(Slightly edited transcript of a sermonette preached at Bible Truth Baptist Church, Griffin, GA, on 23 November 2014.)
Around this time of year, it’s traditional (and appropriate) to read psalms of thanksgiving. I’d like to read Psalm 100 to you this morning, because there’s an important word in it: “thankful.”
1 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
2 Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
3 Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
5 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
Notice the word “thankful” in v. 4. While the words “thank,” “thanks,” and “thanksgiving” each appear numerous times in scripture, the word “thankful” only appears three times: once here, and the other two times in the new testament.
Rom. 1:21, Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Col. 3:15, And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.
I’d like to give you a few brief exhortations this morning.
1. The word is “thank-ful.” We should be full of thanks, not sparing. We tend to thank God around mealtime, but we need to thank him “always for all things” as Paul tells us in Eph. 5:20.
2. Speaking of Paul, I noticed that he begins 11 of his 13 letters with thanksgiving. We should begin things with thanksgiving: prayer, correspondence, meals, and other things we do. Everything that we have comes from God, and to thank him (and anyone else) is to acknowledge that he gave you something. “…and what hast thou that thou hast not received?” Paul asks in 1 Cor. 4:9. Nothing, absolutely nothing.
3. Paul even thanks God for the carnal Corinthian believers, some of his most disobedient converts. Principle: find something to be thankful for, and look for people’s virtues rather than their vices. It’s easy to spot anyone’s vices, given enough time, but it takes grace to note people’s virtues, even at low points in their lives...like when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians.
4. Lastly, note the three groups that thankfulness is aimed at.
a. In Psalm 100, the Jew was told to be thankful, and rightly so. As
God’s covenant people, they had tremendous blessings that they
owed God thanks for.
b. In Col. 3, the church of God was told to be thankful. As the body
of Christ, we have been blessed “with all spiritual blessings in
heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3), so we certainly should be
full of thanks for all that we’ve received, amen?
c. And in Rom. 1:21, God condemns the Gentiles for their ingratitude.
So God is looking for thankful hearts in all men, since those three
groups (1 Cor. 10:32) make up mankind.
5. How about you, Christian? Is your heart full of thanks? I hope so. If not, read through Paul’s epistles and see how much God has given you, and may your heart be filled to overflowing with thanks for the grace that you’ve received.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014
When Will Sci-Fi Catch Up with the Bible?
At work this week I found a copy of a magazine whose cover portrayed the earth as one big city. This reminded me of something from a series of sci-fi books that I read years ago, The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov. The capital of the universe in that trilogy is a planet named Trantor, which is actually one big city (remember the "Death Star" from the original Star Wars trilogy?). What a thought! A planet that's one big city. But is that thought original to Asimov? Note Isaiah 5:8 in the King James Bible: "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" Beginning with Cain, who built the first city (Enoch; Gen. 4:17), fallen man craves to join house to house for self-preservation. Cain is succeeded by Nimrod, who rules over multiple cities (Gen. 10:10), and later in Genesis (ch. 13-19) we see five cities of the plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar) adjacent to one another. The city of Nineveh in Jonah's day took three days to walk through (Jon. 3:3-4), probably due to expansive suburbs. Even today, as some cities expand, they actually join with other cities into a population region (e.g. Atlanta). My thought: if men were not checked by God, they would turn the earth into one city, since by nature they want to avoid the curse of sweaty, agrarian labour imposed on them with the fall (Gen. 3:17-19) and live together in cities (the pre-flood, Cainite world!). So Asimov's thought is not original. Every thing that man comes up with can ultimately be traced back to the Creator and his thoughts recorded for us in scripture. If man could come up with something outside the scope of God's thought, then he would be the Creator, but the fact that he cannot proves that he is a creature and not the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
Things that God Says Are Awe-some
In the United States, you often hear people, especially younger people, refer to certain people, places, or things as "awesome." Not sure how that got started (maybe the hippies), but the common usage is the same as saying "great" or "wonderful." But the scriptural usage is something different, and that’s what I’d like to discuss in this post.
The word "awe" appears in scripture only three times, all in Psalms, and that’s no coincidence, as we’ll see later. In this brief devotional, I’d like to (1) show you these references; (2) define awe; and (3) look at each passage to see what we can learn about awe from it, since it’s a grace that should be present in our hearts. First, let’s look at the three references to awe in scripture.
References
• Ps. 4:4, Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
• Ps. 33:8, Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
• Ps. 119:161, Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.
Definition
The second reference above, I believe, provides the scriptural sense of "awe": a holy fear, like we saw in Ps. 66:13. "Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him." See how a word in one part of the verse helps define a more difficult word in another part? The Bible is full of this, and it’s a principle of Bible study that the English text defines itself. So awe is a holy fear, since the context is either a holy God (Ps. 4:3-4, 33:8) or his holy word (119:161). In Heb. 12:28 we read about “serv[ing] God with acceptably with reverence and godly fear,” but not all fear is godly. Prov. 29:25 says, “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.” So some types of fear are good and some are not, and we’ll discuss that more later.
Principles
1. Awe is a heart condition that begins with the individual. Ps. 4:4 and 119:161 are directly aimed at individuals, and their heart attitude toward God and his word. For both objects, the attitude or spirit should be one of holy fear. Awe is what we call a grace, like humility, faith, kindness, etc. Heb. 12:28, which I referred to earlier, says that godly fear is a grace that ought to be present in our lives. One can even be in awe when lying down. In Ps. 4:8, the psalmist mentions laying down to sleep, but between the time he lies down and falls asleep, he’s communing with his own heart and feeling God’s awesome presence. Great way to end a day, amen? When you go to bed, think about the day and how good God has been to you, and “stand in awe before him” in your heart.
2. Awe leads to holiness. Ps. 4:4 says, “Stand in awe, and sin not,” so awe discourages sin. Prov. 16:6b affirms this, “by fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” And even under grace, Paul says that our business should be “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).
3. Awe should be universal, but it has limits too. All the earth should fear the LORD and stand in awe of him, not just individuals, and they will in the millennial kingdom, which this psalm is pointing to prophetically. But believers in Christ are not to be in "awe" of princes like we are God and his word (119:161). Paul tells us to "Render...fear to whom fear" is due, namely "rulers" (Rom. 13:1-7), but I think that, Biblically, awe is a higher fear due to God and his word than that due to "the powers...ordained of God" (Rom. 13:1). Princes should be in awe of God and his word themselves; maybe then they wouldn’t persecute believers, and we should pray for them along these lines (1 Tim. 2:1-6). But if we want others to be in awe of God and his word, we need to start with “the man in the mirror.” The reason why there’s so little respect and reverence for God in our government and society is because these things are so lacking in the church. This leads to my fourth point.
4. Awe should characterize our worship as well as our walk. All the references to awe are found in the Psalms, the praises of Israel, which is no coincidence. Praise should include a holy awe of God: both testaments affirm this.
a. Ps. 5:7b, “and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple.” Someone might say, “Well, that’s the Jews in the old testament.” OK, let’s see what Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, has to say about it.
b. Eph. 5:18-21. This passage deals with the filling of the Spirit, and its results: worship (v. 19), thanksgiving (v.20), and submission (v. 21)…in the fear of God. If you don’t fear God, you’re not filled with the Spirit! Remember 2 Cor. 7:1, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God”? Look at Acts 9:31, “…walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost.” The Holy Ghost produces a holy fear, in our walk and worship, because it’s part of his work—to prompt men and angels to fear and worship God (Is. 11:1-2).
We live in a generation that says this is awesome and that is awesome, but let’s make sure that we’re in awe of the two most important things in the universe: God and his word! Awe is a heart condition that begins with individuals, and it should lead to personal holiness. Awe should be universal, but it has limits too. We should be in awe of certain things, not everything. That’s why I think the common usage of the word detracts from its power, though the world naturally uses it because it’s a powerful word. Finally, awe should characterize our worship as well as our walk. Worship is acknowledging God’s worth, and truly grasping God’s worth will produce holy fear in us and make us rejoice in him “with trembling” (Ps. 2:11).
The word "awe" appears in scripture only three times, all in Psalms, and that’s no coincidence, as we’ll see later. In this brief devotional, I’d like to (1) show you these references; (2) define awe; and (3) look at each passage to see what we can learn about awe from it, since it’s a grace that should be present in our hearts. First, let’s look at the three references to awe in scripture.
References
• Ps. 4:4, Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.
• Ps. 33:8, Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
• Ps. 119:161, Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.
Definition
The second reference above, I believe, provides the scriptural sense of "awe": a holy fear, like we saw in Ps. 66:13. "Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him." See how a word in one part of the verse helps define a more difficult word in another part? The Bible is full of this, and it’s a principle of Bible study that the English text defines itself. So awe is a holy fear, since the context is either a holy God (Ps. 4:3-4, 33:8) or his holy word (119:161). In Heb. 12:28 we read about “serv[ing] God with acceptably with reverence and godly fear,” but not all fear is godly. Prov. 29:25 says, “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.” So some types of fear are good and some are not, and we’ll discuss that more later.
Principles
1. Awe is a heart condition that begins with the individual. Ps. 4:4 and 119:161 are directly aimed at individuals, and their heart attitude toward God and his word. For both objects, the attitude or spirit should be one of holy fear. Awe is what we call a grace, like humility, faith, kindness, etc. Heb. 12:28, which I referred to earlier, says that godly fear is a grace that ought to be present in our lives. One can even be in awe when lying down. In Ps. 4:8, the psalmist mentions laying down to sleep, but between the time he lies down and falls asleep, he’s communing with his own heart and feeling God’s awesome presence. Great way to end a day, amen? When you go to bed, think about the day and how good God has been to you, and “stand in awe before him” in your heart.
2. Awe leads to holiness. Ps. 4:4 says, “Stand in awe, and sin not,” so awe discourages sin. Prov. 16:6b affirms this, “by fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” And even under grace, Paul says that our business should be “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).
3. Awe should be universal, but it has limits too. All the earth should fear the LORD and stand in awe of him, not just individuals, and they will in the millennial kingdom, which this psalm is pointing to prophetically. But believers in Christ are not to be in "awe" of princes like we are God and his word (119:161). Paul tells us to "Render...fear to whom fear" is due, namely "rulers" (Rom. 13:1-7), but I think that, Biblically, awe is a higher fear due to God and his word than that due to "the powers...ordained of God" (Rom. 13:1). Princes should be in awe of God and his word themselves; maybe then they wouldn’t persecute believers, and we should pray for them along these lines (1 Tim. 2:1-6). But if we want others to be in awe of God and his word, we need to start with “the man in the mirror.” The reason why there’s so little respect and reverence for God in our government and society is because these things are so lacking in the church. This leads to my fourth point.
4. Awe should characterize our worship as well as our walk. All the references to awe are found in the Psalms, the praises of Israel, which is no coincidence. Praise should include a holy awe of God: both testaments affirm this.
a. Ps. 5:7b, “and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple.” Someone might say, “Well, that’s the Jews in the old testament.” OK, let’s see what Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, has to say about it.
b. Eph. 5:18-21. This passage deals with the filling of the Spirit, and its results: worship (v. 19), thanksgiving (v.20), and submission (v. 21)…in the fear of God. If you don’t fear God, you’re not filled with the Spirit! Remember 2 Cor. 7:1, “perfecting holiness in the fear of God”? Look at Acts 9:31, “…walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost.” The Holy Ghost produces a holy fear, in our walk and worship, because it’s part of his work—to prompt men and angels to fear and worship God (Is. 11:1-2).
We live in a generation that says this is awesome and that is awesome, but let’s make sure that we’re in awe of the two most important things in the universe: God and his word! Awe is a heart condition that begins with individuals, and it should lead to personal holiness. Awe should be universal, but it has limits too. We should be in awe of certain things, not everything. That’s why I think the common usage of the word detracts from its power, though the world naturally uses it because it’s a powerful word. Finally, awe should characterize our worship as well as our walk. Worship is acknowledging God’s worth, and truly grasping God’s worth will produce holy fear in us and make us rejoice in him “with trembling” (Ps. 2:11).
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Give ME the Book of God! or, Wisdom from Wesley
The following selection is taken from the book, "Christian Believer: Knowing God with Heart and Mind (Readings)," by Abingdon Press. In it many of John Wesley's thoughts about the word of God resonate with my own...and perhaps your own.
"To candid, reasonable men I am not afraid to lay open the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a few moments hence I am no more seen--I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven--how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the Book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libris [a man of one book]. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his Book; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning what I read? Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of lights: 'Lord, is it not thy Word, "If any men lack wisdom, let him ask of God"?...'. I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, 'comparing spiritual things with spiritual.' I meditate thereon, with all the attention and earnest ness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God, and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach."
"To candid, reasonable men I am not afraid to lay open the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf, till a few moments hence I am no more seen--I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, the way to heaven--how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the Book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libris [a man of one book]. Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his Book; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning what I read? Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of lights: 'Lord, is it not thy Word, "If any men lack wisdom, let him ask of God"?...'. I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, 'comparing spiritual things with spiritual.' I meditate thereon, with all the attention and earnest ness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God, and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach."
Personal Testimony: David Jared
(Slightly edited version of a testimony given at Bible Truth Baptist Church, Griffin, Georgia, on October 1, 2014.
TEXTS
• Job 36:24, Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold (context is creation, but I’d like to apply it, devotionally to the work of salvation).
• Ps. 66:13, Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul (this is a good verse for any dispensation, past, present, or future).
In this testimony, I’d like to magnify the grace of God by telling you, briefly, what God hath done for my soul to bring me to Christ 26 years ago. Some other time, as the Lord allows, I’ll talk more about my post-conversion experiences, but so as to preach as well as testify tonight, I’ll stick to my salvation experience.
I was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1969 to Roman Catholic parents, the youngest of seven children (four girls and three boys). My dad was from east Tennessee, but his family worked their way north and ended up in Dayton. He was from a mixed religious background and had little interest in matters of faith, though professing Roman Catholicism. My mother came from German stock and old-school Catholicism, so her parents insisted that my father convert to their faith to marry her. He complied, but I think that he was a skeptic at heart despite his profession. My dad was a hard worker and influenced all of us children positively in that way. I can’t imagine the challenges that children of lazy parents must face, since mine always set an example of diligence, for which I’m truly grateful. My parents were also faithful to one another for 50 years. As Catholics, divorce was not an option for them, and they kept their vows to each other and loved each other for life, another great example for me. They also encouraged my siblings and I to do well in school, which had big payoffs for those of us who took the academic route.
But the greatest influence my parents had on me, I think, was pointing me, by example, toward the spiritual. By God’s grace, I’ve been in church all of my life. While many of the teachings of Roman Catholicism are false, it was the positive things about it, I think, that helped prepare me to receive Jesus Christ. If a Catholic is sincere, and not skeptical, you won’t have to convince him that there’s a God, that Christ is his only begotten Son, even that Christ is the Saviour of the world. I believed all of that from my youth. I even knew, in my conscience, that the Bible was God’s perfect word, even though I had never read it.
But the one thing that Catholicism hid from me was, ironically, the most important: how to appropriate the work that Christ did for me. You see, even though Catholics acknowledge Christ as the Saviour of the world, they do not understand how he saves: by grace through faith, without works. While a Catholic may believe that Christ died for our sins (I did), most of them don’t understand that the proper response to that is complete trust in Christ’s work to save him, apart from any works of his own. Paul said in Rom. 4:5, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” I’m grateful that I finally came to that point, but I don’t consider my years as a Catholic wasted…by any means. God is far too wise and good that. God puts all of us in the right place from the start. If I had been put in any other family, I might not have come to Christ. I may not have had all the truth growing up, but I had enough to prepare me for more, plus God was faithful to provide it for me at just the right time. Under my parents’ roof and authority, it would have been hard to trust Christ despite them, but when I left home my parents left it up to me which spiritual path I would take, unlike many other Catholic parents, especially in other countries. Someone might say, what about children who were abused by their families? I would answer that’s a terrible thing and God has no pleasure in it, but I’ve heard enough testimonies of abused children who came to Christ to trust in God’s wisdom and goodness, no matter how bad things may look on the surface. So I thank him, with all of my heart, for giving me the parents, family, and religious upbringing that he did. It certainly helped prepare me to receive Christ.
