More GREAT QUOTES
-Sermonindex.
"Men's hearts are being searched...it is a tremendous sifting time,
not only of actions but of inner motives. Nothing can escape the
all-searching eye of God."
-Frank Bartleman, AZUSA STREET.
"This life is a dressing room for eternity - THAT'S ALL IT IS!"
-Leonard Ravenhill
"Consecrate, then concentrate..."
- Dwight L. Moody
"Only when we are captured by an overwhelming sense of awe and
reverence in the presence of God, will we begin to worship God in
spirit and in truth."
-Alistair Begg
"How often God visited the Jewish Church with judgments because
they would not repent and be revived at the call of His prophets!
How often have we seen Churches, and even whole denominations,
cursed with a curse, because they would not wake up and seek
the Lord..." - Charles Finney
"The law shows the distance that exists between God and man;
the Gospel bridges that awful chasm and brings the sinner across it."
- C.H. Spurgeon
Rabu, 29 Mei 2013
When God Closes Doors
When God Closes Doors
This Guest post is written by Jayne Thurber-Smith.Jayne is an award-winning writer for various publications including Faith & Friends, Floral Business magazine and The Citizen of Chesapeake newspaper, and is also a sports contributor to cbn.com.
She and her husband’s favorite activity is being included in whatever their four adult children have going on.
You may contact Jayne in one of the following ways:
If you would like to write a guest post for this blog, check out the guidelines here.
I
was completely burned out from working at a busy call center. I was
trying to help my four children get through college but I wished I could
find something I enjoyed a little more. I simply did not have the
patience for the irate and often unreasonable customer service calls I
handled, sometimes one hundred per day.So when a position opened up in the marketing department next door, I put in for it. I was thrilled when I received a call for an interview with Human Resources and doubly thrilled to get called for a second interview with the actual department heads. I thought we all hit it off.
But that’s where it ended.
After two weeks of anticipation I stopped in to see HR and asked if I was still in consideration. I was politely told no. It had come down to me and someone with a Master’s degree and guess who got it? Impossible. I had been so sure it was mine. Why was someone with a Master’s degree interviewing for jobs that did not require it? Why were they not applying for jobs that required a Master’s degree?
As I returned to my cubicle, deflated, I couldn’t hide my tears. My supervisor, thank God, was a loving, kind Christian and he knew I was up for the job. He could tell by looking at me what the answer was.
He took me aside and said softly “I don’t know if this was Ishmael, but I know God has Isaac.” He immediately brought to mind the Bible story of Abraham trying to rush God by having a baby with his servant Hagar, before his wife Sarah bore him a son as had been promised.
That was completely the coaching I needed to strengthen my resolve. I knew God promised in 2 Samuel 22:31 that His ways are perfect. I knew there was a job more suited for me somewhere and so did my supervisor. I shook off the self-pity and kept job hunting.
Within two months I got a response to an application I put in for a job closer to my home, perfect for me in every way. This time I landed it. I’ve been there for two years now and every day I pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. I now have my “Isaac,” which I wouldn’t have kept looking for had I merely settled for “Ishmael.”
Cruciform God
Cruciform God
The greatest expression of what God is truly like is found in Jesus when He died on the cross.
While most Christians affirm the centrality of the cross for the mission and work of Jesus in bringing reconciliation and redemption to this world, it is relatively rare in Christian circles (but thankfully, becoming more common!) to state that of all the ways which Jesus reveals God to us, it is on the cross where God is most clearly seen.
If you ask the average Christians how God is most clearly revealed in Jesus Christ, they may talk about His teachings, His miracles, or maybe even His resurrection from the dead, but few would point to the cross. The cross is critical to the Gospel, people would say, and essential for accomplishing the mission of Jesus in the world, but it is not usually thought of as the primary way in which Jesus shows us what God is truly like.
Key Text: Philippians 2:5-11
Philippians 2:5-11 is one of the most well-known passages in the Bible about what Jesus did in leaving heaven to come to earth.Many read this passage as a description of the downward spiral into humility and death which Jesus undertook for the sake of humanity, so that this downward spiral eventually resulted in the worst of all possible humiliations, death on a cross (Php 2:5-8). As a result, God raised Him and reversed this downward spiral of humiliation by giving Jesus an upward descent into glory and honor (Php 2:9-11).
