience the power of God in your life until you first respond to the power of the gospel.  You do not have the power to change yourself – and the good news is that you don’t have to clean up your act before coming to Christ.  Put your faith in Christ and He’ll unleash His cleansing power in your life.

NOTHING IS TOO DIFFICULT FOR GOD.  DO YOU BELIEVE IT?
Connected to God’s Power

Just before WWII in the town of Itasca, Texas, a school fire took the lives of 263 children.  When the war ended, the town began to expand and eventually built a brand new school, which featured the finest sprinkler system in the world.  Civic pride ran high.  Honor students were selected to guide visitors on tours of the new facilities, pointing out the most advanced sprinkler system ever developed.  Never again would Itasca experience another tragedy. 

Well, the town continued to grow, and seven years later, it was necessary to put an addition on the school.  When they added the new wing, they discovered that the sprinkler system had never been connected!

What a tragedy it is when we fail to hook up to the power of God available to us.  It’s a double tragedy when we consider that all we need to do to get this power is to surrender to Christ. 

July 21, 2010

The Greatness of our God

July 21, 2010

Our Omniscient God

Many years ago, little Johnny Sylvester was kicked in the head by a horse and doctors were fearful that he might not make it.  Johnny told his father, “I wish I could see Babe Ruth hit a homer before I die.”  A telegram was sent off to the New York Yankees in St. Louis, where they were playing the Cardinals in the 1926 World Series.  A few days later, Johnny received autographed balls from both the Yankees and the Cardinals, including one the Babe had inscribed with these words, “I’ll hit a home run for you in Wednesday’s game.”

Instead of hitting one homer, he hit 3!  The doctors called the effect on the boy’s condition a miracle.  Some months later, during spring training, an uncle of the boy approached Ruth and thanked him profusely.  Babe Ruth smiled and said, “You’re very welcome.”  After the uncle left, Babe turned to the reporters who were standing around and asked, “Who in the blankety-blank is Johnny Sylvester?”

Aren’t you glad that God doesn’t forget who we are?  By the way, Johnny died – at the ripe old age of 74!

Definition of Omniscience

Yesterday we learned about God’s omnipresence –He is everywhere present at the same time.  And today we’re focusing on God’s omniscience – He is all-knowing.  In classical theology the doctrine of God’s omniscience means that God knows all things, past, present and future, real and potential, and He knows them all at the same time.  He not only knows what was, and what is, He also knows what will be. On top of that, He knows everything that could be but is not.

There are few doctrines that are so explicitly taught in Scripture as that of God’s omniscience.  Let’s consider just a few:

1 Samuel 2:3: “…the Lord is a God who knows…”
1 John 3:20: “God…knows everything.”
Psalm 147:5: “Great is our Lord…His understanding has no limit.”
Proverbs 15:3: “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.”

Friends, God knows everything – everything possible and everything actual; all events and all creatures, in the past, present and future.  His knowledge is absolute, innate, full, complete, and free.  God is perfect in knowledge.  He knows no thing better than any other thing, but all things equally well.  He never discovers anything, he is never surprised, never amazed.  He never wonders about anything, nor does He seek information or ask questions.  And He knows how everything fits together.

Think About Love

I want you right now to think about a time in your life when you felt truly loved.  It may have been a moment with a parent, with a child, a friend, or your spouse – or it may have been a time when you felt truly loved by God.  Whatever it was, think back on it.  What do you see?  What made you feel loved?

While the circumstances in these love moments are different for each one of us, there are at least two common threads woven into the fabric of each one.

• We were known.  Someone knew us at a level deeper than the norm.  They knew things about us that no one else knew.

• We were accepted.  With all that they knew about us, the one who loved us chose to come toward us and remain committed to us.

For love to be complete, we need to be both known and accepted.  Both need to be there. To be accepted without being known is shallow.  To be known but not accepted is terrifying.  Complete love must have both. 

There is no one who knows us more thoroughly than the God of the universe – and there is no one who accepts us more completely than Our Omniscient God.

Grab a Bible and turn to Psalm 139.  Let me tell you where we’re headed:

I.  God knows us completely (1-6)
II. God thinks of us constantly (17-18)
III. God searches us conclusively (23-24)

God Knows Us Completely

The first truth from Psalm 139 is that God Knows Us Completely.  No one knows us more thoroughly than the God of the universe.

Check out verses 1-6:

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.  You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.  You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.  Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.  You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; too lofty for me to attain.

David is saying, “God, you know me completely.  You’ve made a detailed inquiry into my life.  You know all of my actions; all of my words, all of my thoughts; you not only know what I’ve done, you know why I did it.  You know it all!”

I think that most of us understand this truth about God.  We really do.  And yet many of us are able to operate on two levels.  While we understand intellectually that God knows everything about us, on a day-to-day level, we live as if we can keep secrets from God.  Maybe its because we’re afraid that if God knew everything about us, He would reject us and judge us.  It’s hard for us to comprehend a God who can know the truth about us and accept us anyway.

Psalm 139:1 states that God knows us because He searches us: “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.”  The Hebrew word here means, “to examine carefully or explore” and can even apply to a burglar who is searching for some valuable possessions.  The word carries with it the idea of digging or scouring.  David is saying that God knows him penetratingly because He has scoured and ransacked every detail of his life.  Because He has carefully examined us, He knows us.  Let’s take a closer look at verses 2-5 by asking the question, “What does God know about us?”

1.  He knows what we do (2a).  “You know when I sit and when I rise…” God knows when we sit down and when we stand up.  He knows when we plop into the lazy boy and when we get up to get some more nachos and cheese. The two opposites of sitting and rising represent all of our actions throughout the day.  Proverbs 5:21 says, “For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths.”  God knows every move we make.

2.  He knows what we think (2b).  “…You perceive my thoughts from afar.”  It’s amazing and difficult to comprehend, but God knows what we think even before we think it!  I can remember when Beth and I were dating that I always wanted to know what she was thinking.  I can remember holding hands with her as we were walking somewhere and asking her what she was thinking about.  I asked her many times to reveal her thoughts to me.  As I look back on this, its obvious to me that I was very insecure – I wanted to make sure she wasn’t thinking anything bad about me.

Friend, God knows everything you’re thinking – and He still loves you.  Jeremiah 17:10 helps us understand the depth of God’s knowledge: “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind…”

3.  He knows where we go (3).  “You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.”  When I was growing up, my bedroom was in the basement.  The coolest thing about having a room downstairs was that it had a little window that opened to the outside.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that I could sneak out this window at night and do whatever I wanted to do because know no one could see me.  I used this escape hatch on many occasions – and was never caught.  Just recently I was talking to my parents about my clever set-up –confession is good for the soul, even 25 years later – and I found out that they already knew all about it!

God knew all about my gig as well.  The word for “discern” in verse 3 means to “sift or winnow as grain.”  God knows where we go, because He can see everything, and can discern everything.  He sifts through our lives, understanding what is really going on.  He immediately comprehends the good and the bad things we do – from the time we stumble out of the sack in the morning, to when we collapse into bed at night.  He sees it all, and when we think we are making our escape, as we learned last week, He is always with us no matter where we go.

4.  He knows what we say (4).  “Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”  If you’re at all like me, you often don’t know what’s going to come out of your mouth until you say it.  God not only hears everything that we say, He knows what we’re going to say, before we can even form the words in our mouth.  Someone has said that our thoughts are likes words to God – He hears them and understands them completely as if we had shouted them from the rooftop.

