Podcast: Gospel: The Pure Heart

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
-Hebrews 4:12-16

When I was very young, I was in a certain science class. This was probably fourth grade. We had a test scheduled on this particular day, but for whatever reason the teacher decided to postpone the test until the next day. Those of us who were not prepared were happy. But there were many who were ready for the test and wanted to take it. They didn’t want to spend another night studying when they were ready to go. So the teacher gave us a choice. Take it today, or take it tomorrow.

A portion of the class took it right away, and it was a HARD test. I was not part of that group. I spent the evening studying and came back the next day for the test. The only thing was, the teacher had changed the test. And the second test was really, really easy.

I probably would not even remember this day except that one of my friends, whose name is Dan, stood up in class and said that it wasn’t fair. And he argued the point until he was sent to the principal’s office.

It wasn’t fair. We all knew it wasn’t fair. And frankly, we probably would have all talked about how unfair it was in whispers after class except that Dan stood up, and suddenly, we didn’t have an excuse anymore. If you would have asked me why I didn’t talk to the teacher about it, I could have said a number of things before he stood up. I would have said, “Oh, you don’t ask about this stuff.” Or, “You don’t know what it was like in there – no one said a word!” But then he stood up. I’m not saying he went about it the right way, but one thing it did do was to tear away all of the false excuses and leave the truth – I was scared to say anything.

That’s not my biggest regret in life. Not even close. No, my biggest regrets are when I caused people to hurt because of selfishness. When pride, lust, anger, and hatred came out in my words or actions and brought about harm that I can never repay. I regret thinking badly about people. I regret being so absorbed in my own stuff to help. I regret the lies, the insults, the screaming, the fighting. I regret those moments when I am so angry that all I can think about doing is hurt someone. I regret doing all of these things with God.

These are sins. It’s hard for us to understand how serious they are, because they are part of our everyday lives. Every day we get angry at someone. Every day we lust after someone. Every day we seek our own selfish desires. When God tells us to love Him “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” we sort of shrug and go about our way. It’s a standard we’ve never seen met, and so we push it aside as something that cannot be done and shouldn’t be attempted. We look around, make sure no one else is suddenly doing something holy and cool, and rest in the assurance that we’re no worse than the next guy.

But God looks at things a little bit differently. His holy standard is perfection, and anything less than that is a capital crime. He looks into our hearts and judges the pride, ambition, lust, and greed within. He sees the way we react in anger at people, people He intended us to love. He made us to worship Him, and instead we spend all our time and money on entertainment.

And our excuse may go something like this. “God, you really don’t know what it’s like down here! It’s just unreasonable to expect that much from us. We can’t be perfect! This world just isn’t set up like that.”

I’ll tell you something – that is exactly what my response would be. There isn’t a day that goes by that I react rightly to everything that happens. There isn’t a day I’m not plagued with sin. I try, but I’m just not good enough to make it. I’d be the first guy looking around the class, making sure no one is standing up, and then settling into that excuse that this is just the way things go.

Except that God does know. God does understand. And if anyone had any doubts, He proved it by becoming a man and living a life with all of the temptations and trials as anyone else. Jesus lived a perfect life, down to even the intentions of His pure heart.

Here’s the cool thing. He didn’t do it to prove we aren’t good enough. We’re not good enough, but He didn’t need to prove it that way. History has given plenty of proof of that. No, He did it to provide for us a way. He didn’t do it to say, “I told you so!” but to take away all of those sins from us.

The wages of sin is death, and no sin can be forgiven without the shedding of blood. So when Jesus died on that Cross, dying the death He did not deserve, His Blood was not paying the price of His own sin, because He had none, but for ours. He took our sin upon that Cross and paid that price. Because of His perfect life, because of His pure heart, He was able to lay down His life for us, even though we did not deserve it.

He also gives us His righteousness, that same pure heart, so we can stand before the Father on the Day of Judgment and be accepted into life as though we hadn’t a blemish on us.

