Close...Close Enough?

In earlier articles, I’ve written about the Christian’s reluctance to name the name of Jesus Christ in his daily conversations, and even, at times, in his prayers. Astonishing as it may be, we are often ashamed to be known as a heartfelt follower and disciple of our one and only Savior.

Recently I watched a film presentation that I found both challenging and troubling. It concerned a fictional small town in Texas called Promise, where a husband and wife were mourning for a child who had died, and where the residents had been suffering from a severe drought for a number of years.

Mysteriously, a young boy about ten years of age wanders into this town, claiming to have come on a mission from God. This lad brings with him some sweet words of encouragement, some remarkable signs and wonders such as healings and prophecies about coming rainfalls, etc. He is even present when a girl who dies from an overdose is brought back to life. He also gives a ministry to the grieving mom. She agrees to make prayer mats for all the residents of the town, because the boy tells her that they all need to begin talking to God.

Toward the end of the movie, Gabe (the little boy) ministers to a dying doctor, who was the attending physician when the couple’s child passed away. The doctor says how unworthy he feels to leave this earth and get into heaven, but Gabe assures him that he is worthy, thanks to the blood of Christ. Then the doctor smiles, begins glowing with a heavenly light, and finally dies.

Throughout his ministry in the small town of Promise, Gabe claims that he is only a messenger, with no inherent power of his own. Then, at a town meeting where the folks are remembering the departed physician, Gabe finally reveals himself to be the angel Gabriel, complete with huge, spreading wings, causing everyone to respond with awe.

Now, obviously, this movie was a parable, designed to communicate the value of faith, hope and love, primarily to audiences who already have a basic belief in “God.” For that purpose, I found it entertaining and effective, keeping my interest and making me wonder who or what the boy Gabe would turn out to be. The fact that this character eventually used the term “the blood of Christ” with the dying doctor was reassuring, for I had feared that the making of the prayer mats was some obscure reference to Islam. Up to that point in the story, the “God” Gabe was serving was something of a puzzle.

So much of our media today portrays faith in God as a kind of panacea, that is, a cure-all for the troubles, pains, disappointments and fears that plague us as human beings. God is so good and so loving, we are told, that He cares about our dying loved ones, about our crops that need rain so desperately, about our dangers and afflictions. But it troubles me that so many of the viewing public, especially people who only attend church occasionally and read their Bibles only sporadically, may be forgetting that it’s not enough to “come close” when it comes to trusting “God.”

The true God–the only God who deserves our trust, the only God who EXISTS–is not only perfectly GOOD. He is also perfectly holy and just, and He hates our sins so much that He sent His beloved, eternal Son to suffer the judgment of HELL on the cruel cross. This God who is the ultimate Reality, determines reality for all those He has created. He has revealed this reality in a Book that tells the ultimate truth. He has revealed the reality of who He is in His Son who IS ultimate Truth: the Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose again!

God warns us in His book that if we go on resisting His truth–truth about who He is…truth about who WE are…truth about the judgment awaiting sinners…truth about the only Savior from sin–then there will come a day when that truth will be taken away from us. And we will then be left with the watered-down half-truths of wandering, wishful storytellers who may occasionally “come close” to eternal life…

But not close enough to save anybody.

MNA

4/26/2023

God's Valentine

 (Read First Corinthians 13)

When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment of God’s law, He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength… and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Love, as the songwriter says, “is a many-splendored thing.” A Roman bishop named Valentinus was proclaimed as a saint by the early Catholic church, and he became the patron saint of lovers, as we know from celebrating Valentine’s day each year in February. The greeting card makers and the candy companies do a very lucrative business filling the yearly needs of lovers and would-be lovers who wish to express their tender feelings at this time of year.

But we find in the Bible a definition of love that takes us beyond the realm of feelings of physical attraction and romantic chemistry. There is a love described there that is modeled after the holy character of God Himself. It is a supernatural love, a love for the unlovely and the undeserving. A deep desire to offer one’s self and substance for the betterment of another.

The Apostle Paul wrote several lengthy letters to a very troubled church in first century Corinth. This congregation was experiencing problems galore! The people were divided into camps based on the personalities of their favorite preachers. They were acting proud and boastful about their spiritual gifts–God-given abilities that equipped them to serve one another! They were causing strife and discord over how to do corporate worship and celebrate the Lord’s Supper. There was even a sexual scandal going on that Paul needed to correct! 

He spends several chapters of his epistle speaking to the needs of this troubled church and instructing them on how their worship and ministries should function. He compares the church of Christ to a living body with many different parts that work together, suffer together, rejoice together. Every member should be doing its part joyfully and helpfully. 

