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

What Do We Want from Our Pastors?

Looking back on the many different churches I’ve been a part of, the matter of church leadership has always been a major concern. Pastors, elders, deacons (and deaconesses), board members, teachers, and various other office-holders appear in my memory in varying shades of “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” The overarching question that I keep coming back to is: What does the Lord of the church want His church to be? Because that ought to determine the nature of the church’s leadership.

Shepherding the “flock of God” is, or should be, a high and holy calling. Jesus prayed, not only for His immediate band of apostles and other followers, but also for “those who will believe through their word.” For the church of the future, all the way down to you and me. And He prayed that the Father would “sanctify them by Thy truth; Thy word is truth.” Throughout the Scriptures, the ministry of that sacred, sanctifying word is of paramount importance.

If you’re like me, you’re in constant need of reminding about “the basics.” I’m apt to forget what the Bible is. Not simply a written record of the opinions of those who lived centuries ago in a far-off land. It’s exactly the opposite. The Bible is the eternal truth of the living, ruling, supreme, saving God of the universe. The Bible’s message is as contemporary and relevant as if it had been written this very morning. And its truth, its WHOLE truth, is to SANCTIFY God’s people.

Parts of the Scriptures are thrilling, inspiring, fascinating, heartwarming, challenging. Other parts are strange, obscure, tiresome, uncomfortable, terrifying. But Christians consider “all Scripture” to be “God-breathed...profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God should be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” Serious Christians should desire to learn and treasure and obey “the whole counsel of God.”

Perhaps you find yourself in a church that seems content with lighthearted “sermonettes” on a Sunday morning. Your pastor picks his topic based on what he deems to be the “felt needs” of his people. Or the current crisis facing society the previous week. Or maybe he follows the dictates of the church calendar that rotates through a set litany of topics each year. Many pastors appear eager to make their flocks feel better about themselves and life in general. They portray God as a fountain of happiness, but downplay His desire to SANCTIFY us (make us HOLY).

Really, I’ve found that, by and large, a church will get the kind of pastor it WANTS. And very often, the kind it DESERVES. Unless a group of believers is truly hungry to be taught ALL of the Scriptures, that group will end up with a pastor who is more of a “hireling” than a shepherd. One who feeds the sheep with just what will keep them barely alive, not make them all that God wants them to be.

When was the last time that your minister preached through an entire book of the Bible? How about one of the difficult ones like Ecclesiastes or Ezekiel or Hebrews? Does your preacher tend to cycle through a limited pool of topics or preach only from the New Testament or even just the four Gospels? Would you be willing to go deeper and broader in God’s truth, if only your leader was willing to lead the way?

God gave us 66 books for a good reason. He knew what His people needed from all eternity, and He gave it to us in the form of a magnificent Book! Do we want a pastor who is everybody’s “pal” and keeps us all feeling good Sundays with his jokes and anecdotes and pep talks? Or do we want a scholarly mind that grapples with the depth and breadth of holy Scripture in order to challenge His people to make strides spiritually, preparing them for an unknown future that might include persecution and call for strong, sanctified soldiers of the cross?

What DO we want from our pastors? Isn’t it time to voice those desires in prayer? Isn’t it high time to be serious about our faith, our Lord, our churches, our world?

MNA
7/3/2020

In the Picture?

TRUTH is that which corresponds to reality as it is perceived by GOD.

The preceding sentence is probably the most accurate definition of truth ever devised. Notice that the definition is carefully worded so as to put the final measure of truth in God’s hands, not ours.

Saint Anselm defined God as “that Being than whom no greater can be conceived.” This was the opening of his “ontological argument” for God’s existence. The argument from BEING. Basically, the argument is that God exists NECESSARILY, both as a concept AND as a Reality. For if HE didn’t exist, neither could, or would, anything else!

It follows quite easily that since God’s existence is the only way reality can be accounted for, then His VIEW of reality is the only way TRUTH can be rightly defined.

