Christian Pilgrimage

Advent Podcasts

2010-12-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

For Christmas, we're handling the podcast a little differently than we normally do. We published three new Christmas poems in Primum Mobile Magazine this quarter, and we're uploading an audio version of those poems in this Advent season. The first one is up already, the second going up this weekend, and the final one before Christmas day. God willing, we'll head back into a book of the Bible this January and start teaching through it verse-by-verse.

In the meantime, check out the podcast.

To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

God bless!

Threefold: King

2010-10-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

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.

In the Old Testament, God ordained that three offices be established to instruct, to intercede for, and to protect His children. These are the roles of the prophet, priest, and king. In this series, we will look at how Jesus fulfills these three roles, and continues to do so to this day.

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
-1 Corinthians 15:24-26

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle. As the Messiah, Jesus took upon Himself three Old Testament roles, and they are offices He holds even now. Francis Turretin tells us, “The threefold misery of men introduced by sin – ignorance, guilt, and tyranny and bondage – required this conjunction of a threefold office.” The final of the Threefold Office is “King.”

We are looking at how God established three offices in the Old Testament to protect, warn, and intercede for the people. The prophet spoke on God’s behalf, telling the people what God required and what they had to do. The priest sacrificed on behalf of the people, seeking forgiveness for sin.

We have priests and prophets before Moses, but it is with Moses that these two offices are fully established as we would come to understand them. Moses was the first great prophet, and under his guidance, Aaron became the first high priest.

But the office of the king was not brought about until much later. For centuries, God was the king over the Jewish people. He wrote their laws and established their justice. It wasn’t until the time of Samuel that another king was crowned, and the people sought one then out of a lack of faith.

The elders came to Samuel and said, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). But Samuel wasn’t really very happy about this. He was God’s prophet, and God was their leader. But God told him, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them” (8:7-8).

I’m going about the discussion of this office a little differently than the other two for a purpose. I want us to see that when we say that Christ is King, it is a truth that has always been, and remains so today.

When Jesus ascended, He went to the right hand of the Father, and from there He rules as king. We mean a few different things when we speak of Jesus as king. In the first place, He is the head of the church. We see this too with our passage from 1 Samuel. Surely God here is sovereign over all things, and yet He has chosen a people for Himself, saved them from slavery to Egypt, and He is their King. In the same way, Jesus has saved a people for Himself in His death upon the Cross, freed them from slavery to sin, and He has a kingdom promised for those whom He has saved. This is the Church – the bride of Christ. Not everyone is part of this kingdom, but only those who have repented and have faith in Jesus. As Priest, He has interceded for those people who would believe upon Him, and it is those He has brought into His kingdom.

But it is not just over these few that Jesus ultimately rules. He is coming again, and this is what the Bible says about the Second Coming: “And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:14-16). He is coming, and His coming will put all of earth and heaven under His rule forever, and He will literally rule for all eternity.

And yet His kingdom is not wholly future, but is present as well. It is not, my friends, as though all of the earth, save perhaps the Church, is under the complete control of evil and will remain that way until the Second Coming. No, for Jesus is king even now, and He rules from the right hand of the Father on this very day. He “who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him” (1 Peter 3:22).

We see this also in the passage from 1 Samuel, if we are paying attention. You see, the people wanted a human king of their own, but it did not happen by their word, but by the word of God. Yes, it was an evil thing they desired – to be rid of God as their king. But they did not succeed here, for God had to allow it before it could happen. God did not lose control; He merely allowed someone to sit on the throne.

We must understand that God is sovereign. He is in utter control of all things. Perhaps it does not seem like it, for God does not make this control so very clear as it will be in after the Second Coming. He has not come to sit upon a throne before us all, though it is truly a throne upon which He sits. In His sovereignty He has allowed others to stand in places of power. He has allowed events to take place. He has even allowed evil, but never outside of His control, but always exactly as He wishes it to be by His good will. He does these things for His glory. For His glory He has allowed men to go astray. He will reveal His glory in His mercy toward some and His wrath against others. And yet not a molecule has escaped His control. “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3).

The New Testament reveals that it is Jesus, seated at the right hand of the Father, who wields this power. It is He who is the head of the Church. It is He who will return in power and glory. It was through Him, even, that all of creation was made. And it is He who brings about the sovereign will of the Father.

Let us not tremble at this, unless, of course, we will not repent. This same God who will return in judgment also spoke to us, as a prophet, on how we may be saved. And more still, this same God, who saves a Church for Himself, has, as priest, made the sacrifice necessary for that Church to be saved. As king, He has rescued us from the bonds of sin and given us the freedom of His grace. He has paid it all, and He loses not one of whom the Father gives Him. If you will repent and believe on Him, you will find that He has paid your debt too.

We worship an incredible God. We worship a God who is a prophet – who speaks what we need to know for salvation and righteousness. We worship a God who is a priest – who takes our place in death and pays the punishment we deserve for our sin. And we worship a God who is a king – who has a real kingdom and real power, and is leading His children to an eternity of peace and communion with our Lord.

Threefold: Priest

2010-09-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

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.

In the Old Testament, God ordained that three offices be established to instruct, to intercede for, and to protect His children. These are the roles of the prophet, priest, and king. In this series, we will look at how Jesus fulfills these three roles, and continues to do so to this day.

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.
-Hebrews 7:25-27

As the Messiah, Jesus took upon Himself three Old Testament roles, and they are offices He holds even now. Francis Turretin tells us, “The threefold misery of men introduced by sin – ignorance, guilt, and tyranny and bondage – required this conjunction of a threefold office.” The second of the Threefold Office is “Priest.”

In the Old Testament, the Priest was called upon to be an intercessor between the people and God. They would pray for the people, bringing petitions from the people to God. They would teach the people, bring doctrine from God to the people. Critically, they would sacrifice on behalf of the people, bringing the blood offering from the people to God for the covering of sin.

Christians do not continue the practice of blood sacrifices. The reason for this is clear to any who read the Book of Hebrews – it is because our once-for-all sacrifice has already been made, and no further sacrifice is needed.

Of the three offices that Christ fills, this may be the most immediately obvious. Jesus is our high priest, and it is a role, the writer of the Hebrews tells us, that He holds forever. We have no need any longer for a high priest to stand between us and God, for Jesus “always lives to make intercession” for us (Hebrews 7:25).

A quick word on why this is important. We looked last time at Jesus’ role as a prophet. As prophet, Jesus told us the will and words of God. He delivered, like the prophets before Him, the commands of God. And he warned us what would happen if we do not obey. Jesus spoke of hell more than anyone in the Bible. He wanted to be clear what would happen to the unrighteous.

The problem is that we aren’t righteous. We are all beset by sin, drowning in our evil actions, words, and thoughts. We sin by doing what we aren’t supposed to do and failing to do what we are supposed to do. We have failed to keep God’s holy law.

When we fail, we sin, and the rightful punishment of sin is death. The writer of the Hebrews tells us that “under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). This is what those sacrifices of the Old Testament were about. It was a symbol of repentance of the people and the covering of their sins. This covering is called “propitiation,” which means “satisfying or covering.”

But the blood of goats cannot really take away the punishment we deserve because of sin. It is a symbol, but it does not save us in truth. God wrath is not propitiated because we kill a lamb.

That is why we needed Jesus to take this role as our high priest. Jesus was perfect, utterly without sin, and as such He did not deserve to die. He’s the only one who has ever lived that did not deserve to die. And yet He was tortured, beaten, nailed up to a cross, and baked in the sun until He was dead. And even then, just to be sure, the soldiers stabbed Him with a spear to prove He was dead.

The prophet Isaiah tells of Jesus, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned--every one – to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6). Jesus took on our sin upon that Cross and put it to death. For those who would believe on Him, He has paid the debt that we could not pay.

Jesus not only makes the sacrifice for us, but He has BECOME the sacrifice for us. What the blood of goats and bulls could never do, His Blood has done. His death has propitiated the wrath of the Father and satisfied justice.

Now, the priests of the Old Testament had to do this over and over again. They never got to stop, for they were always sacrificing animals for the sins of the people. But Jesus paid it all in His own death. Those who repent and believe in Him will find that their sins were put to death on that very tree where our Savior died.

In three days our high priest rose from the dead, and even today does He make intercession on our behalf. He remains between us and the Father, an advocate on our behalf (1 John 2:1). When we sin, He stands on our behalf, and He also brings us to the Throne of Grace by the work of His righteousness, even though we have failed in our own.

The Old Testament high priest was the only one allowed to go into the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant was. Only he was allowed, and only once a year, to approach God in that place. But when Jesus died on the Cross, the curtain that blocked off that area was torn in two, and the room was opened.

Because His Blood has cleansed us, we are now able to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Because of His work, our petitions will be heard, our repentance will be honored, and our faith will be counted to us as righteousness.

And let us not think of our high priest as someone cloistered off in a high temple, unaware of the struggles of life. No, Jesus took flesh and walked amongst us. He was tempted and tried. Again, Hebrews tells us, “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” (4:15).

And so our high priest sympathizes with us, and He is ready for us with mercy and grace.

Let us heed the words and warnings of Jesus the prophet. Let us hear Him and understand, that we have all of us gone astray, and that we have failed to meet God’s holy standard. But also has He said, as prophet, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:37-40). It is those people He has purchase by His Blood.

But what has He saved them to? A kingdom. We will look more at this next time, but we are not justified to be lost in a heavenly war over control. No, for Christ is also our King, the ruler of all the universe, and it is a realm He will never lose. It is that to which we have been saved, and we will reign with Him as coheirs to the kingdom for all time.

Threefold: Prophet

2010-09-25T16:05:00.001-07:00

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.

In the Old Testament, God ordained that three offices be established to instruct, to intercede for, and to protect His children. These are the roles of the prophet, priest, and king. In this series, we will look at how Jesus fulfills these three roles, and continues to do so to this day.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
-Hebrews 1:1-2

As the Messiah, Jesus took upon Himself three Old Testament roles, and they are offices He holds even now. Francis Turretin tells us, “The threefold misery of men introduced by sin – ignorance, guilt, and tyranny and bondage – required this conjunction of a threefold office.” The first of the Threefold Office is “Prophet.”

“Repent! For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Such was John the Baptist’s frequent refrain as he spoke prophetically to the people of Judea. He stood in the wilderness as a prophet of God, divinely ordained to speak on behalf of God.

This has been the role of the prophet from the beginning. As a prophet, Moses spoke to Pharaoh on behalf of God, warning him to let the Hebrew people go. As a prophet, Isaiah spoke the words of the Lord to try to turn the Jews back to God. As a prophet, Jonah took the message to Nineveh. John the Baptist prepared the way of the Lord in his prophetic office.

It has always been the role of the prophet to teach, to rebuke, and to warn. Moses taught us what God expects of us in the Law. The Apostle John warns us about the Second Coming of Christ, that we should be ready for Him. It is the ignorance of men, the darkness of unbelief, and the wrong ideas about God that the prophet seeks to remedy. Where we do not know, he teaches. Where we ignore, he rebukes. Where we sin, he warns.

The ultimate Prophet of Scriptures is Jesus Himself. We sometimes miss this, because a prophet points to God, and so Jesus’ words may sound slightly different to us sometimes. After all, He is God, and He therefore points to Himself.

And yet, He has come to teach, rebuke, and to warn. We see Him even using John the Baptist’s favorite phrase in
Matthew 4:17: “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

The biblical prophet speaks on behalf of God. He is the mouthpiece of the Almighty, and whatever words he says in the name of God proves true. In fact, the Bible teaches that we can know a false prophet because he gets stuff wrong. God doesn’t get things wrong, and neither does His prophets. So it is when Jesus speaks to us. His counsel is righteous in all ways, His reproof just in every sense, and His warnings should be heeded.

He reminds us even of how He is of one mind with the Father – “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise” (John 5:19).

And if we doubt His role as a prophet, He even speaks of Himself as a prophet in Luke 13:33: “Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.”

So prophet Jesus has come in this office to teach, rebuke, and warn. He teaches us of the nature of God and salvation. Like a prophet of old, He distributed blessings and woes according to what pleases and displeases God. To one group He will say, “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8), but to another, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (Matthew 23:13). He gives us analogies of the kingdom of God to instruct. He teaches of sin and judgment. And He teaches of Himself as the way to life.

He rebukes one group for coming to Him for a miracle without believing in who He truly is. To merchants in the temple He rebukes with a whip. The scribes and Pharisees are His favorite target, for they wear their religion like a robe, but not in faith and love, but out of their own self-promotion. It is a warning that we should heed even today, for we often crave credit for our own righteousness. What Jesus would tell us is that we have none.

To all He warns of the wrath to come. “Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

The warning of judgment is a true one, for no true prophet, least of all Jesus, spoke falsely. The expectations that God has for us are true. There are many of us who have sought our own ways, but Jesus has told us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), and “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). By the words of a prophet we can be assured, that only through Jesus can we be saved.

Jesus continues in this role today. After He rose from the grave and ascended into heaven, He sent His Spirit to be our guide. It is through this Spirit that He still teaches, rebukes, and warns. It is this same Spirit that inspired the writing of the Bible, and in this we have the Word of God. Just as John tells us that Jesus is the incarnate Word of God, we have delivered to us the written Word of God to point and guide us in righteousness, to teach us about God, to banish our ignorance about spiritual matters, and to warn us of the wrath to come if we do not repent and believe.

But Jesus is more than just a prophet, pointing the way to righteousness, but He is also a priest, who has interceded on our behalf with the Father. We will look more at that next time, but we must see that God’s perfect standard cannot be met in this life. When Jesus tells us, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), He was giving us a command directly from God, but it is one that we cannot obey. We need more than a prophet, but also a priest, who can stand for us before God and secure grace for us. Likewise do we need a king who can take us into His paradise for all time.

God spoke through an earlier prophet, Ezekiel, these words. “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:26-28). It is this new heart that is only available through Jesus, because He alone could make atonement for our sins. Only He could pay the price for us for all the times we have failed in our holy duty to obey and worship God in all things. We are not perfect, yet He is. Once He has bought us with His Blood, He also keeps us until the last day and glorifies us in eternity. These are some of His actions as king, for in this way He has authority over us, even our very souls.

We will learn more of that next time, and it would be appropriate now to see Jesus as not just a prophet who would condemn our actions, but also a priest who would take the place of God’s children in the punishment of those actions, and also as a king with authority to keep us until the last day.

Podcast: 1 John: Keeping Away From Idols

2010-09-18T12:05:00.001-07:00

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.

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
-1 John 5:21

John’s final exhortation to his audience here might catch us a little off guard. He’s been talking for a long time about how Christians act, and the power of prayer, and finally the nature of sin. And then he gives this command to keep ourselves from idols.

And this may not resonate very strongly with the modern Westerner. We don’t see many idols around the streets here. In certain parts of the world, we would see idols on street corners, but not here. The closest we get here is seeing the statue of Buddha at the Chinese restaurant at lunch.

So the temptation for us is to just ignore this part. Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever been tempted to bow down before a statue.

But the biblical definition of idolatry is a little bit more broad. Paul tells us in Romans 1:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
-Romans 1:22-25

What Paul is telling us is that we are all worshippers. Even the most ardent atheist is a worshipper of something. The question is this – are we worshipping the Creator or the creation? If we are worshipping God, the true God, then we have it right. If we are worshipping anything else, then we have it wrong.

It may be a statue. That figure is part of the creation, and is not worthy of worship. Maybe it’s a false idea about God, birthed out of the minds of men. That too is creation, not Creator. It’s idolatry. Maybe it’s money or sex or fame. All creation. Maybe it’s reputation. Creation.

Maybe it’s more sinister. Maybe it’s the figure you’ve always wanted but could never achieve. Maybe it’s the wife or kids. Maybe it’s getting ahead at work. Maybe it’s the approval of the parent who was always criticizing.