The gospel came to me “at sundry times and in divers manners” (Heb. 1:1), but the person most instrumental in my salvation was a young convert named Mike Stephens. Although I was born in Ohio and spent my childhood there, my family moved to Texas for a while and then settled in north Alabama, where my parents retired and my dad passed away years later. I went to high school there and graduated in 1988. As a young person, I was always interested in math and science, and at my dad’s encouragement, I decided to pursue engineering. I applied at several engineering schools engineering and ended up at Georgia Tech. Before leaving for school, though, I took a summer job where God had strategically planted Mike Stephens. I got to know this peaceful young man gradually, and the more I got to know him, and the more he spoke to me about the Lord, the more I was drawn to him. I recommend his approach to those who want to win others to Christ. He was gentle and kind and took a sincere interest in me as a person, not as a mere prospect. I remember visiting his home, doing things together, and later accepting his invitation to attend church. That’s soul winning, folks. Please turn with me to 1 Thes. 2:8. According to Paul, it’s not just giving people the gospel, but your own soul, to reach them. Let them see the peace, joy, and assurance that you have in Christ that they don’t. Don’t be critical of their religion, if they have one, until after they’ve come to Christ; then you can lovingly point out where it’s in error and encourage them to seek the right kind of fellowship.
Although Mike and I never prayed together for me to receive Christ, he planted the seeds that led to my salvation in the following months, when I went off to school in Atlanta. I’m not sure exactly when I trusted Christ, but I know that I did, and that’s what counts. Don’t worry if you can’t pinpoint the exact time that you trusted Christ. The important thing is what are you trusting in right now: Christ or yourself? I know right now that I have eternal life because I’m resting in Christ’s work for me, and not my own merits. Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:12, “…for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him (my soul) against that day.” I remember reading William Shakespeare’s last will and testament, and I was thrilled to see him commit his “soule into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredlie beleeving, through thonelie merites, of Jesus Christe my Saviour, to be made partaker of lyfe everlasting…” (internet). I hope that you can say the same, that you’re trusting in Christ alone to save you, and not any good works that you’ve done. It seems so simple to those of us who believe, but we must never forget how miraculous our salvation was, that we’d let go of our stubborn self-righteousness and trust in someone that we’ve never seen. Most people never come to that point, but don’t let it be you! You can choose to receive Christ, or choose to reject him. I, and every believer here, pray that you’ll make the right choice, to receive him, and join our happy family forever.
So that is how I passed from darkness to light. The Lord’s been good to this “buckeye,” and thank you for letting me share my salvation testimony with you tonight.
TEXTS
• Job 36:24, Remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold (context is creation, but I’d like to apply it, devotionally to the work of salvation).
• Ps. 66:13, Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul (this is a good verse for any dispensation, past, present, or future).
In this testimony, I’d like to magnify the grace of God by telling you, briefly, what God hath done for my soul to bring me to Christ 26 years ago. Some other time, as the Lord allows, I’ll talk more about my post-conversion experiences, but so as to preach as well as testify tonight, I’ll stick to my salvation experience.
I was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1969 to Roman Catholic parents, the youngest of seven children (four girls and three boys). My dad was from east Tennessee, but his family worked their way north and ended up in Dayton. He was from a mixed religious background and had little interest in matters of faith, though professing Roman Catholicism. My mother came from German stock and old-school Catholicism, so her parents insisted that my father convert to their faith to marry her. He complied, but I think that he was a skeptic at heart despite his profession. My dad was a hard worker and influenced all of us children positively in that way. I can’t imagine the challenges that children of lazy parents must face, since mine always set an example of diligence, for which I’m truly grateful. My parents were also faithful to one another for 50 years. As Catholics, divorce was not an option for them, and they kept their vows to each other and loved each other for life, another great example for me. They also encouraged my siblings and I to do well in school, which had big payoffs for those of us who took the academic route.
But the greatest influence my parents had on me, I think, was pointing me, by example, toward the spiritual. By God’s grace, I’ve been in church all of my life. While many of the teachings of Roman Catholicism are false, it was the positive things about it, I think, that helped prepare me to receive Jesus Christ. If a Catholic is sincere, and not skeptical, you won’t have to convince him that there’s a God, that Christ is his only begotten Son, even that Christ is the Saviour of the world. I believed all of that from my youth. I even knew, in my conscience, that the Bible was God’s perfect word, even though I had never read it.
But the one thing that Catholicism hid from me was, ironically, the most important: how to appropriate the work that Christ did for me. You see, even though Catholics acknowledge Christ as the Saviour of the world, they do not understand how he saves: by grace through faith, without works. While a Catholic may believe that Christ died for our sins (I did), most of them don’t understand that the proper response to that is complete trust in Christ’s work to save him, apart from any works of his own. Paul said in Rom. 4:5, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” I’m grateful that I finally came to that point, but I don’t consider my years as a Catholic wasted…by any means. God is far too wise and good that. God puts all of us in the right place from the start. If I had been put in any other family, I might not have come to Christ. I may not have had all the truth growing up, but I had enough to prepare me for more, plus God was faithful to provide it for me at just the right time. Under my parents’ roof and authority, it would have been hard to trust Christ despite them, but when I left home my parents left it up to me which spiritual path I would take, unlike many other Catholic parents, especially in other countries. Someone might say, what about children who were abused by their families? I would answer that’s a terrible thing and God has no pleasure in it, but I’ve heard enough testimonies of abused children who came to Christ to trust in God’s wisdom and goodness, no matter how bad things may look on the surface. So I thank him, with all of my heart, for giving me the parents, family, and religious upbringing that he did. It certainly helped prepare me to receive Christ.
The gospel came to me “at sundry times and in divers manners” (Heb. 1:1), but the person most instrumental in my salvation was a young convert named Mike Stephens. Although I was born in Ohio and spent my childhood there, my family moved to Texas for a while and then settled in north Alabama, where my parents retired and my dad passed away years later. I went to high school there and graduated in 1988. As a young person, I was always interested in math and science, and at my dad’s encouragement, I decided to pursue engineering. I applied at several engineering schools engineering and ended up at Georgia Tech. Before leaving for school, though, I took a summer job where God had strategically planted Mike Stephens. I got to know this peaceful young man gradually, and the more I got to know him, and the more he spoke to me about the Lord, the more I was drawn to him. I recommend his approach to those who want to win others to Christ. He was gentle and kind and took a sincere interest in me as a person, not as a mere prospect. I remember visiting his home, doing things together, and later accepting his invitation to attend church. That’s soul winning, folks. Please turn with me to 1 Thes. 2:8. According to Paul, it’s not just giving people the gospel, but your own soul, to reach them. Let them see the peace, joy, and assurance that you have in Christ that they don’t. Don’t be critical of their religion, if they have one, until after they’ve come to Christ; then you can lovingly point out where it’s in error and encourage them to seek the right kind of fellowship.
Although Mike and I never prayed together for me to receive Christ, he planted the seeds that led to my salvation in the following months, when I went off to school in Atlanta. I’m not sure exactly when I trusted Christ, but I know that I did, and that’s what counts. Don’t worry if you can’t pinpoint the exact time that you trusted Christ. The important thing is what are you trusting in right now: Christ or yourself? I know right now that I have eternal life because I’m resting in Christ’s work for me, and not my own merits. Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:12, “…for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him (my soul) against that day.” I remember reading William Shakespeare’s last will and testament, and I was thrilled to see him commit his “soule into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredlie beleeving, through thonelie merites, of Jesus Christe my Saviour, to be made partaker of lyfe everlasting…” (internet). I hope that you can say the same, that you’re trusting in Christ alone to save you, and not any good works that you’ve done. It seems so simple to those of us who believe, but we must never forget how miraculous our salvation was, that we’d let go of our stubborn self-righteousness and trust in someone that we’ve never seen. Most people never come to that point, but don’t let it be you! You can choose to receive Christ, or choose to reject him. I, and every believer here, pray that you’ll make the right choice, to receive him, and join our happy family forever.
So that is how I passed from darkness to light. The Lord’s been good to this “buckeye,” and thank you for letting me share my salvation testimony with you tonight.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
The Power of a Friend
(Slightly edited transcript of a message preached at Faith-Grace Vietnamese Baptist Church on 28 September 2014.)
Texts: Proverbs 13:20; 17:17
Today I’d like to talk to you about something very important to all of you: friends. If you asked any young person, “What are the most important things to you in life?” friends would likely always be mentioned and often top the list, even before God and parents. It’s a very important subject, not just for teens, but for anyone. Friendships are powerful things: they can make you or break you, depending on who you choose for friends. The two verses we read show you how friends can help you or hurt you…for time and eternity, so it’s critical that you understand what friendship is and who to befriend. For this message, I’d like to define friendship, give some general principles about it from scripture, then look at two friendships in the Bible very closely to illustrate those principles.
Definition of Friendship
Friendship, most basically, is companionship, as we see in Prov. 13:20. It’s more than just someone you know—that’s what we call an acquaintance. A friend is someone that you keep company with and trust.
• Prov. 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.
• Ps. 55:12-14 For it was not an enemy…But it was thou…We took sweet counsel together and walked into the house of God in company.
• Ps. 41:9 Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread (fellowship), hath lifted up his hand against me.
These types of relationships can be terminated, but a true friend is the one mentioned in Prov. 17:17. He loves you at all times, including adversity, or bad times. Ever heard of a “fair-weather” friend? He’s your friend when times are good but not in the storms of life. Prov. 27:10, “Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not…” A friend is someone who sticks by you no matter what. On the freezer in my basement I have a magnet that says, “Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway.” Do you have any friends like that? Well, you have at least one, but we’ll talk about him later.
Principles of Friendship
Next, I’d like to give you three principles about friendship:
• You choose your friends. Remember Prov. 13:20? The man chose to walk with the wise or fools. They didn’t come after him. People say that “S/he got in with the wrong crowd,” as if the crowd is to blame. No, you are the wrong crowd, if you attach yourself to them. Look at Prov. 1:10: sinners may entice you, but ultimately it’s your choice who you hang around. Prov. 1:10-19 describes a gang. Right before that—fearing God (v. 7) and obeying your parents (vv. 8-9). Who’s in gangs mostly? People who don’t fear God and don’t obey their parents. Remember Derek in the movie Courageous? His parents were gone and he lives with his grandmother, but he disobeys her and ends up in a drug-dealing gang, nearly gets killed by the police, and ends up in jail. He became the wrong crowd…and paid dearly for it.
• Your friends will influence you (you are who you hang around), for better or worse. Like it or not, you are who you hang around. We saw that in Prov. 13:20, but check out 1 Cor. 15:33 in the new testament. One good apple in a barrel of bad ones won’t make them all good, y’all. It’s the other way around. The bad apples will corrupt the good one. That’s what this verse is talking about. If the people you are communicating with, as in friendship, are evil, it will affect your manners, or the way you live.
• Friendships affect more (sometimes far more) than the friends. Some people think that their friendship with someone doesn’t affect anyone but them. Let me tell you, your choice of friends doesn’t just affect you and them. It affects those around you, because believe it or not, those friends are rubbing off on you, good or bad, and influence how you treat others. An old English poet, John Donne, said, “No man is an island…” Well, no friendship is an island either; it affects those outside of it, as well as those inside it, and we’ll see how far-reaching this can be in the final part of the message.
Two Friendships in the Bible
To get to the heart and conclusion of my message, I’d like to study two friendships in the Bible that illustrate the principles I’ve given you. One of these you’re probably familiar with, since it was a very good friendship, and we can certainly learn from it, but the other you may not be familiar with. It was a very bad friendship, with tragic results for one of the friends, but we can learn from it as well: who not to become friends with and the terrible consequences of developing bad friendships.
David and Jonathan (1 Sam. 18:1-4)
The first friendship we’ll look at is that of David and Jonathan. Most people know this story. David kills Goliath and wins the heart and admiration of King Saul’s son, Prince Jonathan. Jonathan is so impressed with David, that he gives him his clothes and arms…on the spot (v. 4). Though a prince, he makes himself naked to clothe someone else, his friend. Remind you of someone else? How about Jesus? He hung naked on the cross so that you could be clothed with God’s righteousness, if you’ll trust in him as your Saviour. Notice what else it says about Jonathan: his soul was knit to David’s, and twice it says that “he loved him as his own soul” (vv. 2-3). “A friend loveth at all times,” and Jonathan is a good, though not perfect, example of this. He pleads David’s case before an envious Saul, helps David escape from Saul, stands up for David when Saul is enraged, and even visits David in the wilderness (23:16-18). The only thing that he doesn’t do is follow David, the true king of Israel, but sticks with his wicked father and ends up dead with him in battle.
• Jonathan chooses to be David’s friend, and David chooses to be Jonathan’s friend. Not only was Jonathan’s soul knit to David’s, but vice versa. No one forced it; it was voluntary and an excellent choice on both men’s part.
• Both men benefit from the relationship, David more in my opinion, since the friend that follows God the closest will get the most out of the friendship, I think. David should not have fled from Saul, since God promised to make him king, but he still made a better choice than Jonathan, who, as I mentioned above, will not part with his father, and reaps the consequences.
• Their friendship affected far more than them. Saul is greatly affected by their friendship, and actually the whole kingdom, since Jonathan helps David stay alive and ultimately attain the throne, once Saul is taken out of the way.
Amnon and Jonadab (2 Sam. 13:1-5, 30-36)
This friendship is a timeless example of the worst kind of friendship. As we’ve discussed already, the Bible provides guidance on who to befriend and who not to befriend. Prov. 22:24-25 says, “Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man that shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare unto thy soul.” So in this passage we’re warned about befriending angry people and the bad influence that they can have upon us, but here in 2 Samuel 13 we see another type of person that we should avoid: the worldly-wise man. Now the first time that you see the word “subtil” in the Bible is in Gen. 3:1, in reference to the serpent. Then in Mt. 10:16, Jesus told the apostles, “…be ye therefore wise as serpents.” So subtility is like wisdom. But wisdom can be used for good or evil.
• James 3:15-17. Here we see two types of wisdom: wisdom from above (v. 17) and devilish wisdom (v. 15).
• Prov. 1:4-5. The context of subtilty here is godly wisdom. So subtilty, or wisdom, isn’t necessarily bad, but it can be, as we see here with Jonadab.
Jonadab is actually Amnon’s cousin. He is the son of David’s third brother, Shimeah (13:3, 32), who fought under king Saul against Goliath (1 Sam. 17:13-14). He also had a brother named Jonathan who turns out to be a great warrior and kills one of Goliath’s sons in battle (2 Sam. 21:20-22). But instead of being brave and heroic like his brother, Jonadab is a crafty, cowardly low-life sort of person. He counsels Amnon how to sin, and you need to avoid befriending anyone like that.
• Amnon chooses him a friend. While it’s true that they were related, Amnon wasn’t obligated to be his friend, and there were plenty other good people at court for him to attach himself to (how about Nathan the prophet and Zadok the priest?). But something about Jonadab appeals to Amnon, showing that he himself has character issues which, as we see, this friendship worsens.
• The friendship is unprofitable to both men, much more so to Amnon, who loses his life over it. Amnon has a tender conscience at first, as we see in 13:2, and doesn’t want to harm his half-sister, but Jonadab does not have the same noble character. He tells Amnon how to sin, and then when Amnon has fallen, he tattles on him to King David without taking any blame for anything. What a creep! On top of that, he tries to make himself look good to the king by explaining what’s going on; but God overrules him, he gets no praise from anyone, and he fades out of the picture. Amnon, on the other hand, due to this friendship, goes from tender to cruel because of this friendship, refusing to marry the woman that he’s mistreated. He picks up Jonadab’s cruelty through the association, and it costs him his life.
• But as we saw with David and Jonathan, the friendship affects far more than Amnon and Jonadab. Tamar’s honour is lost for life, Absalom takes vengeance on Amnon and becomes a fugitive, and the conclusion of the matter is a full-scale revolution led by none other than Absalom, who ends up stuck in a tree and slain by Joab and his men. All because Amnon picked the wrong friend! See how important this is, y’all?