5.  He knows what we need (5).  “You hem me in – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”  David is here using some imagery from war.  He knew all about strategic battle plans, ambushes and how to surround a city.  David felt trapped by God’s knowledge of his every thought, word, and deed.  He knew that God surrounded him.  He cannot turn back and try to escape because God is behind him.  He cannot run forward because God is in front of him – and His hand keeps David from harm.

I’ve often done this with my daughters.  When they were learning to crawl, I would put my hand on their heads or shoulders so that they wouldn’t run into the fireplace.  God does that for us as well – His pervasive presence and His complete knowledge of us serve as protective forces in our lives.

I love verse 6.  As David ponders the fact that God knows him completely, he is blown away: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”  He can’t even begin to understand, much less describe, the depth of God’s personal knowledge of his every action, of his every thought, of his every trip, of his every word, and of his every need.  The word “wonderful” is placed at the beginning of the sentence in Hebrew for emphasis.  It should read like this: “Wonderful is God’s knowledge.  It’s too lofty for me to even understand or imagine!”

Friends, when we try to understand the greatness of God’s knowledge, we will become overwhelmed, like David was.  Remember this: wonder and worship are always the proper responses to the glorious attributes of God.  Amazement should lead to awe, which should draw us to adoration.  Paul responded in a similar way in Romans 11:33-36:

“Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable his judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!  Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counselor?  Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?  For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To Him be the glory forever!  Amen.”

God Thinks About Us Constantly

Not only does God know us completely, He also thinks about us constantly.  He knows everything about us – and He still likes us.  We are known – and our Knowable, Holy, Creative, and Ever-present God accepts us.  He sees our entire life from the very beginning, even before we start growing in the womb.  He knows all about our every sin and moral compromise.  And yet, His heart is fixed on us and He thinks about us all the time.  Wow.

Jump down to verses 17-18: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.  When I awake, I am still with you.”

1.  God’s thoughts are precious.  Once again, David is overwhelmed as He contemplates the greatness of God.  He doesn’t understand how God could think of him all the time.  The word precious refers to expensive jewels.  David treasures the realization that God is thinking about him – every second of every day.  He is so involved with our lives that we can’t even begin to fathom how many times He thinks about us. 

That leads to a second truth about God’s thoughts.

2.  God’s thoughts are numerous.  If we were to try to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.  God’s thoughts of us are innumerable – impossible to count, and impossible to understand.

One of the nicest things Beth can say to me is that she thought of me all day.  That really means a lot to know that her mind was thinking of me.  Now, I don’t mean to call this into question, because I think she is being sincere.  But, I also know that she is our family taxi driver, head cook, counselor to our daughters, and full-time domestic engineer.  As much as she would like to think about me all day, it’s impossible for anyone of us to just think of one person every second of our day.

Not so with God.  He thinks about each one of us, all the time!  If you were to calculate how many times His thoughts were filled with each one of us, our calculators and computers would freeze up.  David compares God’s thoughts to the grains of sand on the beach.

3.  God’s thoughts are constant.  God thinks about us all the time.  “When I awake, I am still with you.”  God doesn’t forget about us when we’re sleeping.  I love Psalm 121:3-4: “He will not let your foot slip – He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” 

God Searches Us Conclusively

God knows us completely and thinks of us constantly.  That leads to our final point today: God searches us conclusively.  Let’s look at the last two verses of Psalm 139: “Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.  See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

What David mentioned in verse 1 as a matter of fact – that God had searched him – he now makes a matter of prayer in verses 23-24.  God wants us to invite Him to search our lives.  The verb search is used for digging up valuable minerals in a mine.  The term “test” is used of examining precious metals to prove their purity.

While it is certainly a good idea to do some self-analysis, it is even better to ask God to examine you.  Most of us, when examining ourselves, will arrive at the conclusion that we’re OK – or at least that we’re better than our neighbor or co-worker.

In asking God to evaluate ourselves, we are really asking these 4 things from verses 23-24:

• Search me.  All of me; even my darkest secrets and deeds.
• Test me.  To see if I am pure and true.
• Tell me.  Let me know what you find.
• Help me.  Show me how to correct my ways – lead me the right way.

Once we understand that God loves us, we invite His investigation.  We desire Him to dig into the depths of our being.  We want Him to road test our character.  Why?  Because not only does God know us, He knows us better than we know ourselves.  And He loves us too much to allow us to keep doing the things we’ve been doing.

Brothers and sisters, don’t be afraid to ask God to point out offensive stuff in your life.  Allow Him to show you things that grieve Him, or bring pain to other people.  When He exposes something, own it, confess it, and yield to the God who knows you intimately – and yet loves you completely.  Be willingly accountable to Him.  As someone has said, “A good person desires to know the worst of himself.

J.I. Packer writes this: “I am never out of God’s mind.  There is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, no moment when His care falters…There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself.”

Because He knows us completely, thinks of us constantly, and searches us conclusively, we don’t feel spied on; we feel watched over.  We feel secure.  Having placed our confidence in Christ, no skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to expose our past and no character flaw can come to light that would make God turn away from us.  He already knows everything about us – and still loves us! 

Socrates said that the “unexamined life is not worth living.”  Brothers and sisters, the unexamined life is not biblical.  If we don’t spend time asking God to examine us, we will never live our lives to their full potential.

1 Corinthians 11:28 says “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.”

Remember, if you’re coasting, you’re going downhill.  You cannot coast and grow at the same time.

And it doesn’t matter if Babe Ruth doesn’t know you…it matters greatly that God does.

July 20, 2010

Our Omnipresent God

Here’s post #3 in our journey to get to know God better.  Let’s call it “Our Omnipresent God.”

The Omni-Attributes

Today we’re going to learn about God’s omnipresence.  There are really three attributes of God that should always be kept together in your mind – they all begin with the four-letter prefix “omni”:  Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Omnipresence.  God is all-knowing, He is all-powerful, and He is everywhere present at the same time.

Tony Evans writes that these three attributes always work in tandem:

• God knows what needs to be done – that’s omniscience.
• He has the power to do it – that’s omnipotence.
• He’s always wherever He needs to be to do whatever needs to be done – that’s omnipresence.

My pastor friend Ray Pritchard says that our topic today – God’s omnipresence is one of the most difficult doctrines of the entire Bible.  The question, Where is God? is a very important question. The seeker wants to know…and so does the skeptic… and so does the guilty sinner so he can run the other way.  And so does the hurting person who feels abandoned by the Almighty – “Where is God when I need Him?”

The reason this one is so hard for us is that we have nothing to compare it with.  We can’t even be two places at once – a fact that we sometimes forget!

Here’s a simple definition of omnipresence: “The Lord our God is everywhere at once.”  He is everywhere present all the time.  Paul Little states that “God is not a substance spread out in a thin layer all over the earth – all of Him is in Chicago, in Calcutta, in Cairo, and in Caracas, at once and the same time.”

Someone else has said that God’s presence is like the air we breathe.  Air is odorless, tasteless and invisible.  Although, when we lived in Mexico City, it smelled terrible, it tasted bad and you could actually see it!  Most of the time we don’t even think about the air we breathe, yet we depend on it for our very existence.  Likewise, God’s presence is all around us, and if it were withdrawn, none of us could survive for even one moment.

The Omni-Passage

Psalm 139 is a rich, deep, and very personal song that declares God’s creation in the womb.  It also definitively establishes God’s omniscience and omnipresence.  For our purposes , I want to park in verses 7-12. 

Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.  If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Let’s start by looking at verse 7.  David asks two questions – where can I go from your Spirit? And where can I flee from your presence?  These rhetorical questions are an emphatic way of declaring that God’s presence is everywhere.  While David may have wanted to run from God at different points in his life, He understands that there is no where he could go to get away from Him.  Since God is Spirit, He can pierce and penetrate us – it is impossible to get away from Him.

In verse 8, he contemplates what would happen if he tried to go up to the heavens.  Heaven is a vast place and yet there is no way of escaping God. The phrase “in the depths” refers to Sheol, which in the Bible is the realm of the dead.  Throughout the Bible the two places are contrasted – heaven is a place of light and life, while Sheol is a place of darkness and death. 

God is present in the upper regions of the world and in the depths of the earth.  The word “You” is very emphatic and impressive in the original.  You have to shout it out to get the meaning – You!!!  God, You are there!

After checking out the heights and the depths, now David decides to travel from east to west.  In verse 9, he met the dawn and traveled with the sun to the far side of the sea.  This would be the Mediterranean Sea, which is west of the Holy Land.  The Jewish people, for the most part, were not mariners and did not like the sea, but God was there! 

The phrase, “wings of the dawn” is an elegant metaphor that refers to the sunbeams that flash out from the sun in the morning.  They come out swiftly and disappear just as quickly.  David is saying that if he could just pluck these wings of the dawn and travel as far and as swift as light, even there God would be with him.  Should David flee to the most distant and obscure island, God would already be there – even if he were able to travel at the speed of light David could not outrace God.

Unlike the pagan deities, whose authority was limited to certain geographical areas of operation, the Lord’s authority and presence extends to the heavens, to the depths, to the east and to the west.

Verse 10 provides David some comfort – wherever he ends up, God’s hand will guide and protect him.  It was impossible to run so far away that he would be out of the reach of God.

The prophet Jonah found this out the hard way.  We read in chapter one that he was commissioned by God to go and preach against the great city of Nineveh.  He was to tell them about how wicked they were.  Jonah didn’t like his assignment, not because he was not in favor of telling off the Ninevites but because he knew that God was going to show them some mercy and grace.  These people were the mortal enemies of Israel and Jonah wanted no part of God’s redemptive plan for these barbarians.

So what does he do?  He tries to flee from God.  Jonah 1:3 says that he was running away from the Lord.  In fact, we know that instead of heading to Nineveh, he booked a boat that was sailing in the exact opposite direction.  He went west instead of east.  Scholars tell us that he was headed for the country that is now Spain, trying to get as far away from Ninevah – and as far from God as he could.

He probably breathed a sigh of relief when the ship sailed away from the shore.  He thought he was in the clear, that he had outwitted God.  But, what Jonah found out was that God was with him on the ship, and would soon be with him in the belly of the whale.  Friends, it’s foolish to run from God because there’s no place to hide.

Like David, Jonah investigated the heights and the depths, the east and the west, the land and the sea, and he could not find a place where God was not.  Wherever Jonah went, God’s hand was there to guide him; his right hand was holding him fast.

In Psalm 139:11, we see that David started to wonder if there was a difference in day and night.  “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me.”  David played around with the idea that if he just did some stuff in the dark, then he would at last be out of the reach of God’s presence.

I can remember playing hide and seek with our girls when they were younger.  Each one of them went through a stage that when it was their turn to hide they would stand in the middle of the room with their eyes closed, and their hands over their face, thinking that if they couldn’t see me, then I couldn’t see them.  It was dark to them, but it was light to me.

That’s the way it is with God.  We think that we’re hiding things from Him just because it’s dark, or we think we’re doing something in secret.  God sees everything, because He is everywhere present at the same time.

Verse 12 helps us understand more about God’s pervasive presence: “…the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”  The curtains of the evening will no more cover us then the wings of the morning will allow us to escape His presence.  Everything we do, whether we think we can be seen or not, is done in the full presence of our holy, majestic, and ever-present God.

Implications of Omnipresence

There are several important implications of God’s omnipresence.  Let me list just a few.

1.  God cannot be contained in a building.  Solomon understood this when he said in 1 Kings 8:27: “But will God really dwell on earth?  The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you.  How much less this temple I have built!”  While I understand what people mean when they say they are going to God’s house when they come to church, it’s not entirely accurate.  God does not live in a house made by human hands.  It can certainly be argued that the temple was a holy place, but today God dwells among his people, and in his people, wherever they are and wherever they go.

2.  God cannot be localized in a city or a nation.  This truth should keep us from boasting about America’s supposed moral superiority.  God is no less present in one portion of the universe than any other.  And He is no more present anywhere than where you are right now.  In other words, anyone, anywhere in the universe might say, ‘The Lord is in this place.’  Wherever you are, God is right there, right now.

God is a global God – He does not wear red, white and blue.  And, He does not cheer for one team to win the Super Bowl – unless the Packers are playing!

3.  God is always present whether we believe it or not.  In the early days of space travel, one of the Russian cosmonauts returned from orbiting the earth and had announced that when he had looked out of his space capsule he had not seen God anywhere.  To which someone replied, “If he had taken off his space suit for just one second, he would have seen God pretty quickly!”

4.  He is always available to us wherever we go, 24 hours a day.  The phrase 24/7 really originates with God – He is on task every hour of every day – and He’s already where we’re going.  I really experienced this during some tough times in Mexico.  I can remember one time when Beth and the girls came back to the States for a short Easter break while I was still in language school.  I can’t tell you how lonely I felt – and how alone I was.  God demonstrated His presence to me in a powerful way.

Friends, wherever God is calling, and whatever He is asking you to do, remember this – He is already there before you get there.  And, He’ll be with you even before you arrive.

Omnipresence Brings Conviction

The truth of God’s omnipresence can be soothing or unsettling.  To some of you, it brings comfort.  Others of you find it very convicting.  The fact that God is everywhere present at the same time can be a disturbing doctrine.  As we wrap up this message, I want to address these two effects of God’s omnipresence – conviction and comfort.  Let’s start with conviction.

Are you trying to run from God?  Like Jonah, is God calling you to do something right now that you want nothing to do with?  Don’t wait until God sends a storm into your life, or you end up with a whale of a problem.  Stop running right now.  Wave the white flag.  Do what He’s calling you to do. 

Hebrews 4:13 puts it all in perspective: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”

Are you doing something right now in secret?  Maybe you think that no one else will find out.  Perhaps you’ve arranged everything so that you can get away with things.  Maybe you’re involved in an inappropriate relationship or some kind of illicit behavior.  Friend, let me be honest with you.  There is no way you can avoid the presence of God.  He sees what you’re doing because He’s with you – no matter what you think you’re getting away with. 

Jeremiah 23:24 says this: “Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?” declares the Lord.”  It’s foolish to try to hide from God, isn’t it?

When I was in my first ministry position after seminary, the youth pastor and I would do something that I’m almost embarrassed to talk about.  I don’t know who started it, but I’m sure it was him.  Here’s how it would work.  If Bob would hear me coming up the stairs, he would hide around the corner and then jump out and scream when I got to the top of the stairs.  In order to get him back, I once launched a secret attack on him when he was in the bathroom.