There is nothing wrong with this interpretation, and Paul is certainly placing great emphasis on the sacrifice of Jesus in taking on sin and shame. But what is often overlooked is that this downward spiral into humiliation and then the resulting upward spiral into glorification is only a secondary point for Paul in this text.
The primary point is the fact that in everything Jesus did, He was revealing the very nature and character of God.He came, says Paul, in the “form of God” (Php 2:6).
Now again, when most Christians read verse 6 (and some Bible translations even help in this regard), we often add the word “though” or “although” to the first part of verse 6 (cf. NAS, NRSV). In this way, the reader is led to believe that the following description of Christ’s actions are contrary to the character and nature of God: That although Jesus was God, He turned His back on His divinity, and gave it all up to come to earth. Read this way, the ultimate humiliation of Jesus comes in verse 8 where Jesus became obedient to death, even to death on a cross.
Many teachers and Bible scholars have noted, however, that a better way of reading this text is not to say that although Jesus was God He came to earth to suffer and die, but rather, since Jesus was God He came to earth to suffer and die. When read this way, the cross is not the ultimate humiliation of Jesus, but the ultimate manifestation of the divinity of God in Jesus. This “position” in theology is known as “cruciform” theology. It emphasizes the cruciform nature of God, that God is most fully revealed through the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.
This helps make sense of verse 8 as well, so that rather than it saying that Jesus’ ultimate humiliation was “even death on a cross” (NAS), the text should read “especially death on a cross.”
When Philippians 2:5-8 is read in this light, we see that the cross is not the ultimate expression of Jesus emptying Himself of divinity, but is exactly the opposite: The cross is the ultimate expression of Jesus revealing Himself as divine. In showing us who God truly is, and what God is truly like, Jesus made Himself of no reputation, took the form of a bondservant, came in the likeness of men, humbled Himself completely, and finally, ultimately, especially suffered a cruel and torturous death on the cross. This is what God is truly like. This is who God truly is.
If want to see God, we can look at the entire life and ministry of Jesus, but God is especially revealed through Jesus on the cross.
On the cross, Jesus reveals a God who does not cause others to suffer and die, but who suffers and dies Himself for the sake of others.
On the cross, Jesus most fully reveals God to us! What does that tell you about God?
So why did Jesus come to earth? One of the primary reasons was to destroy the devil’s work. And since Jesus reveals God to us, not just in His life, ministry, teachings, and resurrection, but also (especially!) through His death on the cross, then as we read Jesus back into the Old Testament, and as we seek to understand the violence of God in the Old Testament, we must keep the mission of Christ to destroy the devil’s work first and foremost in our minds, and especially the critical aspect of Christ’s work upon the cross.
What Jesus accomplished on the cross in destroying the work of the destroyer allows for a vastly new understanding of how to understand the violent passages of God in the Old Testament.
But to really see what is going on, we need one more bit of information to make the puzzle pieces all fit together in a grand tapestry of beauty and grace. We will begin to look at this final piece of the puzzle tomorrow.
The Love and Horror of the Cross
The Love and Horror of the Cross
We have come a long way in trying to explain the violence of God in the Old Testament (See the list of posts at the bottom.) I am nearly ready to offer my proposal… But there is one more piece of the puzzle to lay on the table before we start putting all the pieces together.Jesus Became Sin for Us
The
final piece of the puzzle about how to understand the violence of God
in the Old Testament in light of life, ministry, and death of Jesus
Christ is found in 2 Corinthians 5:21.In this text we read that Jesus became sin for us. Paul writes that God made Jesus “who knew no sin to be sin for us.” We must not try to soften the implications or significance of what Paul writes.
It is not just that Jesus took our sin upon Himself. No, He became sin.
He took His righteousness and swapped it with our sinfulness. Every sin we have ever committed was not just “credited” to the account of Jesus, but He was actually made to be that sin!
The horror of this must not be missed. But neither should the love.
The horror and the love of what Jesus did on the cross helps us understand what God was doing in the Old Testament, as I will explain in future posts.