I don’t think that it’s a stretch at all to say that friendship is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. As we’ve seen in these two friendships, the character and fruits of friendships literally affect world events. So it’s utterly important that you choose the right friends, since not just you and your friend are affected, but everyone else.
Let me close this message by introducing you to the perfect friend. Jonadab was a lousy friend, and Jonathan was a good friend, but the best friend that anyone ever had was Jesus Christ. Prov. 18:24 says that, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly…” Emerson said, “If you want a friend, be one.” You can’t expect to have friends if you aren’t friendly to others. You can’t reap where you haven’t sown. But what does the rest of Prov. 18:24 say? “…and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Sometimes you’ll find that your friends stick closer to you than your siblings or relatives. But that’s not all that the verse is saying. It’s also pointing to the Lord Jesus, who will closer to you than literally anyone in the world. As a matter of fact, if you receive him as your Saviour, he will come to live in your heart through the Holy Spirit, and fellowship with you forever. No friend or relative can get inside of you and minister to your heart moment by moment like the Lord Jesus can. And if you don’t become friends with him, you miss out on the greatest friendship any man could ever have. Jesus himself said in John 15:13, “Great love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” and that is exactly what Jesus did for you 2000 years ago. He “shew[ed] himself friendly” by laying down his life for your sins, the payment that God requires for them; now, will you be his friend? Right now, if you’re a sinner, you’re his enemy. I realize that little children are innocent, but if you’re here and you know that you’ve sinned and you haven’t accepted Jesus as you’re Saviour, you’re God’s enemy, even if you don’t know it. Folks, don’t stay in that condition! That’s the worse place that anyone could be, and God doesn’t want you there. He has already proven himself to be your best friend by giving the very best he had for you, his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Now, will you be his friend?
Texts: Proverbs 13:20; 17:17
Today I’d like to talk to you about something very important to all of you: friends. If you asked any young person, “What are the most important things to you in life?” friends would likely always be mentioned and often top the list, even before God and parents. It’s a very important subject, not just for teens, but for anyone. Friendships are powerful things: they can make you or break you, depending on who you choose for friends. The two verses we read show you how friends can help you or hurt you…for time and eternity, so it’s critical that you understand what friendship is and who to befriend. For this message, I’d like to define friendship, give some general principles about it from scripture, then look at two friendships in the Bible very closely to illustrate those principles.
Definition of Friendship
Friendship, most basically, is companionship, as we see in Prov. 13:20. It’s more than just someone you know—that’s what we call an acquaintance. A friend is someone that you keep company with and trust.
• Prov. 13:20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but the companion of fools shall be destroyed.
• Ps. 55:12-14 For it was not an enemy…But it was thou…We took sweet counsel together and walked into the house of God in company.
• Ps. 41:9 Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread (fellowship), hath lifted up his hand against me.
These types of relationships can be terminated, but a true friend is the one mentioned in Prov. 17:17. He loves you at all times, including adversity, or bad times. Ever heard of a “fair-weather” friend? He’s your friend when times are good but not in the storms of life. Prov. 27:10, “Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not…” A friend is someone who sticks by you no matter what. On the freezer in my basement I have a magnet that says, “Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway.” Do you have any friends like that? Well, you have at least one, but we’ll talk about him later.
Principles of Friendship
Next, I’d like to give you three principles about friendship:
• You choose your friends. Remember Prov. 13:20? The man chose to walk with the wise or fools. They didn’t come after him. People say that “S/he got in with the wrong crowd,” as if the crowd is to blame. No, you are the wrong crowd, if you attach yourself to them. Look at Prov. 1:10: sinners may entice you, but ultimately it’s your choice who you hang around. Prov. 1:10-19 describes a gang. Right before that—fearing God (v. 7) and obeying your parents (vv. 8-9). Who’s in gangs mostly? People who don’t fear God and don’t obey their parents. Remember Derek in the movie Courageous? His parents were gone and he lives with his grandmother, but he disobeys her and ends up in a drug-dealing gang, nearly gets killed by the police, and ends up in jail. He became the wrong crowd…and paid dearly for it.
• Your friends will influence you (you are who you hang around), for better or worse. Like it or not, you are who you hang around. We saw that in Prov. 13:20, but check out 1 Cor. 15:33 in the new testament. One good apple in a barrel of bad ones won’t make them all good, y’all. It’s the other way around. The bad apples will corrupt the good one. That’s what this verse is talking about. If the people you are communicating with, as in friendship, are evil, it will affect your manners, or the way you live.
• Friendships affect more (sometimes far more) than the friends. Some people think that their friendship with someone doesn’t affect anyone but them. Let me tell you, your choice of friends doesn’t just affect you and them. It affects those around you, because believe it or not, those friends are rubbing off on you, good or bad, and influence how you treat others. An old English poet, John Donne, said, “No man is an island…” Well, no friendship is an island either; it affects those outside of it, as well as those inside it, and we’ll see how far-reaching this can be in the final part of the message.
Two Friendships in the Bible
To get to the heart and conclusion of my message, I’d like to study two friendships in the Bible that illustrate the principles I’ve given you. One of these you’re probably familiar with, since it was a very good friendship, and we can certainly learn from it, but the other you may not be familiar with. It was a very bad friendship, with tragic results for one of the friends, but we can learn from it as well: who not to become friends with and the terrible consequences of developing bad friendships.
David and Jonathan (1 Sam. 18:1-4)
The first friendship we’ll look at is that of David and Jonathan. Most people know this story. David kills Goliath and wins the heart and admiration of King Saul’s son, Prince Jonathan. Jonathan is so impressed with David, that he gives him his clothes and arms…on the spot (v. 4). Though a prince, he makes himself naked to clothe someone else, his friend. Remind you of someone else? How about Jesus? He hung naked on the cross so that you could be clothed with God’s righteousness, if you’ll trust in him as your Saviour. Notice what else it says about Jonathan: his soul was knit to David’s, and twice it says that “he loved him as his own soul” (vv. 2-3). “A friend loveth at all times,” and Jonathan is a good, though not perfect, example of this. He pleads David’s case before an envious Saul, helps David escape from Saul, stands up for David when Saul is enraged, and even visits David in the wilderness (23:16-18). The only thing that he doesn’t do is follow David, the true king of Israel, but sticks with his wicked father and ends up dead with him in battle.
• Jonathan chooses to be David’s friend, and David chooses to be Jonathan’s friend. Not only was Jonathan’s soul knit to David’s, but vice versa. No one forced it; it was voluntary and an excellent choice on both men’s part.
• Both men benefit from the relationship, David more in my opinion, since the friend that follows God the closest will get the most out of the friendship, I think. David should not have fled from Saul, since God promised to make him king, but he still made a better choice than Jonathan, who, as I mentioned above, will not part with his father, and reaps the consequences.
• Their friendship affected far more than them. Saul is greatly affected by their friendship, and actually the whole kingdom, since Jonathan helps David stay alive and ultimately attain the throne, once Saul is taken out of the way.
Amnon and Jonadab (2 Sam. 13:1-5, 30-36)
This friendship is a timeless example of the worst kind of friendship. As we’ve discussed already, the Bible provides guidance on who to befriend and who not to befriend. Prov. 22:24-25 says, “Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man that shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare unto thy soul.” So in this passage we’re warned about befriending angry people and the bad influence that they can have upon us, but here in 2 Samuel 13 we see another type of person that we should avoid: the worldly-wise man. Now the first time that you see the word “subtil” in the Bible is in Gen. 3:1, in reference to the serpent. Then in Mt. 10:16, Jesus told the apostles, “…be ye therefore wise as serpents.” So subtility is like wisdom. But wisdom can be used for good or evil.
• James 3:15-17. Here we see two types of wisdom: wisdom from above (v. 17) and devilish wisdom (v. 15).
• Prov. 1:4-5. The context of subtilty here is godly wisdom. So subtilty, or wisdom, isn’t necessarily bad, but it can be, as we see here with Jonadab.
Jonadab is actually Amnon’s cousin. He is the son of David’s third brother, Shimeah (13:3, 32), who fought under king Saul against Goliath (1 Sam. 17:13-14). He also had a brother named Jonathan who turns out to be a great warrior and kills one of Goliath’s sons in battle (2 Sam. 21:20-22). But instead of being brave and heroic like his brother, Jonadab is a crafty, cowardly low-life sort of person. He counsels Amnon how to sin, and you need to avoid befriending anyone like that.
• Amnon chooses him a friend. While it’s true that they were related, Amnon wasn’t obligated to be his friend, and there were plenty other good people at court for him to attach himself to (how about Nathan the prophet and Zadok the priest?). But something about Jonadab appeals to Amnon, showing that he himself has character issues which, as we see, this friendship worsens.
• The friendship is unprofitable to both men, much more so to Amnon, who loses his life over it. Amnon has a tender conscience at first, as we see in 13:2, and doesn’t want to harm his half-sister, but Jonadab does not have the same noble character. He tells Amnon how to sin, and then when Amnon has fallen, he tattles on him to King David without taking any blame for anything. What a creep! On top of that, he tries to make himself look good to the king by explaining what’s going on; but God overrules him, he gets no praise from anyone, and he fades out of the picture. Amnon, on the other hand, due to this friendship, goes from tender to cruel because of this friendship, refusing to marry the woman that he’s mistreated. He picks up Jonadab’s cruelty through the association, and it costs him his life.
• But as we saw with David and Jonathan, the friendship affects far more than Amnon and Jonadab. Tamar’s honour is lost for life, Absalom takes vengeance on Amnon and becomes a fugitive, and the conclusion of the matter is a full-scale revolution led by none other than Absalom, who ends up stuck in a tree and slain by Joab and his men. All because Amnon picked the wrong friend! See how important this is, y’all?
I don’t think that it’s a stretch at all to say that friendship is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. As we’ve seen in these two friendships, the character and fruits of friendships literally affect world events. So it’s utterly important that you choose the right friends, since not just you and your friend are affected, but everyone else.
Let me close this message by introducing you to the perfect friend. Jonadab was a lousy friend, and Jonathan was a good friend, but the best friend that anyone ever had was Jesus Christ. Prov. 18:24 says that, “A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly…” Emerson said, “If you want a friend, be one.” You can’t expect to have friends if you aren’t friendly to others. You can’t reap where you haven’t sown. But what does the rest of Prov. 18:24 say? “…and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Sometimes you’ll find that your friends stick closer to you than your siblings or relatives. But that’s not all that the verse is saying. It’s also pointing to the Lord Jesus, who will closer to you than literally anyone in the world. As a matter of fact, if you receive him as your Saviour, he will come to live in your heart through the Holy Spirit, and fellowship with you forever. No friend or relative can get inside of you and minister to your heart moment by moment like the Lord Jesus can. And if you don’t become friends with him, you miss out on the greatest friendship any man could ever have. Jesus himself said in John 15:13, “Great love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” and that is exactly what Jesus did for you 2000 years ago. He “shew[ed] himself friendly” by laying down his life for your sins, the payment that God requires for them; now, will you be his friend? Right now, if you’re a sinner, you’re his enemy. I realize that little children are innocent, but if you’re here and you know that you’ve sinned and you haven’t accepted Jesus as you’re Saviour, you’re God’s enemy, even if you don’t know it. Folks, don’t stay in that condition! That’s the worse place that anyone could be, and God doesn’t want you there. He has already proven himself to be your best friend by giving the very best he had for you, his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Now, will you be his friend?
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Things that God Says Are Awe-some
Texts:
Ps. 4:4, "Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah."
Ps. 33:8, "Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him."
Ps. 119:161, "Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word."
In the U.S you often here people, especially younger people, refer to certain people, places, or things as "awesome." The common usage is synonymous with "great" or "wonderful." But the scriptural usage is something different.
The word "awe" appears in scripture only three times, all in Psalms, and the references are provided above. The second reference above, I believe, provides the scriptural sense of "awe": a holy fear. "Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him." Note that the context of awe is always something holy: God (Ps. 4:3-4, 33:8) or his word (119:161). We're not to be in "awe" of princes like we are God and his word (119:161), but we are to "Render...fear to whom fear" is due, namely "rulers" (Rom. 13:1-7). So I think that it's safe to say that awe is a higher fear due to God and his word than that due to "the powers...ordained of God" (Rom. 13:1). It is a heart condition that can and should be present even when lying down (Ps. 4:4): one can "stand" in awe while lying upon one's bed!
Ps. 4:4, "Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah."
Ps. 33:8, "Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him."
Ps. 119:161, "Princes have persecuted me without a cause: but my heart standeth in awe of thy word."
In the U.S you often here people, especially younger people, refer to certain people, places, or things as "awesome." The common usage is synonymous with "great" or "wonderful." But the scriptural usage is something different.
The word "awe" appears in scripture only three times, all in Psalms, and the references are provided above. The second reference above, I believe, provides the scriptural sense of "awe": a holy fear. "Let all the earth fear the LORD: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him." Note that the context of awe is always something holy: God (Ps. 4:3-4, 33:8) or his word (119:161). We're not to be in "awe" of princes like we are God and his word (119:161), but we are to "Render...fear to whom fear" is due, namely "rulers" (Rom. 13:1-7). So I think that it's safe to say that awe is a higher fear due to God and his word than that due to "the powers...ordained of God" (Rom. 13:1). It is a heart condition that can and should be present even when lying down (Ps. 4:4): one can "stand" in awe while lying upon one's bed!
One Sense of Biblical "Judgment"
Psalm 119:86, "Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments."
Reading this scripture recently inspired me to search for the sense of "judgment" in scripture. Here are my findings so far.
Judgment is essentially discernment of good and bad or good and evil. Heb. 5:14 speaks of mature believers ("them that are of full age") as having "their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Other scriptures throughout the Bible support this definition.
Job 34:4, "Let us choose to us judgment: let us know among ourselves what is good."
Prov. 2:9, "Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path."
Eccl. 12:14, "For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
Amos 5:15a, "Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate:"
Mal. 2:17, "...When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment?"
2 Cor. 5:10, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."
See also 2 Sam. 14:17; 1 Kings 3:9; Is. 7:15-16, May God give us all good judgment (Phil. 1:9-11).
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Things that Men Give Themselves To; or, A Survey of Biblical Addictions (Part 1; Audio)
(Audio recording of a Bible study lesson at Landmark Baptist Church, Locust Grove, GA; 24 August 2014; see link below)
Text: 1 Cor. 16:15-16
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7XpXUhut9IcdzAtWUpHOHMzQTZRYmJRdmk4eGxJV1d2NEV3/edit?usp=sharing
Text: 1 Cor. 16:15-16
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7XpXUhut9IcdzAtWUpHOHMzQTZRYmJRdmk4eGxJV1d2NEV3/edit?usp=sharing
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Spiritual Lessons from Archimedes' Death
Some material in this post is taken from Wikipedia ("Archimedes").
Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was "an ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer." He is "[g]enerally considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time." Archimedes "died c. 212 BC during the Second Punic War [Rome vs. Carthage], when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of Syracuse [under Carthaginian rule] after a two-year-long siege. According to the popular account given by Plutarch, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet General Marcellus but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. The soldier was enraged by this, and killed Archimedes with his sword. Plutarch also gives a lesser-known account of the death of Archimedes which suggests that he may have been killed while attempting to surrender to a Roman soldier. According to this story, Archimedes was carrying mathematical instruments, and was killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable items."
In both of these accounts, we see that Archimedes' work was more important to him than anything, even his personal safety. In one account, he was so engrossed in his work that he was oblivious to everything going on around him; in the other, he tried to salvage his tools to the last. As I pondered this the other day, I realized that this man who let nothing distract him from his life's work. To us it may seem foolish that he didn't abandon his study to preserve his life, but when you look at this incident closely, you see that mathematics was Archimedes' life. It eclipsed everything else therein, even his personal safety in the end.
What a great example for Christians! Archimedes let nothing distract him from his mission, just as Paul exhorts us in 2 Tim. 2:4, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." Furthermore, something was more important to him than life itself...another great example for us. Paul said in Acts 20:24, "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." To Paul, the word of God was more important than life, just as mathematics was for Archimedes. If a Greek scholar will put his thirst for mathematical truth before his life, shouldn't we also put the word of God, the absolute truth (John 17:17), before ours?
Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) was "an ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer." He is "[g]enerally considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time." Archimedes "died c. 212 BC during the Second Punic War [Rome vs. Carthage], when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of Syracuse [under Carthaginian rule] after a two-year-long siege. According to the popular account given by Plutarch, Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. A Roman soldier commanded him to come and meet General Marcellus but he declined, saying that he had to finish working on the problem. The soldier was enraged by this, and killed Archimedes with his sword. Plutarch also gives a lesser-known account of the death of Archimedes which suggests that he may have been killed while attempting to surrender to a Roman soldier. According to this story, Archimedes was carrying mathematical instruments, and was killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable items."
In both of these accounts, we see that Archimedes' work was more important to him than anything, even his personal safety. In one account, he was so engrossed in his work that he was oblivious to everything going on around him; in the other, he tried to salvage his tools to the last. As I pondered this the other day, I realized that this man who let nothing distract him from his life's work. To us it may seem foolish that he didn't abandon his study to preserve his life, but when you look at this incident closely, you see that mathematics was Archimedes' life. It eclipsed everything else therein, even his personal safety in the end.
What a great example for Christians! Archimedes let nothing distract him from his mission, just as Paul exhorts us in 2 Tim. 2:4, "No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." Furthermore, something was more important to him than life itself...another great example for us. Paul said in Acts 20:24, "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." To Paul, the word of God was more important than life, just as mathematics was for Archimedes. If a Greek scholar will put his thirst for mathematical truth before his life, shouldn't we also put the word of God, the absolute truth (John 17:17), before ours?
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Dealing with Your Parents, or A Story of Three Kings
(Transcription of a message preached at Faith-Grace Vietnamese Baptist Church, Stone Mountain, GA; 13 July 2014)
Text: 2 Chronicles 29:1-11
In preparing this message, I was amazed yet again about how much the Bible has to help young people. Did you know that an entire book of the Bible is aimed at a young person? Look at Proverbs 1:1, 4: “The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel…To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.” Many young people have the mistaken idea that the Bible is a book for grown ups. That’s a big mistake. Paul told his dear friend Timothy, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
One of the biggest issues in any young person’s life is how to deal with two sets of people: (1) his peers, or friends; and (2) even more importantly, his parents. The Bible is where you need to turn first to learn what God expects of you as a young person still at home and under your parents’ authority. The Bible, especially the old testament, has plenty to say about this, if we will take the time to study through it.
The portion of scripture I’d like us to consider is from one of the historical books of the old testament (Joshua-Esther): 2 Chronicles. This book is a record of kings’ reigns, mainly the kings of Judah after Israel splits in two after Solomon’s death, which we talked about in one of my previous visits, if you remember. Three kings show up in the last chapters of this book that, in my opinion, teach us some great lessons about how to deal with our parents.
Let’s begin with the passage we read earlier. Here we meet a man named Hezekiah, who, for the record, is one of the greatest kings of Israel; the greatest, according to scripture as to his faith in God. Look at 2 Kings 18:5, “He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.”
To me, that’s an amazing statement. The kings of Judah after him would include the devout king Josiah, and the kings of Judah before him would include David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14--sought; Acts 13:22--found). But according to God, neither of these men trusted God like Hezekiah did. One of the major events in Hezekiah’s reign was when the greatest army in the world at the time, the army of the Assyrians, invaded Israel and surrounded the capital city, Jerusalem. Hezekiah’s army was very weak compared to the invaders, yet he trusted God for deliverance, and do you remember what happened? One angel went out at night and killed 185,000 of the invaders’ leaders and best soldiers (2 Chron. 32:21). David and Josiah never faced such overwhelming odds: David had a great army once he became king, and Josiah was never invaded in 31 years. So Hezekiah stands out among all the kings of Israel for his faith…
But did you know that he had a wicked father? His father’s name was Ahaz, and you can read about his rule in 2 Chron. 28. It’s an awful story. Ahaz turned away from the God of his father, Jotham, and grandfather, Uzziah, both good kings overall. He desecrates God’s temple with a pagan altar and by marring some of the temple furniture used to worship God. In the end, he even shuts the temple down altogether. A very bad man! Destined to have a bad son, right? Highly likely, it would seem.
But not the case, praise the Lord. No sooner is the man dead and his son, Hezekiah, steps forward as the new king, and in the first month that he’s king, he opens the doors of the temple! What a shock that must have been to everyone. They probably thought that Ahaz’s son would have been even worse than Ahaz, growing up like he did. But just the opposite happens. Why do you think that is? I’d like to give you my thoughts on it, and use this relationship (Ahaz-Hezekiah) and Hezekiah’s relationship with his son, Manasseh, to show you three things God expects of young people regarding their parents.
1. The first thing I see about Hezekiah is his submission to his father. His father was a very bad man, perhaps one of the worst men the southern kingdom ever produced, because he led the entire nation into worshipping false gods, even in the temple of God itself. At some point, Hezekiah comes to believe in the true God of Israel. He was nine years old when his father took the throne from his good father, Jotham, so maybe Jotham’s example inspired the young boy. We don’t know. But in the sixteen years that followed, Hezekiah chose, at some point, not to go after false gods, but cleave to the LORD, despite what his father was doing. Nevertheless, he didn’t rebel against his father, but continued to do what his father told him to do. But when his father was gone, and he was in charge, he bravely stepped forward and set the nation on an entirely different course than the one his father had them on.
In every age, including this one, God expects children to submit to their parents. Let’s look at a few verses aimed at the children of Christian parents. First, Ephesians 6:1-3, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” Next, Colossians 3:20, “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is wellpleasing unto the Lord.” Now, even though these verses are aimed at the children of Christian parents, they really apply to all children. Did you notice that the passage from Ephesians quotes the ten commandments? That is God’s holy law, and Paul tells us in Romans 2 that even if a person or a people don’t have God’s written word, it’s written on their hearts (Rom. 2:14-15). One of those laws is that children should honour their parents (Ex. 20:12)—the fifth commandment, as a matter of fact. If you’ve read the letters of the apostle Paul, you notice that in several passages he lists sins, and at least three of those, he mentions “disobedience to parents” as being very displeasing to God, for all families, not just Christian ones.
So Hezekiah had to submit to his wicked father for a time, but God took care of him, just like he’ll take care of you, if you trust him like Hezekiah did. I was not raised by Christian parents. They were churchgoers but they taught me very little about God and set a bad example for me in many ways. But when I came of age, I decided that I really wanted to know God and do whatever he wanted me to do, and it’s the best decision I ever made.
2. That brings me to the second thing that God expects of children. He expects you to learn from your parents lives: both the things they do right, and the things they do wrong. Hezekiah seems to be great example of a young person who learned from the bad things his father did and decided to go the opposite direction. A very wise child! He saw, I believe, that the way his father was living was not working. Something was deeply wrong, he thought, and he wanted to know why. I believe that led him into the arms of God, through his grandfather’s example or his own search, or both.
Now, God also expects young people to learn from the good example of their parents. This brings another character into this drama: Hezekiah’s oldest son, Manasseh. Manasseh was a miracle baby, in a way, since he was born after God miraculously healed Hezekiah from a deadly illness. But sadly, he turns out to the worst king of Judah, even worse than his grandfather Ahaz. But why, you may ask? He had such a good father. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Here’s a boy, Hezekiah, with a wicked daddy, who turns out great, and here’s a boy, Manasseh, with a righteous father, Hezekiah, who turns out awful. What is going on?! Well, the answer is simpler than you might think. Every child, no matter who his parents are, decides his own course in life. He decides whether he will learn from his parents’ successes and mistakes, like Hezekiah did, and benefit from that, or whether he’ll ignore them like Manasseh and suffer. Manasseh ends up losing his power and carried away in chains to imprisonment in a foreign country (Babylon). And there’s been many a man like him that ignored the good example of his parents, even Christian parents, and ends up in jail, maybe even overseas.
Do you see how important this time in your life is, and why it’s so important for you to know what the Bible says about this stuff? Psalm 119:105 says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” It’s almost impossible not to stumble in the dark without a light, and that’s what this precious Book is. I didn’t start reading it until I was 18, and I wish I had started far earlier than that. My two oldest children started reading the Bible when they were 4 or 5, and God’s truth is already being laid up in their hearts, 13 years before it was in mine. One of the first things God taught me after my salvation was, not surprisingly, to obey and respect my parents. It’s wonderful how that desire, which was not very strong at all before, sprung up in my heart, and it was something I wanted to do rather than had to do. If you truly come to know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, he can and will produce the same desires in you, if you allow him to, and the results are wonderful. I know that my parents saw the change in my attitude toward them, and I believe that God worked on their hearts through it.
3. The last thing I’d like to mention, in closing, that God expects of young people, I’ve touched on already, but would like to emphasize: following your parents. It’s natural for you to do so, but you have to first submit to them, learn from their examples, then decide to follow them where they are right. Look at Ephesians 5 this time, verse 1: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.” So it’s natural for children to follow their parents, and the parent-child relationship is so critical because of that. God tells his children, those who have trusted in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, to follow him, because its’ the natural thing to do. But God, unlike our earthly parents, is perfect and sets a perfect example. But since our parents are sinners just like us, we have to study the Bible and compare their lives to it, just like wise King Hezekiah did, and decide what and what not to follow. As a parent, it’s very rewarding to see my children follow the right things I do, but it’s a grief to see them pick up on my faults. My challenge to any parents present is to think about this and be very careful about your walk and example. You cannot set a perfect example for your kids, but you can try, and where you come short, God can use that to show them that you too are a sinner in need of God’s grace, like they are.
So, in closing, I’d like to thank God for the lessons that we can learn from men like Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Manasseh on how to deal with our parents. The Bible is the most holy and the most practical book that you will ever read, and I encourage you to get as deeply in it as you can. Your leaders here, if not your parents themselves, can help you with your understanding of it, either to come to know the Lord personally, or having done that, to grow in grace and knowledge and enjoy the happiest of lives, as young person and as an adult. Thank you so much for your attention, and God bless you all.
Text: 2 Chronicles 29:1-11
In preparing this message, I was amazed yet again about how much the Bible has to help young people. Did you know that an entire book of the Bible is aimed at a young person? Look at Proverbs 1:1, 4: “The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel…To give subtilty to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion.” Many young people have the mistaken idea that the Bible is a book for grown ups. That’s a big mistake. Paul told his dear friend Timothy, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).
One of the biggest issues in any young person’s life is how to deal with two sets of people: (1) his peers, or friends; and (2) even more importantly, his parents. The Bible is where you need to turn first to learn what God expects of you as a young person still at home and under your parents’ authority. The Bible, especially the old testament, has plenty to say about this, if we will take the time to study through it.
The portion of scripture I’d like us to consider is from one of the historical books of the old testament (Joshua-Esther): 2 Chronicles. This book is a record of kings’ reigns, mainly the kings of Judah after Israel splits in two after Solomon’s death, which we talked about in one of my previous visits, if you remember. Three kings show up in the last chapters of this book that, in my opinion, teach us some great lessons about how to deal with our parents.
Let’s begin with the passage we read earlier. Here we meet a man named Hezekiah, who, for the record, is one of the greatest kings of Israel; the greatest, according to scripture as to his faith in God. Look at 2 Kings 18:5, “He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.”
To me, that’s an amazing statement. The kings of Judah after him would include the devout king Josiah, and the kings of Judah before him would include David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14--sought; Acts 13:22--found). But according to God, neither of these men trusted God like Hezekiah did. One of the major events in Hezekiah’s reign was when the greatest army in the world at the time, the army of the Assyrians, invaded Israel and surrounded the capital city, Jerusalem. Hezekiah’s army was very weak compared to the invaders, yet he trusted God for deliverance, and do you remember what happened? One angel went out at night and killed 185,000 of the invaders’ leaders and best soldiers (2 Chron. 32:21). David and Josiah never faced such overwhelming odds: David had a great army once he became king, and Josiah was never invaded in 31 years. So Hezekiah stands out among all the kings of Israel for his faith…
But did you know that he had a wicked father? His father’s name was Ahaz, and you can read about his rule in 2 Chron. 28. It’s an awful story. Ahaz turned away from the God of his father, Jotham, and grandfather, Uzziah, both good kings overall. He desecrates God’s temple with a pagan altar and by marring some of the temple furniture used to worship God. In the end, he even shuts the temple down altogether. A very bad man! Destined to have a bad son, right? Highly likely, it would seem.
But not the case, praise the Lord. No sooner is the man dead and his son, Hezekiah, steps forward as the new king, and in the first month that he’s king, he opens the doors of the temple! What a shock that must have been to everyone. They probably thought that Ahaz’s son would have been even worse than Ahaz, growing up like he did. But just the opposite happens. Why do you think that is? I’d like to give you my thoughts on it, and use this relationship (Ahaz-Hezekiah) and Hezekiah’s relationship with his son, Manasseh, to show you three things God expects of young people regarding their parents.
1. The first thing I see about Hezekiah is his submission to his father. His father was a very bad man, perhaps one of the worst men the southern kingdom ever produced, because he led the entire nation into worshipping false gods, even in the temple of God itself. At some point, Hezekiah comes to believe in the true God of Israel. He was nine years old when his father took the throne from his good father, Jotham, so maybe Jotham’s example inspired the young boy. We don’t know. But in the sixteen years that followed, Hezekiah chose, at some point, not to go after false gods, but cleave to the LORD, despite what his father was doing. Nevertheless, he didn’t rebel against his father, but continued to do what his father told him to do. But when his father was gone, and he was in charge, he bravely stepped forward and set the nation on an entirely different course than the one his father had them on.
In every age, including this one, God expects children to submit to their parents. Let’s look at a few verses aimed at the children of Christian parents. First, Ephesians 6:1-3, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” Next, Colossians 3:20, “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is wellpleasing unto the Lord.” Now, even though these verses are aimed at the children of Christian parents, they really apply to all children. Did you notice that the passage from Ephesians quotes the ten commandments? That is God’s holy law, and Paul tells us in Romans 2 that even if a person or a people don’t have God’s written word, it’s written on their hearts (Rom. 2:14-15). One of those laws is that children should honour their parents (Ex. 20:12)—the fifth commandment, as a matter of fact. If you’ve read the letters of the apostle Paul, you notice that in several passages he lists sins, and at least three of those, he mentions “disobedience to parents” as being very displeasing to God, for all families, not just Christian ones.
So Hezekiah had to submit to his wicked father for a time, but God took care of him, just like he’ll take care of you, if you trust him like Hezekiah did. I was not raised by Christian parents. They were churchgoers but they taught me very little about God and set a bad example for me in many ways. But when I came of age, I decided that I really wanted to know God and do whatever he wanted me to do, and it’s the best decision I ever made.
2. That brings me to the second thing that God expects of children. He expects you to learn from your parents lives: both the things they do right, and the things they do wrong. Hezekiah seems to be great example of a young person who learned from the bad things his father did and decided to go the opposite direction. A very wise child! He saw, I believe, that the way his father was living was not working. Something was deeply wrong, he thought, and he wanted to know why. I believe that led him into the arms of God, through his grandfather’s example or his own search, or both.
Now, God also expects young people to learn from the good example of their parents. This brings another character into this drama: Hezekiah’s oldest son, Manasseh. Manasseh was a miracle baby, in a way, since he was born after God miraculously healed Hezekiah from a deadly illness. But sadly, he turns out to the worst king of Judah, even worse than his grandfather Ahaz. But why, you may ask? He had such a good father. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Here’s a boy, Hezekiah, with a wicked daddy, who turns out great, and here’s a boy, Manasseh, with a righteous father, Hezekiah, who turns out awful. What is going on?! Well, the answer is simpler than you might think. Every child, no matter who his parents are, decides his own course in life. He decides whether he will learn from his parents’ successes and mistakes, like Hezekiah did, and benefit from that, or whether he’ll ignore them like Manasseh and suffer. Manasseh ends up losing his power and carried away in chains to imprisonment in a foreign country (Babylon). And there’s been many a man like him that ignored the good example of his parents, even Christian parents, and ends up in jail, maybe even overseas.