One night I really got him good.  We were getting ready for an elder meeting and I decided to go up to his third floor office and wait for him to come in and get his stuff before the meeting.  I didn’t turn any lights on and just hid under his desk.  I was hoping he would be in a hurry, which he was.  I heard him come up the stairs, head down the hallway and open his door.  Because he knew right where his stuff was, he didn’t bother to turn on the lights. When he reached for his Daytimer, I grabbed his arm and let out a scream.  He jumped and turned as white as a ghost.  As he was laying on the floor the last thing I heard him say was, “I’m going to get you for that, Bill.”

Here’s where it really gets interesting.  The next Sunday morning, Bob planned his ambush.  When he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, he hid behind a door and jumped out screaming.  Much to his chagrin, it was the head elder coming up the stairs instead of me!  He grabbed his chest and went down to one knee.  I came up the stairs to see Bruce giving Bob a sermon on self-control.  I was rolling on the floor laughing.

Friends, God is not hiding behind the door hoping to scare you.  In fact, His presence is meant to be a comfort to you.  Just as David couldn’t flee from Him, neither can we.  If you sense His conviction this morning, respond to Him.  Do you feel like a fugitive, trying to flee from the ever-present God?  The reason He convicts is so that He can get our attention.  He loves us too much to let us keep hiding or running from Him.

Omnipresence Brings Comfort

God’s presence also brings comfort.  Isaiah 41:10 is Beth’s favorite verse: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”  Because God is always with us, we do not have to be dismayed.  This practical doctrine brings us comfort in at least three ways.

1. God is always near to His people.  If you don’t have the second half of Hebrews 13:5 memorized, you really need to do it.  Here it is, “…Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

2. God is especially close when we go through tough times.  Some of you have experienced this recently from Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

3. God comes even closer when we get close to Him.  James 4:8 gives us a challenge: “Come near to God and He will come near to you…”

Practicing the Presence of God

Brother Lawrence wrote a fascinating book many years ago called, “Practicing the Presence of God.”  For 15 years, his responsibility was to wash the greasy pots and pans in the monastery – a job he disliked.  Practicing the presence of God transformed what he considered a chore into an exciting privilege.  This is what he writes: 

“My day-to-day life consists of giving God my simple, loving attention.  If I’m distracted, He calls me back in tones that are supernaturally beautiful…the most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God.  That means finding constant pleasure in His divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with Him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.”

I close with a story about a young man and his father.  This teenager lived alone with his dad, and the two of them had a very special relationship.  Even though the son was always on the bench during football games, his father was always in the stands cheering. He never missed a game.

All through high school he never missed a practice or a game, but remained a bench warmer all four years.  His faithful father was always in the stands with words of encouragement for him.  When the young man went to college, he decided to try out for the football team as a “walk-on”.  Everyone was sure he would never make the cut, but he did. 

This persistent young athlete never missed practice during his four years at college, but he never got into a game.  It was the end of his senior football season, and as he trotted onto the practice field shortly before the big play-off game, the coach met him with a telegram.  The young man read the telegram and became deathly silent.  Swallowing hard, he mumbled to the coach, “My father died this morning.  Is it all right if I miss practice today?”  The coach put his arm gently around his shoulder and said, “Take the rest of the week off, son. And don’t even plan to come to the game on Saturday.”

Saturday arrived, and the game was not going well. In the third quarter, when the team was ten points behind, a silent young man quietly slipped into the empty locker room and put on his football gear.  As he ran onto the sidelines, the coach and his players were astounded to see their faithful teammate back so soon.  “Coach, please let me play. I’ve just got to play today,” said the young man.  The coach pretended not to hear him.  There was no way he wanted his worst player in this close playoff game.

But the young man persisted, and finally feeling sorry for the kid, the coach gave in. “All right,” he said. “You can go in.”  Before long, the coach, the players and everyone in the stands could not believe their eyes.  This little unknown, who had never played before was doing everything right.  The opposing team could not stop him.  The score was soon tied.  In the closing seconds of the game, the kid intercepted a pass and ran all the way back for the winning touchdown.  The fans broke loose.  His teammates hoisted him onto their shoulders. Such cheering you’ve never heard!

Finally, after the stands had emptied and the team had showered and left the locker room, the coach noticed that the young man was sitting quietly in the corner all alone. The coach came to him and said, “Kid, I can’t believe it. You were fantastic! Tell me what got into you? How did you do it?”

He looked at the coach, with tears in his eyes, and said. “Well, you knew my dad died, but did you know that my dad was blind?”  The young man swallowed hard and forced a smile, “Dad came to all my games, but today was the first time he could see me play, and I wanted to show him I could do it!”

Friend, God is at all your games as well – and He’s not blind.  In fact, He sees everything and knows everything – we’re going to talk more about that tomorrow.  He’s cheering for you today.  He’s your biggest fan.  Allow His presence to motivate you to be sold-out in your service and worship of Him.

July 19, 2010

Our Holy God

Note: These posts are taken from a sermon series I preached 10 years ago at PBC. 

I can remember as a young boy really being bored in church.  I thought it was dull and not very interesting.  My mom would give us pep talks before we went to church in an effort to remind us to pay attention and not goof around.  Invariably, to my shame, I often disregarded her instruction.  I was either yawning out loud, poking my sisters, making faces at the minister, or laughing about something that seemed funny – and you know how hard it is to stop laughing in church, don’t you?

Unfortunately for me, my mom had a punishment for bad church behavior.  She wouldn’t say anything in the car – which was my first clue that there was something wrong.  And then, when we’d pull into the driveway, she’d say something like this, “Because you didn’t pay attention during mass, you now need to have your own personal church time with God.  Go and kneel in front of the TV for 30 minutes and talk to God about your bad behavior.” 

The reason we had to kneel in front of the TV was because there were a couple statues on top of it – I think there were Joseph and Mary and maybe even a statue of Jesus there.  We were instructed to fold our hands and pray silently for the entire time.  My sisters didn’t receive this punishment very often – let’s just say that I learned how to turn the Packer game on and turn it off quickly whenever I heard my mom making her way to the living room!

Church was a drag to me – and frankly God seemed boring as well.  It was C.S. Lewis who said, “How little people know who think holiness is dull.  When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.”

Once, as an experiment, the great scientist Isaac Newton stared at the image of the sun reflected in a mirror.  The brightness burned into his retina, and he suffered temporary blindness.  Even after he hid for three days behind closed doors, still the bright spot would not fade from his vision.

I pray that you and I would have a similar experience as we fix our gaze on the penetrating purity of the holiness of God.  May His brightness burn into our lives in such a way that it would never fade from our vision.  May we find His holiness irresistible and not boring.

I want to say right at the beginning that just because I am drawn to the topic of God’s holiness, that doesn’t mean that I am therefore a holy man.  In fact, as I have prepared this week I have become aware that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is because I am not holy.  I’ve tasted just enough of God’s holy majesty to want more.

Exodus 15:11 says that God is majestic in holiness and awesome in glory.  The beauty of the Lord is His majestic holiness.  As we approach this topic, let’s admit that we don’t really understand God’s holiness like we should.

In order to help us focus on our holy God, we’re going to camp in Isaiah 6:1-8.  If you have your Bible, please turn there.

Let me give you some background.  Isaiah may have been the greatest prophet in all of Israel.  He is called a “major prophet” because of the vast amount of written material that bears his name.  He was a statesman, who spoke for God to common people and also to kings.  He prophesied during the reign of four kings over a period of sixty years, which were filled with crisis and moral decadence.  In fact during the time of Isaiah’s prophecy the northern kingdom Israel was taken captive by invaders. The southern kingdom, Judah, was attacked by Assyria.