And He doesn’t expect anything from us in return, because this was the ultimate act of love and mercy. Jesus died for us.

Repent from your sins. Confess them and turn away from them. Believe in Jesus and His sacrifice. And turn in confidence to Him. He knows what you’ve been through, because He was there too. But more than that, He can forgive you.

Which you need, because there has only been one pure heart on this earth, and it isn’t yours.

Podcast: Gospel: The Wicked Heart

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
-Genesis 6:5-6

I have spent several weeks now trying to spread some good news. It may not seem like that’s what I’ve been doing, because what I’ve said has been what most people would consider negative. But a lot of times, if you don’t know the bad news, the good doesn’t seem all that important. A patient is not going to rejoice at a cure unless he already knows he has the disease. A criminal is not going to rejoice that his case was dismissed if he doesn’t know he was charged with anything.

So I’m done being rough on you for a while. Maybe not long, but for a little while. Today I want to talk about the evil heart, but that evil heart is my own.

I was one of those “well-behaved” kids. My teachers loved me because I had good grades and never got into trouble. I was a Boy Scout, a third baseman with a good eye at the plate. I was successful in most things I tried. Academically, I was an A student (with a rare exception), but I was big and strong, so I was a good choice in physical games too. I was raised to be courteous and respectful. I was a good kid.

By my actions, it really seemed like I had it all together. And in a worldly way, I did. I was on the road to becoming successful and well respected.

I bring all of this up because I know what lurks in the heart of a good kid. I was proud, quick to anger, and full of lust. I really thought I deserved to be rich and famous, like it was my right. I never thought much about God, because why would I? I didn’t need Him.

I bought into the lie. I bought into the lie that it’s what I do that makes me a good person. If I blow up in anger every once in a while, well, I made up for it in other ways. If I sought my own ends rather than the good of others, well, doesn’t everyone? And, hey, I was better than most!

Eventually, the darkness of my heart began to come in out in my behavior. I would get impatient more often. I got upset when I wasn’t the focus of attention. I thought I deserved that. It comes out pretty innocently, but it’s not innocent at all. When I had a problem, I expected my friends to drop everything to help. When with a group, I expected everyone to talk about what I wanted to talk about.

My outward life became very closed off and dark. There was only room for me in there, so with others weren’t meeting the needs that I had, I would get mad.

I wasn’t loving anyone at all, but I expected them to love me. I wasn’t loving God, but expected Him to honor me.

This is narcissism on the level of dictators. I wouldn’t have admitted that then, but it is. It is the worst criminals in history that seek their own needs over anyone else, and that’s where I was – I just wasn’t acting on those thoughts like the worst criminals do. And you know what, this sort of selfishness is rampant in our culture. Our laws constrain most of us, but most of us have that sort of selfish and evil heart.

I can’t tell you exactly why it happened when it did, but God opened my heart to a little of His light. I was shocked and disgusted with the evil in there. For so long I had pushed stuff aside, telling myself that my thoughts don’t matter, or that it’s not a big deal. But at once I became aware of the lust, pride, selfishness, greed, and anger in my heart.

I couldn’t put it aside anymore. I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I felt so ill that I wanted to vomit. I spent the next several days crying whenever I thought of what I had made of my life.

How do you fix that? How do you make up for that? See, I was always judging my life by my actions. You know, more good than bad. But I realized that even my good deeds were often done out of selfish motives. I realized that my actions weren’t as good as I thought, because they were done with an evil heart. The good was done with evil motives, and the evil was more of a reflection of who I truly was. It was a startling realization, and it destroyed me.

The reason I’ve done this series is because I want you to see that too. It’s counterintuitive, but the more we concentrate on our own hearts, the less we realize how dirty it is in there. I want you to look at what God says about us and realize that your heart isn’t as clean as it should be. Most of the time, we’re okay with ourselves, so we expect God to be okay with us too. Except that God sees clearly all that stuff that we hide away. God is going to judge us not only by our actions, but by our words and thoughts. How is any of us going to pass that particular test?