But you know what? A church is made up of people. Yes, they are Christians, but they are still fallible. They are saved sinners, but they are still SINNERS. No one can ever be perfect before he or she passes through those pearly gates of our heavenly home! We all have rough edges, annoying little habits, manners of speech and action that are hard to live with. Part of the trouble in Corinth was that the believers were seeking the showier, greater gifts of the Spirit. They wanted to be up front, noticed, appreciated.

Well, Paul began to write in Chapter Thirteen of his letter, what he described as “a more excellent way.” And here is where he began to describe the supreme gift of the Spirit that is to permeate and characterize all the other gifts: DIVINE LOVE. This is God’s own Valentine to His church, and the gift that won’t give you cavities like candy! Or sound corny like a greeting card. Divine love gets us out of ourselves and shines the light on people around us. For that is the pattern our hearts become aware of as we learn about our loving Father, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

As we make our way through this magnificent description of love, we find that it not only reflects the loving character of our God, but it tells us how love relates to the commandments that God gave us to protect and cherish the very values that make life worth living.

Paul begins by describing a brilliant speaker: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels…” Without the power of love, all the words of human orators, or even angelic messengers, become nothing but noise…empty…meaningless. “A sounding gong or a clanging cymbal” may sound impressive or gain your attention. But they contain no meaning in themselves. 

The first speaker, of course, was God Himself. He spoke into the empty void and said, “Let there be light!” He used His voice to call creation into existence. Have you ever wondered why? Why did God create a universe in the first place? He had no needs that were not fulfilled. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had made up the Trinity for all eternity past—a Trinity filled with love and blissful fellowship. They had decided to create the heavens and the earth out of the sheer overflow of their DIVINE LOVE! God’s very words are words motivated by His love.

Do we speak with love? Do we choose loving words to express our thoughts and ideas and plans? When we speak, we are launching our hearts and minds out into the world for others to hear.  Jesus taught “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What worlds are we creating for others to hear when we talk? Are they worlds of praise and wonder, or worlds of complaint and misery? Or simply empty noise?

Paul goes on to write about knowledge. The early church was built on the knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He came to earth to accomplish for us: our salvation. It was also built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets who received messages direct from God! Many in the church of Corinth wanted those kinds of grand revelations. They wanted impressive knowledge that would make them stand out from the crowd.

But elsewhere, Paul warns that knowledge can puff us up with pride. It is love that edifies, that builds up other people, perhaps by sharing one’s knowledge in a gentle, loving way. We might have heads that are filled with great facts and doctrine about God and His Word. But the reason God reveals truth to our ears and our minds and hearts is so that we will believe and treasure His truth, and teach it lovingly to others so that THEY might benefit. Not so that WE might be applauded by men.

And what about FAITH? Having a strong faith is surely a high priority to the Lord, right? Paul next makes the point that even a strong faith in the power of God comes to NOTHING if it isn’t reflecting God’s LOVE along with it. The Apostle Peter boasted about his great faith in the Savior. He claimed he’d follow Jesus faithfully even if all the other disciples turned aside. But Peter’s faith failed him the night Christ was betrayed and arrested. When people identified him as one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter became frightened and denied that he’d ever MET the Man!

After Christ rose from the dead, He restored Peter to his prominence as a leader, an apostle. And what did He ask this man whose faith had failed him? “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” Jesus asked this three times, one time for each of Peter’s three denials. When Simon Peter assured his Master that, yes, of course he loved Him, Jesus told him, “Then, you must feed My sheep—look after the needs of others.” This is how divine love is worked out and demonstrated.

Many Christians are willing to sacrifice everything for God’s kingdom—just as long as they are given the proper amount of credit in return! Self-sacrifice can be motivated by the selfish desire for personal recognition. The self-righteous Pharisees proved this. Their outward acts of holiness were well-known, even legendary. But inside their hearts, Jesus told them, there was no true love motivating their sacrifices. They only did them “to be seen by men.”

Paul gives a list of qualities that describe true love’s character. We can compare these qualities to the Ten Commandments and see how they connect with each other. “Love suffers long and is kind.” Patient, kind-hearted people tend to honor the Lord, as well as other people, rather than being eager to receive honor in return. Honoring our parents is one of the commandments, and as our parents age, honoring them takes more and more kindness and patience!

“Love does not envy, doesn’t parade itself, isn’t puffed up.” Envying what others have in the way of possessions, abilities, lifestyles and so on, leads us to the sin of coveting, which violates the tenth commandment. The Corinthians were seeking to out-shine one another with the showiness of their spiritual gifts. Paul is making the point here that this kind of competition is hardly focusing on meeting the needs of others. Rather it is an exercise in feeding our own ego.

