Tales from a Light Lunch

A co-worker of mine leads a Bible study on Tuesdays at my place of work.

As we studied "the prodigal son" passage from Luke 15 it occurred to me that a person can do any number of “good” things WITHOUT Jesus.

They can save their marriage, quit smoking, lose weight, go to church, serve at a soup kitchen, donate toys, stay faithful to their wife, pay their debts, or help someone move and all of it without trusting in Jesus.

You need Jesus to do that which you cannot do: Live a holy life, absorb full the wrath of God, and be resurrected spotless after 3 days in the grave.

For all that can be accomplished WITHOUT Jesus, peace with God for salvation is only found by what Jesus has already done and our belief in Him as sufficient to save us.

C.H. Spurgeon's "Defense of Calvinism"

In researching Mr. C.H. Spurgeon I came across this gem the other day:

http://www.spurgeon.org/calvinis.htm

Here is an excerpt:

“John Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and laugh at it, too, of a good woman who said, in order to prove the doctrine of election, "Ah! sir, the Lord must have loved me before I was born, or else He would not have seen anything in me to love afterwards." I am sure it is true in my case; I believe the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I was born, or else He never would have chosen me afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in myself why He should have looked upon me with special love. So I am forced to accept that great Biblical doctrine.”

O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go

Listen HERE.

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

The Fade

We sang the song, "His Glory Never Fades" today at church.

Buy it HERE.

The chorus goes like this:

Holy is the Lord God,
worthy of praise
His glory never fades,
His glory never fades

Mighty is our King,
with no end to his days
His glory never fades,
His glory never fades

I meditated while singing on this premise. It is true. All else fades.

Perhaps this is why we are obsessed with photographs. They stamp in time the best of us and are timeless in that regard. The substance and sentiment behind the photo fade over time however. We are zealous to capture the beautiful, the honorable, the memorable, and make it immortal, but we cannot. Everything fades.

Isaiah 40:6-8

6 A voice says, “Cry!" And I said,“What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. 7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. 8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

This may explain why we recycle our celebrities as they get older and the luster wears off, the reason why there is so much pornography and so few marriages that actually end in the death of one of the two, why we are so desperate to have that which is beautiful and preserve it, why we are prisoners of the moment and addicted to that which is best for the moment, why we love the newness and freshness of babies, and why sports fan desire another championsihp unsatisfied with last year's if this year's is thwarted. We want to capture and possess the infinite. We desire to hold that which is unchangingly good and satisfying, but we grasp for it in places, persons, and things which can never meet the heavy weights which we place on them.

The flowers of the field fall. The grass withers. Men die. Memories fail.

God never fades. His beauty does not decay. His riches do not rust. His glory is not diminished by controversy, misstep, rumor, or accusation. He is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

His glory NEVER fades. He is a picture of beauty, love, justice, mercy, forgivenss, joy, and strength. He is a living picture. He is the substance behind the photo that gives it life, yet He need not be captured in inactivity to avoid decay. He ever lives as the best and grandest to which our hearts and minds could possibly aspire. Put another way: nothing we think or feel as great is greater than God.

We can never out-imagine the enormity that is God's glory. We cannot allegorize it in superlative. We cannot apply to it hyperbole. It is beyond that which we exaggerate.

He is glorious. Forever.

Lesson from Church: 1/29/12

Today in church as a follow up to our completion of the book of Revelation, we are beginning a short series entitled: "Letters to Cornerstone" where we attempt to address the issues we speculate Jesus would address by letter if by His Spirit John wrote to us. Not necessarily that specifically, but you get the gist of it.

Today's topic was: Personal Worship

Some points of interest (to me)

(1) John was one of Jesus' best friends during His human life and when John met the resurrected, glorified Christ at the beginning of the book of Revelation, he fell down at his feet as a dead man. Jesus is infinitely glorious and worthy of all praise, adoration, fear, and honor.

(2) The word worship comes from an anglo-saxon word "worth scipe" It can be loosely defined as "the action of delight." We can worship many things, but the Bible makes it clear that only He is due worship, owed worship, worthy of worship. So much so that everything else in comparison seems like hatred. Not because you must hate everything other than Jesus, but you must love Him so much that the next thing in line is so far beneath it that one could say that you hate it per se.

(3) The Gospel in Jesus Christ is our call to satisfaction. It is our call to enjoy Him most that He might be made most to us.