Whatever you are chasing after, that is what you are worshipping. You don’t have to bow before money to worship it. Just ask yourself – what occupies my thoughts, hopes, fears, and time? Is it God the Creator of all things, or is it creation? You may deny that you are worshipping, but whatever it is that controls your life is your god. If your driving passion is sex, then that is what you worship. If you would sacrifice anything for that car, then that is what you worship.

We can see this in church as well. My Roman Catholic friends will bow down and pray to Mary. They say they are not worshipping, but that is the definition of worship. No amount of denying it is going to change that fact. Other churches I have seen put a certain doctrine above all else. It may be a good doctrine, but it has been elevated above the level of a good thing and has become a god thing, so it is no longer good. It could be baptism, or the nature of communion, or a certain eschatology.

John Calvin tells us that our hearts are idol factories. Our hearts seek out things to worship and them make them into little gods. It is part of our fallen nature, that we chase after creation and forget the Creator, just like our first parents did when they ate of the fruit in the Garden of Eden. Even Christians have to guard against this constantly, which is why John mentions it. If we are not on guard, helped by the Holy Spirit, then we will chase after the next thing that comes by. Go to any church near you, and really analyze what they are singing about. Are they singing about God, or themselves? Are they preaching about God, or some felt need in the congregation? If the answer is God, then they are the exception, it seems. Even the churches have turned away from God and to idols under the excuse of making church relevant. Relevancy is a nasty idol. It always wants more; it always demands something different, and it never delivers.

What do you worship? Think through your day. What or who was on your heart and mind? Where did your money go? For what did you sacrifice?

Calvin was right about us. We spend so much time chasing after creation rather than the Creator. We ignore the God who gave us life, breath, and everything, and worship some of those little trinkets that He created. This is a terrible sin and a horrible rebellious crime! Don’t pass this one over. God, by right, has claim over every area of our lives, and in rebellion we try to snatch it away from Him!

In mercy, when we confess and have faith, He is faithful to forgive us. In grace, He will give us eternal life, though we don’t deserve it. Let us look therefore to the Cross, to the place where God died for us. Jesus took upon Himself human form. He lived His life perfectly, never once making some part of creation His idol. And yet He died, taking the rightful punishment of sin upon Himself. This is the death that idolatry has earned. This is the death that should have been ours.

When we look upon the Cross, and we see such love and mercy, it is hard to worry too much about our little idols. When we see Jesus and what He has done on our behalf, it is hard to be anything but grateful and repentant. Let our eyes be focused there then. Let our eyes be turned to the one who deserves our worship, not all the stuff that does not. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

Podcast: 1 John: We Are in Him

2010-08-30T07:08:00.001-07:00

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.

We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
-1 John 5:18-20

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle.

So last time we talked about the sin that leads to death, and it may be our temptation to get a little freaked out when we hear things like, “There is a sin that leads to death.” Immediately, the thoughts that will probably jump to mind are, “Well, what is that sin? What if I accidently commit it? I’m just walking down the street and BOOM, I commit that sin and it’s too late? What if I have already committed it? Am I doomed to hell now? Is there anything I can do?”

It’s the natural reaction whenever we speak of a sin that will not be forgiven. But that’s exactly the opposite reaction that John intends for us, because he is writing the letter to encourage us. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). In other words, he is writing this letter to be encouraging!

And it’s the fault of teachers like me on why it isn’t. There is a very natural break in the text there between those verses and these verses, and so we split up our messages, just like I did. We put them a week apart, and that’s a week to dwell on the sin unto death without the relief herein. My apologies. Hopefully you’ve spent the week in repentance and prayer.

John tells us why true Christians should not be afraid of this sin. It’s because true Christians do not continue in sin. You have to continue in sin to be guilty of the sin that leads to death, because that sin is a continual rejection of the Gospel. Christians are protected from that. John tells us, “he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.” Now, “he who was born of God” could refer to Jesus, because John has already told us “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Jesus is the only begotten of God. So John has already explained how we are protected in that way. But John has also spoken of how we are of God, adopted children, if we truly believe.

And that would make sense here too, based on everything that John has been telling us. So much of this letter speaks of the fruit of repentance. It talks about the love and righteousness that comes about in us if we are truly saved. It is not that this love saves us, but is the result of salvation.

John tells us first that we are all sinners. We do not deserve the life that God offers, but it is offered because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Jesus bore the punishment we deserve for our sin. For those who will be saved, the Spirit of God prompts in them repentance, a turning away from sin. Over time, we become repulsed by our own wickedness, our selfishness, lust, and greed. We turn from our sin and toward God.

In faith we are justified, forgiven of that sin and granted eternal life in Jesus. We are given the Holy Spirit to indwell us, conforming us more into the image of Christ. So we begin to love more. We begin to desire to follow God and His commandments – not out of obligation, but out of love. God, to borrow the phrase from Ezekiel, takes away our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh.

Now tell me. If you have come to a knowledge of the wickedness and filthiness of your own sin; if you have come to realize that only by Jesus’ death on the Cross do you even have a chance; if you have come to know, by the power of the Spirit, the sweetness of the grace of God; and if you have come to turn from your sin and bow before God for mercy; if you have been given the indwelling of the Spirit to guide you; if you have begun to grow in love and righteousness – if all of these things are true, and they are true not just by our human efforts, but by the efforts and security of an infinite God, then how is it possible that you would turn, abandon all of that, and live the rest of your life refusing to repent?

Our own hearts will no longer allow such sin! We have been reborn in Christ! To walk away now is unimaginable, and impossible. John tells us that those who walk away from this never really knew it in the first place.

The knowledge that keeps us to this narrow path is not our own, but given by Jesus through the power of the Spirit. We know it as a part of our justification. It is part of that Grace that has been granted us. That is why we will not fall away into the sin unto death – because we are supernaturally secured. The world may belong to the evil one, but we belong to one far stronger, and He will not let go!

The understanding that the Son gives to us brings us to the Father and to truth. These are all wrapped into one – the way, the truth, and the life. These are the words Jesus said of Himself. Only through Him is there hope for eternal life, because He is that life. He is that truth, and we are in Him who is true, both the Father and the Son. How can we fall away?

Be assured of your salvation, my brothers and sisters. Be assured. The Spirit is at work in you, if you are in Christ, and will not let you go. If by the Spirit you no longer remain in sin, you are assured of your election. I do not say, “if you do not sin,” for we still sin. But if the Spirit is turning you from sin and toward God, then you can be confident in your salvation.

We can be confident not because of ourselves, but because of Him. “He is the true God and eternal life.” This passage interests me, because it is not clear whether this speaks of the Father or the Son. The ESV renders the subject “He,” but the Greek says “This.” Still, the “this” clearly refers to either Jesus or the Father. Jesus was the last to be mentioned, so perhaps Jesus is the true God and eternal life. Perhaps it is the Father, for the Father was prominent also in the previous sentence. The pronoun may be a little unclear, yet it is true either way. The previous sentence says that God the Father is the truth, but also did Jesus tell us of Himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

This is the true God, and no one member of the Trinity claims that distinction over the others. God the Father is true, as is the Son, as is the Spirit. If you are in the Son, then you are in the Father, and you have the Spirit indwelling. You are secured for eternity by their power and efforts. God the Father elected you, the Son bought you, and the Spirit leads you. You are His. Thus can you know that you have eternal life!

Podcast: 1 John: The Sin Unto Death

2010-08-12T15:52:00.001-07:00

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.

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life — to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.
-1 John 5:16-18

Okay, we definitely have our work cut out for us today. This is one of the most difficult passages that John gives us in his epistles, one of those we are apt to scan right over when we are reading, and yet it has been placed in the Word of God for a reason, and we need to tackle it. So what is the sin that leads to death?

First, let’s do a little defining. John tells us that “all wrongdoing is sin.” Previously, he told us that “sin is lawlessness” (3:4). Sin is a word we use fairly often, but I’m not sure that everyone has a good understanding of it. A lot of times sin is dismissed. “Everyone sins,” people will say, brushing it off, as though it as small of a matter as going a couple of miles per hours faster than the speed limit.

Others think of sin as only the really big stuff, like murder or rape. Still others will acknowledge sin in society, like racism or sexism, but don’t really acknowledge personal sins. I heard one person on the radio today talking about sin as merely not living up to your full potential. God would be disappointed in you when you sin, but it’s not really a crime.

John teaches us the truth about sin – it is lawlessness. It is wrong doing. It is, in other words, rebellion against God’s perfect Law. Our sins offend God. He is perfect, worthy of praise, but when we sin, we mock His holy Law, we turn away from the greatest good in the universe, and we say that our way is better than the ordinances set down by a flawless God.

Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and it is a death we all deserve, but it is not one that we have to endure, for “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is what Jesus was doing on that Cross – He was paying the debt, the death, that we owe for our sin. For those who repent and believe, we can still have eternal life, not by our own actions, because we cannot earn it, but by His.

So this is what John means when he tells us that there is sin that does not lead to death. We Christians sin. John has emphatically told us that before in this letter. We sin. But we are also forgiven, if we are children of God, because of Jesus’ action. He is our intercessor with the Father when we sin.

So if I fail today (and I probably will), but if I fail today, and I lie to someone on the street, then I will be forgiven. Pray for me, for God is the source of life, and I do not deserve that life, but He will grant it. If you come to a person in your church who is sinning, pray for that person, so there may be life.

So this is something we can understand, but what is the sin that leads to death?

For that, let’s get some context. Remember that John has already addressed people in the church who leave the church. He has said of those people, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (2:19). Remember also that he is writing this letter to assure Christians of their secure salvation, so this passage is not meant to make us afraid. He is intending for us to remember exactly who he is talking about – those who had heard the truth, professed Christ, but never knew Him, and so they left, thus proving that they were never a part of the true Church in the first place. And the most immediate context is the power of prayer, that Christians should go to God in prayer according to the will of God, and so by this he is showing how powerful that pray can be, even to bringing about forgiveness for all sorts of sin.

But there is one sin that will not be forgiven, and it lines up exactly with what John has been talking about with apostates – those who leave the church. This sin that will not be forgiven is spoken of also in Matthew 12:31: “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” A lot of people have gone online to deny the existence of the Holy Spirit, thinking that is what this passage is talking about. It’s not. It’s the continual resistance to the call to repent. It’s the lifelong ignoring of the truth, the rebellion against God. At some point, He’s going to those who resist him over to their own sin. The sin that leads to death is the rebellion against the truth.

That is what those people did when they heard the truth in the church, listened, understood, but still left. They never had a saving faith in Jesus, and so they went about their own ways, embracing their own sins instead of God’s grace. If you resist God’s grace, my friends, then payment for your sin will be expected of you. The wages of sin is death.

It is not forbidden to pray for those who have willfully denied the truth of the Gospel their whole lives, but it is not encouraged. There is no life for those who will not repent. While there is breath in a man, let us pray that God gives him the gift of repentance and faith, but if the truth is always denied, and at last death takes him, he cannot be saved.

How do we know if someone in our congregations have not truly repented? Of course, we cannot know for sure. We cannot know a man’s heart. And yet there is a way to know if we are in the light or in the darkness. If we continue in our sin.

When we become Christians, the Spirit of God indwells us, and it is just the natural result of that indwelling that sin becomes harder and harder. When I first became a Christian, my life did not change all that much, but sin gradually became harder for me to commit. Those habitual sins started to become sour to me. I didn’t like them.

I still sin. I mess up constantly. But it is the continuing in sin that John is addressing. This may look different for you if you are a young Christian verses an older Christian. This looked different for me when I first started and was still pursuing a lot of my old crimes. But God is working on weaning you from sin. He is moving you closer to Himself and away from sin. So are you a Christian? Look at the sins in your life. Are you continuing in them? Are you becoming less content in your sin? Has there been a change?

The Spirit is going to convict you of those sins, and when we repent, that is we turn away from sin, we will be moved more toward righteousness.

And in that repentance, in faith, we will be forgiven. All wrongdoing is sin, and yet for the Christian, it will not lead to death. We have an advocate with the Father in Jesus Christ. Because of His atoning work on the Cross, He is stepping between us and the wrath we deserve.

Podcast: 1 John: Heard, Assured, and Alive

2010-07-31T08:07:00.001-07:00

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.

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
-1 John 5:12-15

There’s a lot of talk now about how all roads lead to God. It seems like a growing part of the population believes that everyone’s worshipping the same god, just with different names. So it really doesn’t matter, these people say, what religion you are part of. God has revealed himself differently to different people, but it’s really the same. Just try to be a good person.

It’s true that the moral element in most religions is very similar. And that’s the way it should be, because the Law of God is written on our hearts, as Paul tells us in Romans 2:15. So it totally makes sense that the moral law is consistent all over the world. All cultures agree on these things – that lying, stealing, murder, adultery, etc, are wrong.

So does it really matter it we follow Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha? To hear John speak, it completely matters, because “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Eternal life is found in Jesus alone, and there is a very good reason for this. It’s because, while the moral law is shared commonly with all people, no one keeps it. We are all liars, thieves, and blasphemers. We withhold the truth, or even tell outright lies. We take things that are not ours, even if it is just to download music or spend time at work doing personal stuff and still accepting pay for that time. We use God’s name as a curse word, or we use it in a flippant way, which is blasphemy.

More than that, God is going to judge us not just by our actions, but also our hearts. So we may not physically murder someone, but when we have that desire in our hearts, then we are guilty. We may not have sex outside of marriage or cheat on our spouses, but when we look at porn online or have lustful thoughts about people around us, we are guilty.

So the religions may share this moral law, but we don’t keep it, so we cannot be justified by that law. We cannot hope to earn eternal life by our own actions. If God is just, and He is, then we should expect nothing but condemnation for our thoughts, words, and deeds.

That is why there is no salvation except through Jesus, because we cannot earn it ourselves. We need someone to take the punishment we deserve upon Himself. In this action, He would satisfy justice. It would be like if I owed a fine to the court that I cannot pay. If someone paid it for me, I would be free.

But I cannot pay your fine, because I cannot even pay my own. Since no one is sinless, I cannot expect a savior from another person.

Except that Jesus was sinless. He is God in human flesh, come to earth to live the life that I failed to live. He died so that God’s children may live. If you repent, turn away from your sin and toward God, and have faith in Jesus, then you too will live.

You cannot be forgiven by believing Mohammed or Buddha. They cannot pay your fine. So we can agree on the moral law with them, but that doesn’t mean anything, because you can’t keep that law. By the law, we cannot be saved.

That is why John says with confidence that there is no life outside of Jesus. This passage transitions into our next major section of the book, in which he tells us why he is writing the letter – to assure those who believe that we have eternal life. He’s been talking a lot about how Christians are in God, and God in us, and that the presence of God will begin to reveal itself in our lives in love. We’ve gone through these passages before, but John here is reminding us that he is not trying to make us feel guilty, but in fact he is trying to make us feel reassured. He is answering the common question amongst Christians – how can I be sure that I am saved?

And John points us to the Cross. In Jesus we have life. Have you believed? Look back over your life to the hour you first believed. Have you been changing? For some, I know, the change is very quick. For me, it was gradual, but I can see it. I can see the change in me that brought about greater love for others. I can see the fruit of the Spirit – which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23) – manifest itself in my life.

These are not things that save me. They are a result of being saved. I love more because I am in God, and God is love. Don’t slip here – we cannot save ourselves by trying to love more. We have already failed to save ourselves. We love because God first loved us.

So we are assured because we see the presence of the Spirit in our lives. This should give us all the more incentive to pray. Because we are in God, we know that God will hear us. Isn’t that a great reason to pray?