My pride was broken, but that still left the question – what do I do with that? You can try to bend your will to fix the problems in your life, but they’ll only bring up new ones. You know, this all happened five years ago, and I still struggle with pride and anger. It’s still plaguing me. So I can try my best to be good, and I’m still going to be spouting some sort of garbage.

The truth is, you can’t do anything with it. You can’t fix it. You can’t make it up to God. You can’t repair the damage you have done. And you can’t cover it up with good deeds, because even those get tainted by your evil heart. We are selfish at heart. We are lustful at heart. We are proud at heart. We are sinners at heart. At heart, we seek ourselves rather than God. We’re guilty. We’re guilty before a Holy and just God and deserving of punishment.

Someone must to pay for my sins. God is a just God, and He doesn’t let such crimes go unpunished. A good judge doesn’t let criminals go. If he did, he wouldn’t be a good judge. It’s the same thing. God is just, and He wouldn’t be just if He let sin go unpunished. And frankly, the punishment was more than I can pay in this lifetime, because sin can only be atoned for by the shedding of blood.

Trying harder wasn’t going to save me. I wasn’t going to be able to make up for my sins. It wasn’t going to be enough to keep pushing it back into the corner of my heart. Good deeds wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t anything I did at all. It was Jesus.

Someone has to pay for those sins. I could have spent eternity in eternal torment to pay for them. But I won’t. I don’t have to, because Jesus did.

Jesus came to earth in the form of a man, lived a sinless life, and died on a Roman Cross. He had no sin of His own to pay for in the shedding of His Blood, so He paid for mine, and not just mine. Because He is God and of infinite power and value, He has the ability to pay for an infinite number of sins, the sins of all those who repent and put their trust in Him. On the third day He rose again, insuring that I will rise again into eternal life also.

The thing that saved me was Grace. It’s the thing that saves me today, and will continue to save me. I couldn’t do anything with the evil inside me, but He took it from me. In exchange, He gave me His righteousness. In repentance and belief in Jesus we can be saved.

But the Spirit had to knock down that pride of mine before He could really start rebuilding, because before that I could barely acknowledge that I needed a savior at all.

I think that’s where most people are. They don’t turn to Jesus because they don’t realize they need a Savior. Every other major religion in the world tells you to try harder and do better, and that’s sort of the way our brains are wired. If something is wrong, then we can fix it! What God says is this – “You can’t fix it, but I can.” Jesus can fix it. That’s what He was doing on that Cross, and if it were just a simple matter of us trying harder, then His death was in vain.

The best period in my life was that time when He revealed to me that I wasn’t making it on my own. Now I stand on Grace. Where do you stand?

Forgetting these words

“Let them [my words] not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart.”
-Proverbs 4:21

It surprises me, going through Proverbs verse-by-verse, how much of this book is simply a plea for us to remember these words. Over and over again Solomon has asked his son (and us) to remember, to hold these words in our hearts.

In truth, we are very quick to forget what the Bible tells us. We are so fast to go about our way into the world without thinking about it at all.

It’s almost like when you go to the store for one thing, and you leave with ten things, but had forgotten the very thing that you went to the store to get. We get so distracted with the lesser things of the day that we forget what God has told us was important.

Or we just don’t care, which happens far too often. We figure that we know the important part, but the rest of it is just a little dull.

Whatever the reason, it is all idolatry. It is putting something else before God, the One who created you. It is having a god before Him.

You may be surprised that I use such stern language to describe something so mundane as failing to read and remember the Word of God. Most of the population is NOT reading the Word today, or even this week. Does this particular problem (for most wouldn’t even consider it a sin) really require such harsh language?

Yes, it does. And don’t misunderstand. I’m not advocating some sort of legalism here where you are required to read so much of the Word every day. That’s not the problem. The problem is putting other stuff before God. The problem is making Him the last priority of your day, behind work, family, the news, and surfing the internet. That’s the issue here.