“Love doesn’t behave rudely, doesn’t seek its own, is not provoked.” Behaviors like rudeness, greed and anger can quickly ignite into acts of theft and even murder. God’s commands against these things are His way of protecting the values of life and property that we mostly take for granted. Having a heart of love for God and for others means that we are devoted to protecting those values and promoting both the quality and quantity of what others possess. Doing others the good that we want them to do to us!

“Love thinks no evil, doesn’t rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.” What kind of thoughts make our hearts rejoice, make them sing for joy and overflow with gladness? There are some folks, perhaps you and I sometimes, who get a secret thrill out of wickedness. Whether we read about personal scandals of the rich and famous, or see sinful behavior acted out in a play or a movie, there is something attractive to our darker side. We take a kind of delight in evil. We look at the sins of other people and enjoy the fact that they are worse than ourselves. 

Savoring the taste of evil in our minds can be the poison that pushes love out of our hearts. It can turn normal romantic attraction into lust that can lead to impure thoughts and adultery. Satan has a way of twisting good truth into half-truths, and then even more into outright lies. He might tell us, “God is so gracious and forgiving; He won’t mind so much if you flirt with this or that little sin. You can always confess it later and all will be well.” Of course, he will never admit the pain and remorse and loss of joy that comes with that sin. That hook is always well hidden in the tempting bait he holds out to trap us.

Delighting in the truth. Do we know the truth of God? God’s truth is the real thing. Truth is the reality as God has created it, as well as the way He sees it. The world is full of lies and half-truths that camouflage the truth of God. It is in the Holy Scriptures that we find truth in all its delightful fullness. Truth about God’s good creation and man’s tragic fall into sin. Truth of God’s promises to send a Redeemer, and Jesus of Nazareth, who fulfilled those promises. Truth about what love really looks like—from God’s perspective.

Love delights in the truth. It lives in the truth. It TELLS the truth. It shares the truth with others because we’re so delighted with it. We can’t keep it to ourselves. Paul finishes his list of qualities by using the word ALL four times. Love bears ALL, believes ALL, hopes ALL, endures ALL. In other words, when we encounter another person, love is prepared to accept them at face value and assume the BEST about them. And if that person fails us, love is willing to put up with their faults. Love is a faithful friend who is not easily put off by shortcomings. Rather, love keeps on believing the best and coming back for more. Love is TOUGH and very hard to overcome.

And isn’t that the way God’s love is toward you and me? Look at the patient way He dealt with His people Israel, giving them His laws, making them a privileged nation, pursuing them and disciplining them when they disobeyed Him. Promising a Savior again and again, and finally coming through on that promise by sending His only Son. And what amazing love it was that He included the Gentiles in His plan of Redemption! 

Paul’s paean of praise for the gift of divine love is a tall order for those of us who know Jesus as our Lord and Savior. His love is a supernatural love that is only possible in hearts where God’s Holy Spirit is truly at home. From all eternity past, Father, Son and Holy Ghost have loved one another. And that love ended up creating US. Let us imitate that love by showing it to one another, and by sending its bright beams outward into a sinful, sad, needy world.

MNA

2/13/2022

Not Knowing

How do we know what we know? Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty? My five senses are continually sending me information about the world around me (including data about my own body), but can I trust those senses to give me accurate messages? Can I be certain that the workings of my own mind are sifting through that data in a reliable way?

Such questions don’t normally occur to us as we live our day-to-day lives. But philosophers have routinely discussed them for centuries. Epistemology is the study of the whole question of human knowledge and how it is acquired. Many thinkers have come to the conclusion that all we can be sure about beyond any doubt is that we are having sensations--sense perceptions. Others are convinced that the only real knowledge is found in the recesses of the mind--rational thought. Yet others conclude that it is a mixture of the two that determines what and how we know.

Personally, I’m convinced that the claim to “know” something beyond doubt is most usually a doubtful claim.

When God created men and women, He gave them a capacity to “know” Him and trust Him. They enjoyed fellowship with their Creator in a way that you and I only dream of. And yet, even in the Garden of Eden, doubt soon crept into the thinking of our first parents! It slithered into Paradise in the form of a devilish serpent.

The first human couple were tempted, doubted God’s goodness, and fell into sin, dragging their descendants in along with them. Ever since then, the whole question of “knowing” has been up for grabs. When Adam and Eve lost touch with their Creator, their whole basis for certainty about things was short-circuited. The world itself was no longer “very good” in the sense that God had first made it. Indeed, it was under a divine pronouncement of judgment--His curse. There was now no longer God’s unfettered benediction upon creation. Evil had entered, both in the world itself, in ourselves, and in our knowledge of it.