During this time there was a king in Judah named Uzziah.  He reigned for a long time – 52 years.  He was one of the better kings they ever had.  He was able to turn Jerusalem into a fortified city, well equipped with arms for its own defense and he gave the people a great sense of security. 

The story of Uzziah ends on a sad note. While he started out strong, 2 Chronicles 26:16 says that, “…after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.  He was unfaithful to the Lord, His God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.”  Because he arrogantly claimed for himself the rights that God had given only to the priests, God struck him with leprosy and he eventually died.

In spite of the shame of his later years, when King Uzziah died, it became a time of national mourning.  In the same year that his king died, Isaiah went to the temple presumably to find some consolation and to pay his respects to Uzziah.  He got more than he bargained for.

We can summarize Isaiah’s experience this way:

• He saw the Lord’s Majesty (6:1-4)
• He saw the Lord’s Mercy (6:5-7)
• He saw the Lord’s Mission (6:8)

See the Lord’s Majesty

The first thing Isaiah saw was the Lord’s majesty.  Look at 6:1: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple.”  Let’s stop right there.  I saw the Lord.  What an incredible statement!  Think about the situation. You’ll notice the word “Lord” is the word Adonai, which has reference to His absolute sovereignty as King of Kings.
With that in mind, it’s easier to understand verse 1: “In the year that we lost our human king, I saw the real King.”  There’s no reason to panic when God is on the throne.  It may have looked to Isaiah as if everything was falling apart but the Sovereign One was holding everything together.  His kingship is infinitely superior to that of Uzziah or anyone else.  In the midst of this chaotic time, God makes a personal appearance.  And Isaiah sees Him sitting upon a throne.  This is a picture of His majesty and His exaltation, His glory and His power.

As Isaiah sees the Lord’s majesty, He learns three lessons.  Lesson #1 is that God is high.

Imagine if you will what it must have been like for him to see the Lord high and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple.  I love watching brides come down the aisle in weddings.  The train of their gown flows behind them as they walk.  Now, try to picture what Isaiah saw.  The train of God’s robe filled every part of the temple!  It was over the chairs, the podium, and the balcony, everywhere.

Isaiah is overwhelmed with everything, and as he looks up, way up, he sees the Sovereign God seated on a throne high and exalted.  Can you imagine what must have been going through his mind?

Lesson #2 is found in verse 2: God is holy.  Isaiah describes what he saw, “Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.”  Now what are seraphim?  They are a certain group of angels whose personal calling was to attend to God’s holiness.  They are fiery guardians of the holiness of God.

Have you ever wondered why they have 6 wings?  Notice it says that with two, they were flying.  Apparently these marvelous, incredible, supernatural creatures had the capacity to hover like some kind of a celestial helicopter around the throne of God which was high and lifted up. 

And then it says, “With two they covered their feet.”  Why?  Do you remember when Moses was up on an old dirt hill one day?  He turned around and saw a burning bush and a voice came to him out of the bush that said, take off your shoes, Moses.  Why? “For you’re standing on holy ground.” 

This was holy ground not for any virtue in and of itself but because God was there and His pervasive presence sanctified the earth under His feet.  There may be a sense in which whatever kind of ground there is in glory, whatever kind of place angels land is a place so sacred that they cover their feet because it’s holy ground.

Then it says they had two wings with which to cover their face.  That’s a little easier to understand.  If they hover around the throne of God, they’re exposed there to His full glory.  You remember in the book of Exodus that God says to Moses, “You’re going to be My man, go lead My people.”  And Moses says, “I’m not going to do it alone. Who’s going to go with me?” And God says, “My presence will go with you, I’ll go with you.”

To which Moses said, “That’s a nice promise, God, but I’d like some proof.  I mean, I appreciate that but would you prove it by showing me your glory?”  God answers him in Exodus 33:20, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”  No creature could withstand the sight of the blazing fullness of the glory of God.

God promises proximity but never full revelation.  So He says to Moses, “I’ll tell you what, I’ll tuck you in the cleft of a rock and I’ll let you see my back side.”  I like to think of it as afterglow.  You can’t see the whole deal, but I’ll let you see my afterglow.  I think that’s why the angels covered their faces; I don’t think they could have existed in the full display of the glory of the holiness of God.

But the most incredible thing about them is not their appearance but their message.  It’s what they cried out in verse 3, “And they were calling to one another…” They had an antiphonal thing going, back and forth, “…Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory.” 

Why holy, holy, holy?  Is it just because that’s the way the song is written?  No, no, no.  The song came later.  Why say it in triplicate?  When we want to emphasize the importance of something in English, we underline words or use italics, or use boldface or capital letters – or all of these devices at the same time.  We may then follow it with an exclamation point or two.

The Jews used repetition when they wanted to emphasize something.  To mention something three times in succession is to elevate it to the superlative degree – to give it super importance.  When the angels say, “holy, holy, holy,” they are emphasizing the breathtaking splendor of God’s holiness! 

By the way, do you know that that is the only attribute of God in all Scripture that is repeated three times?  Never does the Bible say God is love, love, love. Never does it say God is light, light, light, truth, truth, truth, mercy, mercy, mercy, wrath, wrath, wrath.  But it does say that He’s holy, holy, holy. 

To “be holy” means to be separate.  The very god-ness of God means that He is separate from all that is not God.  There is an infinite qualitative difference between Creator and creature.

The absence of a clear understanding of God’s holiness is the reason for our shallowness, our impotence, our selfishness, our weakness, and our disobedience.  Remember, as we established last week, what we think about God is the most important thing about us.
One day the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Teach us to pray.”  Jesus answered by saying, “Here’s how to pray. Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name.”  You know what hallowed means?  Holy.  If you are serious about prayer, then you must begin with a recognition of the holiness of God.

R.C. Sproul says that, “Any attempt to understand God apart from His holiness is idolatry.”  This is affirmed in the Ten Commandments where we are to have no other gods before us and under no circumstances are we ever to use the name of the Lord God in vain.  He is holy, holy, holy. 

Before we move on, I want you to notice the last phrase of verse 3: “…the whole earth is full of his glory.”  This is lesson #3: God is here.  He is high and He is holy, and He is here.  This is difficult for us to understand.  How can He be both holy and be here?  How can he be high and lifted up and still be right here with us?  Theologians refer to this as His transcendence – He is separate from us; and He is immanent – He is right here with us.  He is to be feared and He is our friend. 

Now let’s see what else Isaiah experienced in verse 4: “At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.”  Now this is getting pretty dramatic.  The place begins to shake.  It’s like an erupting volcano. The foundations of the temple begin to move and the smoke indicates that he is in the fiery presence of God.  In other words, we begin to see a holy God of judgment.  This is a manifestation of His tremendous majestic holiness.  As Hebrews 12:29 says, “God is a consuming fire” and you can’t toy around with Him or you’ll be vaporized.

See the Lord’s Mercy

And so, Isaiah is called to see the Lord’s majesty in verses 1-4.  Now, in verses 5-7, he sees the Lord’s mercy.

What was Isaiah’s reaction when he came face to face with God’s majesty?  Look at the first part of verse 5, “Woe to me!” I cried…” That’s not just a sigh of despair, although I think there’s despair in it.  It’s far more than that.  You see, in the Old Testament prophets gave prophetic announcements, which were very often preceded by the statement, “Thus saith the Lord.”  And their statements could be positive or negative. 