What else would you call it when someone ignores the instruction of the God who created the world and everything in it so he can watch a football game? Isn’t that putting something before God? That is idolatry. What else would you call it when someone decides that his time is better spent in his own pursuits than in seeking after God?

If you believe that the Bible’s claims are true, then how could anything be more important? How could anything come in the way of seeking God’s perfect Word out at every opportunity. And if you don’t believe its claims, then let your soul tremble, for you cannot say what lies beyond the grave, and what Judgment awaits you there. God is a jealous God, and He does not allow those who seek after their own lust, pride, anger, and hatred to darken His Heaven with their sin.

In truth, without this Word, we would have no assurance for the life to come. It’s not that the book saves us, but it points us to the One who does.

Perhaps we could try to be good people, but that would not make up for all the evil in our thoughts, words, and actions. Perhaps we can just hope that there is no God, but that will be no excuse when we face Him on the day of judgment. Perhaps we can say, “Oh, God is good, so He will let me into Heaven,” as though any good God could fail to punish sin.

But if the words of this Book are true, then we have hope. It is not a hope in ourselves, but a hope in the only Son of God, who though He was perfect took the punishment for our sins upon Himself when He died on the Cross. In Jesus we have hope, because he paid the price for us. If we repent and believe, we will be granted life. So says these Words.

Remember that, and keep it close to your heart. There is nothing more important.

I’ve written this blog somewhere before . . .

“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.”
-Proverbs 4:20

It really feels like I’ve written about this verse a lot.

Those of you who have been reading this blog from the beginning know what I’m talking about. Solomon has stopped several times so far to urge his son to pay attention, to listen, to keep these words near to his heart.

Frankly, when I decided to write my reactions to Proverbs verse-by-verse, I really didn’t expect to write about what is essentially the same verse over and over again.

You have to wonder about this kid, right? I mean, if Solomon is having to stop every twenty verses or so to say, “Listen to this,” you have to wonder if his son had heard a single word.

Or you have to wonder if we are listening, because he’s directing this to us as well.

And that’s the thing. We probably aren’t listening at all.

Almost all of us have a Bible at home, and we know we should be reading it, but we usually don’t. We all know we should go to church, but we usually don’t. We all know that we should be focusing on God every day, but there’s just so much else to do!

You have to wonder if we really know any of these things. If you really believe your very life depends on whether the words of this book are true or not, I imagine that you would be digging through it every chance you got. If you really believe that your pride, lust, selfishness, and hatred would kill you in the end, I imagine you’d be seeking a way out.

If you really believed in a God who would judge you in the end, I’m willing to bet you’d be concentrating on Him every single day.

Listen. Pay attention to my words. I can sum up the entire message of Christian Pilgrimage pretty quickly – “You’re a sinner, and you’ll die without the Blood of Jesus. Repent and believe.” Our blogs and podcasts are all based on that, and it really doesn’t get boring, because it’s important. I don’t want to do a series on your finances or sex life because you need to nail this one down first.

God is a just God, and He will judge us all for our actions, our words, and our thoughts. And you’re not good enough to make it. You don’t have a chance on your own. But He also loves us, and He loves us so much that He sent His Son to die on a Cross for us. See, sin cannot be forgiven without the spilling of blood, and His Blood is an atonement for us.

Repent of your sins. Fall on your knees and repent. Believe in Jesus. There is no other way.

Listen to my words – there is no other way. You cannot earn it, but Jesus can, and He earned it for us.

Stupid root!

“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.”
-Proverbs 4:19

During the day at work, I like to listen to sermons. I can’t do that all day, of course, but I will listen when I can. Over the years my lineup of pastors has changed quite a bit. When I started out, I liked certain pastors, but as I grew in understanding of the gospel, I discovered that these pastors were not always teaching the truth of Christ but some variation. So I would remove one and add another. In time, my list was refined to a group I very much enjoy and really learn from.