“You will be as gods,” the serpent had lied, “knowing good and evil.” The devil insists that there are really two sides to ultimate truth. God cannot be trusted. He’s not really as good as He is making out. He actually has a dark side. He’s holding back the good stuff for Himself, unwilling to share it with you humans. He’s a cosmic killjoy. His word can safely be questioned, doubted, even disobeyed. And “you will not surely die.”

This is why I normally meet a claim of absolute certainty with a degree of suspicion. There are a great number of false claims flying around. Ever since the Fall and the expulsion from Eden, people have had to be content to be BELIEVERS rather than KNOWERS.

What I mean is, since God the Creator-friend of Eden with whom Adam and Eve communed has become physically absent from us (until Jesus was born), any knowledge of Him has had to come to us “second-hand.” And human beings have learned to imitate the proverbial “man from Missouri” who stubbornly refuses to take anything at face value. While we continue to long for certainty and crave to be sure that we are sure, we find ourselves needing to TRUST some source or other in the HOPE of having that certainty.

“How do you KNOW that God exists?” Frankly, I cannot fully and finally answer that question to my own personal satisfaction. I have intellectual proofs and arguments that are convincing. I have had experiences and have read the Scriptures, and have even spoken to Him. But my own KNOWLEDGE of God’s reality is based on my FAITH in something, Someone, outside of myself.

It is interesting that the words “faith” and “knowledge” are used in the Bible in a somewhat interchangeable way. We are instructed to be true to the “faith of Christ” and to grow in the “knowledge of Christ.” Perhaps the growth from initial “faith” into “knowledge” is a progressive thing, becoming more and more firmly convinced through increased experience as a believer. But notice that those brought initially into Christ are referred to as BELIEVERS and not KNOWERS.

“Faith” is listed in the New Testament as one of the ninefold “fruit of the Spirit” and is in many ways superior to knowledge. If we consider the term “knowledge” to refer to something that is beyond any doubt, then we can see how faith would be a superior virtue. To go on believing something even though doubt is a possibility, must mean that that something holds a very high value to me. We experience this with our loved ones. I might doubt that my child can succeed in what he or she is attempting to do, but out of LOVE for that child, I go on BELIEVING.

I often wonder about the Lord Jesus and His mission here on planet earth to save His people from their sins. He was born into a Jewish peasant family and became a genuine human being with a body and a soul. But He was also fully God from the very beginning (John 1:1). His two distinct natures were never mixed or combined or confused with one another. So as a human being, Jesus was limited in his knowledge just as you and I are.

Never was any man more challenged to go on believing when it was possible to doubt God, than was Jesus Christ. As His death march to the Cross of Calvary drew closer and closer to His own personal “judgment day,” the Bible tells us that Jesus grew more and more agitated and emotion-laden. In his final hours with the twelve disciples, Jesus begged His heavenly Father for some other path than the horrors that awaited Him as the sacrificial lamb who’d be forsaken on that middle cross. To proceed with that assignment, Jesus had to fix His eyes firmly on “the joy set before Him.”

I just wonder if Christ “knew” with a sense of inhuman certainty that everything would turn out well--that crucifixion would be followed by resurrection? Or, like we, was he plagued with a sense of doubt even as His face felt the blows, His back felt the stripes, His shoulder bore the beam, His hands and feet felt the nails, and His voice screamed, “My God, why?”

If those words are true, if His mission really happened, and accomplished all it meant to, then all my doubts can be faced with an unflinching faith, and I can leave the ultimate KNOWING to my Heavenly Lord who knows ALL THINGS, and who reveals to me all I NEED to know.

Amen

MNA
5/22/2020

Run, Rejoice, Rest

O run away! Escape Destruction City.
Proud Babylon has held thee far too long,
Imprisoned by her pleasures cheap and pretty,
And lulled in senseless slumber by her song.
Succumb not to her wisdom vain and witty:
Flee now to Christ and leave her hellish throng.

Rejoice in Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior
Who, sinless, died for sinners on the tree;
For never did His virtue wane or waver,
But, raised up, Jesus silenced death’s decree!
Today, on high, He guides our gospel labor,
From Satan’s kingdom setting spirits free!

O rest and worship in His holy presence
‘Til Jesus comes all nations to depose.
This age shall pass, of faith and of repentance,
And Christ return to vanquish all our foes.
He calls all men to hush and give attendance--
O heed His word! This day of Grace shall close!


MNA
3.8.16