When they were positive they’d often say, “Blessed.”  When they were negative they would often say, “woe.”  On the lips of a prophet, the word woe is an announcement of doom.  Jeremiah used it.  Ezekiel used it.  Nahum used it.  Amos used it.  Habakkuk used it.  Hosea used it.  Zephaniah used it.  Zechariah used it.  Micah used it.  Jesus used it in Matthew 24 when he said, “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees.”  And the angels of judgment in Revelation use it.  It is a word of cursing.

And here is an amazing thing—a prophet of God pronounces a curse and the judgment of God upon himself!  This is mind-boggling.  Isaiah is the best man in the land.  He is a sold-out servant of God.  But when he sees the holiness of God, the only thing he can do is pronounce a curse upon his own head.  He can only see his defilement, not his goodness.

Before he could see God’s mercy, Isaiah first needed to understand his destiny.

And then he says this, “I am ruined” which means to be lost, or to be annihilated, or to be destroyed.  He was devastated by the holiness of God.  He’s wiped out.  He’s piled.  He’s falling apart.  He’s coming loose at the seams.  What Isaiah was expressing is what modern psychologists describe as the experience of personal disintegration.  Why?  Because he saw God and when he saw God for the first time in his life he saw Isaiah.

And he knew how wretched he was.  He may have been a secure fellow before this.  Everybody honored him and patted him on the back.  He was a paragon of virtue. He was the best of men, a spiritual leader, the voice of God, an obedient saint, a servant of the Lord.  And yet, with one glimpse of God’s holiness, the man was a wretch in his own eyes.

John Calvin once said, “Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have confronted themselves with the majesty of God.”

As long as Isaiah could compare himself with other mortals, he was able to sustain a lofty opinion of his character.  The instant he measured himself by the ultimate standard, he was morally and spiritually annihilated.

After understanding his destiny, Isaiah then came face-to-face with his own depravity.

The most important instrument of a prophet was his mouth.  Seeing his own polluted depravity, Isaiah cries out, “I am a man of unclean lips.”  You know what that means?  I have a dirty mouth.  Me, the prophet of God who should open my mouth to speak of God, I’ve got a dirty mouth and I dwell in the midst of a people who have dirty mouths.

Friends, no one can stand in the presence of God without becoming profoundly and devastatingly aware of his own wretched sinfulness.  In other words, if we don’t understand the holiness of God, we don’t understand our own depravity.  To see even the smallest glimpse of God’s holiness is to be destroyed and wiped out.  Isaiah would never be the same again.  Neither will we when we see God’s holiness.
No one ever comes before the holiness of God without devastation.  The prophet Habakkuk learned this the hard way.  After approaching God rather boldly and demanding an answer to some of his questions, Habakkuk 3:16 records what happens when God finally answers him: “I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled…” Friends, when is the last time you trembled and your heart pounded in the presence of God?
Let’s be honest about something.  Many of us are playing little church games, compromising, disobeying whenever we feel like it, right in the face of a holy God.  If we could see only a portion of what Isaiah saw, we would be changed forever.  No question about it.  You see, many of us are bored with God because we don’t understand Who He really is, and because we don’t understand Who He is, we don’t understand our own depravity.

After coming to grips with our destiny and with our depravity, we are then ready to understand our deliverance.
Look at verse 6 and notice what happens at the very moment that Isaiah owned his sin – “then…” Deliverance is set in motion at the exact time that Isaiah recognizes his destiny and his depravity, “Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.” Now watch this in verse 7: “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’”  God does not leave Isaiah devastated – He does something about it.

This hot coal was not taken from the altar of incense, but from the brazen altar in the temple courtyard, where the sacrifices were offered.  This foresees the deliverance that the final sacrifice, the Lamb of God, made as He laid down His life for us.

Isaiah heard the praise of the seraphim and their thunderous song, which shook the very foundation of the Temple.  But what did God hear?  He heard the faint, fearful cry of a guilty man who understands his destiny and his depravity and is now broken and contrite.  When God hears Isaiah, he tells a seraph to stop worshipping for a awhile so that he can go and minister to a needy heart.

You know what it takes to get to that point where your guilt is taken away and your sins atoned for?  It takes a broken and a contrite heart in the face of the holiness of God.  As Psalm 51:7 reminds us: “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  No cheap grace here, folks.  No easy believism.  This was a severe mercy ignited by God’s holy fire. There is pain involved in true redemption. 

Our lips are sensitive and tender.  And it is to that very part of the body that the angel places a hot coal and sears the flesh.  True salvation is always painful because it involves wrestling about who will ultimately be in control of our lives.

Friends, do you see how our guilt is taken away at the cross?  Our sins, which emit a foul smell before a holy God, are cleansed and purified.

That reminds me of the husband who gave his wife a beautiful skunk coat one Christmas.  When she opened the package, she exclaimed, “I don’t understand how such a nice coat could come from such a foul smelling beast.”  To which the husband replied, “Hey, I don’t ask for much, but you could at least show me some respect!”

Friends, if we’ve put our faith in Jesus Christ, we’re all like skunks who no longer stink.  God has delivered us through the Cross.  Our sin smell has been taken away.  Or as God said earlier to the prophet in Isaiah 1:18: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

See the Lord’s Mission

Isaiah first saw the Lord’s majesty. Then, as he was overcome with the foul odor of his own sinfulness, he experienced the Lord’s mercy.  Now, in verse 8, he sees the Lord’s mission.

Let’s read verse 8: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?’  And I said, ‘Here am I.  Send me!”

In seeing the Lord’s mission, Isaiah is first sensitive to His voice – “I heard the voice of the Lord…” Up to this point he had seen the glory of God; he had heard the song of the seraphim; he had felt the burning coal upon his lips.  Now for the first time he heard the voice of God.  Suddenly the angels were silent, and the voice that boomed through the temple echoed with some piercing questions.

By the way, did you notice the word, “us” in verse 8?  God is asking a question: “Who will go for us?”  The Hebrew is in the plural here, giving us some Old Testament evidence for the existence of the Trinity.  There is plurality in the Godhead.

Next, after being sensitive to the voice of God, Isaiah surrenders to God’s call.

The last thing Isaiah declared was his own lack of worthiness—now he says, “Lord, You need anybody? I’ll go…I’ll go.”  The only way we are fit to serve is when we are cleansed by the mercy of God and overwhelmed by the majesty of God. 

Notice Isaiah’s answer.  “Here am I.  Send me.”  There’s a big difference between saying, “Here am I” and saying, “Here I am.”  Had he said, “Here I am,” that would have merely indicated his location.  Instead, he said, “Here am I.”  With these words, Isaiah is surrendering to God’s mission; he’s stepping forward to volunteer for service.

That leads to a couple obvious questions.  Are you sensitive to His voice this morning?  And, have you surrendered to His call?  God is still looking for people who have been so moved by His majesty, and have experienced His mercy on a personal basis, that they will be eager to join in His mission.

Let’s take a look at the first part of Verse 9, “And He said, ‘Go…’” God is eager to have us go, to be sent as Isaiah was into His mission field.  Our mission is very similar to Isaiah’s – and was given to us by Jesus right before He ascended into heaven in Matthew 28:19-20: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Are you sensitive to His voice today?  Are you surrendered to His mission?  I don’t know what exactly that will mean for you personally, but I do know that we’ve been given a task to do – to go and make disciples of all nations.