Do you see how important this time in your life is, and why it’s so important for you to know what the Bible says about this stuff? Psalm 119:105 says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” It’s almost impossible not to stumble in the dark without a light, and that’s what this precious Book is. I didn’t start reading it until I was 18, and I wish I had started far earlier than that. My two oldest children started reading the Bible when they were 4 or 5, and God’s truth is already being laid up in their hearts, 13 years before it was in mine. One of the first things God taught me after my salvation was, not surprisingly, to obey and respect my parents. It’s wonderful how that desire, which was not very strong at all before, sprung up in my heart, and it was something I wanted to do rather than had to do. If you truly come to know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, he can and will produce the same desires in you, if you allow him to, and the results are wonderful. I know that my parents saw the change in my attitude toward them, and I believe that God worked on their hearts through it.
3. The last thing I’d like to mention, in closing, that God expects of young people, I’ve touched on already, but would like to emphasize: following your parents. It’s natural for you to do so, but you have to first submit to them, learn from their examples, then decide to follow them where they are right. Look at Ephesians 5 this time, verse 1: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.” So it’s natural for children to follow their parents, and the parent-child relationship is so critical because of that. God tells his children, those who have trusted in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, to follow him, because its’ the natural thing to do. But God, unlike our earthly parents, is perfect and sets a perfect example. But since our parents are sinners just like us, we have to study the Bible and compare their lives to it, just like wise King Hezekiah did, and decide what and what not to follow. As a parent, it’s very rewarding to see my children follow the right things I do, but it’s a grief to see them pick up on my faults. My challenge to any parents present is to think about this and be very careful about your walk and example. You cannot set a perfect example for your kids, but you can try, and where you come short, God can use that to show them that you too are a sinner in need of God’s grace, like they are.
So, in closing, I’d like to thank God for the lessons that we can learn from men like Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Manasseh on how to deal with our parents. The Bible is the most holy and the most practical book that you will ever read, and I encourage you to get as deeply in it as you can. Your leaders here, if not your parents themselves, can help you with your understanding of it, either to come to know the Lord personally, or having done that, to grow in grace and knowledge and enjoy the happiest of lives, as young person and as an adult. Thank you so much for your attention, and God bless you all.
The Other Side of Hell
Like it or not, hell is a revelation of the love, mercy, and grace of God, indeed all of his beneficent attributes. God does not suspend one attribute when exercising another. He always acts in perfect unity (cf. A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy for further discussion of this truth). For example, when God saves a sinner, he does not suspend his righteousness to do so. Paul’s epistle to the Romans (3:24-26) reveals that God never forgave or saved anyone, in either testament, without a righteous basis, which we now know to be the cross of Christ. Old testament saints were saved “on credit,” if you will, until Christ came and actually paid for their sins in full (animal blood was only a temporary, typical expedient; cf. Heb. 10:4). So at Calvary, God not only shows love, mercy, and grace, but also righteousness and wrath. Sin angers God (Ps. 7:11) and requires punishment for this wrath to be pacified (cf. Esther 7:10).
As for hell, the element of love, mercy, and grace associated with it may not be obvious, but it’s there nonetheless. It must be, since, as stated above, God always acts in unity; so even where sinners suffer the pangs of hell, there is something of God’s beneficence present. “How?!” you may ask.
Think about this: what is God to do with his creatures who, after repeated attempts at reconciliation, refuse him and insist upon remaining his enemies? Welcome them into heaven? Save them against their will? Then they’d be robots and not men! Similarly, what is he to do with creatures like Satan, devils, and wicked men who go from wickedness to greater wickedness? Didn’t the world rejoice when Hitler died? What if God had let that terrible little man live 969 years, like he did the patriarch Methuselah (yes, 969 literal years of 360 days apiece)? The whole world would’ve been destroyed, most likely. FYI, large reserves of deadly instruments were found after the Third Reich fell, indicating that the 11-12 million killed in Nazi genocides (Russians, Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, sodomites, et al.) was only the beginning.
In his beneficence, God created hell to contain Satan, his spiritual minions (Mt. 25:41), wicked men, and the impenitent (Rom. 2:4-5) from doing further damage to themselves and others. Dear reader, our hearts have the potential for desperate wickedness (Jer. 17:9), and without God’s beneficent restraints, we would all live like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Amin (never repented), and Genghis Khan (enjoyed hearing his enemies suffer) and self-destruct after killing everyone around us, a la Littleton, Virginia Tech, etc. The tongue is set on fire of hell (James 3:6) because the heart of man is! Only a beneficent God stands in its way of absolute destruction (Rom. 3:15-17).
Thank you, wonderful Lord, for creating hell! You desire all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but you’re far too righteous to justify the impenitent and go against their free will to reject you. You’re also kind to those who choose you by containing forever those who will not submit to you and would, if they could, harm you and those who love you forever. Beware the heart of man!
I’d like to close this essay with a poem from C.S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress. I think that this poem captures both sides of hell as discussed above and was my partial inspiration for this essay (along Tozer, etc.):
‘God in His mercy made
The fixèd pains of Hell.
That misery might be stayed,
God in His mercy made
Eternal bounds and bade
Its waves no further swell.
God in His mercy made
The fixèd pains of Hell.’
Friday, August 1, 2014
The Ministries of Angels and Devils in the Church Age
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In the church age, following the close of Paul's ministry, angels are invisible (Acts 27:23; Col. 2:18), passive, and learning (Eph. 3:10). Devils in this age (post-Acts 19:16) are invisible, active, and teaching (1 Tim. 4:1). The more I study dispensational truth, however, the more skeptical I am of accounts of visible satanic activity in the church age. It's clear from 1 Timothy 4:1 and other passages that evil spirits are at work in this age. But I'm doubting more and more that they manifest themselves visibly in this age, as movies and even testimonies have alleged (remember 1 Thes. 5:21 and 2 Pt. 1:18-19). While there is no passage in Paul’s epistles that would rule out the possibility of diabolical manifestations, like there is angelic (Col. 2:18), I'm confident that most if not all of the accounts of such things are false. Satan’s primary weapon in this age is spiritual deception (2 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 6:11; 1 Tim. 4:1; etc.). Paul didn’t give the body of Christ any instructions on how to exorcise devils, like he did the kingdom apostles (cf. Mt. 17:18-21), but he did exhort us to "put on the whole armour of God" (Eph. 6:11, 13), which is spiritual, that we may stand against spiritual wickedness (Eph 6:12). His emphasis is on defensive warfare in this age, rather than offensive (i.e. exorcisms), which is more characteristic of the kingdom program (Mt. 4:24, 10:1-8; Luke 10:17-20; Acts 5:16, 8:7). One final thought is that occupation with alleged visible manifestations of angelic and diabolical activity can blind believers to the true activities of angels and devils in this age, as spelled out for us through Paul, and hinder our occupation with the Lord Jesus Christ and his body (Col. 2:18-19).
Special thanks to Bros. David O'Steen and Eli Caldwell for their contributions to this post.
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Saturday, July 12, 2014
Pride, Humility, and Humiliation
(Transcribed from a lesson taught at Landmark Baptist Church on June 29, 2014)
Text: Acts 8:26-33
The word “humiliation,” which triggered this study, appears only once in the AV, in Acts 8:33, and the context is Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Philip, likely the evangelist rather than the apostle, is speaking with the Ethiopian eunuch, who reads a passage from Is. 53:7-8, with slightly different wording in Acts 8:32-33. Since the eunuch obviously doesn’t change the scripture, I believe that Acts 8:33 sheds light on the sense of Is. 53:8. What Isaiah is describing is interpreted as “humiliation” in Acts 8, and since this word only appears once in scripture, it’s worth a second look. Also, it made me think about humility: is it the same as humiliation or different? Likely different, since it’s a different word, but also likely similar, since it’s a similar word. Finally, I thought about pride, the opposite of humility, and a vice rather than a virtue…no matter what the world says!
I believe that there is a progression from this vice, which we’re all born with, to humility, which is a divine virtue and part of our new nature (Col. 3:12), and finally to humiliation. I see humiliation as even deeper than humility, and although it’s not so much a grace as an experience. We’ll begin with the terrible vice of pride.
PRIDE
Pride is part of the sinful nature that we inherited from Adam. Job 41:34 says that leviathan, another name for Satan (Is. 27:1; Rev. 12:9), is “a king over all the children of pride.” Now, this could apply to those who reject God in the great tribulation period, which the book of Job typifies (42 chapters/42 months), but I think that it fits natural men in general, since we’re born with this vice woven deeply into our spiritual constitution.
Lucifer fell through pride (Ezek. 28:17), and Adam and Eve, his successors as regents of earth, were made with the possibility of pride (cf. Gen. 3:6; 1 John 2:16). Note the revelation of their capacity for pride in Gen. 3:5-6. Satan offers them knowledge that God had withheld from them. They wanted more than God had chosen to give them, just like Lucifer before them (Is. 14:14). They, like Lucifer, wanted a glory that God withheld for himself.
I think that the very first chapters of scripture help us understand the essence of pride. Pride is wanting glory for yourself that God reserves for himself (or to himself). From beginning to end, the great concern of the Bible is the glory of God. Lucifer wanted it for himself, Adam and Eve wanted it for themselves, and all of their offspring, to varying degrees, crave it for themselves, except for one, the Lord Jesus Christ, who divests himself of all glory so that God the Father may ultimately receive universal glory and elect angels and men may rejoice in and even partake of that glory.
Here are some verses that capture the essence of pride:
• Ps. 115:1. Pride is to crave glory for your name, not God’s, as the psalmist longs for here.
• Prov. 25:27. Pride is to “search [your] own glory” rather than God’s.
• Rom. 1:21. Pride is to refuse give God the glory “due unto his name” (Ps. 29:2). Paul reiterates this in vv. 23 and 30 (pride is the root and fruit of man’s devolution).
• Acts 12:22-23. Glory was on the table here, but Herod wants it for himself, not God, and God strikes him down. “Pride goeth before destruction [not just contention], and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18).
A word of clarification on feeling “proud,” with help from C.S. Lewis (broadly paraphrased from the chapter on "Pride" in Mere Christianity (hereafter, MS)), to give us a balanced view of pride’s essence. To say that you’re proud of your children is really saying that you’re pleased with them in the sight of others, not that you value them more than God. It’s simply a figure of speech. It might be better to say, “I’m thankful for…or I’m pleased with…,” but the heart in these cases isn’t wrong like it is when you say therein, “Look at me, and make much of me; I don’t care if God gets any credit or not.”
That’s real pride, folks, and something that must be warred against and mortified in all of its forms. Politicians talk about the “War on Poverty,” but how about a “War on Pride”? Beloved, if you don’t watch out for pride in your life and seek God’s grace to mortify it, it will kill you, i.e. it will steal your spiritual life and growth, to varying degrees.
HUMILITY
The basic nature of natural man is pride. He may “humble” himself or put himself down, but it’s not in a godly sense. There’s a selfish root to it, since he has only the Adamic nature and not the Spirit of God (Jude 19). Paul warns of carnal humility in Col. 2:18 (“a voluntary humility”) and 2:23 (“willworship…humility). So there is indeed a selfish humility.
A few examples:
• Mike Pearl (No Greater Joy Ministries) said that plain people (Amish, Mennonite, et al. ) impressed him as being proud of their humility (pride of grace, vs. pride of face (Prov. 21:4) and pride of race). You must realize that self-deprecation is a covert pride: “I’m such a sinner…I’m so dumb.” But what did you just do in both cases? You called attention to yourself. If you were really humble, you wouldn’t talk about yourself at all, your virtues or your vices.
• Evan Roberts, who was a key figure in the Welsh revival of 1904, was interviewed during the revival and described by the writer as “a man totally unconscious of himself.” What bliss, to forget oneself, even for a moments! what a foretaste of glory, when we’ll lose ourselves in adoration and service to Christ!
• C.S. Lewis asks in MC (paraphrased), what would a humble fellow look like? He’d probably be kind and pleasant and really interested in what you had to say.
o Inattention is pride too. If you really understood your need of people, you’d listen to them intently, lest you miss what God has for you through them. Remember, you have two ears and one mouth, so you should listen twice as much as you speak, right? Wherefore let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath (Jas. 1:19).
Humility, then, is giving up glory—to God and men. It rejoices in God getting the glory, not itself (Ps. 34:1-2; 115:1). Christ gave up the glory he could have rightfully had among men, seeking God’s glory instead. God was glorified by his cross and will be for all eternity, and Christ will share in that glory (Phil. 2:5-11). The same will be true of us, as his children, if we humble ourselves and serve and suffer with Christ (Rom. 8:17-18; 2 Tim. 2:12; etc.)
By comparing Col. 3:12 and Phil. 2:3, we see that humility equates to lowliness, i.e., taking the lower position before God and men. Jesus Christ’s entire life was one of humility, from cradle to grave. Take his last days for example: he (1) rides into Jerusalem, as the son of David, on an ass-colt (Zech. 9:9), not a horse (symbol of pride; Ps. 20:7); (2) dines at a healed leper’s house (Mt. 26:6); (3) washes his ambitious apostles’ feet as they argue about “which of them should be accounted the greatest” (Luke 22:24) and overlook the common courtesy due him (Luke 7:44); (4) forgives Israel on the cross; and (5) allows the two thieves to revile him (Mt. 26:44; Mk. 14:32), then forgives the penitent one, promising him eternal glory (Luke 23:43).
That same humility resides in us by the Spirit, and should be manifest in our lives per Phil. 2:3. Besides lowliness, notice two other words in the verse: (1) strife--: Solomon said that “Only by pride cometh contention (Prov. 13:10); and (2) vainglory—a composite of vanity and glory; vainly seeking one’s own glory, like we saw in Prov. 25:27. That’s pride.
I used to look at “esteeming others better than [myself]” like this: even if you were better than someone, say more spiritual, you’d try to look at others as better than you. But God wants us to esteem others better than us, not as if we’re pretending, but in truth, since they are, in reality, better than us. How is that? Well, when you consider that all of us are members of one another (Eph. 4:25), and that “the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee” (1 Cor. 12:21), it makes sense: I can truly esteem Bro. John Doe as better than myself, because he IS—God has made him something different than me, something that I need to be complete, and if I ignore or, even worse, despise him, I will miss out on part of the life of Christ.
O, if believers only understood how much they need each other, not just in theory, but in fact! Understanding how the body operates, in practice, will drive you to the body to complete yourself. Just as you feel a longing to marry and complete yourself in the physical sense, don’t you feel the same longing for other believers to, in a practical sense, complete yourself spiritually? In a positional sense, you are complete (Col. 2:10), but notice the verse before that—the completion is connected with a body, which is called “the fullness of him that filleth all in all” in Eph. 1:22-23. You cannot be practically complete in Christ without the body, folks, and I believe that the more tightly compacted you become with the other members of the body, the more you will personally experience and demonstrate the life of Christ for God’s glory.
Some fine books have been written on humility. I see Andrew Murray’s in Christian bookstores from time to time in the classics section (you can get it at LifeWay), but the one that book I’ve read on it I highly recommend: Humility, by C.J. Mahaney. Mahaney is a Reformed (Calvinistic) Baptist pastor in Louisville. This is an excellent treatise on humility that gives you, from cover to cover, practical tips on fostering humility in your life, with God’s help. Why don’t these limelight Christian celebrities write books on humility? Easy, they’re proud. Humility doesn’t make money. It mortifies the self-life and puts God in the limelight, not you.
Only God know the heart, but when a man doesn’t put an emphasis on humility, something is wrong with him. D.M. Lloyd-Jones, the famous British preacher in the mid-twentieth century, said that the most dangerous man is the man who emphasizes the wrong things. There’s a lot of truth to that. That’s how Satan got Eve and Adam. He emphasized what God was apparently withholding from them, with not a word about God’s goodness, righteousness, and truth (Eph. 5:9), which were at back of God’s command for them to refrain from eating the forbidden fruit.