Since our corporate “fall” in the Garden of Eden, we, Adam and Eve’s offspring, have been engaged in the vain attempt to turn truth into a subjective animal. A amorphous chimera that can be molded and nuanced to suit us and our subjective experience. Together with our primordial parents, we swallowed the lie, “You shall be as gods.” Satan followed that promise up with the qualifier: “knowing good and evil.” But what he really meant was that we could REDEFINE right and wrong according to our corporate whim.

For fallen human beings, created in God’s image, yet saddled with a sinful nature that rebels against Him, we are actually FAR from truly “knowing good and evil.” Oh, we THINK we know what they are. We might even come close sometimes. But guess what? The history of our race proves quite clearly that our “god”-like knowledge of right and wrong is way out of kilter.

Lets take COVID-19 as a present-day example.

Pretty much our entire planet is agreeing right now that this new virus is an unqualified EVIL. It is immobilizing and terrorizing whole populations. It is killing many of our loved ones. It is closing down thousands of businesses. It is separating families. It is a source of misinformation and confusion, much of it on a global scale.

But, if Anselm is right, if God must be, and truth is reality as HE sees it...

Then we must ask ourselves, “What is the truth about the coronavirus as God perceives it?”

When Indiana’s governor gave a speech about the measures our state was taking to combat and accommodate the present crisis, he closed the address by citing his hope and plea for the people of faith in our state to continue their important work of reaching out to struggling and hurting people. He saw this as a way to keep up our morale and our hope for a better tomorrow.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but on youtube, the comments following the governor’s speech included a bunch of criticisms that chastised him for mentioning “people of faith” along with the heroic health care workers and first responders who were facing the crisis with “real” help, and not that religious nonsense (or words to that effect).

It seems that we really DO prefer to define truth, even good and evil, with God out of the picture, even though He, and no other, is the source of all being, and the arbiter of all truth, and the only true KNOWER of what is good, and hence, what is evil.

There are times in the Bible narrative, when God takes definite, concrete steps to “shake things up,” and get folks’ attention. I recall one story of how the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites and hauled it off to display it triumphantly in one of their pagan temples. God shook things up by making their idol Dagon topple over and break apart, then sending a plague of tumors and an infestation of rats!

The Philistines did all they could, humanly speaking, to solve this problem in a manner that left the Hebrew God out of the picture. Their solutions failed miserably. So they finally sent the Ark back to Israel in a cart pulled by two milk cows who had just calved, while keeping the calves away from the mothers. The cows pulled the cart straight back to Israel, proving to the Philistine leaders that God really HAD caused the plague and the infestation. “Scientific” proof!

Pestilence, plague, natural disaster, fire falling from heaven, whatever tragic situation humans have faced or will face in the future, can we not stop playing the pointless game of facing the crisis with God out of the picture? The truth is that He’s in it. He could not NOT be in it. His being makes all other reality possible. And only He perceives the crisis as it TRULY is.

Read your Bible and you’ll get a clue of the many ways God has USED seemingly evil things in the past to bring about enormous GOOD. Natural evils as well as human evils, nothing is beyond God’s ability to sovereignly sanctify it. Even evil men nailing His only Son to the cross.

Health care professionals, first responders, philanthropists, good neighbors--all of these can be symbols of hope for those caught up in a terrifying viral crisis like we’re facing right now.

But, as we thank them for their efforts, let’s trace the hope we feel back to its ultimate SOURCE.

Crises like this are one of God’s ways of making us keep Him in the picture.