People tell me, “Oh, I’m good with God. I pray all the time.” I do not doubt that these people pray, but may I suggest that the important part is not the prayer itself, but who is listening? There is an assumption in our culture that God hears all prayers, even by those who are not Christian. We have no such assurance from the Word. God listens to His children. Those who are in Him can be assured that He is listening, but not someone who is praying to some nameless god or the false god of another religion. Only the true God hears prayers, and we must pray to Him in faith. James tells us that the person who does not come to God in faith “must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord” (1:7).

And for what should we pray? We should pray according to God’s will. God is not going to go against His will just because you want a new car. This is not so strange as we may think. It is sometimes very clear whether we are praying for our own will or for God’s will. God has told us that He will provide for us what we need, so clearly a prayer for that provision is a good prayer. A prayer to be freed from a marriage because you have your eye on another woman is a sinful prayer.

When we have commands, we know the will of God. We should pray in humility and selflessness. But this verse is not saying that we cannot pray for a future event simply because we do not know God’s will in that event. We do not know how His hand will move, but this verse is specifically addressing God’s revealed will.

Let us pray for tomorrow. Let us also be sure that we can talk to our Father about our pain, our confusion, and our desires. We may not receive an answer right away, as Job discovered. And yet if we do not know how things will go, let us hope more for God’s will than our own for the future. Ultimately, God is better at being sovereign Lord of the universe than we are. He is working all things together for our good, if we are in Him (Romans 8:28), so even when things take a bad turn today, His will ultimately will prove better than our own best-laid plans. He is leading us to a future that will be eternally good. In the end, we will be more content and more hopeful in leaving those plans to Him.

Podcast: 1 John: Water, Blood, and Spirit

2010-07-21T17:26:00.001-07:00

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.

This is he who came by water and blood – Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
-1 John 5:6-11

I wasn’t really looking forward to it because this passage has just about as many interpretations as there are commentators. Albert Barnes, for one, lists six interpretations, and that’s in one commentary alone. The ultimate meaning of the passage as a whole is very clear, and very wonderful, but trying to figure out the particulars is pretty hard. Very honestly, I’m not sure what John is getting at here. I have an opinion, but I don’t know that John had this particular thing in mind when he wrote it. So I’m going to give this one a stab and see what we come up with, but with the hope and understanding that it is getting us to verse 11 here, which is the real wonder of this passage. Hopefully we won’t let this business of water and blood distract us from where John is going. It is that clear conclusion that should draw us, even if we don’t understand the rest.

We’ll get there. Stick with me. “This is he who came by water and blood – Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.”

Deuteronomy 19:15 tells us that “Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established.” Both Jesus and Paul make reference to this “two or three witnesses” idea, and John is here giving us the witnesses to the truth of Christ.

The real sticking point here is the “water” is the passage.
Most people say the blood is His death, but the water is more difficult. So I’m going to throw out some possible interpretations. The water, some say, is for His baptism. He was baptized by John the Baptizer, and the Spirit bore witness to that. Some say it is OUR baptism, as a symbol of our salvation, bought by His blood. Others will say it refers to when blood and water mixed came out of him when he was speared on the Cross.

The water represents, I believe, His baptism, at which time the Father identified Jesus and the spirit descended on Him. That Spirit becomes another witness, for the Spirit helps guide Jesus through life without sin. His words, His actions, and even His thoughts were perfect, and people could see that. If you read the Gospel accounts and watch for the account of the crowd, they can tell that there is something different in Jesus. They tell us that no one ever spoke as He did.

The blood is the final witness, for upon the Cross He died a death that He did not deserve. It is this Blood that saves us, for He was dying for God’s children. The passage tells us that Jesus did not come by water alone. John the Baptizer baptized by water, and it was a baptism by repentance. And repentance is great, except that it doesn’t satisfy justice. There is still a price to be paid, and the writer of Hebrews reminds us that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. So Jesus came by water and blood both.

The Cross is such an amazing testimony for who Jesus is, for it is the culmination of redemptive history. God loves us so much, and He wants us to be saved, but we, like wayward children, have gone about our own pleasures and wickedness. We have sinned against a holy and just God. We have embraced inequity rather than righteousness. We have sinned, and that sin is not some minor thing. Sin is crime against God. Every greedy, lustful, or prideful thought is a sin against Him. Those sins deserve punishment.

And the Cross was that punishment for those who repent and have faith in Him. The Cross provides that Blood that we need to be forgiven. Jesus died the death we deserve so that we could have the life that He earned. If you wonder who Jesus is, then look to the Cross. There died not just another guy. There died not some other sinner who deserved it. There died the Son of God.

His baptism, His life, and His death, all testify together that Jesus is God.

But there is more, because these three combined make up the first of a new set of three witnesses. We know who Jesus is because of the historical truths of His life, death, and resurrection. But there is more, because God the Father also testifies about Jesus. How does this happen? By His words to us.

The Bible is about Jesus. It was started thousands of years before the birth of Christ, and yet it is about Him. The whole Old Testament points forward to Him. There are hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah, and Jesus is that Messiah. The Father testified of Him when He inspired the Old Testament. Then He testified again when He brought Jesus back to life on the third day, proving that He was God. Do you want testimony about Jesus? Look for the body. It’s not there. That is strong testimony, my friends. The Jews of the first century, when arguing against Christianity, never just took officials to the tomb and pointed inside, saying, “See? He’s still there.” That would have destroyed Christianity at the very start if they had done it, but they didn’t. They didn’t do it because the tomb was empty.

The Father testified further through the writers of the New Testament, giving them the Word of God to transmit to us in the Bible. Creation itself is a testimony, because through Jesus was everything made. The sunset tonight is a testimony to God. Creation and the Word stand as the witness of God that Jesus is the Messiah.

Finally, there is an internal testimony. This is not some warm feeling in your belly, but a change when we are saved. What has John been telling us the whole time? He’s been telling us that once we become Christians, the Spirit begins to change us so that we start actually living as we should. It is a work of God in us, because once we are saved, we are in Him. So what is this testimony? It is the change within us. Don’t take this verse out of context and say, “I have a quiver in my liver, so I must be saved!” You cannot look at the whole of 1 John and come to that conclusion.

Three witness, and they all point to the truth of the Gospel. Jesus was God, and He died for us, and yet He lives. He lives! If you deny that, then you are calling God a liar, because He has given us these testimonies to teach us of Himself.

“And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” Jesus told us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

This is the way to life. In Jesus there is life, and in no one else. You cannot earn your way to eternal life. You cannot follow some false god and expect to live. Jesus is the way. Examine the testimonies, for they are true. These witnesses all point to the Cross, where Jesus took on the sins of the children of God and died for them. Eternal life is a free gift, not to be earned, because it was already earned by the only one who could do it – Jesus.

If you are a believer, you will find that these witnesses remain with us. By water we are baptized, by Blood forgiven, and by the Spirit led.

Podcast: 1 John: Law, Grace, and Law

2010-06-12T05:59:00.001-07:00

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.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
-1 John 5:1-5

This is the drum that John’s been beating for a while, and here we are at the summary of the doctrine. He’s come at it in a couple of different ways, but this is the ultimate point. True Christians act like Christians.

And John’s been very careful to specify that it is not the fact that we love each other that saves us. Not at all. And he’s been careful to state that we’re not going to be perfect, and that the Blood of Jesus still covers our sin, even when we sin after becoming Christian. And yet, even though he is careful to say that, there is still a lot of misunderstanding about what saves us and how we will respond. So let’s start from the beginning and work our way back to this point.

There is the Law. The Law was given by God to Moses. You remember Charlton Heston bringing them down in The 10 Commandments. These are the things God expects from us. These are His perfect standard of righteousness. Unfortunately, we don’t do those things. God tells us not to lie, and we do. God tells us not to covet our neighbor’s stuff, and we do. God tells us not use His name as a curse word, and we do. We become so wrapped up in ourselves that we seek our own pleasures and satisfaction rather than seeking God. The greatest commandment is to love God. That shouldn’t be hard. He created us. He gave us breath and food and everything in creation. He has given us so much. And yet we do not love Him. We say we do, but except for a little time here or there, we aren’t even thinking about Him. We’re thinking about US. We are only thinking about getting ahead, being happy, getting rich, gaining power, being recognized.

And so we’ve failed at keeping the Law. We are not righteous. We are rebellious, selfish, God-belittling, and self-exalting. We are sinners. We do not deserve eternal life, but rather we deserve the rightful punishment for sin, which is death.

But God loves us, even when we do not love Him, and He sent His Son to take our place in death. He died upon the Cross, even though He didn’t deserve it, to take our place.

We are not saved by anything we do, but what He has already done. When we repent of our sin, our rebellion, turn away from it, and trust in Jesus, then we are saved. His righteousness has earned eternal life for us, just like our unrighteousness earned death for Him.

That’s it. That’s Grace. There isn’t more to it. We are saved by Grace alone, not by our own actions. When we have faith, we are saved.

What John is talking about is what comes next. He is talking about what happens when we repent and believe. He is speaking to the Christian who has been saved by Grace, and talking about what that Grace means.

And we jump back to the Law again, but in a different way. See, we could not keep the Law before. We failed to do it. Then by Grace we are saved by Jesus, who did keep the Law. So why can we keep it now? Because we are in God and God in us.

It’s that simple. God the Son fulfilled the Law, and now God the Spirit is in us. And that Spirit guides us.

We’re back at the Law, but not as a source of salvation. Jesus already took care of that. We are back because the righteous obey the commands of God, and we are righteous in Christ.

So John speaks of these things in connection with each other. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” We have been reborn in Him, gaining His righteousness. So John repeats the phrase a little differently: “and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.”

Same thing. Do you believe in God? Do you have that saving faith? Then you love Him. And what is the greatest commandment? To love God. Huh.

The writer of Hebrews gives us a clue as to why we could not obey the Law without God, and why we can with Him: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (11:6). See, we were made to worship God, and if we don’t even have faith, how can we be doing what He has made us to do. It doesn’t matter how many orphans you feed or dolphins you save. The first and greatest commandment is to love God. If you fail that, then you fail. You must have faith.

And so with faith comes a love for God, and that is pleasing to God.

“By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” Again, John is making connections. If you love God, then you will follow God. That seems obvious right? You only disregard people when you love yourself or someone else more. You stick with those you love most. That is why God tells men to cleave to their wives. That is a picture of Christ and His church. It’s a metaphor for the greater relationship between God and His children. The way you cleave to your spouse is a picture of the closeness and deep love between Jesus and the Body of Christ. This is a love that causes you to follow God.

Have you ever wondered why the answer for the question, “How can I be saved?” seems slightly different in various parts of the Bible? Sometimes it says “Believe,” and sometimes “Repent and believe,” and sometimes “Repent and be baptized.” It’s because faith is going to bring about the rest of it. Faith will bring about repentance. Faith brings about obedience, including baptism. As James tells us, “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). Why is it dead? Because faith brings love, and love obedience. They exist together.

And you will then naturally love other Christians, because God loves other Christians.

These commands are not burdensome. Before Grace they were burdensome, because we did not have God in us. But now we are righteous in Christ, and so they are easier. We have been turned away from sin and toward God. This was not our doing, but it was part of that Grace.

John speaks of our victory over the world. What is it? Faith. Faith. That is the ingredient that changes everything. That is the part of Grace that turns us from the Law that cannot justify us and into a place where we’re already justified, and we obey out of sheer love for God.

Jesus overcame the world in His death, and by Grace we are baptized into that death. In other words, we died upon that Cross with Jesus, and we were reborn by His power to new life. We have overcome the world with faith, because our faith is in the one who overcame the world on our behalf.

I am not suggesting that if we sin that is proof that we are not saved. John has already told us that if we say we are sinless, then we are lying. No, we’re talking about a turn here. We are not perfect, but we’ve been turned by the Spirit. This is the evidence that we are saved, not that we are sinless, because we’re not, but that we have been turned from sin and toward God.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then look at your heart. Are you being guided by the Spirit toward good works, not as a source of righteousness, but as a result of love? Do you stand by Jesus’ righteousness, or an effort to gain your own? John is telling us these things so that we can be confident in your salvation. If these words do not bring about a confidence, then look to your heart. Have you a true faith in Him? One that brings about love and obedience? If not, don’t try harder. That will not please Him. Look to the Cross for Grace. It is only Grace that can bring about this result in us.

Podcast: 1 John: Why We Love

2010-06-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

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 this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
-1 John 3:11

In the last episode, we finished up chapter 4 of John’s first epistle, but before we moved on, I wanted to take a look at the section as a whole. John’s been telling us pretty plainly for about two chapters that we are supposed to love our fellow Christians. But he hasn’t been talking about it like it’s something we should be struggling with, but ultimately as something that Christians do by nature. The reason for that is, ultimately, that faith and love are tied up together, and you cannot have faith without loving God and you cannot love God without loving those whom God loves. It’s all one. That will be the message of the first verses of chapter 5, but before we get there, let’s take another look at the different causes John gives for our love.

I picked that word – “causes” – intentionally. I’ve read a lot of commentaries that talk about the “reasons” John gives us for why we love. I don’t have a problem with that phrase. Not at all. I’m only changing it because “reasons” seems like you are trying to convince someone. Here are some reasons for doing something. We’re going to find that love is something different. It is, of course, something we can choose to do, but John presents it more as the natural effect of what is happening in us. I think we’ll see that clearly as we go.

We’ve read the command, but that phrase is repeated in 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”

Take a close look at what he is saying here. He doesn’t say, “love the brothers so you will pass into life.” He tells us that we can know we have passed into life because we love the brothers. We love the brothers, in other words, because love is an effect of passing from death to life in Christ. He’s saying it in the same sense that I would say, “We know that we have been swimming because we’re all wet.” The wetness did not cause the swimming, but the other way around.

In 3:24 he tells us why this is: “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”

If we are careful about John’s wording, we will see it here again. Love is an evidence that we are in God. God is love, and so those who are in God naturally love. Again, it is an effect. We do not love so that we can be in God, but the other way around.

4:9 defines love a little more clearly: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” And John will say that we are the beneficiaries of this love, and so we ought to love others. We should love, in other words, because we were loved. And that is exactly what it says in 4:19: “We love because he first loved us.”

It is the love of God, overflowing in us, that produces our love for others. This is very natural. It is difficult for a man, giddy with love for a girl, to be mean to others. That love overflows into everything! The perfect love of God is so much more effectual than even that. Poured out for us, it splashes onto everything around us.

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.” In 4:16-17, love becomes our assurance of eternal life. If we have been changed, if we see that His love is overflowing in our lives, so that we cannot help but to love, we can be assured of our standing with the Father. We are secured for eternity.

And this love, spilling over in us, becomes a witness to the world about the truth of Christ. 4:12 says, “No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

It is love that drives us to talk to others about Jesus. It is love that persuades us to serve others so that they will see the love of God in us. It is love that changes us, and it will be a change that cannot be denied by anyone except those who refuse to see.

Am I preaching a salvation of works? Surely not. Surely you have seen from the very beginning that the love within us causes nothing, but is an effect. Love is the result, but not the cause. At least OUR love is not the cause. For truly it is love that has brought all of this about, but it is the love of God that causes, and love in us is the effect.

It is the love of God for a fallen people that caused Him to send His Son to the earth to die for us. It is that incredible love for those who did not deserve it that put Jesus upon that Cross. Make no mistake – love is a command, and it is a command that we have failed to accomplish in every day. That is the standard God has set for righteousness, and we prove with every selfish and hateful thought that we are not righteous at all. In justice, God could have destroyed us all. He could have rained down fire against us, and He would have been right to do it. Except for love. Except that God literally loved us to death, and in that death He took our punishment and paid the price for our sins. He died for us.

If I preach a salvation of works, it is the work He has already done. It is a finished work, lacking nothing. The love we show is merely an effect of the love He has already given. When we are convicted of our sin, that is the work of His love in us. When we fall upon our knees and beg His mercy, that is the work of His love in us. When we are forgiven, not because of anything we have done, but because of the work of Jesus alone, that is the work of His love in us. We find grace because of love.