It was D.L. Moody who said, “I am only one, but I am one.  I cannot do everything, but I can do something.  And that which I can do by the grace of God, I will do.”

• That’s why we send missionaries out from Pontiac Bible Church.

You see, our mission must flow out of our understanding of God’s majesty and our personal experience with God’s mercy.  This pattern is seen throughout the Bible. 

• God appears in His majesty. 
• Man quakes in terror. 
• God forgives and extends mercy. 
• God sends.

Let me give you one final exhortation.  Do not go if you have had no vision of the majesty and greatness of God.  Do not go if you have never owned your own smelly depravity.  Do not go if you have not experienced His mercy and restoring grace. 

You may need to spend some time on your knees in front of our holy God.

If you don’t, you will have nothing to say.  You cannot help someone by just commiserating with them and sharing their misery.  If you go, then you must go, knowing you have what they need to hear.  If you have been overwhelmed with God’s majesty, been impacted by His mercy, and have surrendered to His mission, then by all means, GO!!!! , GO!!!! , GO!!!!

 

July 18, 2010

God is Knowable

I mentioned in the sermon today that I will be posting about God’s attributes for the next week or so.  Check by every day and we’ll journey together in our quest to know God better.

Let’s start with this truth: God is knowable.

Let’s consider five passages that speak of the vital importance of knowing God.

Jeremiah 24:7: “I will give them a heart to know me…” You and I were made to know God. He has put within each of us a desire to know Him.

John 17:3: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God.” Our privilege and responsibility is to know God – this is what being a believer is all about.

Ephesians 1:17: “…so that you may know Him better.” You and I can always know God better than we do right now. This should be our heart’s passion.

Psalm 9:10: “Those who know your name will trust in you.” Our knowledge of God should lead to greater faith and obedience.

2 Thessalonians 1:8: “Those who do not know God…” God will judge those who choose to not get to know Him.

Quotes From Others

I have benefited greatly from the writings of several authors on the subject of knowing God. Here are just a few quotes that help me see both the gravity and the joy of knowing Him.

Charles Spurgeon: “Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the deity”

A.W. Tozer: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…and the most important fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like…The heaviest obligation upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of him…the gravest question before the church is always God himself.”

J.I. Packer: “What were we made for? To know God. What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God. What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God.”

A Warning

Before we move on, it’s important to heed a warning issued by J.I. Packer in his book called, Knowing God.

It is possible to know about God without knowing God intimately. This is the danger of sterile intellectualism. It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that since we know a lot of things about God, that we must know Him well. Just because we’ve read the latest book, or attended the latest seminar, doesn’t mean that we know God.

While knowledge about God is good and absolutely essential, knowing God is more than knowing facts about Him. It’s like trying to get to know your wife by reading her resume. Or, as someone has said, it’s “like having a relationship with the Postmaster General on the basis of one’s ability to lick a stamp. Hardly a life-changing experience.”

Having established the importance of knowing God, and making the distinction between knowing facts about God and knowing Him intimately, here are 4 ways that we can know God.

1. The first way is by relying on our IMAGINATION. Each of us carries around a mental picture of who God is. That picture is a collage of a lifetime of experiences, impressions and assumptions. The process begins early in life as we observe our parents – those seemingly all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present beings who rule the cosmos of our home – for better or for worse. As children, we instinctively project our view of our parents onto our impression of God.

As we grow up, other information is added to our imagination of God. These include our experiences with churches – all the sights and sounds and symbols and sermons. They significantly shape our image of God – again, either for better or for worse. As we mature, we keep updating our Deity database, by accumulating inferences from our teachers, from movies, from music, from current events, and from our own observations about life.

Everyone has an image of God. Some of us view Him as a robo-cop God, a deity with a big stick who runs around policing the universe. Others envision a Mr. Goodwrench kind of God, who just fixes problems. Others imagine a Grandfatherly God, from whom seldom is heard a discouraging word.

That reminds me of a man who was talking to God one day. He decided to ask God a question, “How long is a million years to you? God answered, “Like a second.”

The man thought for awhile and then asked another question, “How much is a million dollars to you?” God answered, “Like a penny.”

The man, excited now, asked his final question, “Then, can I have a penny?” To which God replied, “In a second.”

What is your view of God? What is He like to you? What does He require of you? What does He desire for you? You and I have accumulated an imagination of God – one that can be based on hearsay, or heresy, or inference, or perceptions. Our knowledge of Him may only be second-hand. And our personal picture of God may be factual or faulty. When we rely on imagination alone, we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we really know God, when we don’t.

2. There are better methods for getting to know God. One is when, instead of relying on human imagination, we rely on God’s INVITATION. We can’t begin to get to know Him unless He extends an invitation. Over the years, we have accumulated inferences and images of what God is like. And we may not want to disturb our carefully constructed conclusions; lest a change in how we think compels us to change the way we live.

God understands our reluctance. So He makes the first move. As Isaiah 1:2 says, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the Lord has spoken.” He extends an invitation to us – He wants us to listen to Him and respond to His initiative. It is not we who makes friends with Him, but He who makes friends with us. To know God is to enter a relationship, which He Himself initiates. Have you accepted God’s gracious invitation to get to know Him more fully, more accurately, and more personally?

3. After accepting God’s invitation, then phase 3 of knowing Him kicks in. That’s when we rely on God’s REVELATION. Let me illustrate.

Suppose you accepted an invitation to spend some time with Charles Schulz before he died. Imagine that you arrive to find him alone by his pool, wearing a Snoopy swimsuit. He invites you to sit down. He could tell you anything he wanted to because you are there at his invitation. He could choose to keep the conversation on the surface, or he could choose to tell you all about the little red-haired girl who broke his heart over 50 years ago. He could tell you about his alter ego, Charlie Brown. He could take his mask off and share with you things that concern him, dreams that he has hoped for, and experiences that bring him joy.

Whatever He would say would be up to him. You can’t read his mind. What you would know about him would depend totally upon his self-disclosure. In other words, you could only receive what he chose to reveal.

In a similar way, what we can know about God comes by way of His revelation. God is so far above and beyond us that we are totally dependent on His self-disclosure. If he doesn’t choose to reveal himself, we could never know about the things that concern Him, the things He hopes for, and the things that bring Him joy. Thankfully, God has revealed Himself.

He has done it in at least 3 ways:

•One way God reveals Himself is through creation. Romans 1:20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

But, this natural revelation of God is limited. We can know the power of God by observing His creation, but we can’t know His love. For this we need the Bible. God has supernaturally revealed Himself through the Scriptures. 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” If you want to get to know God, you do it by getting to know this book. If you want to hear from God, then read this book. The Bible is bursting with direct statements from God about God – and it reveals His mind, His heart, and His will for us.

Friends, you cannot possibly know God apart from knowing Him through His words. The more you know about the Bible, the more you will know about its Author.

God’s primary vehicle for self-disclosure is through Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches in Hebrews 1:3 that “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being…” Jesus reveals who God the father is. As Jesus said in John 8:19, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” Once we get to know Jesus, we get to know the Father.

God is knowable. We can get to know Him through imagination, which can be helpful but it can also be harmful. We really get to know God by His personal invitation and through His special revelation.