But lately I’ve listened to a bunch of different preachers who have it wrong in some way or another. Some think that God will let everyone into Heaven. Some harp on the Law, saying we have to “get right with God” or we’ll burn in Hell.

I’ve been doing it to get an idea of what sort of teaching is out there, but it’s been frustrating for me. I often get upset, because I can picture a well-intentioned congregation that is following this pastor, and the pastor is leading them down the wrong path!

Sometimes, it makes me want to jump up from my chair and yell out, “What are you doing? Don’t you see what’s going on here?” Which I don’t do, of course, because I listen at work.

But then I read this verse, and I realized, no, they don’t see what’s happening at all. Because they’re in the dark.

And I was there too. It wasn’t too long ago that I was at a church that did not preach the Word, and I was listening to pastors who had it wrong. As God increased the light on my path (see verse 18), I began to actually see those things that were causing me to trip in the dark.

When you are in the dark and know nothing of the light, the smallest things can get you off track. The tiniest root can cause you to trip. You’ll latch on to anyone who seems to know where he is going. You’ll follow anyone who seems to know about the light.

But Jesus is our true light. He tells us this Himself: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). When this verse tells us that the wicked walk in darkness, it’s talking about us. None of us have walked in righteousness. None of us can claim holiness. We have all sinned in thought, word, and deed. We have been lost in the darkness of pride, lust, and greed. We have followed after the desires of our hearts, and we have lost the way.

It is Jesus that provides the light. It is Jesus alone who walked in righteousness. It is Him alone who deserved life, and yet still He died. In that death He took the dark punishment we deserved for our sins. If we have any hope to walk in the light of life, then it can only be by His light, because He is the only way to life.

There are religious teachers out there who are convinced that they know the way to life, but they are just as much in the dark as you are. The only way is Jesus. Have you realized that you will not make it by your own actions? Have you come to see the wickedness of your sins? Repent of them and believe in the Light. Keep walking in Grace until the end, when, as Proverbs 4:18 suggests, you are in the full day of His Glory and Majesty.

Podcast: Gospel: The Proud Heart

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.
-Luke 1:51-53

This is important. I’m going to tell you something that you may not hear anywhere else. You won’t even get this in some churches. Your pride is killing you.

Everywhere else you look, people are going to tell you to be proud. They’ll talk to you about the importance of self-esteem, that you are very valuable, that you deserve so much more, that you don’t deserve the mistreatment you are getting, that you should stand up and demand recognition for what you have done, that you deserve to be heard, that you deserve respect. Isn’t that what we’re getting from Oprah and schools and even some churches? Isn’t that exactly what they are saying?

Respect is like the new inalienable right in America. You can do whatever you want, but if you happen to be slightly disrespectful, wow, you’re going to hear about it. Everyone is clamoring to speak, as though they all have the answers, and no one is listening. Everyone thinks they deserve something more, that they should be given something more.

That’s what the world is telling you. I’m going to tell you the truth – your pride is killing you.

You go all day long looking out for yourself. You go demanding, expecting, and you get angry when you don’t GET. You start talking bad about the person who didn’t give you your due. You’ll take it to the street if you have to – protesting for your way of doing things. You hold grudges against those who slighted you, as though you haven’t done a hundred times worse to others. You’ll give the people around you a piece of your mind, but you probably won’t listen when they want to give you a piece of theirs. You complain that your wife and kids don’t understand; they just don’t pay attention enough, or they don’t give you your space, or they don’t give you enough respect. Your driving desire in life is yourself. Your driving desire is YOU.

It’s even like that when you go to church. You seek out the church that makes you the most comfortable, even if the teaching isn’t very biblical. You ignore certain commands in the Bible because, well, you like doing those things. When you hear a sermon about a certain sin, you immediately think of a hundred people committing that sin, but you never look to yourself. You watch television rather than reading your Bible. You read the sports page rather than praying. You make a big deal about giving, but you never give very much.