(4) Despite popular notion: the pursuit of God is not at odds with the pursuit of joy.

(5) “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” ― A.W. Tozer

(6) The Gospel is the fuel for producing this joy and love and rich satisfaction. It is not another "to do" list of disciplines to produce in us or fake before men a certian pious hand-raising, tear-filled joy. It is a deep apprecation of gratitude and love and joy produced by the Spirit's reminding you of the grace of God in Christ Jesus.

It was a good reminder to enjoy God and to pursue Him, to make Him our hightest aim and to find our deepest satisfaction in Him by cutting off that in which we are tempted to delight that is not Him.

Personal relationhip advice

"The unbeliever simply needs to come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ."

This may be the answer to the question: "How does one become saved?"

Now, granted, I think I perceive what the person means in answering the question this way. They mean to say the person needs to develop a "positive" relationship with Jesus Christ.

Grant me the next few paragraphs to at least appeal to you that this language is sloppy and perhaps not uniformly true.

We all HAVE a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We are born enemies. While not a favorable relationship or one to which we would boast on our spiritual resume, it is true. Our relationship to Jesus is one of enemy, adversary, and rebel.

We all also HAVE a personal relationship with the Devil. We are his children. While not a favorable relationship or one to which we would boast on our spiritual resume, it is true.

You do not become a Christian be developing a personal relationship with Jesus. You already have one and it is not favorable to your eternal security.

You become a Christian by God's grace reaching you through the preached Gospel of His atoning sacrifice in the Person and work of Jesus Christ, His Son. In Him, by Him, and through Him only do we have peace with God and eternal life secured.

In response to this, yes, we respond by pursuing God for the first time as His Spirit cheers us on. We pursue Him because He first pursued us. We love Him because He first loved us. It is a relationship and it is personal. But it does not save.

Grace working through faith in Jesus alone saves.

Lessons from Eriwn Lutzer

On the way to church this morning we heard Erwin Lutzer on the radio preaching.

Dr. Lutzer pointed out first that many modern church leaders display their lack of confidence in the Gospel by insisting that they dress it up. People do not want simply the Gospel, they need it packaged in a way that is marketed to the desires they bring with them into the service.

Dr. Lutzer rightly pointed out that the apostle Paul sought to know nothing except Christ crucified and was willing to be seen as foolish by the trendy hipsters in Corinth if only to know, matter-of-factly that it was the Gospel that was preached.

We are converted in no other way. Dr. Lutzer mentioned the conversion of C.H. Spurgeon, who as a 17 year old young man, attending a church service. The attending pastor was unable to attend due to poor weather conditions. A lay person in the congregation preached a message containing only a few Bible verses that he nervously repeated. It was clumsy, unprepared, unpolished, unfashionable, unimpressive, and it grasped the heart of a young 17 year old boy who would become known by many as a giant of Christianity.

Two observations:

(1) My wife and I discussed the beauty of a lay person stepping up to preach in light of the pastor being held up because of weather. We live in a day where church is likely to be cancelled if the pastor can not make it. We also live in a day where most lay folk would not even know one Bible verse on which they could preach. Things worth doing are worth doing poorly if no one more qualified is there to do them. Someone ought to preach. This man recognized this and his courage and humility in leaning on Christ to guide him is refreshing

(2) The Gospel is mighty to save, full of power, and the only means by which men turn from darkness to light. The simplicity of the Gospel is often overlooked in lieu of persuasive speech and the personality of the speakers.

Dr. Lutzer also made an additional point by pointing to a dream a man once reportedly had placed upon him one night while sleeping.

In the dream the man carried a burdensome cross that was heavy and frustrating and hard to bear. He came across a carpenter while travelling and asked him if he could lighten his load. The carpenter acquiesced and sawed off 2-3 feet of the cross. The man was grateful and continued walking with a new sense of vigor and excitement. His cross was lighter and he was excited. He then came to a vast gulf on the path on which he was walking. The only means of crossing the gulf was laying down the cross from his back to use as a bridge . The cross, however, was now 2-3 feet short and could not bridge the gap.

The cross we bear is given to us by God for His purposes and we will fall short every time we attempt to make our cross shorter.

Lastly, he quoted Bonhoeffer in saying (and I paraphrase here because I do not recall the words verbatim) "may they not tremble before us as men, but before the cross."