But this post will simply relate a dream I had as a boy which I think shows both the horror and the love of the cross.
A Dream About the Love and Horror of the Cross
When I was about ten years old, I had a nightmare about Jesus dying the cross. I vividly remember seeing His broken and bleeding body hanging upon the cross. As I watched, I noticed a few black ants coming up out of the ground and climbing up the cross toward Jesus. As they climbed, more and more ants swarmed up out of the ground so that by the time the first few ants had reached the bloody feet of Jesus, all the ground around the cross and the lower portion of the beam was a roiling mass of blackness. This swarm of ants scurried up the cross and over the body of Jesus.
I
could tell by the way Jesus twitched and squirmed that the ants were
not just climbing over His body, but were biting Him as well. I was
surprised that Jesus did not cry out in pain, but I knew that if He did,
they would enter His mouth and eat Him alive from the inside out. As
soon as I had this horrifying thought, Jesus looked me in the eyes and
then opened His mouth wide. As expected, the mass of ants swarmed in and
they ate Jesus alive. Soon, there was nothing left of Jesus, only a
black mass of ants.I woke trembling, with tears in my eyes.
I knew, of course, what the ants were. They were my sins. Each tiny ant represented one of my sins. And there were millions upon millions of them. At first I thought that there was no way all those sins were mine; they had to have been the sins of the whole world. But that look from Jesus told the whole story. They were my sins, and mine alone. There were so many, they were beyond counting, but He took them all on, every single one.
And I knew that this is what He had done for the entire world, for each and every person.
Most surprisingly, however, I felt no accusation from Jesus. No anger. No condemnation.
Just love.
Strangely, and most vividly of all, there was not even a sense that He wanted me to try to sin less. When He looked me in the eyes, it was as if He said, “Look at me. I am already covered with millions upon millions of biting black ants. What difference will ten more or ten less really make? If you want to stop sinning, it is for your benefit, not mine. No matter how much you sin, I will take it all on. And whether you sin or don’t sin, I will continue to love you just the same.”
I have often thought about that dream. But recently, as I have sought to view God in light of what Jesus tells us about Him, I have begun to see that the dream not only reflects what Jesus did for all people on the cross, but also reflects what God has always been doing for the sins of the whole world. We will begin to see how tomorrow.
Jesus Became Sin for Us
Jesus Became Sin for Us
2
Corinthians 5:21 may be the most horrifying verse in Scripture, for it
reveals the fact that Jesus, who was holy, righteous, and perfectly
sinless, became sin for us. God made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for
us.The Horror of the Cross
Can you imagine the horror, the shame, and the guilt that poured upon Jesus while He hung upon the cross?We, who are born in sin and who are accustomed to sin’s constant presence within us, still feel shame and guilt when we sin. Imagine then how it would feel for God in the flesh, who is perfectly holy and righteous, and for whom sin is the exact antithesis and opposite of everything about His being, to not just take on a few sins, but to actually become sin for the entire world? It is shocking and horrifying to think about.
The Love of the Cross
But it is also incredibly loving, for God, who alone knows the full ramifications and consequences of sin, knew that only in this way could He have the relationship and fellowship with us that He so desires. Only by taking sin upon Himself could He finally, ultimately, and completely defeat sin, death, and the devil. So He did it.Jesus became sin for us and gave us His righteousness.
Jesus accepted our sin into Himself.
He breathed it in, soaked it up, and allowed it to consume Him from within.
Why? Because He loves us, and He knows that if He does not become sin for us, if He does not let sin consume Him, it will destroy and consume us.
Jesus Became Sin
The
truth of 2 Corinthians 5:21 is for every single person who has ever
lived and who will ever live. It is for every single person who has
drawn breath. It is for every single sin that has ever been committed
and ever will be. Jesus draws them all into Himself and becomes sin for
us!On the cross, Jesus is both the most beautiful thing the world has ever seen, and the most loathsome. Jesus is the most righteous and the most sinful. The cross of Jesus is full of love and horror.
Love, because of what Jesus did, but horror, because of what Jesus became: He became sin. This is the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:21. Jesus became sin for us. God made Him to be sin. Jesus was despised, rejected, and loathed (Isa 53:2-6). People looked upon Him with revulsion. Even God rejected Him (Matt 27:46).