HUMILIATION
As we grow in the Lord, pride is mortified and replaced with humility. But there’s an even deeper work that God wishes to do, I believe, and that’s the work of humiliation. Christ not only “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8), but he was humiliated as well, according to Acts 8:33. He initiated the humbling, but I think that God initiated the humiliation. It’s a two-sided thing. One side is man’s—humility. The other side is God’s—humiliation. On Christ’s side, he puts himself down. On God’s side, he puts Christ down. The unity is that Christ submits to God’s ordering. Look at 1 Pt. 2:21-25, which also cites Is. 53 also and may shed even more light on Is. 53:8/Acts 8:33, esp. v. 23. Christ did not stand up for himself (humility); he let God put him down (humiliation) for his own righteous purpose or judgment.
The glorious outcome of all of this: Christ subjected himself to God’s judgment by bearing men’s sins like a transgressor, and God promptly took him out of prison (the lower parts of the earth) and judgment by raising him from the dead, proving his righteousness and sinlessness! Note Acts 8:33, “In his humiliation his judgment was taken away…” By being put down at the pleasure of God, God was able to take his judgment away when he raised him from the dead. The resurrection was a universal, eternal testimony to the righteousness of God (for justifying sinners) and Jesus Christ (as the sinless substitute for those sinners); cf. Rom. 3:25.
CONCLUSION
So I think there is scriptural support for the progression I’ve described above: the vice of pride needing mortification by God’s grace and replacement with the virtue of humility. Deepening humility, however, prepares one for humiliation, as seen in the life of Christ. Only a life of steadily going lower can prepare one to properly respond to crises where God sovereignly puts you down in humiliation, with the ultimate goal of glorifying himself and blessing you through it. I posted on Facebook recently that the competition in Christian circles should not be on who can go the highest (visible results, attendance, fame, etc.), but on who can go the lowest. Didn’t Christ say that “whosover will be great among you, let him be your minister” (Mt. 20:26)? F.B. Meyer said that he thought God’s gifts were waiting for him as he attained higher levels of spirituality, but he later realized that God’s gifts were waiting for him as he stooped to lower levels of humility (from One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp). That must be our mission, beloved, since the life that’s in us wants to carry us lower and lower, just as it carried our Saviour lower and lower, to the point that he looked like one under God’s judgment, but ultimately through that shown to be righteous.
I’d like to close with an old poem by a French preacher named Theodore Monod, entitled, “None of Self and All of Thee.”
Oh, the bitter shame and sorrow
That a time could ever be,
When I proudly said to Jesus,
“All of self, and none of Thee.”
Yet He found me; I beheld Him
Bleeding on th’ accursed tree,
And my wistful heart said faintly,
“Some of self, and some of Thee.”
Day by day his tender mercy,
Helping, healing, full, and free,
Brought me lower while I whispered,
“Less of self, and more of Thee.”
Higher than the highest heaven,
Deeper than the deepest sea,
Lord, Thy love at last has conquered:
“None of self, and all of Thee.”
Text: Acts 8:26-33
The word “humiliation,” which triggered this study, appears only once in the AV, in Acts 8:33, and the context is Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Philip, likely the evangelist rather than the apostle, is speaking with the Ethiopian eunuch, who reads a passage from Is. 53:7-8, with slightly different wording in Acts 8:32-33. Since the eunuch obviously doesn’t change the scripture, I believe that Acts 8:33 sheds light on the sense of Is. 53:8. What Isaiah is describing is interpreted as “humiliation” in Acts 8, and since this word only appears once in scripture, it’s worth a second look. Also, it made me think about humility: is it the same as humiliation or different? Likely different, since it’s a different word, but also likely similar, since it’s a similar word. Finally, I thought about pride, the opposite of humility, and a vice rather than a virtue…no matter what the world says!
I believe that there is a progression from this vice, which we’re all born with, to humility, which is a divine virtue and part of our new nature (Col. 3:12), and finally to humiliation. I see humiliation as even deeper than humility, and although it’s not so much a grace as an experience. We’ll begin with the terrible vice of pride.
PRIDE
Pride is part of the sinful nature that we inherited from Adam. Job 41:34 says that leviathan, another name for Satan (Is. 27:1; Rev. 12:9), is “a king over all the children of pride.” Now, this could apply to those who reject God in the great tribulation period, which the book of Job typifies (42 chapters/42 months), but I think that it fits natural men in general, since we’re born with this vice woven deeply into our spiritual constitution.
Lucifer fell through pride (Ezek. 28:17), and Adam and Eve, his successors as regents of earth, were made with the possibility of pride (cf. Gen. 3:6; 1 John 2:16). Note the revelation of their capacity for pride in Gen. 3:5-6. Satan offers them knowledge that God had withheld from them. They wanted more than God had chosen to give them, just like Lucifer before them (Is. 14:14). They, like Lucifer, wanted a glory that God withheld for himself.
I think that the very first chapters of scripture help us understand the essence of pride. Pride is wanting glory for yourself that God reserves for himself (or to himself). From beginning to end, the great concern of the Bible is the glory of God. Lucifer wanted it for himself, Adam and Eve wanted it for themselves, and all of their offspring, to varying degrees, crave it for themselves, except for one, the Lord Jesus Christ, who divests himself of all glory so that God the Father may ultimately receive universal glory and elect angels and men may rejoice in and even partake of that glory.
Here are some verses that capture the essence of pride:
• Ps. 115:1. Pride is to crave glory for your name, not God’s, as the psalmist longs for here.
• Prov. 25:27. Pride is to “search [your] own glory” rather than God’s.
• Rom. 1:21. Pride is to refuse give God the glory “due unto his name” (Ps. 29:2). Paul reiterates this in vv. 23 and 30 (pride is the root and fruit of man’s devolution).
• Acts 12:22-23. Glory was on the table here, but Herod wants it for himself, not God, and God strikes him down. “Pride goeth before destruction [not just contention], and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18).
A word of clarification on feeling “proud,” with help from C.S. Lewis (broadly paraphrased from the chapter on "Pride" in Mere Christianity (hereafter, MS)), to give us a balanced view of pride’s essence. To say that you’re proud of your children is really saying that you’re pleased with them in the sight of others, not that you value them more than God. It’s simply a figure of speech. It might be better to say, “I’m thankful for…or I’m pleased with…,” but the heart in these cases isn’t wrong like it is when you say therein, “Look at me, and make much of me; I don’t care if God gets any credit or not.”
That’s real pride, folks, and something that must be warred against and mortified in all of its forms. Politicians talk about the “War on Poverty,” but how about a “War on Pride”? Beloved, if you don’t watch out for pride in your life and seek God’s grace to mortify it, it will kill you, i.e. it will steal your spiritual life and growth, to varying degrees.
HUMILITY
The basic nature of natural man is pride. He may “humble” himself or put himself down, but it’s not in a godly sense. There’s a selfish root to it, since he has only the Adamic nature and not the Spirit of God (Jude 19). Paul warns of carnal humility in Col. 2:18 (“a voluntary humility”) and 2:23 (“willworship…humility). So there is indeed a selfish humility.
A few examples:
• Mike Pearl (No Greater Joy Ministries) said that plain people (Amish, Mennonite, et al. ) impressed him as being proud of their humility (pride of grace, vs. pride of face (Prov. 21:4) and pride of race). You must realize that self-deprecation is a covert pride: “I’m such a sinner…I’m so dumb.” But what did you just do in both cases? You called attention to yourself. If you were really humble, you wouldn’t talk about yourself at all, your virtues or your vices.
• Evan Roberts, who was a key figure in the Welsh revival of 1904, was interviewed during the revival and described by the writer as “a man totally unconscious of himself.” What bliss, to forget oneself, even for a moments! what a foretaste of glory, when we’ll lose ourselves in adoration and service to Christ!
• C.S. Lewis asks in MC (paraphrased), what would a humble fellow look like? He’d probably be kind and pleasant and really interested in what you had to say.
o Inattention is pride too. If you really understood your need of people, you’d listen to them intently, lest you miss what God has for you through them. Remember, you have two ears and one mouth, so you should listen twice as much as you speak, right? Wherefore let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath (Jas. 1:19).
Humility, then, is giving up glory—to God and men. It rejoices in God getting the glory, not itself (Ps. 34:1-2; 115:1). Christ gave up the glory he could have rightfully had among men, seeking God’s glory instead. God was glorified by his cross and will be for all eternity, and Christ will share in that glory (Phil. 2:5-11). The same will be true of us, as his children, if we humble ourselves and serve and suffer with Christ (Rom. 8:17-18; 2 Tim. 2:12; etc.)
By comparing Col. 3:12 and Phil. 2:3, we see that humility equates to lowliness, i.e., taking the lower position before God and men. Jesus Christ’s entire life was one of humility, from cradle to grave. Take his last days for example: he (1) rides into Jerusalem, as the son of David, on an ass-colt (Zech. 9:9), not a horse (symbol of pride; Ps. 20:7); (2) dines at a healed leper’s house (Mt. 26:6); (3) washes his ambitious apostles’ feet as they argue about “which of them should be accounted the greatest” (Luke 22:24) and overlook the common courtesy due him (Luke 7:44); (4) forgives Israel on the cross; and (5) allows the two thieves to revile him (Mt. 26:44; Mk. 14:32), then forgives the penitent one, promising him eternal glory (Luke 23:43).
That same humility resides in us by the Spirit, and should be manifest in our lives per Phil. 2:3. Besides lowliness, notice two other words in the verse: (1) strife--: Solomon said that “Only by pride cometh contention (Prov. 13:10); and (2) vainglory—a composite of vanity and glory; vainly seeking one’s own glory, like we saw in Prov. 25:27. That’s pride.
I used to look at “esteeming others better than [myself]” like this: even if you were better than someone, say more spiritual, you’d try to look at others as better than you. But God wants us to esteem others better than us, not as if we’re pretending, but in truth, since they are, in reality, better than us. How is that? Well, when you consider that all of us are members of one another (Eph. 4:25), and that “the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee” (1 Cor. 12:21), it makes sense: I can truly esteem Bro. John Doe as better than myself, because he IS—God has made him something different than me, something that I need to be complete, and if I ignore or, even worse, despise him, I will miss out on part of the life of Christ.
O, if believers only understood how much they need each other, not just in theory, but in fact! Understanding how the body operates, in practice, will drive you to the body to complete yourself. Just as you feel a longing to marry and complete yourself in the physical sense, don’t you feel the same longing for other believers to, in a practical sense, complete yourself spiritually? In a positional sense, you are complete (Col. 2:10), but notice the verse before that—the completion is connected with a body, which is called “the fullness of him that filleth all in all” in Eph. 1:22-23. You cannot be practically complete in Christ without the body, folks, and I believe that the more tightly compacted you become with the other members of the body, the more you will personally experience and demonstrate the life of Christ for God’s glory.
Some fine books have been written on humility. I see Andrew Murray’s in Christian bookstores from time to time in the classics section (you can get it at LifeWay), but the one that book I’ve read on it I highly recommend: Humility, by C.J. Mahaney. Mahaney is a Reformed (Calvinistic) Baptist pastor in Louisville. This is an excellent treatise on humility that gives you, from cover to cover, practical tips on fostering humility in your life, with God’s help. Why don’t these limelight Christian celebrities write books on humility? Easy, they’re proud. Humility doesn’t make money. It mortifies the self-life and puts God in the limelight, not you.
Only God know the heart, but when a man doesn’t put an emphasis on humility, something is wrong with him. D.M. Lloyd-Jones, the famous British preacher in the mid-twentieth century, said that the most dangerous man is the man who emphasizes the wrong things. There’s a lot of truth to that. That’s how Satan got Eve and Adam. He emphasized what God was apparently withholding from them, with not a word about God’s goodness, righteousness, and truth (Eph. 5:9), which were at back of God’s command for them to refrain from eating the forbidden fruit.
HUMILIATION
As we grow in the Lord, pride is mortified and replaced with humility. But there’s an even deeper work that God wishes to do, I believe, and that’s the work of humiliation. Christ not only “humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8), but he was humiliated as well, according to Acts 8:33. He initiated the humbling, but I think that God initiated the humiliation. It’s a two-sided thing. One side is man’s—humility. The other side is God’s—humiliation. On Christ’s side, he puts himself down. On God’s side, he puts Christ down. The unity is that Christ submits to God’s ordering. Look at 1 Pt. 2:21-25, which also cites Is. 53 also and may shed even more light on Is. 53:8/Acts 8:33, esp. v. 23. Christ did not stand up for himself (humility); he let God put him down (humiliation) for his own righteous purpose or judgment.
The glorious outcome of all of this: Christ subjected himself to God’s judgment by bearing men’s sins like a transgressor, and God promptly took him out of prison (the lower parts of the earth) and judgment by raising him from the dead, proving his righteousness and sinlessness! Note Acts 8:33, “In his humiliation his judgment was taken away…” By being put down at the pleasure of God, God was able to take his judgment away when he raised him from the dead. The resurrection was a universal, eternal testimony to the righteousness of God (for justifying sinners) and Jesus Christ (as the sinless substitute for those sinners); cf. Rom. 3:25.
CONCLUSION
So I think there is scriptural support for the progression I’ve described above: the vice of pride needing mortification by God’s grace and replacement with the virtue of humility. Deepening humility, however, prepares one for humiliation, as seen in the life of Christ. Only a life of steadily going lower can prepare one to properly respond to crises where God sovereignly puts you down in humiliation, with the ultimate goal of glorifying himself and blessing you through it. I posted on Facebook recently that the competition in Christian circles should not be on who can go the highest (visible results, attendance, fame, etc.), but on who can go the lowest. Didn’t Christ say that “whosover will be great among you, let him be your minister” (Mt. 20:26)? F.B. Meyer said that he thought God’s gifts were waiting for him as he attained higher levels of spirituality, but he later realized that God’s gifts were waiting for him as he stooped to lower levels of humility (from One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp). That must be our mission, beloved, since the life that’s in us wants to carry us lower and lower, just as it carried our Saviour lower and lower, to the point that he looked like one under God’s judgment, but ultimately through that shown to be righteous.
I’d like to close with an old poem by a French preacher named Theodore Monod, entitled, “None of Self and All of Thee.”
Oh, the bitter shame and sorrow
That a time could ever be,
When I proudly said to Jesus,
“All of self, and none of Thee.”
Yet He found me; I beheld Him
Bleeding on th’ accursed tree,
And my wistful heart said faintly,
“Some of self, and some of Thee.”
Day by day his tender mercy,
Helping, healing, full, and free,
Brought me lower while I whispered,
“Less of self, and more of Thee.”
Higher than the highest heaven,
Deeper than the deepest sea,
Lord, Thy love at last has conquered:
“None of self, and all of Thee.”
Saturday, June 28, 2014
A Tale of Two Tables: Solomon and Nehemiah
In reading through Nehemiah 5 this morning, I was struck by the difference between Nehemiah's table (5:18) and Solomon's, as described in 1 Kings 4:22-23. True, it was an entirely different set of circumstances: on the one hand is Israel's wealthiest monarch at the height of his power; on the other hand is the appointed governor of the feeble Jewish remnant from Babylon. Nonetheless, the last phrase of Neh. 5:18 was very illuminating to me. Nehemiah is very conscious and conscientious that "...the bondage was heavy upon this people." Hence, he is sparing with the amount of food that he accepts for his sustenance and that of those attending him.
I do not think that this was the case with Solomon. When Israel first desired a king to rule over them, the prophet Samuel warned them of the burdens that would accompany such rule (1 Sam. 8). Although those burdens may not be so evident in David's reign, they are deeply felt in Solomon's, as evidenced by the people's complaint through Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:3-4). This is no surprise to me, in light of Solomon's vast projects, even beyond the construction of the temple (e.g. a palace which took 13 years to construct; cf. 1 Kings 7:1; 2 Chron. 8:1). It seems that the people were heavily taxed, though enjoying a general national prosperity (deja vu? Eccl. 1:9-10), and Solomon did nothing to lighten their burdens, nor does his foolish son Rehoboam (1 Kings 12:12-15), with terrible consequences.