Is it so difficult to understand how, once we are in the God of love, that we would begin to love as well? Is it so hard to understand that once we have been grafted into that sweet vine that we would produce the same sort of fruit? Our love is not how we earn salvation, it is the evidence that we are saved!

Please hear me on that point, because well-meaning Christians so often lie to us and tell us that just because we prayed the Sinner’s Prayer as a kid that we never have to worry about our salvation. That’s not what John is saying. He is saying, “Do you believe in Jesus? Has that belief manifested itself in how you treat others? If not, then you do not believe.”

Hear him, friends, and look at your hearts. Do you believe? Then surely you have shown the evidence of that repentance in how you see others. Look at your heart for the evidence of life in you! Then praise God for that life, and let it show in everything you do, for no one has seen God, but they will see how we love.

Podcast: 1 John: Love as the Cure for Fear

2010-05-25T04:25:00.001-07:00

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.

And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
-1 John 4:14-21

“And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” So the writer of Hebrews puts it. For some people, this is a very scary thought. For others, it doesn’t concern them that much at all. Oddly enough, it’s usually the people who should fear the most that are not at all afraid. You go talk to people on the streets, and most of them will be utterly confident that God is okay with them, even though they don’t even bother to consider their own sin and how God will react to it.

I’ve been in a couple of conversations recently about our security in salvation with people whom I believe to be true Christians. Of course, I will not be the one to judge that, but I have confidence in their faith. And they often fear that day, even though they know that Jesus has paid that price for them. I wish I had studied this passage earlier. Maybe I could have given them a better answer.

This section almost seems like a summary of the entire letter so far. It’s true that John tends to write almost in a swirl of thought – he goes through his argument, and then he goes through it again in a slightly different manner, and then again, adding a bit more. So in this way, almost every section of the letter is a summary of everything else, but here he begins again with the reminder that he was a witness. This is HIS testimony, what he knows as truth because he was there.

And the summary of that truth is as simple as we can make it. “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.”

We should linger here for a little while, because this truth is so simple that we often try to add to it just so that it appears big enough to be real. I am currently reading a supposedly Christian book that is a call to service of the poor and needy. A worthy call that is, and yet that service is constantly spoken of in this book as part of the Gospel. That is the temptation, to see the Gospel as something tangible and generous and charitable on our part, and not just on God’s. That is the result of the Gospel, yes, but it is not the Gospel.

In truth, the charity of the Gospel comes from God and Him alone. We are sinners. We do not deserve eternal life. We blow off our sin because we are so used to it, but God does not. He demands that we be good people, and instead we chase after our own selfish desires. The good news of the Gospel is that the punishment we owe has been paid by Jesus. He died the death that we should have died. When we confess Him (and by confessing, we don’t mean something we merely say, but something we believe in faith, and it is not that we just believe that there was a guy named Jesus, but that He is the Son of God, come from heaven to live as a man, to die on our behalf, to rise on the third day, and who is at the right hand of the Father even now), when we confess Him, we are saved. The good news is that we can never earn God’s favor, but that He gives it to His children without cost or obligation.

This is what shows His love for us. And here’s the cool thing about it, that love is exactly why we should not fear judgment, if we are in Him. God loves us so much that He gave His Son’s life for us. Do you now think that He would withhold that love on the Day of Judgment? John Calvin wrote, “Therefore no one can come with a tranquil mind to God’s tribunal, except he believes that he is freely loved.”

Brothers and sisters, we are freely loved. God the Son died for us. We need not fear His wrath again! It is for those who are outside of God that need to fear this day, but we do not. The love of God, expressed in the Cross, perfected in us, drives away our fear.

Now, that is the good news. Let us add nothing to it. Let us not mistake it again. This good news, once applied within us, now produces its affects in how we love one another. God loves the Church, and God’s children, who have God in them, will love the Church too. It is the natural result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and those who do not produce this natural result of the Gospel may not truly be God’s children.

Jesus uses the analogy of a vine. He is the vine, and we are His branches. Those branches that are in Him will bear fruit. But a branch laying on the ground by itself will have no fruit. God loves the Church, and if we are in Him, then we will love the Church as naturally as a branch of the true vine bears fruit.

We love because He first loved us.

Again, I would like to quote Calvin: “Faith in Christ, makes God to dwell in men, and we are partakers of this grace; but as God is love, no one dwells in him except he loves his brethren. Then love ought to reign in us, since God unites himself to us.”

Do you see? It is not that we are saved by our love. So often is John quoted in an effort to try to tell people that we have to do this and we have to do that. That’s not what John is saying. He never speaks of loving others in any sense except as the natural effect of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He is telling us how we can be sure that we are God’s children, not telling us what we need to do to become God’s children.

This letter is written to reassure Christians of their salvation in Christ, and John uses love as a proof of that. Is God’s indwelling Spirit turning you away from yourself and toward God and others? Do you see the evidence of God’s love in your life? If so, then do not fear. Look to His love, proven by the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, to drive out fear. If His love has had its complete result in us, then we will not fear, for we will be reassured in all times by His love.

If you do not see these evidences of God’s love in your life, then there may be cause for fear. But don’t react to this by running out and trying to love people. This is not a work that will earn us God’s love, but rather it is a natural outgrowth of God’s love. It is God’s saving love for us that must come first. John’s message over and over has been this – look to your heart. Does it testify against you, or do you see the Spirit’s work within it to conform you more to the image of Christ? If it is the former, then turn to the Cross. Repent of your sins. Seek God’s forgiveness and have faith in Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection. We are saved by faith, and not works. It is a free gift that we could never earn.

If your confession and faith are true, you will begin to see fruit of that repentance in your life. It is as natural as good fruit from a good vine.

Podcast: 1 John: All You Need is Love!

2010-05-12T13:27:00.001-07:00

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.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
-1 John 4:7-13

I was just listening to an interview with a woman who claims to be a Christian, but is involved in habitual, unrepentant sexual sin. A pastor was invited into the same interview to try to ask her to turn away from this sin and obey God. I was most interested in what she was saying, because, as we’ve heard a thousand times, she kept falling back on the defense of love. She loves her partner, she said, and God would never command against that. After all, God is love! Besides which, if what she was doing was truly a sin, then God would forgive her, because He is love!

We’re going to be looking today at that very verse, so the timing of that interview was surely providential. I’ve heard this phrase quoted so often, and it is usually by those who are not repentant of their sins. They do not want to submit to God. They want to go about their lives and not be punished for what they have done. So they will say, “God is love, right? Then why would He punish me? Why would He not want me to be happy?”

It’s strange that we don’t accept this definition of love in any other area of life unless it benefits us. If your kids misbehave, we all recognize that the only loving thing to do is to discipline them. If a friend is messing up his life, the only loving thing to do is to try to talk to that friend.

But when you are the one messing up your life, you often think it is mean and hurtful to be confronted. See, we want people to love us in a way that always agrees with us, always stands by us, never confronts, never asks hard questions. We’re like a child who gets mad at his mother for sending him to his room, not understanding that the mother did that because love doesn’t always agree with a selfish and self-absorbed kid.

John talks a lot about love here, and he gives a good definition. See, when we say that God is love, we’re not just saying that God will act lovingly. We’re also saying that the actions of God are, by definition, loving. If your definition of love is such that you don’t think Jesus was loving, then you have a bad definition. If your ideas on love don’t line up with His, then your love isn’t love at all. And the truth is that Jesus was kind, compassionate, giving, and also sometimes harsh, insulting, sarcastic, and very willing to embarrass someone in front of a crowd when necessary.

So when John tells us to love one another, it’s not some touchy-feely warm feeling you have in your heart for someone. He’s not saying, “Oh, just hang out together, watch a movie, and always support each others decisions.” No, this love is wholly different.

Those who do not love but claim to be followers of Christ are not following Christ at all. See, God is love. If He is in you, then you have love. That is foundational. Paul gives us a rather detailed definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Test yourself. Measure yourself against these truths. Are you growing in love since you were saved by Jesus? If not, then were you saved at all?

John, in this text, gives the ultimate example of love in Christ. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” God loved us so much that He sent His Son to die so that we could live. No, this is not a love as this world thinks of love, which is usually just glorified lust or a subjective affinity with someone. This is love that puts others before life itself. God came from heaven in human form, lived as a poor carpenter and persecuted teacher, then was tortured to death on a Cross, and all because He loved us. That, my friends, is love.

You may wonder why God had to die for us to live. John tells us in the word “propitiation.” You may not know this word, but it is a truly wonderful word. My friends, we are sinners. We are selfish, lustful, hate-filled, ambitious, egotistical sinners whose first instinct is for ourselves rather than for others. We do not love like this! We say we do, but our love is a selfish love that is really no love at all. We love people because what they do for us, how they make us feel. We do not love, and in not loving we prove that we are not of God.

God is love, and His love is one that disciplines, that reproves. It is a love that punishes when someone deserves it, and we deserve it. It is a love that is just, and justice is not on our side.

But it is a love that also sacrifices for us. When Jesus died, what was really happening is that He was taking the punishment upon Himself that we deserved. He was satisfying justice on our behalf. If you are a child of God, then your debt is paid. That is what propitiation means. It is one of the most wonderful words in history, because it means that Jesus died so that I don’t have to. Because of what He did, I do not have to face what I truly deserve.

And it is a free gift. We cannot earn it. When we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus, His Blood saves us. He gives us His Spirit, and with that Holy Spirit in us, we begin to change. God is in us and God is love, and so we begin to love!

It is not a warm and fuzzy feeling in the gut. It’s a love that sacrifices. It is a love that reproves when needed. It is a love that will drive you to beg those around you to repent and believe in Him, no matter what they think of you for it.

No one has ever seen God, but God is love, and so this is our connection to Him. John 1:18 tells us, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” Notice how the whole Trinity is involved in this. The Father sends the Son out of love. The Son dies for us so that we can become God’s children. The Spirit indwells us. It is through this process that we have are connected back to the Father, and we are connected in love to one another.

Let me stress that, because we so often forget this. We so often take it upon ourselves to be these great moral people, to be generous and loving, and we so often fail, because we’re looking to the wrong source. We are looking to ourselves, but if we could do that, we wouldn’t need Jesus! We don’t earn eternal life by this love, the love is the evidence of the eternal life. What earned it was the Cross, the fiery center of the Christian faith, the Blood that washes sin away. God works this out in us through repentance, through faith, and the indwelling of the Spirit. If you don’t love, then look to the Cross! That propitiation is everything here, not just the thing that gets us started.

God is love. If you don’t love, then go to God in repentance and faith. He is the only true source of love, so your answer must be there, not in your own efforts to be a better person.

Podcast: 1 John: Testing the Spirits

2010-05-05T18:05:00.001-07:00

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.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
-1 John 4:1-6

I have to say, I’ve been frustrated lately. My wife and I are trying to a find a church home near us, so I’ve been going through these websites to get a feel for the different churches before we go and visit. After all, there are hundreds of churches around us, and it would take us a few years to actually visit all of them. We’re trying to narrow things down a little before actually going to visit.

Now, we’ve been able to veto a lot of these churches just based on stuff on their website. So many churches just don’t have the focus that I would like in a church. Either they disagree with us on major doctrine or they are more interested in talking about finances and relationships than in the sovereign God of the universe. They may use the Bible, but their focus is off. They’re more concerned with you, while I want to learn about Him.

A lot of the ones we vetoed right away were churches we would probably say were Christian churches, just with different priorities than we have. I expect to see those pastors and leaders in eternal life. We disagree on major issues, but not foundational issues. Other churches give me a totally different feel. They call themselves Christian, but I look at their doctrine, and I can’t imagine that they actually are Christian.

This passage made me stop and think about this whole debate over doctrines. We have disagreements within Christianity, but when would those disagreement actually rise to the level where we would have to say that a certain personality or church is heretical? In this passage, John refers to this as having the “spirit of the antichrist.” That’s a pretty heavy level to lay, just like it is when we say someone is a heretic. But when would that charge be appropriate?

This passage distinguishes these things rather well. We have two criteria that an orthodox view must have. First, a spirit “that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” Second, “Whoever knows God listens to us,” meaning the Apostles.

Okay, there’s a little more to this than just believing that there was this dude named Jesus once. That’s not what John is saying. There’s a lot here. First of all, John uses Jesus’ title, which is the Christ, which is Greek for Messiah. What this is is a confession that Jesus is the Messiah.

Now we’ve opened this up a bit, because the Messiah is something much more important than a mere person. The Old Testament has many messianic prophecies, prophecies that tell us that the Messiah will carry our sin upon Himself. Isaiah writes of this man, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6).

When we confess Him as Christ, we are confessing that He did what we failed to do – lived a life without sin, worthy of eternal life. He alone does not deserve death, because there is no lust, pride, hatred, or ambition in Him. And yet He died anyway, and in that death took our sins upon Himself. He died so that we do not have to.

Confessing Him as Christ cannot be done without confessing ourselves as unworthy, for if we do not believe that we need a Savior, we will not confess that we have one. Confessing Him as Christ cannot be done without resting our entire hope upon Him, for we will have realized that we have no hope without Him.

The second test is whether we believe the Apostles. Now, we as Christians sometimes have honest disagreements about what the Apostles meant. Our disagreements do not usually rise to the level of heresy. But when the Apostles are dismissed, their writings ignored or brushed away, then that is part of the spirit of the antichrist.

I am sympathetic to those “Red Letter Christians” who believe that only Jesus’ words are infallible, and the words of the Apostles could be flawed. I sympathize, but I must call them to repentance. John, James, Jude, Paul, Peter, Mark, Luke, Matthew, and the writer of Hebrews were inspired by the Holy Spirit. All Scripture is God breathed, and we must look to it as the Word of God.

If you come across a teacher who denies the plain words of Paul, then we may be dealing with heresy. Again, I may disagree with an Arminian on predestination, but that does not mean the Arminian is ignoring the Scripture. We have a disagreement, and I would say he is wrong, but I would not call him a heretic. I do not believe in paedobaptism (infant baptism), but I call many Lutherans and Presbyterians my close brothers. We are both studying the Word, and we disagree on this point. It is the rejection of the Word that we must guard against, for that is part of the spirit of the antichrist.

Which means those supposedly Christian leaders who want to call Paul into question. Those who read what the Bible says on homosexuality or fornication and ignore it, teaching others that these activities are okay. Guard against these people.

But above all else, trust God. If you have the Spirit, then you are secured by that Spirit for eternity. You need not fear for your soul. God uses even false teachers for His greater glory and for our good. We may not understand how He does it, but as the sovereign God of the universe, He is more than able.

This is where our security lies. Look, if it were up to me, I may wake up a Buddhist tomorrow, or a Muslim. I have no confidence in my own strength to keep my faith intact. So why should I not worry about the spirit of the antichrist? Tomorrow, that may be something that entices me! But John tells us that we have already overcome these things. How is that so?

“For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” Listen to that answer. It is God who secures me for eternity, not myself. My faith will stand if that faith is from God. Those who leave the church for heresy prove in their leaving that they were never part of the true Church. They never had a faith that is from God. That is what we learned in 1 John 2:19.

We worship a sovereign God, a God that is not tossed about by the winds of history, but the God who causes them to blow, and in what direction. He is the hand that guides our every moment. And so we have overcome the world because HE has overcome the world, and we are in Him.

So test the teachings of every new fad that comes along. Learn of Jesus through the testimony of the Word so you can hold up every spirit against the truth of Him. Read the writings of the Apostles and have confidence that they are from the Father. If there is teaching that outright denies these words, then they are of the spirit of the antichrist. They are heresies. Beware of them.