God Became Sin
All of this helps us understand exactly what was going on in the violent portrayals of God in the Old Testament. If it is on the cross that Jesus most fully reveals God, and it is on the cross that Jesus became sin for the world, then this means that God also was becoming sin for the world.Just as Jesus became repulsive on the cross by taking on the sin of the world, the proper response to reading about the violence of God in the Old Testament is to be repulsed. We are repulsed by the violence of God in the Old Testament because we are supposed to be repulsed. The violence of God in the Old Testament is God taking on the sin of Israel.
This is a challenge thought, I know, so let us approach it from another perspective, from the perspective of God Himself. To do this, we must remember everything we have seen in this series so far (see the list of posts below).
We must remember that the Bible is inspired and inerrant. It records exactly what God wanted recorded. We must remember that when we read about God in the Old Testament, we read Jesus back into those passages, rather than read those depictions of God forward onto Jesus. We must remember that Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work, and that the primary way Jesus did all this is by taking all the devil’s work into Himself upon the cross by becoming the sin of the world.
God inspired the Old Testament authors to write about Him in a violent way so that He could do the same thing for Israel that Jesus did on the cross: Just as Jesus became sin for us, God became sin for Israel.
Go Ask Your Mother
Go Ask Your Mother
Make sure you thank your mother today for everything she has done for you throughout the years. All the meals she has cooked, the clothes she has washed, the floors she has cleaned…And thank her as well for having more knowledge and expertise about life than anybody else you will ever meet. That is why as children, no matter what problem we were facing, we knew mother could solve it. And when we couldn’t find mother, and went to dad instead, it was to ask the only question which maybe he knew the answer to:
“Hey dad… where’s mom?”
Ha!
So I laughed when I saw this image last week:
It’s true, and we men know it…
So thank your mothers today… and fathers, thank your wives!
Getting to Know Our Neighbors
Getting to Know Our Neighbors
This practical post on getting to know your neighbors is by Sam Riviera. Sam is a frequent contributor to this blog. See the bottom of this post for more articles in this series about getting to know your neighbors.
My
wife and I know most of the people in our neighborhood and in the two
adjoining neighborhoods, a total of about three hundred homes. Several
neighbors have told us that we know more neighbors than anyone else in
the neighborhood, and asked us how that happened, since many of our
neighbors have lived here longer than we have.Follow Jesus to Your Neighbor’s House
We enjoy getting to know neighbors. It may appear to come natural to us, but we make it an intentional part of following Jesus.In this series I will discuss some of the methods that have worked for us in getting to know our neighbors, how we move some of the relationships beyond just being acquainted, and what we’re doing now to move those relationships to yet another level.
Living in Neighborly Isolation
Most of us drive home from work, push the button on our remote garage door opener, pull into the garage, close the garage door, and go into the house. If we emerge from the house that evening, we may go only to our backyard, possibly to play with our children, or to grill something on our outdoor grill. The next morning, we raise the garage door, back out, and wave to a neighbor as we pull away from our house.If we hire a lawn service, we may rarely spend any time in our front yard. If we’re lucky, we may know the people who live next to us, but probably don’t know most of the people who live two or three houses away from ours. We may notice a house with an unkempt yard, or the house with several broken-down cars parked in front. But we don’t know the people who live there, and assume they’re probably lazy.
Many of us find our friends and build relationships at work, church, or among relatives. When we have a party, those are the people we invite. When the party runs a little late on a warm summer evening when all of our neighbors have their windows open, and our guests are laughing and singing and some neighbor calls the police to complain, we’re offended. We silently make a vow to get even with every neighbor who does anything to annoy us. We have our rights and have to stand up for them! Right?
That’s what Jesus would do, right? Didn’t He throw the moneylenders out of the temple, His temple? If Jesus could display His righteous anger, shouldn’t it be OK for us to do the same?
Loving Our Neighbors Like Jesus
We have discovered there is another way, a way that not only doesn’t get the neighbors upset with us and us mad at the neighbors, but a way that looks a whole lot more like Jesus.This “other way” begins with getting to know our neighbors.
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