Contrarily, Nehemiah makes every effort to ease the remnant's burdens (cf. 5:1ff.), including frugality at his table, with positive consequences. His leadership and example inspire the remnant to complete the great work of reconstucting Jerusalem's walls and provide stability "in troublous times" (Dan. 9:25), in contrast to Solomon's lifestyle, which ultimately severs his nation in two for centuries. I wonder if Solomon ever heeded the counsel that his attendants gave to Rehoboam, "If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them...then they will be thy servants for ever" (1 Kings 12:7)...
I do not think that this was the case with Solomon. When Israel first desired a king to rule over them, the prophet Samuel warned them of the burdens that would accompany such rule (1 Sam. 8). Although those burdens may not be so evident in David's reign, they are deeply felt in Solomon's, as evidenced by the people's complaint through Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:3-4). This is no surprise to me, in light of Solomon's vast projects, even beyond the construction of the temple (e.g. a palace which took 13 years to construct; cf. 1 Kings 7:1; 2 Chron. 8:1). It seems that the people were heavily taxed, though enjoying a general national prosperity (deja vu? Eccl. 1:9-10), and Solomon did nothing to lighten their burdens, nor does his foolish son Rehoboam (1 Kings 12:12-15), with terrible consequences.
Contrarily, Nehemiah makes every effort to ease the remnant's burdens (cf. 5:1ff.), including frugality at his table, with positive consequences. His leadership and example inspire the remnant to complete the great work of reconstucting Jerusalem's walls and provide stability "in troublous times" (Dan. 9:25), in contrast to Solomon's lifestyle, which ultimately severs his nation in two for centuries. I wonder if Solomon ever heeded the counsel that his attendants gave to Rehoboam, "If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them...then they will be thy servants for ever" (1 Kings 12:7)...
A "Sore Thumb" in Nehemiah 3
In reading through Nehemiah 3 this morning, one verse in the chapter stood out, as we say in the States, "like a sore thumb" (noticeably and painfully): verse 5. I will comment on this verse at the close of this, but first, I'd like to provide some background and general thoughts on the chapter as a whole.
The chapter begins with Elashib the high priest and his brethren (v. 1) rising up to begin the work of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, under Nehemiah's oversight. The clear subject of the chapter is the zeal of the Jews (cf. 3:20--"earnestly repaired"), from all stations of life, to complete this great work. Noblemen work (e.g. vv. 14-19), along with goldsmiths (vv. 8, 31-32), apothecaries (v. 8), and merchants (vv. 31-32). Even the two rulers of the city itself get involved (vv. 9, 12), one joined by his daughters! Humility is shown, as well as zeal, where one ruler, Malchiah, willingly chooses to repair the dung gate (v. 14), perhaps the least honourable of the gates.
To make a spiritual application to the church age: just as it took people from all stations of life to build that structure, it takes both leaders and followers to build the structure known as the body of Christ (Eph. 4:8-16)! And just as building that structure took both zeal and humility, building up the body of Christ will require both of those graces as well. A saint may be zealous, but if he's proud, it will hinder him from edifying the body; also, if he is humble and lazy, rather than zealous, the lack of zeal will hinder the building up of the body as well.
What stood out to me in v. 5 is that which concerned the Tekoite nobles--"...but their nobles put not their necks to the work of the Lord." Tekoa was a town in Judah, the home of Amos the prophet (Amos 1:1) and the "wise woman" employed by Joab to influence David (2 Sam. 14:2, 4). For some reason, the nobles from this town refused to support the work of rebuilding the wall, in contrast to everyone around them, and God takes note of it...forever! And I don't think that it's coincidental that this citation occurs in the fifth verse of the chapter, five being strongly associated with death from the beginning to end of scripture (cf. Gen. 5:5, the first recorded death in scripture).
Were the nobles too "high and mighty" to bow their necks to this work? Their subordinates willingly collaborate, repairing not just one, but two sections of the wall (vv. 5, 27), which God also takes note of...forever! What a shame that the nobles would not humble themselves, so that they could be exalted like their subordinates were (Luke 14:11; 18:14)! And finally, what a lesson for us in this day (Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 2 Tim. 3:16-17), to willingly join in the great work of building up the body of Christ, no matter our station in life. Don't let it be said of you, beloved, at the judgment seat of Christ, that you put not your neck unto the work of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58).
The chapter begins with Elashib the high priest and his brethren (v. 1) rising up to begin the work of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, under Nehemiah's oversight. The clear subject of the chapter is the zeal of the Jews (cf. 3:20--"earnestly repaired"), from all stations of life, to complete this great work. Noblemen work (e.g. vv. 14-19), along with goldsmiths (vv. 8, 31-32), apothecaries (v. 8), and merchants (vv. 31-32). Even the two rulers of the city itself get involved (vv. 9, 12), one joined by his daughters! Humility is shown, as well as zeal, where one ruler, Malchiah, willingly chooses to repair the dung gate (v. 14), perhaps the least honourable of the gates.
To make a spiritual application to the church age: just as it took people from all stations of life to build that structure, it takes both leaders and followers to build the structure known as the body of Christ (Eph. 4:8-16)! And just as building that structure took both zeal and humility, building up the body of Christ will require both of those graces as well. A saint may be zealous, but if he's proud, it will hinder him from edifying the body; also, if he is humble and lazy, rather than zealous, the lack of zeal will hinder the building up of the body as well.
What stood out to me in v. 5 is that which concerned the Tekoite nobles--"...but their nobles put not their necks to the work of the Lord." Tekoa was a town in Judah, the home of Amos the prophet (Amos 1:1) and the "wise woman" employed by Joab to influence David (2 Sam. 14:2, 4). For some reason, the nobles from this town refused to support the work of rebuilding the wall, in contrast to everyone around them, and God takes note of it...forever! And I don't think that it's coincidental that this citation occurs in the fifth verse of the chapter, five being strongly associated with death from the beginning to end of scripture (cf. Gen. 5:5, the first recorded death in scripture).
Were the nobles too "high and mighty" to bow their necks to this work? Their subordinates willingly collaborate, repairing not just one, but two sections of the wall (vv. 5, 27), which God also takes note of...forever! What a shame that the nobles would not humble themselves, so that they could be exalted like their subordinates were (Luke 14:11; 18:14)! And finally, what a lesson for us in this day (Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 2 Tim. 3:16-17), to willingly join in the great work of building up the body of Christ, no matter our station in life. Don't let it be said of you, beloved, at the judgment seat of Christ, that you put not your neck unto the work of the Lord (1 Cor. 15:58).
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Some Things that Moved Paul Deeply
(Blog version of a two-part message preached at Bible Believers' Baptist Church, Madison, AL, on 26 May 2014.)
Text: Eph. 4:17-21
There are three words in the Bible that consist of only one letter: a/A, I, and o/O. The first of these is called an article, the second a pronoun, but the third functions as an address in some cases (“O King”; “o man of God”; etc.) and as an exclamation in others (“O that they were wise; “O the depths of the riches..”; etc.). It’s interesting that although “a” or “o” can be lowercase or uppercase in scripture, “I” is always uppercase. There may be nothing to that, but “I” is certainly the part of us that needs to be “lowercase” and not “uppercase.”
The word “O” appears 972 times in scripture, 917 in the old testament (OT), and 55 in the new (NT). [The word “oh” appears 37 times, all in the OT.] Of the NT references, 18 of these are in connection with the apostle Paul, either in the Acts chronology (5) or in his epistles (13). A survey of the usage of “O” throughout scripture shows us that it is an expression connected with deep feeling, almost invariably. Since Paul is our pattern and example in the church age, I think that it behooves us to note the things that moved him deeply and examine ourselves as to whether we share his sentiments. Likely those sentiments, if we share them with him, won’t reach the depth that his did, due to the abundant grace that he received as our pattern, but my assertion in this study is that those sentiments should be there, and if they are not, we should allow God to produce them in us. Scripture warns us against becoming “past feeling” (Eph. 4:19), and although it’s a reference to the Gentiles, it’s possible for Christians to become hardened as well, especially in the last days (1 Tim. 4:1-2).
We’ll look at a total of 11 passages, with brief comments on each.
1. Hindering seekers from hearing the truth (Acts 13:10). On the first leg of Paul’s first missionary journey, the apostle encounters a wicked Jewish sorcerer named Bar-Jesus who attempts to keep Sergius Paulus from hearing the truth. Paul becomes righteously indignant (note “righteousness” and “right”) in the Holy Ghost, and the anger is so deep, that the first word out of his mouth is “O…” It should move us deeply when people, lost or saved, try to hinder others from hearing the truth, since the truth brings us life (John 14:6), sanctification (John 17:17), and spiritual freedom (John 8:32). Christ rebuked the Pharisees for the same thing in Mt. 23:13, “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” Notice the exclamation point. Christ is deeply moved by this sin and pronounces woe on those that commit it, and Bar-Jesus is a solemn example of such woe at the beginning of the church age.
2. Presence of earthly powers (Acts 26:13, 19). In his defense before Agrippa, Paul twice uses “O” in reference to the king, showing the deep feeling produced by this audience. Why the deep feeling, since he was merely an earthly sovereign? Well, all earthly sovereigns “are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:2) and therefore stand in the place of God, and believers should give them the honour due them (Rom. 13:7). If the heathen respect earthly power (cf. 25:26), shouldn’t we much more, who know the Lord that empowered them (1 Pt. 2:13-14)? Luke addresses the “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:1) this way in Acts 1:1, out of respect for his office. If we really believe that these people sit in the place of God, shouldn’t we have a deep sense of awe and respect toward them?
3. Sinners’ self-righteousness (Rom. 2:1-3). In Rom. 1:18-3:20, Paul shows how all men are guilty before God, Gentiles and Jews, and in need of the gospel. Although some may be following the light they have (i.e. creation, conscience, and law), there is a higher light that is the final solution to their sin problem: the gospel of Christ. Paul anticipates men’s arguments, including the self-justification of the “moral” Jew or Gentile (2:1-11). This self-justification, which Paul no doubt has encountered personally many times before writing this epistle, moves him to address such men personally with great feeling in vv. 1 and 3. One can see why since those justifying themselves by condemning others are also guilty of things worthy of condemnation (e.g. 1:29-32). For example, they may not have performed the act of adultery, but secretly lusted after someone else’s wife in their heart or divorced their wife loosely (Mt. 5:27-32). Paul is rightly stirred by their self-righteousness, as other godly men are in the scriptures. For example, Elihu, the mysterious “fourth man” that reproves Job and magnifies God in Job 32-37, is angered by Job’s self-justification and Job’s three friends’ unjust condemnation of him (Job 32:1-3), quite similar to what we see in Rom. 2:1-3. Self-justification should be abhorrent to all of us, since Christ condemns it (Luke 16:15), and rightly so since, compared with God’s absolute holiness, our best works “are as filthy rags” (Is. 64:6). Small wonder then, that Paul addresses such people so strongly, since God is opposed to men’s self-justification, which exalts them instead of him (Luke 7:29-30).
4. His own inner corruption (Rom. 7:24). In this poignant passage, especially vv. 14-25, Paul describes the struggle of the two natures, which begins at regeneration and continues as long as the believer resides in this “body of death” (v. 24). A believer never reaches a point where the sinful nature does not oppose the desires of the new nature to do good (7:21-23), since this counteraction is said to be a “law” (cf. Gal. 5:17). The burden of this perennial struggle evokes a deep groan from the spirit of Paul, which longs to be free from the evil influence of the flesh. Though he cannot escape its presence until death, he has been delivered from its power by a greater law, that of the Spirit now resident in him through salvation (Rom. 8:1-4). What a tremendous comfort that, even though our regenerated spirits are “trapped” within sinful, corruptible flesh, a greater power is available to mortify its influence, the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:16).
5. Men questioning God’s righteousness in election (Rom. 9:20).
Romans 9-11 is Paul’s explanation of dispensational changes associated with the mystery program and their bearing on Jews and Gentiles. Some Jews believe Paul’s gospel (referred to as “the election” in 11:5, 7), while others don’t. Paul reminds his Roman audience, which includes Jews (4:1, 7:1), that being the physical seed of Abraham does not make them children of God (9:7-8). That comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (9:30, 33). Examples of God preferring spiritual seed over physical are provided from the old testament (Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and Esau). If any would question the righteousness of this election due to foreknowledge (v. 11), before any works are done, Paul is further willing to defend it. God decides who he will show mercy to and who he will harden and execute wrath upon, but not capriciously. Note carefully in vv. 11, 22 that doing good and evil are involved. God determines that certain will be blessed and cursed, but it’s not arbitrary. The respective “vessels” (vv. 22-23) have to respond appropriately to get the blessings (belief), or inappropriately to get punished (v. 22). Someone questioning God’s righteousness in all of this evokes deep anger from Paul, who is using all the scripture he can to show how God is right in all aspects of election, in any age.
6. God’s wisdom in saving all men through Israel’s fall (Rom. 11:33). This is one of only two times that Paul uses exclamation points (cf. 2 Cor. 7:11). Here Paul is greatly moved by grasping the wisdom of God’s plan to save all men through Israel’s fall. Although on the surface things look pretty bad for Israel (only a remnant believe Paul’s gospel and the rest are blinded; cf. 11:5-10), God reveals to Paul that their fall brings spiritual riches to the Gentiles (vv. 11-12). But God’s wisdom doesn’t stop there. His intention is not only to save the Gentiles through Israel’s fall, but to conversely use the Gentiles’ salvation to provoke the Jews to jealousy and trusting in Christ themselves (v. 14). When Paul grasps God’s two-sided plan to save all men in this age, as summarized in vv. 30-32, he cannot but burst out in praise for a Being so wise. There are two other places where Paul praises God for his wisdom (Rom. 16:25-27; 1 Tim. 1:17). The greatness of this wisdom should move us deeply and produce praise in our hearts and lips (Ps. 147:5).
7. Allowing unbelieving spouses to depart (1 Cor. 7:16). Paul’s use of “O” in this passage surprised me the most. It is aimed at believing spouses with unbelieving partners. In 1 Cor. 7:15, Paul says that the voluntary departure of an unbelieving partner is a legal divorce, and the believing partner is then free to marry again, in the Lord of course (7:39). It may seem like a strange thing for Paul to be deeply moved about, but it magnifies the importance of peace in the Christian home, if that home and its church is going to be what it ought to. In a sense, he’s saying “Let the unbelieving go; you don’t know whether you’ll save them (cf. 9:22, “…that I may…save some”), and God has called you to peace, which their presence may keep you from. The deep emotion in v. 16, I think, springs from Paul’s desire for the peace God has called all believers to, including those married to unbelieving partners, to be present in believing spouses' lives.
8. 1 Cor. 15:55 (believers’ victory over death). This verse is a free quotation of Hos. 13:14, which refers to the resurrection of Israel at the second coming, but the depth of feeling is retained in Paul’s prophecy here. The verse rings like a challenge to death and the grave, in the assurance of our future glorification. Considering how strong and painful sin is (v. 56), shouldn’t we be deeply moved at the prospect of being completely victorious over it?! As most of us have been taught, trusting Christ as our Saviour delivers us immediately from the penalty of sin, and yielding our members daily to Christ delivers us from the power of sin still latent in our members (Rom. 6, 7). But our glorification will, at long last, deliver us from the very presence of sin, so that it will never trouble us again. Blessed day! “Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more…” wrote Cowper in “There is a Fountain.” That’s a reference to glory, where sin and its exceeding sinfulness will be cast off forever and everything we do thereafter will be right (1 John 5:17). What a day that will be and what deep feeling that should arouse in us when we consider what’s to come!
9. Believers’ indifference toward spiritual fathers (2 Cor. 6:11). This verse provides a great example of what “O” signifies: an opened mouth from an enlarged heart. Paul’s heart is enlarged toward the Corinthians (v. 11), his spiritual children (v. 13), but theirs is not toward him (v. 12). I think that vv. 3-10 imply that Paul’s apostolic authority was being questioned by some of the Corinthians, hence this listing of credentials long after he had led them to Christ. He does the same thing in 11:23-33 and in 12:1-12. 2 Cor. 6:10 is a great lead in to his outburst in v. 11. Paul himself, like his Saviour (8:9) had made himself poor so that the Corinthians could be rich, and rightly feels that this should enlarge their heart toward him, their spiritual father. But here the flesh rears its ugly head in the church, and the very people that Paul led to Christ seem to be repaying him not with affection, but by questioning his apostolic authority. Isn’t the flesh great?! One can easily see, then, why Paul would be so moved.