And to top it all off, you expect God to honor your life. You expect Him to forgive you. You expect Him to say you did just fine. You think that because you are so prideful that you think you have the best way of doing things. You think that because your heart is so full of yourself that you can’t think about anything else. The thought that you may not be acceptable to the Almighty never crosses your mind.

Satan thought the same thing, and God threw him out of heaven. Pride got him booted out, and it will do the same to you. So I say again: your pride is killing you.

Just to prove the point, I’m willing to bet most of you listening are thinking, “You tell those sinners, Paul! Preach it!” Don’t think that, because I’m talking about you. I’m talking about you. Your theology of sin is all about the other guy. It’s all about the Liberals, or the Evangelicals, or some other group. It’s all about someone else.

Let me be perfectly clear – the Bible’s teaching on sin is about you. In pride, you may try to pass it off to someone else, but that is still pride, and it’s killing you.

You haven’t lived up to the Law, and you cannot. In pride alone you have sinned enough to get kicked out of eternal life, just like Satan was.

Pride is no small sin. It’s not something that can just be brushed aside. Look at what the Bible says about pride:

O LORD, God of vengeance, O God of vengeance, shine forth! Rise up, O judge of the earth; repay to the proud what they deserve!
-Psalm 94:1-2

The LORD tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow's boundaries.
-Proverbs 15:25

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
-1 Peter 5:5

The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.
-Proverbs 8:13

The Lord GOD has sworn by himself, declares the LORD, the God of hosts: "I abhor the pride of Jacob and hate his strongholds, and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it."
Amos 6:8

For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."
-Mark 7:21-23

For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world.
-1 John 2:16

You are guilty of this sin, and a thousand more. You are not “good enough.” Your sin isn’t just going to be ignored. God isn’t just going to ignore all of this and welcome you into Heaven. He has made it clear in His Word that He hates pride, and we are overflowing with it.

We cannot make it alone to Heaven. That is undoubtedly true. But God has sent someone to bring us back. Jesus Christ, though He deserved Heaven, came to earth to live and die. He was executed on a Roman Cross, though He was the only man who has ever lived who was completely sinless. He is the only one who has ever deserved to live, yet still He died. In that death, He took our sin upon Himself to pay for our pride, lusts, hatred, ambition, and greed. At the same time, He can place His righteousness upon us. We cannot earn it, but in love He has given it. In righteousness then, we can live forever.

Do not refuse this gift. Repent of your pride and other sins and believe in Him. Do not let that old sin of pride tell you that you’ll make it on your own. Don’t let you pride tell you that God will accept you the way you are. If you do, all you’ll be left with is your pride when it comes to the time of Judgment, and we already know that God hates it.

The light of full day

“But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.”
-Proverbs 4:18

I get excited when I look back on my life as a Christian. Frankly, for the first year after becoming a Christian, I wasn’t terribly active in the church or growing very quickly. I got involved in a small group because I had some friends there, and that helped a lot. It forced me to at least think about Jesus during the week.

One of the girls in the group converted to Christianity, and suddenly she had a lot of questions. That rather forced the rest of us to get more involved just so we could find answers for her. All of a sudden, we were all researching during the week – not for our own sakes, but for hers!

Soon after that, a great trial in my life drove me to God even more. I had nowhere else to go. I thank God constantly for that time, because I became more at peace in Him than ever before.

There have been other events since, forcing me to study one aspect of Christ or another, or forcing me to pray more. But now it’s the study itself that drives me. Once I reached a certain point, studying the Bible simply became a joy.

That’s what makes me excited about it. When I look back, I see the long path that got me here. As this verse says, the path of righteousness begins like the dawn, but the light grows. The Hebrew here tells us that the light is both clear and bright. It is pure.

It’s not yet midday for me, I am happy to say. There is so much more left to learn, to see, to do. I am still so fallen and so flawed. I sin so much, but this road is working it out of me gradually.

But here’s the thing – this road of righteousness, it’s not mine. I did not do this in my life. I am not able to make myself a good person. I cannot work my way close to God.