MNA
4/3/2020

The Amazement of "ALL"

The word “all” appears in the Bible over 5,000 times. Here are just a few of the “alls” of the Scriptures:
Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. (Gen. 2:1)
And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. (Gen. 6:17)
Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five? (Gen. 18:28)
And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt. (Gen. 41:41)
The fish that were in the river died, the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink the water of the river. So there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. (Ex. 7:21)
And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of livestock. (Ex. 12:29)
Then He said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Ex. 33:19)

I gave you just eight examples from just 2 books of the Bible. In those 2 books, Genesis and Exodus, “all” appears over 500 times. One of the most important things about God’s Word is its universal truth. Here are some major ways the word “all” applies to what we read in the Scriptures:

--The God of the Bible, who appears in the first verse of Genesis as the Creator, is the only God that is. He is the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists besides Himself.
--Therefore, all creation--every creature that exists--owes its love, worship, thanksgiving and service to the God of all.
--Our first parents, Adam and Eve, disobeyed the Lord, and because of their sin, God brought the curse of death and judgment upon all of their offspring--including you & me.
--Because God Himself is the Truth, all truth flows from Him. All the words of God are true, and therefore, all the words of the Bible are divine truth.
--The Scriptures are true for you and for me, they are true for all people, in all places, at all times, for all generations, through all of history, and to all eternity.
--The Bible declares that the Son of God--Jesus Christ--became the only Savior for all people. He claimed: “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
--Those who turn from their sins and fully trust in God’s Son to save them, receive forgiveness and cleansing from all their sins. Jesus Christ paid for all their sins on the cross of Calvary 2,000 years ago. So, believers have no more payments to make for sin!
--That brings us to my main topic for this article: Our risen Savior Jesus reigns today, right now, in Heaven, and is in sovereign control over ALL THINGS.

Everyone knows that the Bible is all about Jesus--the people of Israel anticipated Him as their coming Messiah, the prophecies of the Old Testament foretold His coming, His ministry, His sacrifice and His everlasting kingdom. Then, the New Testament Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke and John--give the story of His incarnation, His life and ministry, His miracles and teaching, His betrayal and arrest, His trial and crucifixion, and then His resurrection and ascension.

But Jesus’ followers had their Master’s promise that the Holy Spirit would lead them into “all the truth” about Him. This was accomplished as Christ’s Apostles received direct revelation from the Son of God through the ministry of the Spirit--revelation that was written down by both the Gospel writers, and by the writers of the New Testament epistles. One of the most important of these letters to the churches was the book of Romans, authored by the Apostle Paul.

No other book of the Bible gives such a complete explanation of what makes the coming of Christ such good news for all people. And Paul himself was such an enthusiastic preacher of that gospel message for a very surprising reason: he started out as one of Christ’s biggest enemies!

The gospel is so amazing because it is good news for sinners--sinners like you and me, those guilty of the smallest sins and the biggest sins, those who admire Jesus and those who hate and despise Him, rich and poor sinners, foolish and wise sinners, young and old sinners, Jewish and Gentile sinners. All sinners in the world can receive Paul’s message as “good news”!

The good news Paul describes to the Christians in the church at Rome is all about receiving. When Paul was known as Saul of Tarsus, he was a Jewish Pharisee, committed to keeping God’s law as strictly as possible, and counting on his own strict obedience to make him acceptable in God’s eyes. His religion was based on doing, on offering, on giving something to the Lord that was demanded of him.

But when he finally met God’s Son on the road to Damascus, Saul found out that salvation from his sins was all about receiving. Jesus Christ had come to provide a free gift of forgiveness and perfect righteousness that is offered by grace and through faith alone. He discovered that all of his law-keeping put together could never earn the favor of a holy God. God is so high and holy and perfect, that no one’s obedience is good enough.

Isaiah 64:6 tells us that “all our righteous deeds are like filthy rags” in the eyes of the Lord! So, how many “filthy rags” would it take to make our holy Creator pleased with us--pleased enough with us to allow us into His perfect presence? Our only hope for salvation from God’s judgment would have to be based on His mercy and grace. We must trust in a God of mercy to save us.