But also have confidence in your sovereign Father in heaven. It is He who secures His children for eternity. It is He who will draw all of those He will to Himself. When we have faith – true faith – and repentance of our sins, we prove ourselves to be part of that family, forgiven because of the sacrifice Jesus made on the Cross, and held for eternity by the power of the Spirit. Have confidence not in yourself, but in the Cross.

Podcast: 1 John: Listening to Your Heart

2010-04-27T16:27:00.000-07:00

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.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
-1 John 3:19-24

If you ask people, “Are you a good person,” you’ll probably go a long time before finding someone who would say no. I would have answered “Yes” for most of my life. There were two reasons for that. First, I acted better than a lot of people I know, and certainly better than people I saw on daytime talk shows and the news. If you watch either daytime talk or the news, you’ll quickly come away with the impression that you are a very good person. You’ll see a bunch of people committing terrible sexual sins, murdering people, being cruel to others, selfishly suing anyone they can. You sit there and think, well, at least I’m not like THAT!

The other reason I thought I was a good person is because I didn’t actually do all the terrible stuff I wanted to do. My heart was filled with lust, hatred, and pride, but I didn’t act on it. I tried to be good. And that’s really all society asks of us. Just don’t do everything you would want to do. As long as you aren’t killing people or talking in the theater, the world says you’re okay.

But all these two things prove is that I wasn’t as bad as I could have been. If you showed people what was in my heart, everyone would recognize how evil I was.

Some people have gone so astray that they have seared their consciences. Most of us have not, thankfully, and your conscience will tell you the truth – we’re not good people. Just because our evil is restrained a bit by society and the laws does not mean we’re good. It only means we’re not letting our true selves out. The thoughts of your heart – that is the true you. We think and do things and our hearts testify against us.

Do not be fooled – God knows what is in your heart. He will judge you by what you think and say, not just what you do. We can all make up a quick list of things we’ve done that prove that we’re good people, but it’s your heart that will testify against you. What will its testimony be?

This part of John’s letter cannot be understood properly without the Gospel. Please remember that he is writing to Christians, and that he has reassured those same Christians that Jesus will be our advocate if we sin. There is an undercurrent of the Gospel here, and we will go drastically off course if we forget that.

All of our hearts will testify that we are not good enough for a holy and just God. The truth is that we do not deserve eternal life, but instead we deserve death. We are filled with all sorts of terrible desires and thoughts, and those things bear witness against our claims to be good. They tell the truth – if we were not restrained by the law and by society, we would act in atrocious and horrible ways. We hold ourselves back, but that is not the real us.

The question is not whether we are good enough for heaven. We’re not. The question is whether we can be forgiven. God is just, and so He requires a just punishment for sin. But in the death of Jesus, we have that punishment. He took our place in death so that we can live.

If we repent and believe in Him, we will be forgiven. That guilt that is proven by your heart will be lifted and replaced with the Holy Spirit.

So what does your heart say? Has that guilt been taken away, or are you still trying to hide things from God and the world. It won’t work. God created you. He knows your every thought.

If, instead, your heart testifies to the presence of the Holy Spirit, then you can have confidence in your standing with Him. Not by your own doing, but by His. Has your heart been turned away from that evil and toward God? Has your repentance shown up in the way you act and think? Has your heart been changed?

I’m not asking if you are perfect. You are not. I’m asking what is in your heart. Is the Spirit moving you toward obedience and away from rebellion? Is He moving you toward repentance for those sins you do commit and away from trying to justify yourself?

I’m also not suggesting that we are saved by our works. We are not. But it is the testimony of the Scriptures that a faith that saves manifests itself in us.

Please note what John says about the commandment: “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” This is a COMMANDMENT, not COMMANDMENTS. There is only one, and these two aspects are tied together. If you believe in Jesus, then your heart will be changed, and you will love. If you still only love yourself, if your heart is still filled with the same degree of wickedness, if you have no repentance for what you have done, then you do not truly believe.

It is that Spirit that brings both of these things about – faith and love. These things are spiritual, so without God they are ultimately impossible. Oh, the world may say that it loves, but the people of the world do not know love as God has revealed it – the love that put Jesus on the Cross for a bunch of rebellious, selfish, wicked, greedy, lustful, and prideful brats that have turned away from Him and toward our own petty concerns. That is the way we were, and He died for us anyway. By His Spirit He changes us into something more like Him, and we will begin to reflect that same love.

Look at your heart. Is the Spirit there, working in your life to form you into something better than you were? If so, then have confidence in your faith! If not, then fall upon your knees and seek repentance with everything you have. There is no more important question to have answered in this life.

Finally, if the Spirit is working in you, then have some confidence in your prayers. If your heart reflects God’s own heart, then what concerns Him will concern you also, and you will be of one mind in seeking His will. Pray with passion and confidence for His kingdom, for His will, for forgiveness, for provision, knowing that your Father in Heaven loves you and will provide for you. Let your requests be made from faith, not from selfishness or fear. We are His children, and we will be heard.

Podcast: 1 John: What Is Love?

2010-04-13T17:35:00.001-07:00

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.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
-1 John 3:16-18

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle. Today we’ll try to learn “What Is Love?”

I think this is one of the biggest problems facing our culture today. Not as big as, you know, denying God and such, but it’s a pretty big one. That is the complete misunderstanding to what love is.

Love today just refers to some vague feeling that you want to be around someone. We throw it around as though it were some sort of general affection. There is no sacrifice to this sort of love. In fact, it is very often selfish. There is no submission between people who claim to love one another. They just like one another. They will still fight tooth and nail to get their own way, of course. They will still demand their rights and freedoms. But they love one another.

You talk to the normal married couple today, and certainly they will claim to love one another, but ask them about the sacrifices they have made. They are still living their own lives, doing their own thing. The wife does not respect the husband or submit to his leadership. The husband does not live his life for the benefit of the wife. If they have too many conflicts, they will just split up.

There’s something askew there. If you want proof, just try telling people that they are sinners in need of a Savior. There are few more loving acts than to try to save someone from eternal damnation, but see what people think of that. They will call you hateful, judgmental, and extreme.

Love, under this definition, cannot include any sort of correction, confrontation, or conflict. These things are not seen as loving anymore, and yet can we say it is loving to NOT try to save someone’s life, even if it means confrontation?

Jesus died for us. This is how the Bible defines love. He died on our behalf, while we were still sinners. We were in rebellion against God, seeking our own pleasures, our own lusts, pride, and greed, over His glory. Even when we had rejected Him fully, He came to earth in the form of Jesus and died on our behalf.

How does that definition hold up in your life? Let me be frank here. Jesus came to die for me, even though I have spent most of my life disobeying and dishonoring him. That sort of love makes whatever love I claim seem like a middle school romance that will disappear on a whim.

The very fact that we rejected Him was why His death had to take place. In our sin, we had earned for ourselves a punishment of death. It was no minor infraction that we have committed, but crimes worthy of capital punishment. Just because you don’t think you’re so bad doesn’t mean that you haven’t offended a holy and just God.

Jesus took our place in that punishment. He died so that we could live. If we repent and believe, we can be reconciled with the Father, though we don’t deserve it.

When we become Christians, we are given a new heart, and we are given the Spirit to guide us. Encountering Jesus changes us. In the new birth, we are made more like the image of the Son.

That is why John keeps telling us that we can be confident in our salvation by looking at our hearts. Has there been a change in you? Have you turned away from your focus on yourself and toward Him? Look at your heart! Do you love?

We will not have the perfect love that Jesus had, and yet we should be moving in that direction. Of His twelve Apostles, eleven were martyred for the faith. Paul had his head chopped off. Peter was crucified upside-down. Tradition says that John was boiled alive, but he didn’t die, so they imprisoned him on the island of Patmos. Throughout the Bible we find men who died for their faith. They love God and us so much, that the love proved greater than their love for their own lives.

You say you love people. How do you know? Is it something you say, or is it something you do? If it is only words, then you don’t have the foggiest clue as to what love means. Love put Jesus on the Cross for you! That is love! It wasn’t some emotion He felt, but a choice that He made, to love us to death, even while we mocked Him and rebelled against Him. That is love!

It is a love that puts me to shame, but it is a love that also inspires me. God loved me so much that He died so that I could have a place in eternity with Him. What need do I have to fear from this life? What need do I have to count my own life more worthy than the lives of the brothers? He has bought me with His Blood, and He will not let me go.

If you are timid in your faith, if you count our own life more worthy than the spreading of the Gospel, if you are afraid of being rejected and embarrassed because of His name, if you are too worried about money to give to others, then look to the Cross. Look to the Cross and learn what love really means. You have benefited from that great love. That sacrifice has given us freedom to love as we ought. Don’t just try to do better out of your own strong will. That doesn’t come from the heart, and it is not love. First turn to the Cross. Confess your sins and repent of your terrible failure to love. In that repentance and guidance of the Holy Spirit, learn what love is truly about.

The world’s reaction to that love may not be a great one. After all, the world killed Jesus. John warns us in the previous passage that the world will hate us. But let us love in action anyway, because it is no longer our goal to please the world. We are secured in Him. We need not worry about what will be done to us, because it is not our security. He first loved us, and nothing can separate us from that love.

That is a great reason to quit talking about how we love others so much, and get to showing it.

Desire and commandment

2010-04-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

“[The commandment is a light] to preserve you from the evil woman, from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.”
-Proverbs 6:24

When it comes to sex, it seems that more and more people are using the DESIRE as justification for the ACT. When asked why its okay to be in a homosexual relationship, or to sleep around outside of marriage, or to have an affair, or to have multiple partners, people will use a lot of reasons, mostly based on desire – “That’s the way I am,” “You can’t choose who you will love,” “God made me like this,” “I can’t help it,” etc.

I have read on many occasions testimonies from people who grew up in conservative churches who reject the biblical teachings on sex because they like it, or their desires are pulling them in some direction. They reject all those old “rules” because their desires are telling them something else.

Of course this doesn’t work in any other area of life. Everyone agrees that there should be laws against rape and murder, no matter what the criminal’s desires are. We think there is a difference here because there doesn’t seem to be a victim.

Whether or not there is a victim, this one thing should become very clear to us – not all desires are for the good. I can’t help but to think of that truth when someone else tells me that what they are doing must be right because they “love” that other person. Surely God wouldn’t condemn love, right?

Desires are not the best judge of right and wrong. Just because my heart is telling me something doesn’t mean it’s okay. Frankly, the definition that God gives for what is right is a bit different. God tells us that we should love Him above all others. Anything less than that is sin. So we should be looking to God’s Word for guidance on our relationships before we look to our own hearts. The “God wouldn’t condemn love” line isn’t going to work with Him when your love has only been toward your own desires.

Here is the truth of it – God gives us guidance in His rules. He didn’t make them because he’s a sourpuss who needs to lighten up. He didn’t give them to a particular culture and then forget about them today. He gave them to us for our benefit for all time.

The Law is established to convict us of our sin, to drive us repentant to the Cross, where we can obtain the forgiveness of our sins by the Blood of Jesus. He uses it to point us to the greatest good in all of the universe – Himself. We take it and make excuses. “I know the Bible says that, but we live in a different culture, and that was really for a certain people at a certain time, and the Greek word means something different, and Paul wasn’t really inspired at that point anyway.”

In the end, those are excuses, and they will not get you through the Day of Judgment.

Turn away from sinful sex. Sex between a man and his wife was made by God to be enjoyed, but do not take what God has given and drag it through the mud of your own uncontrolled desires. Look to Him for your satisfaction. Look to the Cross for your salvation. In Him you will not be disappointed.

Podcast: 1 John: Love and Hate in Technicolor

2010-04-05T14:01:00.001-07:00

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 this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
-1 John 3:11-15

Many of you know this already, but I grew up in the church, and remained there for about twenty years when I realized that I wasn’t a Christian. It wasn’t a bad thing at all to learn, and it’s something that is actually encouraged by the Bible. Paul tells us to “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves” (2 Cor 13:5). This is largely discouraged in the church today. We tell each other that as long as you walked up during an altar call and prayed a prayer then you’re cool with God. The attitude of the New Testament writers was quite the opposite – they really thought it better to realize that you’re not a Christian while there is time to do something about it.

Coming to the understanding that I wasn’t a Christian was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Until I realized that I was not saved, I wouldn’t have been able to be saved, if that makes sense. As long as I thought I was okay, I had no interest in truly becoming okay.

We haven’t reached this passage yet in our study, but John is going to eventually us the reason for his letter. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

When I was in the church before I was a Christian, I really didn’t have a concept of Grace. I thought I was fine with God because I was working hard at being a good person. What is so powerful about 1 John is how it rips away that self-righteousness and shows you the truth – that God is looking at your heart, and not just at your actions.

John doesn’t tell us that we can be confident in our salvation because we do the right things. Doing the right things is actually not impossible. You can summon up the will to act well in all sorts of situations. John ignores that sort of thing completely. What John tells you is that you can only be confident in your salvation if you love.

Looking back, I certainly wasn’t loving. I did the right things, but my heart was wicked and dark. Sure, I would claim that I loved everyone, and I probably even believed it at the time. But if I would have been honest, I would have told you that my heart was filled with lust, pride, selfishness, greed, and hatred. If you put me on a crowded highway, I would have proven that hatred really fast.

It is for this reason that John will link hate and murder. Look, human law only really cares about what we actually do. We can hate people so much that we will think about murder all day long, but human law doesn’t care. But God looks to the heart. It is what is within us that He cares about. God is not fooled if we can keep our external behavior in line. He doesn’t reward those who simply have better power of will than others. He’s concerned with who you are.

Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:21-22). This is what John is talking about. It’s not enough to merely refrain from killing someone. We should love that person too.

And here’s where the real issue is. I can force myself by my own will to not kill someone. I’ve actually been doing rather well on this point. But I cannot force myself not to hate them. That is something that only God can do.

The evidence for that is everywhere. Watch television for a while and see what people say about Christianity, and then tell me that John analogy to Cain is not appropriate. In John’s day, Christians were being killed for their faith. John’s own brother was murdered for being a Christian. That still happens today, but in America we don’t see it that much. Still, we can see the hatred in the books being published, the people on talk shows, and the general attitude of people. They see the righteousness of Christ, and that righteousness shines light on their own evil actions, and so they want the light put out.

How many times will you hear these phrases – “Don’t judge me;” “Don’t push your morality on me;” “Stay out of other people’s bedroom;” “Keep your religion in the church”? It is the light of God that exposes all unrighteousness, and the unrighteous do not want their deeds exposed.

We should not be like that. We should not be like Cain, who killed his brother. Do you know this story? It’s in Genesis 4 if you do not. Cain was jealous over his brother’s righteousness, and he killed him. Is your anger sometimes like that? May it not be, for we were reborn in Christ to love. We were not saved in order to walk as the world walks, but as Jesus walks.

Let me stress this point – this is not something you can do out of force of will. Look at what John tells us. He does not tell us, “Love others and you will then pass from death to life.” No, he says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.”

Our love is the evidence of our heart. If we still have the worldly heart of stone, we will not love as we should. If that heart of stone has been replaced by a heart of flesh, something that only God can do, then we will no longer be like Cain.

Our love is a barometer of our faith. If you want to know whether you are in the faith, look to your heart. Has it been changed by the Holy Spirit? Is it being formed even now into something that looks more like Christ?

I’m interested that John uses the word “message” here: “For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” This passage mirrors something he said before in 1 John 1:5: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

And that’s really the point. Are we in Him? Then we are in the light, and the darkness is being banished from us. It is not that we will not sin. John is not trying to make that point. It is that before we were in darkness, and now we are in light. It is that before we were like Cain, and now it God has turned our hearts toward love. It is that before we were driven by greed, lust, pride, and selfishness in all ways, but now we have been turned toward the Cross and away from ourselves. We may still fall to those temptations, but our hearts have been basically changed by grace.

