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For God So Loved The World

John 3-4

The Gospel of John is written in simple words but the theological truths these words express are deep and earth shattering.  There are simple truths to be found here but John builds on those truths to reveal even more of the mysteries of God.  An unbeliever would be better off reading one of the earlier three Gospels than starting here.  As a believer, however, my mind is set on fire by John and the lessons he brings to grow us in our faith.

In today’s passages John likens the role of Jesus the Christ to that of Moses lifting up the bronze snake in the wilderness.

John 3:14-15

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

If you will remember way back at the beginning of the year, in Numbers, the people of Israel had sinned against God and a plague of poisonous snakes came upon them.  They confessed their sin and asked Moses to intercede with God for their salvation.  God instructed Moses to make a bronze serpent and raise it up on a pole.  All who looked at the serpent would live.  (Numbers 21:4-9)  This was a picture of the salvation that Jesus Christ would bring.  All of mankind is dying from the bite of that evil old snake, sin.  The anti-venom for sin is Jesus Christ.  It is to Him, and only Him, that one can be saved from the inevitable death that sin brings.

Immediately following this verse that tells us that Jesus saves is perhaps the most well known verse of Scripture in all the world.  John 3:16 tells us why God sent His son as the cure for what ails us.

John 3:16-18

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Sometimes we look at such an important verse as John 3:16 and we miss the importance of the surrounding verses.  I find it extremely important that God explains further why Jesus came; not to condemn but to save.  I get so tired of those that tell me that if I declare sin to be sin that I am “judging” people and that the Bible says that we should not judge lest we be judged ourselves.  This is, of course, an abuse of Scripture by those who have no greater use for Scripture than to justify their own sinful behavior.

If the speed limit is 55 and you are driving 65 you are speeding.  If I am riding with you and I say to you, “You are speeding”, I am not judging you; I am stating a fact of law.  Now if a police officer catches you speeding and writes you a ticket, he is not judging you either.  When you go to court and stand before the judge, you will be judged.  The judge is the one who determines guilt and punishment.  To state that sin is sin is not to judge, or even to play the role of the police, but to be that friend riding alongside a speeder simply stating a fact of law.

I remember driving my car to lunch with a good friend of mine, Vic Schneider, who was sitting in the passenger seat next to me.  I turned on to a road that had a speed limit of 40 and my speed was creeping up to 45.  My friend said to me “Watch your speed here.  They really watch this road.”  I don’t know if he had simply seen a lot of cars pulled over along this road or if he had been unfortunate enough to actually have gotten a ticket there himself but his warning was not given as a reproach or rebuke but as concern for my well being.  My friend warned me not because he viewed himself as better than me or in any way “over” me.  He warned me because he was my friend.

A few years ago a Steven Spielberg movie called Minority Report starring Tom Cruise came out.  The idea behind the futuristic story was that the police knew in advance when someone was going to commit a crime.  The police would see the future act on their screen in the police station and they would go and arrest the criminal before he actually committed the crime.  The criminal was judged, condemned, and sentenced before the police even went to collect him.  Of course, this was a man-made system and the plot revolves around the fact that it was flawed; it wasn’t always correct about what the alleged criminal was going to do.

God, on the other hand, is perfect.  He knows all of the choices you have already made and all the choices you will make.  He does not force you to make these choices but He knows what you will do.  We all are already guilty, judged, condemned and sentenced.  There is no flaw in His knowledge; there is no error.  The sentence is death.  It doesn’t matter if you think you don’t deserve death; you are no more the judge than I am.

Jesus didn’t come to condemn because we are already condemned; that would be a bit redundant.  We were condemned before we were even born, not because we were “pre-destined” to sin but because God already knew that we would.  Before you argue with me about this let me ask you, have you ever sinned?  No?  You have never told a lie?  You have never taken something that belonged to someone else?  You have never desired something or someone that belonged to someone else?  Have you ever looked longingly at a pretty girl or been angry with someone who cut you off in traffic?  I’d like to meet you.  You must be Jesus Christ Himself because other than Him “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

God gave you free will.  He did not make you sin, nor did Satan, you chose that all by your lonesome.  He knew what you would choose and you are already condemned to death; it is what you deserve.  Jesus came to offer a reprieve from the just sentence of death.  His coming is no more condemnation of sin than your warning the lost of the consequences of their sin.  Jesus came to warn and to die in our place.  Having accepted His pardon He instructs us to warn others.  We don’t warn in anger or self-righteousness, we warn out of concern for the fate of the lost.  We warn out of love; the same love God showed us.