4. That leads to a final way to know God – by personal INVESTIGATION.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to share the gospel with someone. This person mentioned to me that she really wanted to figure God out and get to know Him for the first time. I told her that as long as she is eager to get to know Him, she would find Him. I then shared Jeremiah 29:13 with her: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” I then gave her a Bible and encouraged her to read it every day.

Friends, if you are serious about getting to know God, you will get to know Him. He promised us. I urge you to read and study the Bible like you never have before – when you read it, ask God to reveal Himself to you through it. You see, the question is not so much, “Do you know God?” but “How well do you know Him?” Even for those of us who have been believers for some time, the adventure of knowing God never ends. One of Paul’s prayers, in Ephesians 1:17, shows that our pursuit of knowing God is to be on the front burner, all the time: “I…keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.”

So, start where you are. Expose your mind to the Bible. Permit God to correct your mental image of who He is. Allow Him to cut away any perceptions that are improper. Accept His invitation to personally know Him, and let Him reveal Himself to you.

Bragging Rights

Have you ever noticed how much we like to brag? We like to brag about our degrees or our promotions, or our cars, or our kids, or about how many important people we know. It’s almost as if we have to validate our own existence by bragging about what we have, who we are, or who we know.

In Jeremiah’s day, the situation was very similar. Listen to what he writes in Jeremiah 9:23: “Let not the wise man boast of His wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man of his riches.” We are prone to boast about these three things – wisdom, power and wealth. In Bible times as well as today, the important people included the scholar, the athlete, the politician, the warrior, and the financier. As we learned last week, Solomon was caught up in this pursuit as he searched for something that would really matter. And today we elevate people with different names – we honor Einstein’s brilliance, Michael Jordan’s athletic prowess, Roosevelt’s leadership, Schwarzkopf’s military tactics, and the money of Bill Gates.

Let’s be honest. Most of us don’t qualify for any of these categories – and most of us don’t know anyone even remotely famous. Verse 24 tells us that if we want to boast or brag, then we should tell others that we know God: “But let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.”

Getting Our Attention

Jim Bakker, the televangelist who built the huge PTL empire spent 5 years in prison for mail fraud and for bilking his followers out of millions of dollars. In his book called, I Was Wrong, he admits that his whole view of God was faulty. As he recounts his spiritual journey behind bars, he finally comes to the conclusion that God sent him to prison for a very specific purpose. He had become so concerned with building a name for himself that he somewhere along the way forgot all about God. According to Bakker, God sent him to prison so that he could get to know God for who He really is. It’s as simple as that.

If knowing God is that important, I wonder what He’ll have to do to get our attention? Our biggest problem is not that God isn’t speaking, it’s that we’re so busy we can’t—or won’t—slow down long enough to hear His voice. Psalm 46:10 urges us to “Be still and know that I am God.”

What then should we do? Hosea 6:3 challenges us to “…press on to acknowledge the Lord.” To press on means to move toward the goal with undiminished vigor. It means to set your focus on knowing our Knowable God – and letting nothing get in your way. Do you have a passion and vigor for God this morning?

Tony Evans uses a great illustration: “I can’t fully explain what it means to know God. I can use the terms, but it’s like defining a kiss. Webster calls a kiss ‘a caress with the lips; a gentle touch or contact.’ But anyone who has kissed someone knows that a kiss is really much more than that. You can’t explain it, but Lord have mercy, it’s good when you get it! I can’t fully explain what getting to know God feels like, but I know that you will like it when it happens. (Our God is Awesome, p. 34)

Friends, you will never understand God until you begin to know Him personally. I can’t define it fully, but when you encounter God Almighty, your life will never be the same again. Which is why Psalm 34:8 says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” He is good – and He’s good all the time, but you’ll never know until you taste Him for yourself!

I love the book of Job. With all its pain and agony, it’s full of faith and hope. At the end of the book, after God has recited a litany of His powerful acts. Job is literally speechless. Listen to what he says in 42:5: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”

Some of you are in the same place today. You’ve heard about God, but now you really want to see Him.

Prayer of Commitment

Would you pray this prayer with me?  It originally appeared in A.W. Tozer’s book called, “The Knowledge of the Holy.”

“O majesty unspeakable, my soul desires to behold Thee. I cry to Thee from the dust. Yet when I inquire after Thy name it is secret. Thou art hidden in the light which no man can approach unto. What Thou art cannot be thought or uttered, for Thy glory is beyond comprehension. Still, prophet and psalmist, apostle and saint have encouraged me to believe that I may in some measure know Thee. Therefore, I pray, whatever of Thyself Thou hast been pleased to disclose, help me to search out as treasure more precious than fine gold: for with Thee shall I live when the stars of the twilight are no more and the heavens have vanished away and only Thou remainest. Amen.” (p. 18)

 

July 18, 2010

A Prayer to Pray

This prayer originally appeared in A.W. Tozer’s book called, “The Knowledge of the Holy.”

“O majesty unspeakable, my soul desires to behold Thee. I cry to Thee from the dust. Yet when I inquire after Thy name it is secret. Thou art hidden in the light which no man can approach unto. What Thou art cannot be thought or uttered, for Thy glory is beyond comprehension.  Still, prophet and psalmist, apostle and saint have encouraged me to believe that I may in some measure know Thee. Therefore, I pray, whatever of Thyself Thou hast been pleased to disclose, help me to search out as treasure more precious than fine gold: for with Thee shall I live when the stars of the twilight are no more and the heavens have vanished away and only Thou remainest. Amen.” (p. 18)

July 18, 2010

Sometimes He Calms the Storm

We’re ending the services today with this video.  It’s a good reminder that sometimes God calms the storm around us and other times He calms us so we can ride through the storm.

July 17, 2010

Bible Study Resources

This is the best link I’ve ever seen that lists Bible study resources and online sermons in one place.

Keep Believing Resources.

July 16, 2010

The Sleepy Sluggard

I never thought of myself as a sluggard until I read this.

July 16, 2010

In Jesus’ Name

Pastor Ray has a great post here.

July 16, 2010

A Sad Day

This is just not right.  Things like this should never go away.

July 15, 2010

Teaching Honor

One of the ways that parents can teach honor to children is to include it in the instruction process. You might say, “I’d like you to obey me by setting the table, then I want you to think of something extra to do to surprise me. That’s showing honor. You choose; it’s up to you. Report to me when you’re done and I’ll check your work.”

Surprising parents delights them and focuses on something they want or need. Instructing children to surprise you by doing something extra teaches them to think about your needs and desires not just getting away with the bare minimum. When your child does an extra task, it’s like giving you a gift. Receive the gift with delight. This can be a fun way to teach honor.

Honor involves doing more than what’s expected. All family members need to learn honor and children can learn it when parents teach it. So look for ways to teach kids to do more than what’s expected in daily life. It will not only make family life better now but it will also help kids be more successful as they get older.

This parenting tip comes from the book,  Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes In You and Your Kids by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN.

If you’d like to receive tips yourself, you can sign up at www.biblicalparenting.org.

July 14, 2010

Don’t Waste Your Cancer

I’ve posted this article by John Piper previously but it bears repeating in light of our current sermon series.

See here.

July 12, 2010

Unhappy Parents?

Albert Mohler has an excellent post about parenting that is well worth the read.  These sentences appear near the end and summarize the article but please read the whole thing.

“Christians must see children as gifts from God, not as projects. We should see marriage and parenthood as a stewardship and privilege, not as a mere lifestyle choice. We must resist the cultural seductions and raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and understand family life as a crucible for holiness, not an experiment in happiness.”

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