So, Paul explains to the Roman believers--and to you and me--that “the righteous will live by faith” (Romans 1:17), that Christ offers us a “righteousness apart from the law” (3:21), that faith in Christ is “credited as righteousness” (4:22), that believers are identified with Christ so that “we too might walk in newness of life” (6:4), that our freedom from sin makes us “slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” (6:19), that the Spirit of God dwells in us to help us in our weakness (8:26). All of these benefits are love-gifts of grace from our heavenly Father.

Of course, our faith in Jesus Christ doesn’t end as soon as we become Christians. The challenge and the power of living out our life in Christ requires that we go on trusting Him. Jesus’ ministry to His people didn’t end after He died and arose and ascended to His heavenly glory. The risen Lord Jesus is ruling and reigning on the throne of the universe. Romans 8:28 is one of the most reassuring verses in Paul’s entire epistle: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

For believers in Christ, faced with the weaknesses of our own fallible flesh, a fallen world full of persecution and temptations, and the craftiness of the devil and his fallen angels, Romans 8:28 is a source of strength, comfort and confidence. Our progress on the path to heaven doesn’t depend totally on our effort, our faithfulness, our strength of willpower. No, our Savior and King is always providing us with supernatural help. He is in control of all things. And He causes all things to work together for our benefit. The good purpose of making us like Jesus Himself!

Just think about it:
~ All of the circumstances of your birth, your family, your physical traits and talents,
~ All of the events of your past, your upbringing, your education, your victories & failures,
~ All of the relationships you’ve made, your spouse, your children, your friends & enemies,
~ All of the problems in your life, your disappointments, your diseases, your weaknesses,
~ All of the situations you worry about, your doubts, your fears, your joys & your sorrows,
~ All of the lessons you’ve learned, are learning, or have yet to learn,
~ All of the local, national, or world situations we read about or see in the media,
~ All of the decisions made by those who have authority over you, those who care about you or don’t care at all,

All things are under the control of your good God, Lord and Savior, who plans them for your good.

At the same time, you and I must keep in mind that knowing about Romans 8:28 and believing it are two different things. Many of God’s most precious promises are some of the most difficult to fully accept. The world, the devil, and our own weak flesh can cause us to doubt God’s sovereign control over life’s circumstances. When we doubt His loving power over all things, we can start to lose the peace, the joy, and the hope that sustain us through the storms and trials of life.

Believe me, Paul certainly understood that this earthly life is filled with storms and trials, especially for Christians. Chapter 8 of Romans is concerned with the sufferings and weaknesses that take place in our world. Paul writes that the whole creation is “groaning,” as if it is in labor, waiting to be delivered. You mothers know what the pains of labor are like. Paul goes on to say that we Christians have a “groaning” in our souls as well. It is a longing for our heavenly home, for the pure, beautiful, eternal state where we will leave all suffering behind, and dwell in the glorious presence of our Lord Jesus forever.

Mothers, when your baby is born, I’m told that the memory of your labor pains quickly fades away--there is such overwhelming joy and relief that your new child has arrived safe into the world, the agony of the delivery process all seems to have been worth the effort. In fact, isn’t it true that the joy is actually ALL THE GREATER because of the part you played in bringing the son or daughter into the world--painful though it was?

That is very much like the suffering we go through as believers. At times it is extremely hard to see the loving hand of a sovereign God at work in and through those difficult, painful trials. When we lose a job...when fire or violent weather strikes our property...when a loved one leaves...when our bodies grow tired and weak...when we get confused, depressed or frustrated…

All of those hardships, the Bible assures us, are the pains leading up to our DELIVERANCE into glory! And when we trust our heavenly Father to cause our pains and sufferings to “work together for good,” we are following the example of our Lord Jesus. Remember, HE took on our weak, limited human flesh when he became a man. HE experienced poverty, hunger, thirst and physical pain. HE suffered the loss of loved ones and the misunderstanding of his own people. HE was accused of being false, demonic and guilty of crimes he didn’t commit. HE was nailed to a terrible cross to pay for sins that were not his own!