Like Moses lifting up the bronze snake in the wilderness, we are to lift up Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world that they might rely upon Him and be saved.  Let us not be angry with the sinners of the world, for we would have to be angry with ourselves, but let us love the world enough to warn them of their fate and inform them of the pardon that is available.  It is what He has asked us to do.

Have a day filled with the love of Christ,

Your brother and servant in Christ,

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!

Look Out!

Isaiah 63-66

I have spoken with a number of people who say they can’t believe that Jesus is the only way to be saved.  I have heard “Christians” say they believe there is more than one way to heaven.  It seems the crux of the problem is the idea that it would be “unfair” for God to condemn those that have never heard of Jesus.  I also get a sense that there is a desire to “get along” with people of different cultures and belief systems, so this idea that there is more than one way to get to heaven business is a misguided attempt to have peace.  It’s a bit of this “live and let live” or “to each his own” kind of philosophy run amok.

Now this topic can get into some pretty involved theological points and I’m not the person to take us there.  But let me ask you this.  What do you do with statements by Jesus like this one?

John 14:6

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

He didn’t say “I am A way, and A truth, and A life.  No one comes to the Father except through me and a couple other dudes.”  He said He is it.  Please don’t give me this “mistranslated” nonsense.  If we can’t reliably translate documents from one language to the next then we can have no international agreements; the UN is doomed to failure and should be dissolved for we cannot make reliable contracts, diplomacy, or negotiations.  No, the text is clear.  Jesus says that He is the only way.  Now you cannot say you believe in Him but you do not believe Him.  He either told the truth or He lied.  If He lied He is not worth following for He cannot deliver what He promised.  If He told the truth, and you are His follower, then this issue is settled.  There is no way to heaven but through Jesus Christ.

“But that is unfair” you say.  My friends, I am the pot.  I do not know how the Potter does what He does.  I just know that He makes pots.  The evidence is all the many different, wonderfully crafted pots.  He gets to decide what is fair, not you.  It is His creation, not yours.  Your idea of “fair” was born in a perverted world; your idea of “fair” is perverted.  You and I cannot possibly understand how He will accomplish His purpose but look at what He said through Isaiah so many years ago.

Isaiah 65:11-12

“But you who forsake the Lord,
who forget my holy mountain,
who set a table for Fortune
and fill cups of mixed wine for Destiny,
I will destine you to the sword,
and all of you shall bow down to the slaughter,
because, when I called, you did not answer;
when I spoke, you did not listen,
but you did what was evil in my eyes
and chose what I did not delight in.”

I get a very clear picture in Scripture that when the end comes every human being will have had the opportunity to accept or reject Christ.  I don’t know how He will do it, but then I don’t know how He does most of what He does.  To say that you “can’t believe in a God that would condemn so many people” is to say that you have created your own God who will do things the way you see fit.  You realize that you’ve just made yourself God don’t you?  You have just made an idol of yourself and if you’ve been reading along with us then you know things are not going to go well for you in the end.

The passage above shows that those that are condemned are those that rejected God when He called them.  They will have earned their wages and those wages are death.  Frankly, if you really care about all of those people who will be condemned then I would think the proper attitude would not be to disregard or reject God’s Holy Word but to get out there and start telling the lost about Jesus.

Is there more than one way to be made right with God?  Jesus says no.  Do you care more about your peace than the salvation of the lost?  Tell me what you would do in the following scenario.  You are standing on a corner in New York City waiting for the crosswalk light to change.  Suddenly a man walks past you.  He is wearing earphones and looking at his phone as he dances into the crosswalk against the light.  He is clearly not paying attention, and as you look around you see that a bus is bearing down on him at breakneck speed.  What would you do?  Would you shout a warning to him?  “Look out!”  He has his earphones on.  He might not hear you.  Would you reach out and grab him and yank him back to safety?

I suspect you might do all of the above.  When you see someone in danger your natural impulse would be to yell a warning.  Would you be worried that they might be upset with you for shouting at them?  Would you hesitate to pull them back for fear that they would be offended that you touched them?  I hope not.  Their life was in danger.  I realize my little example provides a clear and present danger that all can see.  It is harder for the lost to see the looming bus of God’s wrath but their life is in danger nonetheless.