If his dialogue with the Corinthians has a happy ending, his ministry does not, except on a personal level. In 2 Timothy we read how the church as a whole, and Paul’s ministerial associates, have forsaken him by the time of his death. But God in his grace, perhaps in response to Paul’s intercession in 2 Tim. 4:16, allows the church age to continue, despite the early church’s shameful treatment of the man who led them all to Christ. We tend to look at the early church “through rose-coloured spectacles,” but Paul’s ministry was a fight, from start to finish, against foes outside and inside the church (Acts 20:29-30). The Corinthians’ indifference is, in a way, a precursor to even greater difficulties later in his ministry.
10. Believers’ folly in lapsing into legalism (Gal. 3:1). This outburst follows Paul’s account of Peter’s lapse into legalism, but Christ shows the same deep feeling re: the folly of Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25), “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken…” The deep emotion here reminds me of that he showed toward Bar-Jesus’ opposition in Acts 13. If God is a God of truth, which he’s called (Ps. 31:5), and he lives in us, which he does (1 Cor. 6:19), then shouldn’t lies and perversion of the truth move us deeply? Ever wonder why there’s so much in the Bible about false doctrine, false prophets, and false teachers? Because God’s very nature is truth and consequently he abhors lying (Ps. 119:163). That stuff may not seem important or “relevant” to you, but it deeply moves a God who is absolutely holy and true (1 John 1:5; Rev. 6:10), and if we’re in tune with him, it should deeply move us too.
11. 1 Tim. 6:11, 20 (minister’s need to flee covetousness and keep his charge). 1 Timothy 6 is perhaps Paul’s strongest words against covetousness. Elsewhere he does call it idolatry (Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5). It can lead to false doctrine (v. 5) and the general destruction of those who follow it (vv.9-10); hence Paul’s emotional exhortation to Timothy in vv. 11-12 to flee it and follow graces in its place. Note the expression “lay hold of eternal life” in vv. 12, 19. The context of v. 19 is giving (v. 18), and by comparison with vv. 11-12, I think that Paul is exhorting Timothy to give also, in lieu of coveting, and so lay hold on eternal life himself. Lastly, he charges Timothy to keep the charge committed unto him and avoid false doctrine, bringing us full circle from 1 Timothy 1:3, where Paul reminds Timothy of why he left him in Ephesus: to contend for pure doctrine within the church.
In conclusion, then, the life of the apostle Paul is characterized by deep feeling, shown in part by his use of the exclamation “O.” These aren’t the only places he expresses deep feeling (cf. Rom. 9:1-5), but they are indicative of it. Although our faith is not based on feelings, it should produce feelings, even deep ones, about various things, as Paul demonstrates. If we’re not deeply moved by the things Paul was, perhaps it’s because we don’t understand the Christian life very well and our affections are in the wrong place. Paul tells us in Col. 3:1-2, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection (your feelings) on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Text: Eph. 4:17-21
There are three words in the Bible that consist of only one letter: a/A, I, and o/O. The first of these is called an article, the second a pronoun, but the third functions as an address in some cases (“O King”; “o man of God”; etc.) and as an exclamation in others (“O that they were wise; “O the depths of the riches..”; etc.). It’s interesting that although “a” or “o” can be lowercase or uppercase in scripture, “I” is always uppercase. There may be nothing to that, but “I” is certainly the part of us that needs to be “lowercase” and not “uppercase.”
The word “O” appears 972 times in scripture, 917 in the old testament (OT), and 55 in the new (NT). [The word “oh” appears 37 times, all in the OT.] Of the NT references, 18 of these are in connection with the apostle Paul, either in the Acts chronology (5) or in his epistles (13). A survey of the usage of “O” throughout scripture shows us that it is an expression connected with deep feeling, almost invariably. Since Paul is our pattern and example in the church age, I think that it behooves us to note the things that moved him deeply and examine ourselves as to whether we share his sentiments. Likely those sentiments, if we share them with him, won’t reach the depth that his did, due to the abundant grace that he received as our pattern, but my assertion in this study is that those sentiments should be there, and if they are not, we should allow God to produce them in us. Scripture warns us against becoming “past feeling” (Eph. 4:19), and although it’s a reference to the Gentiles, it’s possible for Christians to become hardened as well, especially in the last days (1 Tim. 4:1-2).
We’ll look at a total of 11 passages, with brief comments on each.
1. Hindering seekers from hearing the truth (Acts 13:10). On the first leg of Paul’s first missionary journey, the apostle encounters a wicked Jewish sorcerer named Bar-Jesus who attempts to keep Sergius Paulus from hearing the truth. Paul becomes righteously indignant (note “righteousness” and “right”) in the Holy Ghost, and the anger is so deep, that the first word out of his mouth is “O…” It should move us deeply when people, lost or saved, try to hinder others from hearing the truth, since the truth brings us life (John 14:6), sanctification (John 17:17), and spiritual freedom (John 8:32). Christ rebuked the Pharisees for the same thing in Mt. 23:13, “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” Notice the exclamation point. Christ is deeply moved by this sin and pronounces woe on those that commit it, and Bar-Jesus is a solemn example of such woe at the beginning of the church age.
2. Presence of earthly powers (Acts 26:13, 19). In his defense before Agrippa, Paul twice uses “O” in reference to the king, showing the deep feeling produced by this audience. Why the deep feeling, since he was merely an earthly sovereign? Well, all earthly sovereigns “are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:2) and therefore stand in the place of God, and believers should give them the honour due them (Rom. 13:7). If the heathen respect earthly power (cf. 25:26), shouldn’t we much more, who know the Lord that empowered them (1 Pt. 2:13-14)? Luke addresses the “most excellent Theophilus” (Luke 1:1) this way in Acts 1:1, out of respect for his office. If we really believe that these people sit in the place of God, shouldn’t we have a deep sense of awe and respect toward them?
3. Sinners’ self-righteousness (Rom. 2:1-3). In Rom. 1:18-3:20, Paul shows how all men are guilty before God, Gentiles and Jews, and in need of the gospel. Although some may be following the light they have (i.e. creation, conscience, and law), there is a higher light that is the final solution to their sin problem: the gospel of Christ. Paul anticipates men’s arguments, including the self-justification of the “moral” Jew or Gentile (2:1-11). This self-justification, which Paul no doubt has encountered personally many times before writing this epistle, moves him to address such men personally with great feeling in vv. 1 and 3. One can see why since those justifying themselves by condemning others are also guilty of things worthy of condemnation (e.g. 1:29-32). For example, they may not have performed the act of adultery, but secretly lusted after someone else’s wife in their heart or divorced their wife loosely (Mt. 5:27-32). Paul is rightly stirred by their self-righteousness, as other godly men are in the scriptures. For example, Elihu, the mysterious “fourth man” that reproves Job and magnifies God in Job 32-37, is angered by Job’s self-justification and Job’s three friends’ unjust condemnation of him (Job 32:1-3), quite similar to what we see in Rom. 2:1-3. Self-justification should be abhorrent to all of us, since Christ condemns it (Luke 16:15), and rightly so since, compared with God’s absolute holiness, our best works “are as filthy rags” (Is. 64:6). Small wonder then, that Paul addresses such people so strongly, since God is opposed to men’s self-justification, which exalts them instead of him (Luke 7:29-30).
4. His own inner corruption (Rom. 7:24). In this poignant passage, especially vv. 14-25, Paul describes the struggle of the two natures, which begins at regeneration and continues as long as the believer resides in this “body of death” (v. 24). A believer never reaches a point where the sinful nature does not oppose the desires of the new nature to do good (7:21-23), since this counteraction is said to be a “law” (cf. Gal. 5:17). The burden of this perennial struggle evokes a deep groan from the spirit of Paul, which longs to be free from the evil influence of the flesh. Though he cannot escape its presence until death, he has been delivered from its power by a greater law, that of the Spirit now resident in him through salvation (Rom. 8:1-4). What a tremendous comfort that, even though our regenerated spirits are “trapped” within sinful, corruptible flesh, a greater power is available to mortify its influence, the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:13; Gal. 5:16).
5. Men questioning God’s righteousness in election (Rom. 9:20).
Romans 9-11 is Paul’s explanation of dispensational changes associated with the mystery program and their bearing on Jews and Gentiles. Some Jews believe Paul’s gospel (referred to as “the election” in 11:5, 7), while others don’t. Paul reminds his Roman audience, which includes Jews (4:1, 7:1), that being the physical seed of Abraham does not make them children of God (9:7-8). That comes by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (9:30, 33). Examples of God preferring spiritual seed over physical are provided from the old testament (Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and Esau). If any would question the righteousness of this election due to foreknowledge (v. 11), before any works are done, Paul is further willing to defend it. God decides who he will show mercy to and who he will harden and execute wrath upon, but not capriciously. Note carefully in vv. 11, 22 that doing good and evil are involved. God determines that certain will be blessed and cursed, but it’s not arbitrary. The respective “vessels” (vv. 22-23) have to respond appropriately to get the blessings (belief), or inappropriately to get punished (v. 22). Someone questioning God’s righteousness in all of this evokes deep anger from Paul, who is using all the scripture he can to show how God is right in all aspects of election, in any age.
6. God’s wisdom in saving all men through Israel’s fall (Rom. 11:33). This is one of only two times that Paul uses exclamation points (cf. 2 Cor. 7:11). Here Paul is greatly moved by grasping the wisdom of God’s plan to save all men through Israel’s fall. Although on the surface things look pretty bad for Israel (only a remnant believe Paul’s gospel and the rest are blinded; cf. 11:5-10), God reveals to Paul that their fall brings spiritual riches to the Gentiles (vv. 11-12). But God’s wisdom doesn’t stop there. His intention is not only to save the Gentiles through Israel’s fall, but to conversely use the Gentiles’ salvation to provoke the Jews to jealousy and trusting in Christ themselves (v. 14). When Paul grasps God’s two-sided plan to save all men in this age, as summarized in vv. 30-32, he cannot but burst out in praise for a Being so wise. There are two other places where Paul praises God for his wisdom (Rom. 16:25-27; 1 Tim. 1:17). The greatness of this wisdom should move us deeply and produce praise in our hearts and lips (Ps. 147:5).
7. Allowing unbelieving spouses to depart (1 Cor. 7:16). Paul’s use of “O” in this passage surprised me the most. It is aimed at believing spouses with unbelieving partners. In 1 Cor. 7:15, Paul says that the voluntary departure of an unbelieving partner is a legal divorce, and the believing partner is then free to marry again, in the Lord of course (7:39). It may seem like a strange thing for Paul to be deeply moved about, but it magnifies the importance of peace in the Christian home, if that home and its church is going to be what it ought to. In a sense, he’s saying “Let the unbelieving go; you don’t know whether you’ll save them (cf. 9:22, “…that I may…save some”), and God has called you to peace, which their presence may keep you from. The deep emotion in v. 16, I think, springs from Paul’s desire for the peace God has called all believers to, including those married to unbelieving partners, to be present in believing spouses' lives.
8. 1 Cor. 15:55 (believers’ victory over death). This verse is a free quotation of Hos. 13:14, which refers to the resurrection of Israel at the second coming, but the depth of feeling is retained in Paul’s prophecy here. The verse rings like a challenge to death and the grave, in the assurance of our future glorification. Considering how strong and painful sin is (v. 56), shouldn’t we be deeply moved at the prospect of being completely victorious over it?! As most of us have been taught, trusting Christ as our Saviour delivers us immediately from the penalty of sin, and yielding our members daily to Christ delivers us from the power of sin still latent in our members (Rom. 6, 7). But our glorification will, at long last, deliver us from the very presence of sin, so that it will never trouble us again. Blessed day! “Till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more…” wrote Cowper in “There is a Fountain.” That’s a reference to glory, where sin and its exceeding sinfulness will be cast off forever and everything we do thereafter will be right (1 John 5:17). What a day that will be and what deep feeling that should arouse in us when we consider what’s to come!
9. Believers’ indifference toward spiritual fathers (2 Cor. 6:11). This verse provides a great example of what “O” signifies: an opened mouth from an enlarged heart. Paul’s heart is enlarged toward the Corinthians (v. 11), his spiritual children (v. 13), but theirs is not toward him (v. 12). I think that vv. 3-10 imply that Paul’s apostolic authority was being questioned by some of the Corinthians, hence this listing of credentials long after he had led them to Christ. He does the same thing in 11:23-33 and in 12:1-12. 2 Cor. 6:10 is a great lead in to his outburst in v. 11. Paul himself, like his Saviour (8:9) had made himself poor so that the Corinthians could be rich, and rightly feels that this should enlarge their heart toward him, their spiritual father. But here the flesh rears its ugly head in the church, and the very people that Paul led to Christ seem to be repaying him not with affection, but by questioning his apostolic authority. Isn’t the flesh great?! One can easily see, then, why Paul would be so moved.
If his dialogue with the Corinthians has a happy ending, his ministry does not, except on a personal level. In 2 Timothy we read how the church as a whole, and Paul’s ministerial associates, have forsaken him by the time of his death. But God in his grace, perhaps in response to Paul’s intercession in 2 Tim. 4:16, allows the church age to continue, despite the early church’s shameful treatment of the man who led them all to Christ. We tend to look at the early church “through rose-coloured spectacles,” but Paul’s ministry was a fight, from start to finish, against foes outside and inside the church (Acts 20:29-30). The Corinthians’ indifference is, in a way, a precursor to even greater difficulties later in his ministry.
10. Believers’ folly in lapsing into legalism (Gal. 3:1). This outburst follows Paul’s account of Peter’s lapse into legalism, but Christ shows the same deep feeling re: the folly of Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:25), “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken…” The deep emotion here reminds me of that he showed toward Bar-Jesus’ opposition in Acts 13. If God is a God of truth, which he’s called (Ps. 31:5), and he lives in us, which he does (1 Cor. 6:19), then shouldn’t lies and perversion of the truth move us deeply? Ever wonder why there’s so much in the Bible about false doctrine, false prophets, and false teachers? Because God’s very nature is truth and consequently he abhors lying (Ps. 119:163). That stuff may not seem important or “relevant” to you, but it deeply moves a God who is absolutely holy and true (1 John 1:5; Rev. 6:10), and if we’re in tune with him, it should deeply move us too.
11. 1 Tim. 6:11, 20 (minister’s need to flee covetousness and keep his charge). 1 Timothy 6 is perhaps Paul’s strongest words against covetousness. Elsewhere he does call it idolatry (Eph. 5:5; Col. 3:5). It can lead to false doctrine (v. 5) and the general destruction of those who follow it (vv.9-10); hence Paul’s emotional exhortation to Timothy in vv. 11-12 to flee it and follow graces in its place. Note the expression “lay hold of eternal life” in vv. 12, 19. The context of v. 19 is giving (v. 18), and by comparison with vv. 11-12, I think that Paul is exhorting Timothy to give also, in lieu of coveting, and so lay hold on eternal life himself. Lastly, he charges Timothy to keep the charge committed unto him and avoid false doctrine, bringing us full circle from 1 Timothy 1:3, where Paul reminds Timothy of why he left him in Ephesus: to contend for pure doctrine within the church.
In conclusion, then, the life of the apostle Paul is characterized by deep feeling, shown in part by his use of the exclamation “O.” These aren’t the only places he expresses deep feeling (cf. Rom. 9:1-5), but they are indicative of it. Although our faith is not based on feelings, it should produce feelings, even deep ones, about various things, as Paul demonstrates. If we’re not deeply moved by the things Paul was, perhaps it’s because we don’t understand the Christian life very well and our affections are in the wrong place. Paul tells us in Col. 3:1-2, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection (your feelings) on things above, not on things on the earth.”
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