Paul describes Jesus in Philippians 2: He “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.” All that Christ suffered as a man, led up to the glory that He received in Heaven from His Father--glory that will be His forever. Glory that you and I will share in when we see Him face to face!

Paul writes: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). Our sufferings are being worked by God together for our ultimate good. In fact, our sufferings make us more like our Savior, who suffered so much for us!

And think of the great scope of the “good” God is preparing for those who love Him! The pains and struggles of this life are only for that long: “this life.” But the glory and blessings of the life to come will NEVER END. The inheritance that awaits all of God’s children will outweigh this life’s sufferings so much, we will think it strange that we ever doubted or complained about them.

Think of the “good” God accomplishes through our hardships even IN this life: They cause us to pray more often and more fervently. They strengthen our faith as we lean on Christ. They increase our desire and expectation for Heaven. They make us more humble and less self-dependent. They give us more sympathy and compassion for others so we may comfort them. In other words, trials and sufferings make us more like Jesus. They sanctify us.

“Every human tie may perish; Friend to friend unfaithful prove;
Mothers cease their own to cherish; Heaven and earth at last remove;
But no changes Can attend Jehovah’s love.

In the furnace God may prove thee, Thence to bring thee forth more bright,
But can never cease to love thee; Thou art precious in His sight:
God is with thee, God, thine everlasting light.”

At the end of chapter 8 of Romans, Paul gives a frightful list of things that might conceivably make our Lord “cease to love” us. “Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” “In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (v. 37).

All things work for our good,
We are more than conquerors over all that threatens us.
All that we suffer cannot be compared with the glories of Heaven.
Because God loves all those who are called according to His purpose,
And His love is eternal. It will outlast it ALL!

MNA
4/3/2017

Beauty's Longing

Feather-fingered branches massage the morning sky--
a pale gray pallette awaiting a tarrying dawn;
voices from that distant wood echo
lower, far, far lower than my thoughts.
Music casts its magical curse on
my wooden ears of flesh, where the echoes die.

Elven languages leave me wandering,
wondering whether Tolkien heard them plainer:
songs across the western seas
where gray ships pass away, never returning...
Life of the song, heat of the flame, blindness of the light,
all beyond, far beyond my knowing.

But of Joy, Love, Truth, a mocking fragrance
bugles the hunt for one more day.
Through the gray a bow of promise breaks
and nettles of beauty pierce my stony depths.
At such tortured moments my soul would fly
into eager immolation, losing itself
in the One no mortal man could see, and live.


MNA
3.23.2016

Pearls, Pigs and Parables

God’s truth is the most precious thing on earth. It makes one wise unto salvation. It’s the one true window we possess into the wondrous unseen world of heavenly things. Besides the souls of men and women, it’s the one treasure of this world that shall never pass away.

In our Christian literature-soaked culture, it’s hard to fathom that, in whole regions of our planet, people are risking more than their lives in order to possess even a fragment of this Book of Books.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the Christian Scriptures (Testaments Old and New) is that, in spite of their divine origin and profound wisdom, so much of this Book is so easy to comprehend. Its overarching theme and story-line reads like a simple fairy tale. Yet its history, teaching and directives are so practical and all-encompassing, that the most scholarly minds are still plumbing its depths after thousands of years!

Clearly, the Bible is a message from the keenest and deepest Thinker in the universe. Of course, as has often been admitted, ALL truth is GOD’S truth...we know many useful things about our world through our secular observations. Yet there are essential truths God has shared with us in the Scriptures about humanity, Himself, history, hope for the future--things we could learn in no other way. Pearls of great price, indeed!

Unfortunately, most people today fail to recognize God’s written revelation as the precious string of pearls it is. Many who feel themselves too self-sufficient, worldly-wise, scientific and sophisticated, view those who love God’s Word as “Bible-thumpers,” bigoted hayseeds and unschooled hicks. The combined childlike simplicity and timeless profundity of the Scriptures leave them uninterested, unimpressed, unmoved.