This is what John is saying – look to your heart. What is there? Has God changed your focus away from yourself and toward others, not for reasons of ambition or to make a name for yourself, but out of love? Maybe it hasn’t been all that much, but when you look upon your life, you can see the change. Can you trace a distinct movement toward God since the hour you first repented to Him? Do you love when before you hated? Do you have compassion when before you had anger? If not, turn to the Cross. Repent and ask His forgiveness in faith. It is because of Jesus’ sacrifice that we can be changed, not by the power of our own wills.

We have the tendency to believe that we are doing okay on our own. It’s not terribly hard to be a good person according to the world’s standards. For this very reason does John tell us to look within. If your heart has borne fruit in keeping with your repentance, then you can have confidence in your election as a child of God. If not, then go to Him.

Let us not overdo this. Let us not think of every sin as “proof” that we are lost. We will still sin as Christians, but once we are in Christ, we know that, in the words of John, “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” It is by Him alone that we can be forgiven. Confess to Him in faith and true repentance. We are saved by His righteousness, and not our own. It is that same righteousness that will change us, and one day perfect us.

Good Friday video

2010-04-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

Good Friday

2010-04-02T07:31:00.001-07:00

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 Scriptures say that, just before His death, Jesus was in a garden, praying. This wasn’t a serene moment with flowers and butterflies. Outside the garden, Judas was bringing the soldiers to come and get Him. Jesus’ disciples couldn’t seem to stay awake. For Jesus Himself, He was flat upon His face, so distressed that blood was coming out of Him like sweat. He was praying for an alternative. He was praying that, if there was another way, the Father would allow that other way.

But there wasn’t, and the guards came for Him.

One of the most understated verses in the Bible is John 19:1, where it says, “Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him.” The readers of that day would have known what that meant, and they would have cringed in horror. We pass it by. The Passion of the Christ did it justice, and it’s hard to watch. To flog someone, they would use a cat of nine tails, which is a whip with metal balls and hooks weaved into the straps. It was designed to strip away the skin and break the bones. Many people died from the flogging alone. Jesus survived it. Once His skin was battered and torn, they put a robe against His exposed flesh and forced Him to carry His own cross upon that bloody back.

We call it Good Friday. We call it good that Jesus walked across the city, His blood flowing onto the street behind Him. We call it good when He was nailed upon that Cross and lifted up into the sun to bake until He was dead.

Most Christians can quote to you why it happened. They say He died to forgive us of our sin. That’s true. I wonder if we’ve ever questioned what sin really means, if God had to come to earth and endure that punishment for it to be forgiven.

Do you have any idea what sin means? Do you know why Jesus had to have the skin scraped off his back in order for it to be wash clean?

May I suggest that our sin is more grave of a matter than we normally think? May I suggest that it is more vile, more offensive, more wretched than we would like to admit? Frankly, if I were a good person who just needed a little help to finally reach Heaven, Jesus could just stretch out His arm to me. If I were but a mile away, He could come and carry me. But I was so far away, so utterly and completely incapable of even getting close, that He had to chase me into death itself.

Your little lies here and there are more terrible than you think. Your lust is more offensive than you want to consider. Your pride is the very sort of thing that got Satan thrown out of heaven, it was so terrible, and you think it’s just part of being human. Maybe. Maybe it is, but that doesn’t make it okay.

We deserve death for what we have done. We deserve to die for our sins. That’s the point. If someone was going to take our punishment, it was a punishment of death. If someone was going to take our sins upon Himself and pay the price for them, that price was death!

And God Himself was the only one who could pay that price for us, because He’s the only one who didn’t owe it Himself.

God died. God died that day, and we call it Good Friday, because He was doing it for us. He took the worst atrocity in human history and uses it so that we can be forgiven.

Some of you will be going to church for the first time in a long time this Easter. Some of you go every Sunday, but it’s just something you do. Some of you are really into the whole religion thing, and you think you’re a good person. Some of you are saved, but you need to be reminded of the Gospel, the good news, that we can be forgiven. That we are so evil that it took the death of God for us to be forgiven, but that God loved us so much that He died to make that happen.

Dwell on this. Dwell upon the Cross. Let its meaning sink in. Then repent of those sins that put Him there. And believe that He was there for you. Trust in Him, and you will be forgiven.

My definition of “fool”

2010-03-31T16:36:00.000-07:00

“For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,”
-Proverbs 6:23

When I was a teenager, I, like so many other teenagers, thought my parents were idiots. I pretty much decided that they hadn’t the foggiest clue as to the world. They were out of touch and oblivious.

The reason I thought this, of course, was because they didn’t want me to do the stuff I wanted to do. That’s most people’s definition of a fool, by the way – the fool is someone who disagrees with them.

There were so many rules, and I didn’t really see much sense in a lot of them. I would have so preferred to be free, frolicking around and doing whatever I pleased.

In our culture, we so often see rules as something that restricts, that is wrong and confining. The word itself – “rules” – has a negative connotation. Think about the sentence I used earlier: “There were so many rules.” Doesn’t sound good, does it?

Our culture puts freedom above all things, but perfect freedom is not necessarily good. I figured this truth out perhaps a few years too late: my parents weren’t trying to be minor dictators with me – they were trying to light my path.

We learn things along the way, and these things would be of great benefit to those generations who come after, if only they weren’t so proud that they refused to listen. But there was a reason my parents told me to be in at a certain time. There was a reason why they told me no when it came to this toy or that. There was a reason they disciplined me, and it wasn’t because they just felt like it.

My parents’ rules were not designed to ruin my fun. They were designed to guide me. Their punishments were not designed to hurt me, but to lead me to something better.

It is that way with God. God does have rules, and most people think they are too strict and puritanical. We never consider that God may know something we don’t. We never consider that the wisest being in the entire galaxy, who loves us greatly, is trying to protect us. He knows everything, and He loves us. Isn’t that a good reason to listen to Him?

We have rebelled against Him, of course. We have mocked Him publically with blasphemies. We have taken His name and used it like a cuss word. We have preferred TV and sports to worship of Him. We have offended our Heavenly Father.

And in love, He will forgive the repentant ones. He even sent His Son to die in our place so that we would not have to face the punishment for our sins. He has sent His Spirit to guide us to the light – that light we so often and scornfully abandon.

I guess I’ve lived long enough to trust the words of my parents. I didn’t think much of them then, but I think much of them now. It is the same with God, only more so. He never misleads, never missteps. His guidance is perfect in all circumstances, even when we have rebelled against Him.

The influence of a parent

2010-03-29T16:36:00.001-07:00

“When you walk, they [your parents’ teachings] will lead you; when you lie down, they will watch over you; and when you awake, they will talk with you.”
-Proverbs 6:22

There isn’t a day that goes by that my parents’ influence isn’t evident in my life. I may not even think about it, but their wisdom from the first two decades of my life has influenced everything. It’s like an instinct now, those things they have instilled in me.

And they are there at all times. It’s not as though I have to really concentrate to remember what my father taught me about honest work, or what my mother taught me about the Bible. I just know.

Ultimately, this is what frightens me about how the role of the parent is being deemphasized in our culture. America tells you to dump your kids off at daycare and then go to work where you can fulfill your potential. America tells you that you don’t need a man to help you raise your son.

Most people don’t realize that there is something important going on even in a game of catch. It is something that cannot be replaced. Ever.

The Bible teaches us that a father should be the spiritual leader of the family. I could lament how much we men have failed at that duty, but let’s be honest – far too many fathers aren’t even in the home. It would do little good for me to talk about a lack of Bible studies when the first problem is a lack of fathers.

God has chosen for Himself the title of “Father.” There is something really wonderful about that title, and it’s something that may now be lost on so many people who have had really terrible experiences with their earthly fathers, or maybe don’t even know who their fathers are.

But if fallen humans are dragging the name through the mud, let us remember that they have taken something wonderful and blessed, something modeled after God’s relationship with us, and tainted it, but that does not change the faithfulness and love of the original.

If you haven’t been the man you should be, I would ask you to look at how God has modeled that for us. Look upon His love, His sacrifice, and His unending provision. If you have a lower view of that word “father,” look not at those who have failed to live up to it, but the one who set the standard. He is filled with compassion and comfort.

This is the Father who sent His only Son to die upon the Cross for us. In our sin, we have fallen short of His glory, but in the death of Jesus, He provided a sacrifice that would satisfy justice so that we could be forgiven. Repent and have faith in Him, the only one who is worth our faith.

He has written His Word down for us in the Bible. Let this Word lead you. Read it so that it will follow you around, awake or asleep. Our human fathers, to one degree or another, will probably fail at some point, but not the original Father.

Remember this one?

2010-03-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

“Bind them [your parents’ teachings] on your heart always; tie them around your neck.”
-Proverbs 6:21

My wife and I are meeting with some friends of ours every week right now to discuss our marriages and lives. In a lot of ways, it has been a very rewarding experience. In honesty and love we are able to really talk about our successes and failings and what God is doing in our lives. I frankly have far too few friendships like this.

One of the most rewarding aspects of these meetings is that we have been asked to memorize a passage of Scripture every week. I have, honestly, been a lazy memorizer. I will read the Bible like crazy, but I have so many projects that I don’t ever sit still long enough to memorize.

And that’s a really terrible thing to say, because it’s not that I don’t recognize the importance of this. It would be one thing if I just didn’t think it would be worthwhile, but I really do think it’s a great habit. I memorized Romans 8:28 several years ago (“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose,” NASB), and I have literally used it in conversation more times than I can remember. It has been a wonderful comfort to me, and I’ve had it with me to help others.

And I just don’t continue that habit.

When Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness, He didn’t lean on His own power to refute the devil, but He quoted Scripture. He quoted, in fact, from Deuteronomy. A couple of things stand out here. First of all, if Jesus felt the need to turn to the Word, how much more do I need it? Secondly (and I’m borrowing this from a sermon I heard recently), if my ability to resist temptation depends on how well I remember Deuteronomy, I’m in trouble!

It’s not just Deuteronomy. I have to repent of my laziness on this. I really don’t turn to the Word as much and as seriously as I should, and neither do you.

This is the written revelation of God, and I find myself more interested in other things most of the time. That is a convicting statement to me! It is embarrassing to admit, that I chase after entertainment so often rather than the God-breathed Scripture.

I am so thankful that Jesus did not stumble where I do. I am so glad that He took it seriously enough to remember those passages from Deuteronomy to refute the devil where I so often fail against him. I am thankful because, obviously, I have not lived a life that will earn me any sort of favor from God. People like to say that they are good people, but we are not. We chase lust, greed, ambition, selfishness, and pride above God all the time.

But Jesus did live that perfect life. He was sinless, and when He died, He took our place in death, so that we may have life. When I consider what He went through for me, I cannot help but to fall to my knees in repentance at His feet and beg for forgiveness.

And by that faith, I am forgiven.

It’s a wonderful truth, and it’s all found in our Father’s Word. It’s a story I really would like to learn better.

Podcast: 1 John: The Good, the Bad, and the Forgiven

2010-03-23T04:25:00.000-07:00

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.

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
-1 John 3:4-10

There is a common thread that runs through pretty much all major religions in the world. The reason it runs through all these religions is that it runs through us as well. This thread is the belief that we will be rewarded or punished for our actions.

We sort of take that one for granted, don’t we? If we work hard at our careers, we expect a bigger raise. If we are generally good people, then we expect to be respected and liked. If we give money to charity, we expect a tax break for it. Even as kids we are told that Santa gives presents to good kids, or that mommy will buy us a toy if we’re good. If something bad happens, we respond with statements like, “I didn’t deserve that!”

Religion is usually like that. Each religion acknowledges a set of rules and philosophies, and the basic message is that you will be rewarded for following those rules and philosophies. In other words, these are things you have to do to please God.

We have to watch ourselves when we are in passages like this that we don’t fall into that sort of philosophy. We have to make sure that we don’t say, “Okay, I see. I need to be righteous and then God will like me.” That’s not what this is about. This is not saying that if you sin at all, then you’ve proven that you’re not a Christian. We know this because John has already explained in the last chapter that Jesus remains our advocate, even when we do sin, and previous to that, that anyone who claims to be without sin is a liar.

So to unpack this, let’s start with the source. Look closely at this passage. What does John say as to the source of this righteousness? “You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; . . . The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.”

What is the source here? It’s not us. Those who are born of God do not make a practice of sinning. He cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

It’s not out of ourselves that we keep from sinning. It’s who we are. If you miss this point, you’re going to miss everything, and you’re going to walk away from this passage with a legalistic view of God, and you’re going to fail to reach the standard put here. You’re going to try, out of your own selves, to be righteous, and you’re not going to do it.

No, what is being described in this passage is not what you have to do to make yourself pleasing to God, but a description of the children of God and the children of the devil. The children of God act righteously because they are children of God. That is the reason for it.

The solution here is not to try harder to make yourself righteous. It’s to figure out whose child you are. Do you make it a practice to keep sinning? Does it even cross your mind that you are disobeying God? Do you like sin more than you like God?

If so – and this may be a hard truth for you – you may not be of God. Don’t immediately get defensive here. Look at your actions. Examine yourself, and be honest. This is important. Don’t avoid the question. If you don’t want to take a serious look at whether you are saved or not, then that’s a decent indication that you are not saved.

The good news is peppered throughout in this section. “You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. . . . The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” Would you fall into the category of “child of the devil” here? We are born in this state, chasing our own desires from the womb. We are sold out to sin and spend our lives in lust, greed, pride, hatred, and selfishness. We are guilty, and we are not of God.

But Jesus appeared to take away sins. This is so critical to understanding John here. Without Christ, we have nothing. He came and died, and in that death took the punishment that we deserve. He died so that we could become children of God when before we were children of the devil.

Let me be clear on this. This world is not made up of good people and bad people. We are all bad people. The only difference between the children of God and the children of the devil is Grace. It is forgiveness! If we repent and believe in Him, then He is faithful to forgive us.

In Grace, we are adopted as children of God. God puts His Spirit in us, and that foreign righteousness begins to change us. Children of God act differently than children of the devil because God is guiding us from within.

If that hasn’t happened for you, then I will not tell you to do better. I will tell you to look to the Cross. Have you repented of your sins? Have you believed in He who died for our sins?

We, as Christians, are being sanctified by His power. We are being changed to something more resembling Him. That is why we do not make a practice of sinning anymore. Sure, we still sin, and we are still forgiven by His Blood. But before Christ, sin controlled us. Before Him, we were trapped in that lawlessness. No longer.

The longer we walk, the more we will be changed, until that final day when we are perfected by His Grace. In the meantime, we will find ourselves looking more and more to God and less and less at the world. The practice of sinning will start to fade.

We are not perfected yet. We have all sinned this very day. That’s not what John is talking about. He’s talking about a redemption that changes us. He is telling us to look at ourselves. If we have not changed, then we may not be redeemed. If we are still chasing lawlessness, then we may not be His. Whose child are you? To deny the question answers it clearly enough.

Wanna hear something cool?

2010-03-17T18:35:00.001-07:00

“My son, keep your father's commandment, and forsake not your mother's teaching.”
-Proverbs 6:20

When Abraham came back from a particular battle, he met a man who was both priest and king. His name was Melchizedek. He appears for a few short verses in Genesis 14. It’s such a tiny part of the book that you forget it almost immediately, at least unless you know what it means.

The author of Hebrews, many centuries later, wrote extensively on how this man foreshadowed the coming of Christ. This tiny episode in the life of Abraham was put there very intentionally so that we would know something of Jesus.

I’ve been writing for almost twenty years of my life. I haven’t gotten much of it published, but I have written tens of thousands of words. And most of them were throwaway words. Most of them were only there to get me to the place I wanted to be.