There is a video of a professed atheist who, as is the case with all atheists, thinks we Christians are deluded.  He has another view, however, that I suspect he does not share with most atheists.  He says in his video that he has no problem with Christians attempting to share their faith with him.  In a nutshell he says that if Christians believe that anyone who does not accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior is doomed to hell, how much do they have to hate him to keep it to themselves?  Do you get that?  He is saying that if you really do believe what you say you believe then it is an act of hate to keep it to yourself.

Are we not to show the love of Christ to a lost and dying world?  Could you live with yourself if you could have stopped that man from walking in front of that oncoming bus but didn’t?  Can you live with yourself if you don’t tell that lost coworker, family member, or neighbor about Jesus?  One day we will all stand before the King.  The lost will be separated and sent to eternal suffering.  Can you stand the thought of having failed those you could have at least tried to save?

If you think I’m hitting you pretty hard please understand that I am hitting myself pretty hard.  The truth is all of us Christians have not been living up to God’s call on our life.  It’s about time we started shouting some warnings don’t you think?

Have a life saving day!

Your brother and servant in Christ,

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!

The Great Work Out

Isaiah 24-28

I mentioned yesterday that chapters 13-24 of Isaiah were about judgment.  Chapters 13-23 concern judgment of nations surrounding Israel.  All of these prophecies have since come true.  Chapter 24 speaks of judgment that has not yet taken place.  This is the end of days when all of mankind will be judged.  This is no surprise right?  We all know that there is a day of reckoning, right?  You don’t think you can go around elevating yourself above God and expect that you will blithely walk into His kingdom when it is all over do you?

I think the reason God gave us the prophecies of judgment on those nations surrounding Israel is so we can understand that final judgment will come to pass.  Eleven prophecies in a row concerning judgment have each come to pass in their turn.  Do you think number twelve will be a dud?  They say there are no atheists in foxholes and I would like to suggest that, if you haven’t done so already, you jump into the only foxhole deep enough to save you from the explosion soon to come.  That foxhole is Jesus Christ!

Back in Ecclesiastes Solomon yammered on about a philosophy very much in vogue these days; party hard for tomorrow we die.  What Solomon missed, and what those who follow that philosophy today have missed, is that you don’t have to die at all; not in the way that matters, in an eternal sense.  Isaiah tells us that in today’s reading.

Isaiah 25:8-9

“He will swallow up death forever;

and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,

and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken.

It will be said on that day,

“Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.

This is the Lord; we have waited for him;

let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

You see chapter 24 tells us of the judgment to come; chapter 25 tells us of the kingdom and salvation to come.  I wish we all could get the idea that death is a physical thing out of our heads.  Physical death, for the person dying, is meaningless; where you are headed after you have shuffled off the mortal coil is everything.  Spiritual death is separation from God for all of eternity.  If we are lucky, or unlucky depending on your perspective, we have 80 to 90 years of physical life in this corrupt world.  Compared to eternity, however, that is a blink of an eye.  As I get older I look back and ask myself, where has the time gone?  As I get closer and closer to the end, my life begins to look more and more like the blink of an eye.

Now granted, as far as I know my death is not imminent so it is perhaps easy for me to say this but I am not afraid of dying.  I realize that if I become aware of pending death I may in fact show fear but I’m having a hard time envisioning that.  My only concern about dying is the hole I might leave in the lives of my wife and daughter.  They depend on me and I’d hate to leave them in the lurch so to speak, but that is the only concern I have about dying.  Do I look forward to a painful death?  No.  Don’t ask me to choose the method.  If it were up to me it would be suddenly and peacefully.  I don’t like pain any more than the next guy and I hate the idea of drowning.  I was a bit asthmatic as a kid and struggled to catch my breath at times.  I would hate the anxiety of drowning.  But dying?  Bring it on.

I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  I am an adopted son of the King.  This is not my home.  I am a stranger in a strange land and dying is simply going home to be with my Father.  If it were up to me I’d be there now.  Death, where is thy sting?  Jesus has swallowed up death forever!

Now, if Jesus came to save me and I have accepted Him and been saved, why am I still here?  What more is there to be gained by staying in this corrupt world?  Ah, there’s the rub, there is something to be gained by staying in this world post salvation.  When we accept Christ we are but new born babes, having been born again as it were.  We have much to learn and God desires to mold us and grow us into the men He created us to be.  The acceptance of Christ is the beginning.  The way God grows us is through the trials and tribulations we face between that moment of salvation and our moment of homecoming.  He also grows us when we are doing His business.