To most folks, the Bible is a purely human invention, a crutch for feeble minds; at best, it’s just one arcane religious tome among many. To them, the possibility that their sovereign Maker has a message they desperately need to hear, is too remote a possibility to bother about. If honest, they would say, “That book was useful in years gone by, before mankind ‘came of age’ and realized we’re nothing but creatures sprung up by chance from primordial slime. But we’ve grown up. We’ve gone beyond supernatural explanations and old-fashioned myths.”

Interestingly, this was the attitude of many of the skeptics in Jesus’ day when He was ministering throughout Galilee and Judea. Jews of the party of the Sadducees were especially prone to dismiss Jesus as just one more troublesome fanatic who spoke of a supernatural realm and a coming divine kingdom, where all human power structures would be subject to God’s judgment, and the down-trodden poor would be rewarded and comforted at last.

The Pharisees weren’t much better. Unlike the Sadducees, they believed in the supernatural and the possibility of miracles. But they saw God as One who could be appeased and manipulated by “playing the system” of rules and regulations, most of which their traditions had added on to God’s own requirements of obedient Jews. They listened carefully to Jesus’ teachings. But they did so with the primary goal of confirming their own preconceived interpretations, or else, finding fault with His teaching so they could accuse Him of sedition or heresy.

One of the most insulting epithets that I can think of is to call somebody a “pig” or a “swine.” To most people, this would be associated with one who is inhumanly selfish, rotten, dirty or vile. Pigs are animals which are known as rooters in the mud and the slime. This is a name thrown at police officers by those who run afoul of the law. It’s used by tyrants to describe people they have no use for and wish to denigrate as less than human. I’ve even heard it used to characterize women who are hopelessly committed to lives of prostitution.

When Jesus wanted to make a point about those who had no use for His words, He drew the picture of casting a valuable string of pearls into the pigsty. He warned His followers against casting pearls before swine, and giving holy things to dogs (Matthew 7:6). Both dogs and pigs were unclean animals to the Jews, and the Lord was clearly saying that some hearers of the truth are so hardened in their hearts and confirmed in their rejection of what is holy, that the clear presentation of God’s truth to such people only provokes them to even more violent rejection.

This is one of the reasons, I believe, that Jesus’ primary mode of teaching, especially among large crowds, was by way of parables. Some of His most chilling words are recorded in Mark 4:11-12...

“To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”

Elsewhere, Jesus taught that one must become as a little child to enter His kingdom. Little children typically will sit on a parent’s or grandparent’s lap and happily drink in the stories and instructions he or she is given. An innocent little child won’t get hung up on doubts and objections and needless adult-style worries when confronted with uncomfortable truths.

Sadly, though, most folks bring a great deal of mental and moral baggage with them as they are exposed to the precious pearls of God’s truth. And far too many of them consider themselves too sophisticated and “mature” to humbly submit to what God has to tell them. They see themselves as above and beyond the need for repentance and a new birth such as Jesus offered to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. These know-it-alls find it offensive that a simple carpenter from Galilee (or one of His untaught followers) would seek to instruct them in matters of spiritual importance.

In Romans chapter one, Paul writes that the sinful proclivity of mankind that chiefly causes God to display His holy wrath against us, is that of suppressing His truth in unrighteousness. Even the mere awareness of God’s presence in our universe, revealed in creation and in our own consciences, is so repugnant to us, we do all we can to repress it, deny it, explain it away, push it down and out of sight. And when we can’t do that, we twist that knowledge into a false deity-- some idol we can fashion and control.

Jesus’ words of warning must be heard. Even now, God is scattering the seed of His Word all around us. It is a day of grace. But, that grace will not be offered forever. If my heart is resisting the simple call of Christ to repent and believe and follow Him, the day may come when He’ll consider me dog-like or pig-like enough to keep His pearls away from me forever.