The Bible isn’t like that, and the more I dig, the more I know that to be true. There was a purpose for that priest guy in Genesis – the same one that we may have thought was just a throw away character. It wasn’t just an episode to move the plot forward – it means something.

And it means something profound. The writer of Hebrews spends chapters on this guy, and theologians have spent books on what the writer of Hebrews was talking about. There is a depth here that cannot be compared. There is something, literally, divine behind its composition.

And so many people, even Christians, ignore it. Here we have the story about how God redeems His people, how He brings His purpose to fruition, and how His will is done in even the worst of times, and we think it’s boring.

Don’t ignore this. This is the teaching of your Father. Take it and learn it. Teach it to your children so they will not forsake it. It’s literally the story that brings life. There is no other book that can do that. God uses His word to bring about repentance and faith. It is by this that we are saved.

Without these words, I never would have known I had fallen short of the glory of God. I would have admitted to messing up some times, but I would not have known how offensive my mistakes were. I never would have known that I cannot earn Heaven on my own. I never would have known I needed a Savior.

This Book is His story – the story of Jesus. This is the man who left Heaven, came to earth, and died to take the punishment for our sins. This is His story. If I never heard that story, how would I have known to bow before Him?

Read it. Learn about Him. If you are unfamiliar with the Bible, start in John and Romans. Work out from there. Pray for wisdom. When the Spirit reveals the truth to you, you will be amazed at the depth in there.

Podcast: 1 John: Seeing God and Living

2010-03-13T07:26:00.001-08:00

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.

And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
-1 John 2:28-3:3

It was right at two years ago that I met, in person for the first time, the woman who is now my wife. We actually met online, and we had talked quite a bit by the time we finally met in person.

I remember that day very well. I carefully picked out what I would wear, made sure you bathed and shaved so I would be pretty. I had cleaned out my car and such so I wouldn’t look like a slob. Basically, I did what I could to make myself presentable. It seems to have worked, it seems, since we were married in November of that same year.

Most people, I think, would go through such preparations for a first date. It’s a very natural thing to do – to sort of put your best foot forward.

But when it comes to the return of Christ, I don’t think we take anything close to the same sort of care. I think this is so strange, people are so worried about what others think of them, but if you ask them about what God thinks of them, they immediately say, “Oh, He’s got no problem with me. I’m a good person.”

John does something very interesting here, and it’s all spawned off this idea of abiding in Christ. This came out of his discussion of the antichrist, where he warned us of enemies of Christ, but at the same time reminded us that we abide in Christ, and therefore we will not be misled by false teachers. Our eternal security is in Him.

The next thing he tells us is that this abiding is pretty important, because Jesus is coming back, and if we abide in Him, then we have no reason to fear that day. There will be no shame for us. You don’t have to be wearing nice clothes or clear out your car. Abide in Him, and you will be ready.

So the question must come next – how do I know whether I abide in Him? John mentions an answer that he will develop later, and that is that those in Him will act like it. He is the source of righteousness, and so those who act righteously are in Him.

In case you’re worrying, this does not mean that we will earn our salvation by righteousness. The chapter stops here, but those chapter sections were added much later, and John’s thought process has certainly not stopped yet. Since he keeps going, we will too.

He gives us right away the reason that we act differently than the world – that is because we are children of God. And it is not because of our own actions that we have become such, but because of His love.

We have to get this order right. God’s love has saved us, not a work of our own. He has loved us, and in that love chosen us for salvation. In that salvation, by faith, we have become children of God. As children, we do not act like the world acts. They did not understand Jesus, and they won’t understand us either.

This does not happen all at once, and it does not happen completely. At least not yet. Notice what John says in 3:2 – “what we will be has not yet appeared.” A lot of commentators see this is as referring specifically to our glorified bodies. I think this is true, but don’t think merely to the physical. Our context here is righteousness and purity. It’s not just our bodies, but we will be purified in will as well. We have not yet become what is promised to us as children of God. That process of sanctification, which forms us more and more into the image of Christ, is not complete. We are not sinless as Christians. We still mess up over and over again. That is not the righteousness John is talking about. He is talking about a change in us. This change does not save us, but is a result of that salvation.

Ultimately, we will be formed into the image of Jesus. In the end, we will be sanctified. John tells us that “when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

Let’s not stray at this point. John is not saying we will be gods. We are still the creation, not the Creator. John is speaking of what we will be eternally, in perfected body and will. In this way we will be like Jesus.

But this fascinates me. You’ll remember that in Exodus, God tells Moses “man shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). The reason for this is because of our sin. When Isaiah sees Jesus in Isaiah 6, his immediately reaction is that he is going to die. And he’s going to die because he’s a sinner.

What John tells us about seeing Him as He is should terrify us. We are sinners too – probably worse than Isaiah, who was a very godly man. I’ve been a terrible person, constantly seeking my own advancement over others, chasing lust, filled with pride, putting my greed and ambition above God. If Isaiah thought he was going to die, how much worse am I going to have it?

But there is something different here, and it is a difference that will eventually allow us to see God. We have been purified by the Blood of the Lamb. Our sins were nailed upon the Cross with Jesus, and He died in our place. In repentance and faith, we are washed clean of these sins and clothed with Jesus’ righteousness.

Our debt for our sin has been paid. We can now be judged righteous because of what He did.

We are judged righteous because of what He did, but remember that we have not yet become sanctified. We are not yet like Him. But when we see Him, it is then that we will be sanctified fully.

John ends our section today with these words: “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” This sums it up perfectly – if we hope in Him, that is we have faith, we are purifying ourselves. But this is not ultimately done by our own work, but by His. His righteousness is imputed to us.

Let’s look back at our equation to summarize what we have learned. God loves us, and He saves us, even when we do not deserve it. We can be saved because of what the Son did on the Cross, paying the price for our sin. By faith we become children of God, separated from the world by the work of God. By His work, we are being sanctified, and that process will be finished when we see Him as He is.

In that sanctifying process, though, we are already changed, and that is where John is going with this. We’ll try to take a look at that next time, God willing.

Liars and mischief makers

2010-03-12T06:09:00.000-08:00

“a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”
-Proverbs 6:19

I’ve been very interested in these last few verses. Normally, as we have gone through Proverbs, we are seeing truisms. They are statements of advice, and not necessarily promises of a return. We actually run into trouble when we try to apply them universally, because they were never meant for that.

We speak like this all the time. I can give general advice about marriage or finances that may not work in all cases. It doesn’t mean the advice was bad – it only means that there are outside forces.

So not every child who is raised on the Word will be a good person. Generally, they will, but sometimes not. Not everyone who is honest and upright will find success. Not every wicked man will find punishment in this life.

That was a tangent, but with a point. I’ve enjoyed this section very much because of how specific and universal it is. These are seven things God hates. You can be sure of them. It doesn’t matter who you are or what the situation, God hates these things. These are things that God considers to be betrayals.

The sixth in the list is lying, which I think would rule just about everyone out in the list of “good people of the earth.” We lie all the time. It’s almost a second nature.

This is actually the second time in this list he’s mentioned liars, though this time it is specifically in our testimony about others. We can lie about general things, and God hates that, but that’s not what this is about. This is when we lie about people at work. We lie about those we see on the street. We say things that aren’t true to try to make ourselves seem better or to promote our own view of the situation. We exaggerate and twist words. We slander against them.

And we keep doing it whenever we can find an advantage in it.

The final one on the list is the act of sowing discord, or making mischief. This is actually added to the list as the worst of them all, and yet this is something we see rather often. We see people spread gossip at home, church, or at work. We see people, for their own ends, try to stir up anger in others in those same places. Sometimes we seek out chaos because we are upset, or because we want something, or simply because it will help us out. We want others involved in our own pet issues, so we make trouble.

False teachers do this in the church. They come in with foreign doctrines and try to wedge them into the body of Christ. They come with their own issues, whether it be sexual issues, or that women should be pastors, or that God doesn’t want us to drink alcohol, or that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, or that the true Gospel is economic or political freedom. They are making mischief in the church, and it offends God.

The true Gospel, the Gospel that can save us from God’s wrath against these sins that we have all committed, is this – that Jesus came to earth to die in our place. His Blood satisfied the justice demanded for our sin. Because of that we can be forgiven. Because of His resurrection, we can know that we too will be resurrected, and that we can have eternal life with the Father.

We have all done things the Father hates. But because of the Son, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.

Schemes and anxiousness to sin

2010-03-09T18:15:00.001-08:00

“a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,”
-Proverb 6:18

Sometimes you stop before you sin. Sometimes, you stand there a moment, asking yourself if you really want to do that. You weigh the pros and cons and make a decision. Often, you decide to sin anyway.

Sometimes you just find yourself in a situation where sin is staring you in the face. There’s no pause there in those cases – you just sin or you don’t. There wasn’t a long internal debate, just, “Yep. That looks fun. Let’s do it!”

Sometimes, you can’t wait to sin. Sometimes you actually hurry toward it. There is something really scary about these times, but we do it. It’s scary because the truth of the depth of our sinfulness is revealed in those moments. We’re not just people who mess up every once in a while – we’re sinners.

It could be an anxiousness to lie about someone to get your own way. It could be to hurry home to commit fornication or look at porn. It could be wanting to get back at your spouse. It could be anything – anything your heart wants so badly that you are looking forward to it.

God hates it. It’s one of the seven things listed in this part of Proverbs that God hates. Honestly, we should hate it too. Nothing speaks so poorly of us than that hope and desire to be evil.

In a similar way, God hates it when we plot evil in our hearts. Maybe we don’t do it this time, but we are thinking it. We are coming up with ways to hurt other people. Sometimes, we come up with elaborate revenge plans.

These things should be terrible to us, but we have become so accustomed to sinning that we don’t think about it much. But God is perfect. He is holy and just, and He sees sin for what it is. It is offensive, and it is, literally, damning.

The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. Death! We deserve death for when we were so anxious to sin. We deserve death for that plot we had against our neighbor. We deserve to die for it.

But even though we deserve to die, God created a way for us to live in Jesus Christ. He came to earth and lived a perfect life. He did not sin, and He did not deserve to die. Of course, He died anyway. He was murdered upon the Cross for our sins.

We need to be honest here – we are guilty of offending the very nature of God. We can’t make it on our own. We need a Savior. He’s the only one that’s earned it.

Podcast: 1 John: Jesus is not the Father

2010-03-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

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.

No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.
-1 John 2:23-24

I came up with the title of this podcast about a week ago, when I was about to record the episode entitled “Jesus is God.” I’ve been letting this title bounce about in my head for a while, and I’m honestly curious about how people are going to take it.

Typically, I think, Christians are aware that Jesus is God. We believe in the Trinity, even if we cannot explain it. I think that if you ask the average people in church on Sunday morning, they will tell you that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit make up the Trinity. They are God. Jehovah’s Witnesses and other cults will deny this, which is one reason we need to study the doctrine carefully. I think it’s important to do episodes like “Jesus is God” even when most Christians would say that so that we know what we believe and why, and we can answer the objections of others.

But while we say we accept the Trinity, I think most Christians really believe in a form of modalism, which is the belief that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are really the same person taking on different roles. Basically, these titles are like masks they wear and nothing more. We don’t really see them as being separate persons who have separate roles.

No, I didn’t say they were different gods. There is only one God. The Bible is very clear on that. And that God is the Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit. But we can also see in the Bible that the three persons of the Trinity are separate.

This is tough, I know. It’s not something we can fully understand in this life. Honestly, I don’t think we’ll fully understand it in Heaven either, because if we understood the nature of God fully, there would be nothing to separate Creator and creature. So even in the new Heaven and the new Earth, I don’t think we’ll fully understand the nature of God. But especially in this life, we have a tough time with this one.

I think the best analogy I’ve heard explains the Trinity in terms of a good marriage. A married couple is made up of two people, of course, but in a good marriage there is a unity of thought and purpose that is incredible. The Bible says that the two become one, and we can see that in a good marriage. Two people – one flesh.

The Godhead is what they are, but they are three persons. One what – three whos. So there is one God, undivided and unified, and God is made up of the Father, Son, and Spirit, who are separate persons.

That is why John in this section says things like, “Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.” He does not say “Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also because they are the same person.” He is very deliberate in his language here.

Let’s look at a couple of passages where we see the Son as distinct from the Father. We looked in the last episode how Jesus is God already, so please take a listen if you have not heard it. I’m going on the assumption that we agree that Jesus is God before making the distinction between Jesus and the Father.

Jesus tells us, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love” (John 15:9). Now, if Jesus is the Father, then this is a little strange. He would be saying, in essence, “As I love myself, so I loved you.” But that’s not what He’s saying at all.

In Matthew 11:27, He says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Again, is He talking about Himself in the third person here? This passage would make no sense at all if the Father and Son are the same person.

At Jesus’ baptism, we actually see all three members of the Trinity distinctly. “And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:16-17).

Jesus was not throwing His voice here. He did not cause His Spirit to leave Him and then come back down. We see them here distinctly and as three separate persons.

So you’re probably wondering why this matters. It actually matters a great deal, because misunderstanding the doctrine of the Trinity actually leads all sorts of strange ideas about salvation. If you deny that Jesus was God, then you can’t have a perfect and complete sacrifice. A man cannot carry the sins of the world on his shoulders, and neither can an angel. If you deny that they are one God, then you end up with polytheism, which the Bible rejects. If you deny that they are separate persons, then you loss the power of God’s love in the sending of His only begotten Son.

Here’s the truth of the matter in salvation. God the Father has chosen us before the foundation of the world to be redeemed, despite our unworthiness. In sin we have earned death, but He has chosen us to be drawn to Himself.

But justice requires someone to pay the price for our sins, and so God the Son came to earth, lived a perfect life, and died in our place upon a Roman Cross. He rose three days, thus insuring that we too will rise from the dead.

God the Spirit now regenerates our hearts to accept the message of the Gospel. In our sin, we are in rebellion against God, but by the Spirit’s work, our hearts are turned toward Him by convicting us of our sins and giving us faith.

Without the Father, none of us would be drawn. Without the Son, the punishment for our sins would not be paid, and justice would not be satisfied. Without the Spirit, we would continue in our rebellion, never being given the gift of faith. Without the work of each person of the Trinity, we would be lost in our sins.

Our prayers also reflect the three members of the Trinity. We pray to the Father, through the Son, and by the power of the Spirit.

God is worthy of worship, as is each member of the Godhead. One God in three Persons – that is the truth revealed in the Bible. It strikes me as a truth very much worth our time, our efforts to understand, and our praise.

Pride, lies, and violence

2010-03-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

“haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,”
-Proverbs 6:17

If God gave you a list of things He just hates, you would think you would pay attention. I mean, that’s important, don’t you think? That’s worth our attention?

Of course we would say yes right away, and yet the Bible gives us such lists, and we ignore them. One such list is the Ten Commandments. In this section of Proverbs, we are told very clearly that these are “things that the LORD hates” (verse 16).

Does that interest you? Are you at all curious? People have a problem with the doctrine of hell these days, and I know why they do – they don’t understand what God hates. They know what they themselves hate, and they just assume God is the same way. And so we can’t imagine that someone would go to hell for lying or having lustful thoughts. That is beyond our comprehension. We think we’re basically good people, because we don’t do many things that we hate, and we don’t even both to look at what God hates.

Pride is the first thing, and we’re all drowning in it. That very attitude that “I’m a good person” is a prideful one, especially when we don’t even look at what the true definition of “good” is. The Bible tells us otherwise. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is none righteous. We look at our own lives with confidence and pleasure, seeing all the things we have amassed for ourselves, the family we have built, the reputation we have, the accolades and promotions. We are pleased with our own understanding and intellect. We think we’re doing just fine, and so we go about our lives thinking nothing of God or the mercy He has had with us.

It is offensive. Those actions and thoughts are offensive to God. He has created you to bring honor to Him, and you live to bring honor to yourself. He is worthy of all praise, and you try to get praise for yourself.