I am convinced that far too many Christians remain stuck in spiritual infancy because they have avoided undertaking the exertion and the inevitable tumbles that accompany learning to walk in faith.  In what kind of shape would a person who was carried from birth find themselves?  They would be weak, flabby, worthless bags of fat!  They would be unable to do anything for themselves requiring others to feed them and change them.  Can you imagine being a 45 year old man needing to be fed and changed?  I am using the phrase “walk in faith” as another way to say “put feet on your faith”.  It is by doing that we grow.  It is by being about our Fathers business that we mature and maturing in our relationship with God is the entire reason we are still in this corrupt world.

Brothers, rejoice and be glad in His salvation but start exercising your faith. Put feet on your faith.  Start growing into the men He created you to be by being about His business.

Isaiah 26:3-4

“You keep him in perfect peace

whose mind is stayed on you,

because he trusts in you.

Trust in the Lord forever,

for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. “

I wanted to leave you with those two verses from today’s reading.  Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace and He offers you perfect peace.  In fact, if you have accepted Him as your Lord and Savior then you already have received this gift.  Far too many of us, however, have neglected to open it.  How do we open His gift of perfect peace?  That peace is found by keeping our minds on Him and we do that because we trust in Him.  Do you trust in Him?  Do you work to keep your mind on Him?  Do you have His perfect peace?  If not, it may be time to take the next step in your maturity as a Christian.  It may be time to get up on your feet and go about your Father’s business.

Have a great workout today guys!

Your brother and servant in Christ,

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!

P.S.  Some of you may have noticed a couple of literary references in my comments above.  If so, and you are curious, they are from Bill Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act III Scene I.  The lines I refer to are from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy and are most readily recalled by it’s opening line “To Be, or not to be…”  It is said this scene deals with thoughts of suicide.  If you would like to read this famous soliloquy you may do so here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be,_or_not_to_be

Here Am I!  Send Me!

Isaiah 6-9

There is so much on which I would like to comment today but there just isn’t time.  I again found my heart soaring as I read passages about God’s Holiness, about Isaiah’s faithfulness, and about our coming Savior and King.  For example:

Isaiah 6:8

“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

That one simple verse, composed of three simple sentences, is devastating to me.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are asking “who will go for us?”  Isaiah said “Here am I! Send me.”  You do know that God asks that question every day don’t you?  Do you know He is looking right at you and me when He asks it? Did you notice that Isaiah did not ask “to do what?”  He didn’t ask if he could do it after he finished something else.  He didn’t barter about the particulars.  He simply said “Here am I!  Send me.”

Isaiah reminds me of Abram when God told him to rise and go to a place He would show him.  In other words “get up and get going; I’ll show you where you are going after you show me your faithfulness”.  Ah, the words “trust and obey” come crashing into my brain.  That is at the heart of faith.  This is not to suggest that the brain is turned off, but at the end of the day, when things just don’t make sense, when we don’t have all the answers we would like, we must simply trust and obey.

Isaiah 7:14

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

Here it is!  People get ready!  Jesus is coming!  Soon we’ll be going home!!!  Here, 700 years before it came to pass Isaiah tells us that God is coming to earth in human form.  Immanuel means “God with us.”  He was that then and He is still that today.  Christ resides within me.  He is still Immanuel.

Why do we need Him?  Because we walk in the darkness of our own sin.

Isaiah 9:2

“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined.”

I remember flipping channels the other day and I paused for a moment on one of the Harry Potter movies that have been playing a lot lately.  It was a scene where Harry and another fellow lay on the ground in a wood next to a small pond.  Dark, ghost like, shadows swirled overhead, coming closer and closer.  As they passed over the bodies they seem to suck the life from both individuals.  Just when it seemed like all was lost, a pinpoint of light from the other side of the pond burst forth.  It was an intense, brilliant light that quickly blossomed to the point of blotting out the screen.  The dark shadowy creatures were shattered in an instant.  Nothing could withstand the light.  That’s like us isn’t it?  Weren’t we being sucked dry of life by our sins?  Were not our sins draining us of life?  It was the light of Christ that broke through the darkness that surrounded us, obliterated our sins, and saved us from death; restoring our souls.

Isaiah 9:6-7

“For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

Praise God!  Praise God!! Praise God!!!  May glory, and power, and honor, and praise be forever His!!!  He saved you.  He cleansed you and now He is asking whom shall I send?  I hope he hears you say “Here am I!  Send me!”

May you have an obedient day!

Your brother and servant in Christ,

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!