The path belongs to Jesus. In His perfect life, He forged this trail, and in His death, He lets us walk it. If left to myself, I would be lost in darkness. My mind and heart are filled with evil lust, greed, selfishness, pride, and hatred. I do not deserve life with God.

But Jesus died in my place, taking my sins upon Himself and paying the price I owed. That’s why I can keep walking this path, no matter how often I slip. His mercy picks me up, and His Grace leads me farther into the light of day.

It is that Grace I need to proclaim, not my own accomplishment. The message of the Bible is not that we can earn our way to Heaven. The message of the Bible is that we absolutely cannot earn it. Our very natures have been taken over in sin, the thoughts of our hearts always on evil. The road we forge can only go to darkness.

Repent of that road and believe in the One who made a better way. By His Blood we can be forgiven. By His Grace we can have everlasting life, though we do not deserve it.

Where did lunch come from? (Part 2)

“For they [the wicked] eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.”
-Proverbs 4:17

We looked a little at this verse last time, but I wanted to suggest an alternative reading of it. And the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Solomon had this in mind just as much as the interpretation we looked at in the last post.

There is something about people that we don’t really want to admit. We will deny it every chance we get, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. It is this: there is a darkness in our hearts that is always seeking its own gain. We are driven by our own desires. The results of that drive are not always bad. Greed could drive us to go to work every day. Now, the greed is bad, but going to work isn’t.

Sometimes, our activities are not so good. Lust can drive us to pornography, premarital sex, or adultery. Pride will cause us to hold a grudge against someone over a very small slight. Ambition may drive us to sabotage a coworker.

We are enslaved by our lusts, pride, selfishness, greed, ambition, and hatred. They control us. Even when we are doing so-called “good things,” we are often doing them for recognition or reward.

The Bible tells us this frankly: “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).

You can try, by sheer force of will, to stop sinning. You won’t be able to. The reason is very simple – you are a sinner, and sinners sin. It’s something we sinners seek out like bread or wine. We feast upon unrighteousness in our hearts, even if we put on a noble face for the crowd.

But listen to how Paul continues this thought:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
-Titus 3:4-7

We may be sinners, but Jesus is not. We may seek unrighteousness like bread and wine, but He never did. He did not deserve death as we do, but in His death He took the punishment that should have been ours.

In repentance and belief, we are freed from the Law and given His righteousness. We don’t need to earn the love of God, for Jesus has earned it for us. Therefore we can stand before the Father without fear of His wrath, for we have been washed clean by His Blood.

Where did lunch come from?

“For they [the wicked] eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.”
-Proverbs 4:17

In my line of work (insurance), I occasionally come across people who are trying to defraud my company of how ever much money we are willing to give them. Strangely, they don’t seem like total jerks at all (well, most of them), but when the chance for some quick cash arises, it has an odd effect on them.

Some of these are really obvious. Others are not. For some, it just seems like they are acting a little more hurt than they really are. A groan here or there will do it, they think.

I came across two interpretations of this verse, the second of which we’ll take a look at next time. In the first, the bread and wine mentioned are gained through unjust causes. Honestly, I was going to skip this interpretation completely. I immediately thought, “This isn’t about me. I work an honest job, and I worked it honestly.” And I doubt many of my readers are thieves either, though I could be wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be quick to make assumptions on that one. Still, I really wanted to just pass to the second interpretation.

It’s true that I do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. But that’s not where I slip. I slip, like some of those hurt people I deal with, when an unexpected opportunity for gain or loss comes by. Do I exaggerate the truth when it fits my purposes? Do I hold back when I think it may get me into trouble? I remember several times when I withheld a bit of information when returning an item to a store or calling customer service about my bill. Can I really say I was that honest when it came to getting that money?

For some of us, our jobs may not be that honest. It’s probably legal, and it probably doesn’t involved violence, but that doesn’t mean it’s honest. Does our daily bread come from taking advantage of people? Does it come from misleading them at all? Does it come from clever sales pitches and pressure sales? Does it come from overly inflating prices?

I can think of a few times even recently where my daily bread didn’t come out of hard work and love. It came from something else.

These little lies, these little misrepresentations, they come from a lack of faith. See, God told us He would provide our daily bread. It is He that gives us our jobs and income, and it is also He who knows where our next meal is coming from. So it’s only when we doubt this provision that we resort to dishonesty to get more money. If we really believed that God would keep His promise, we would continue to work in honesty and uprightness.

That bread and that wine are temporary. Tomorrow you will need more. And so we have to begin all over again in dishonesty and, Heaven forbid, violence.

Jesus provides the water of life, which is eternal. He offered His own body and blood up as a sacrifice for us, which, remember, He first offered to His followers as bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. Even when we, in our lack of faith, turn from God and to our own devices, Jesus died on our behalf so we could live. To the woman at the well He said, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

God not only is our provision in this life, but for eternity. We have sinned, each one of us, and none of us deserve life, but Jesus took the punishment for our sins upon Himself on the Cross. By His Grace we can have the life we did not deserve.

It is His death we remember every time we take Communion. Such righteousness does Jesus possess, and like His body and blood, it is righteousness He gives to us.

Why we need a guide, and how to get a free one

“For they [the wicked] cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.”
-Proverbs 4:16

I sat down to write about this verse, and I had to take a little time just to meditate on it. Solomon is describing an evil that I never want to know. He is talking about someone who wishes harm on other people, someone who loses sleep when his enemy is safe. This is the sort of wickedness we sometimes see in dictators or unrepentant murderers, but I don’t like thinking of this possibility for me.

And that’s what Solomon wants us to consider. He has just finished telling his son not to start down the paths of the wicked, and this verse tells us why – because the wicked end up like this. This warning is meant for just normal people.

And then, as I considered these words, I began to remember all the times I did, in fact, act like this. Times when I could not go to sleep after a fight with my wife because I wanted so badly to say something cruel to her. Times when I wished a certain person at work would get fired because he was annoying. Times when I would plot and scheme to achieve my own ends, even if it hurt someone else (or sometimes BECAUSE it would hurt someone else).

Like it or not, we are capable of the worst evils known to man. Most of us keep it in our heads most of the time. Some of it spills out into our words. For a few, these terrible evils come out in actions. But it’s there for all of us. Our hearts are filled with murders, dark plots, and violence that would shock even the most hardened of criminals. Think what you will about how good of a person you are. The truth is, if the desires of our hearts came about, we would all be Hitlers.

When Jesus came to earth, He was so truthful in His assessments of others that He was murdered. The people gathered together and strong-armed the Roman representative in Jerusalem, a representative who did not want Jesus crucified, but bowed to the political pressure. They had Him killed. And I wonder if I would have been any different. If Jesus had pointed to me and revealed the darkness inside of me, would I have repented or called out for Him to be placed upon the Cross?

But Jesus didn’t point out those sins to be a jerk or something. He was telling them something we all need to hear. You think you’re okay, but you’re not. You think you’re a good person, but you’re not. You’re a sinner, and if you don’t repent, you’re lost. We need that, because we’re not going to admit it on our own. We need Him to point it out, and we need Him to tell us how to make it better.

In that massive miscarriage of justice, Jesus did something wonderful. He died for us. There isn’t any way to “make it up” to God for all the wrong we have done, said, and thought. There isn’t a way to make it better. But Jesus died in our place, so He could pay the price we owed in sin. If we repent and believe, we will find Grace.

In showing us our sin He has proven a good guide. But He goes beyond that, for He paid our way to eternal life by atoning for our sins, even when we don’t deserve it. And He commands us follow Him. How do we do that? By His Grace, and by Grace alone. In mercy, He paid for our sins, something we could never pay alone, but that doesn’t mean we can now earn God’s love when we couldn’t before. No, we walk by Grace, for His righteousness is imputed to us. It is only by that Grace that we can stand.