Liars offend God. God is always truthful, always honest. He never lies. He cannot lie. He is holy and good, and it is against His very nature to lie. But we do it all the time. We twist the truth, tell half truths, and outright lie all the time. God has given us truth as something beautiful and wonderful, and we have trampled on it. We have used it as a plaything.

God also hates those who do violence. We may not all be guilty of this one, but we’re probably only innocent because we’re afraid of going to jail. In truth, we are all tempted to hurt others. In that moment of anger, we want to hurt someone who was made in God’s image. Those thoughts are offensive to Him.

These are only the first three of seven that are listed here, but already we can see that we may not do so well if held against God’s standard of right and wrong and not our own. We want to believe that we’re doing fine, but we’re not.

We have all sinned, and we all deserve punishment for those sins. But in love Jesus came to earth to die on our behalf, taking those sins upon Himself. If we repent and believe in Him, He will forgive us, having already paid the price for our offenses against God. We can’t look to ourselves for salvation, but we can look to Him.

Once we are forgiven, let’s remember these things as things that God hates. Our society may not think lying is a big deal, but our God does, and His opinion is the only one that matters. We may still stumble, and we will still be forgiven. So cast your eyes upon the Cross and remember what He has done for our lies, for our anger, and for our pride.

Seven things that bug me

2010-03-03T17:16:00.000-08:00

“There are six things that the LORD hates, seven that are an abomination to him:”
-Proverbs 6:16

List out seven things you hate. Go ahead – I’ll be here when you get back. Now, I don’t mean like spinach or reality television. I mean like evil things. Certain types of crimes.

If I were to make my list, I think that, obviously, rape and murder would be on there. Abortion would make the list easily. Also pornography, child molesters, and people who use the Bible to tell the sick and the elderly to send them money. I suppose false teachers in general really, really bother me.

Maybe those last two can go together, but that’s off the top of my head.

Solomon makes a list here of six things that the Lord hates, and a seventh that is worse than them all, and the list may surprise us. We’re going to list them today, and then, God willing, deal with them in more detail in days to come.

1) Pride
2) Lying
3) Murder
4) Scheming
5) Anxiousness to do evil
6) Slander
7) Spreading discord

Okay, so I expected “murder,” certainly. Being anxious to do evil is something that doesn’t surprise me. The rest cause me to think. Think about it for a minute – when you lie, you are doing something that makes the short list of things God hates.

I think that one of the main reasons this generation does not worry about the judgment of God is that it doesn’t understand the heart of God. We see things that OTHER people do as perhaps evil, but a lie or two doesn’t hurt anyone. Planning to get back at someone doesn’t really qualify as a huge sin. Our lists are more like the one I tried to come up with above. It is filled with the sins we see on the news, but not sins we ourselves commit.

But lying is an offense to God. Slander is horrible to Him. These are not things to just be passed over, but they are rebellious acts against a just and Holy God. We may scoff at that, but that is only to put our own concept of good and evil above His, and He has infinitely more qualifications to make that call.

If we do not share His heart in these things, then it is only a reflection of our own fallen nature. We are so tied up in ourselves that we cannot imagine that we have done serious evil that is worthy of stern punishment. We assume God is cool with us, but He is not!

This is exactly why Jesus had to come. If lying is such an offense against God, and it is, then who can call himself just? Who can claim to be righteous? Not one. We all deserve punishment. But God is loving, just as He is Holy, and He sent His only begotten Son to earth to live a perfect life and die in our place. If you believe in Him, then He paid for your sins on that Cross.

By the work of the Spirit, we are gradually conformed to be a better person. Someday, when we are glorified through Him, then we will have this same heart against evil, and we will also finally not fall on the list. Until that day, Jesus will continue to intercede for us with the Father.

Someday is sooner than you think

2010-03-01T17:53:00.000-08:00

“therefore calamity will come upon him [the wicked man] suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.”
-Proverbs 6:15

There have been times when I thought my life was broken beyond the ability of anyone to fix. Mostly, I have these moments because I am seeing so narrowly that I can’t recognize that things can change, and probably will change within the next hour or so.

I get these moments sometimes when arguing with my wife. I’ll all at once forget how really great our marriage has been, and I just despair. It’s silly, and it’s selfish and childish.

I had some health problems (which turned out to be very minor) a couple of years back and thought the same thing – this is it! It’s over. Not even close. I had exaggerated thing in my own head so much and blown everything out of proportion.

But one day, it’s really going to end. One day, it will be over.

As much as we worry about every little thing in our lives, it is often hard to even fathom that. One day, life will be done.

In this life, we cannot count on justice. It’s not always going to be true that the bad guy is caught and locked up, and that the good guy is going to succeed. It doesn’t always happen like that. That frustrates us. It frustrates me quite a bit. And when Solomon tells us that the wicked man is going to face calamity, we want to believe that, but we don’t.

Except for that one day that we don’t really want to think about. Except for that one day when we die.

Solomon is pointing here to a greater judge than merely human courts. Solomon is pointing to a court where the decisions are final, where the rulings include no leeway. He is pointing to a time where it’s too late for healing, for repentance, and for mercy. It will be a time where you’ve run out of second chances.

And he’s talking about you. In the previous verses, he describes this wicked man as simply one who is deceptive and self-centered. He’s not talking about some murderer; he’s talking about us.

One day, we will all stand before God to answer for our thoughts, words, and deeds. We will have to answer for every lustful thought, every moment of greed, and every unkind word. We will have to answer for every lie, every blasphemy, and every time we coveted something that wasn’t ours.

But there is good news. It is true that will be a time where there will be no further healing, but that time is not here yet. On that day, there will be no further mercy, but that day is not here yet. There is still time to turn away from sin, repent to God for our wickedness, and ask His forgiveness.

Forgiveness is possible. It’s possible because of Jesus’ death on the Cross. When He died, He took the punishment we had earned for our sins. He took our place in death. If we believe in Him, we can be saved.

Don’t wait until it is too late. That day will come. Be ready for it.

Are you good?

2010-02-26T15:47:00.000-08:00

“with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord;”
-Proverbs 6:14

I think most people I meet could make a good case that they are good people. They will talk to me about how they obey the law, give to charity, love their families, etc. By the world’s standards, they are good.

That doesn’t really understanding the real meaning of “good,” but we can go with it for a while. You pay your taxes, work hard at your job, and don’t cheat on your wife, so you’re actually doing better than a large portion of society at least!

But even under that standard, if you are honest, you will not pass this test – what is in your heart? The Bible tells us something very interesting, that morality is not confined to what you do. It’s also about what you say and what you think.

So Solomon’s description of the wicked man here points us back to the source of the problem – the man’s heart is devising evil.

We can understand that, can’t we? My actions may be okay, but that’s only because I DON’T act upon every impulse. My thoughts are always a lot worse than my actions. It’s usually self interest that keeps me from telling people off, beating people up, and generally being a raging terror over the earth. I don’t want to lose my job, or my family, or my freedom, so I keep them inside.

But they are there, and God sees your thoughts.

That is why Jesus tells us that even looking at someone in lust is like committing adultery. Even hating someone is like committing murder. These things are true because they are true in our hearts, and God sees that.

In fact, we’re not good people by action either, but that’s another topic for another time. For now, we must realize that our hearts are filled with lust, anger, pride, ambition, and greed. We’re not good people.

And that is exactly why we need a Savior. See, if God knows my thoughts, then there is no way He’s going to find me blameless on the Day of Judgment. I’m going to be found guilty and sent to Hell as my rightful punishment. God is just, and He’s not just going to let sin go unpunished.

But God is also loving, and He sent His Son to die in our place, so that justice may be satisfied. Jesus, who was without sin, died in our place. He took on the punishment that I had earned. So now, with justice satisfied, I can be accepted into eternal life, even though I had not earned it. In repentance and faith, I have been saved by His actions, not my own.

And it is not something we can earn. It is a gift, given when the Spirit convicts us of our sin and turns us, broken, to the Cross. When we look upon Jesus and believe that He can save us by His Blood, then we are saved.

This is the glorious news of the Gospel – not that we are good people, but that we are forgiven people.

Podcast: An Introduction to Christocentrism

2010-02-25T18:44:00.000-08:00

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.

I’m going to borrow an analogy from Chris Rosebrough over at Pirate Christian Radio. I hate to do that, but I can’t think of a better one, so here we go. Have you seen the movie The Sixth Sense? If you haven’t I’m about to ruin the ending for you, but you’ve had years to see it by now, so it’s your own fault. In the movie, Bruce Willis plays this child psychologist who is trying to help out a boy who can see ghosts. So we follow Willis around as he tries to live his normal life, tries to save his failing marriage, all while also trying to help this boy who has this weird supernatural ability. Only at the end of the movie, it is revealed that Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time. He is one of the ghosts that the boy is seeing. The reason his wife wouldn’t talk with him is because she didn’t know he was there.

When you watch the movie a second time, the entire story has a different feel. You watched it the first time, and it was a really good movie, but you had no idea what was really going on. The second time, though, you are seeing the real story.

The Bible is like that. We read the stories and the commandments and the genealogies, and we’re understanding the text in a certain way. But at the end, we may catch on to something profound – we didn’t understand completely what the Book was about at all.

So what is it about? In short, it is about Jesus. He tells us quite directly this it is about Him in two places. First, on the road to Emmaus, after Jesus has risen from the dead, He meets up with a couple of the disciples on the road and walks with them. He makes it so they don’t recognize Him at first, but talks with them about Himself and hears them doubt His resurrection.

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
-Luke 24:25-27

Did you catch that? He takes them through the Old Testament and explains where and how it is talking about Him.

The other passage is more clear still. He is speaking to some Jews who are criticizing Him for healing on the Sabbath. In the middle of His lecture, He says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).

It is for this reason that Paul says to the church in Corinth, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Christocentrism is just a fancy word that means that we believe that the Bible is about Jesus. Every part of the Bible, in context, speaks to Him.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you can take a verse out of context and apply it to Him directly. It doesn’t mean that the clear, primary meaning of the verse about Him directly, but every passage points to Him. So we won’t, for example, say that Jesus was guilty of trying to build a tower to heaven with the people at Babel. But we would learn from that event that no man can reach heaven on his own, but Jesus will become our bridge to get there.

There are a few places where the New Testament writers apply this doctrine, and we’ll look at a couple of examples. When Adam sinned, he brought a curse down upon the whole of the human race, and none of us even have the opportunity to live without sin as he could have done. But how does that point us to Jesus? Well, Paul explains, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:21-22). That story is about Jesus too, for Jesus came to undo the problems that began with Adam.

In Genesis, Abraham meets up with this strange fellow named Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God. He doesn’t appear very long, but comes in, and Abraham gives this guy a tenth of the stuff he plundered in a battle.

This would be a rather forgettable episode except that David prophesies about the Messiah, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” This goes unexplained until the author of Hebrews picks up on this and goes into great detail about how Melchizedek points the way to Christ.

You see? You think you are reading about some random priest nearby, but in truth we are reading something that points to Jesus.

Let’s run through the Book of Genesis briefly and give some examples. This is not exhaustive, but just a few examples. We spoke of Adam, the tower of Babel, and Melchizedek already, so we won’t look at those again. But we don’t get very far in Genesis before we meet Cain and Abel. Like Abel, Jesus is killed because of his righteousness. Like those in Noah’s ark, those in Jesus will be saved from the judgment of the earth. What about Abraham? Well, like Abraham, God’s people are born through Jesus. Like Isaac, Jesus is led to be a sacrifice by His Father. Like Jacob, Jesus will stoop to become a servant to earn His bride, which is the Church. Like Joseph, Jesus will endure terrible things so that people can be saved.

Those are quick examples, but they illustrate the point. There is wonderful depth in the Scriptures when you learn what they are really about. When we read them with the understanding that it all points to our Lord and Savior, it is like watching The Sixth Sense for the second time – this time, you’ll understand it on a deeper level.

A quick word of warning – let’s not take this to an extreme by making every passage into an allegory or ignoring the plain text. We don’t forget the primary focus of the passage. But we do come to it with an understanding that it will point to Jesus in a meaningful way. So we shouldn’t forget that the Flood really did happen, and that people were punished for their sin, and that God really did show mercy to Noah and his family. It’s not an allegory – it happened. And we also shouldn’t forget that this generation will also be punished for their sins, but that Jesus will have mercy on those who believe on Him.

Most importantly, Christocentrism keeps our focus where it should be, assuming we are applying it properly. So many sermons today speak of the Scriptures as a guidebook for life. They preach about what you need to do, and how to fix this in your life, and how God wants you to have money and power, and how you can rebuke all the bad stuff in your life. Christocentrism tells us to turn back to the Cross, turn back to Jesus. It’s about Him. It’s not about us. It’s for His Glory, for His name. And it is about not what we do, but what He has already done.

We can lose that focus so quickly, but when we lose it, we have lost the point of the Scriptures. It is all about Him. When we learn about the Bible, but do not recognize that focus in the Word, then we haven’t really understood it fully.

It takes some time to begin seeing Scripture in this way. That’s okay. Begin by praying that God will guide your understanding. Read and listen to Christ-focused teachers rather than the man-focused ones. And above all, have faith in Him and not in yourself.

The evil next door

2010-02-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

[A wicked man] “winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger,”
-Proverbs 6:13

Our world is so filled with evil. We see it every day on television and in the newspapers. All over the world is there murder and war and horrible atrocities. And there really doesn’t seem like there’s anything we can do about it. I mean, there are tyrants ruling countries right now, and we know that they are evil, and our solution so often is “sanctions.” The U.N. gets together and declares “sanctions,” and this resolution is ignored by half the countries, because they can make money dealing with the tyrant, and the tyrant isn’t hurting them, so why not?

We sometimes forget that the world was trying to make peace with Hitler for YEARS before everyone finally decided to make war with him. England was trying to make deals with him that he could keep the land he already took by force as long as he doesn’t take more. America just washed their hands of the whole mess until Japan bombed an American target. Everyone was much more interested in starting out of the way than confronting evil.

It seems like everyone is talking about a solution of one kind or another. Conversations are popping up everyone on how to deal with evil in the world, whether it be domestic (crime) or foreign.

What I find very interesting is what the Bible says about it. In the Bible, evil is not that thing that is out there – the tyrant or the murderer, or the warmonger. Evil is always something much closer to home.

Solomon is describing this wicked man in a way that I did not expect. I expected him to be a violent man, who was filled with vile hatred for everyone. Not so. This is a man who is subtly trying to get his way.

He is keeping his actions hidden. We can see it in this passage very clearly. He’s not even speaking those things that are wrong. He’s only motioning them. A little wink, a gesture: that’s all.

This is the sort of evil that is a bit closer to home. This is the sort of evil that is in your office, at the gym, at school, and at the store. It’s the sort of plotting that puts a person’s own desires and greed above everything else.

It’s us. It’s you, and it’s me. Solomon is telling us something here that we don’t want to admit – evil is not only that thing across the ocean that’s hurting people. Evil is also you in that business deal, or cheating on our taxes, or speaking ill about others.

This is a call to be honest and upfront with our dealings, but it is also a pointer to the one man who did not fail in this area, and that is Jesus. He alone was honest at all times. He alone did not try to sneakily manipulate things to get His way. He alone did not sin.

We may have failed to live up to His standard, but there is forgiveness for those who confess their sins and trust in Him for their salvation.

Quit winking so much. Be truthful in your dealings. But don’t be confused about this part of it – it is by Him alone that we can be saved, for He alone was without sin. And it is by His strength that you will be guided in righteousness once you are forgiven.

Podcast: 1 John: Preaching to the Choir

2010-02-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

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.

But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. . . . No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us – eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie – just as it has taught you, abide in him.
-1 John 2:20-21, 23-27

There are two basic types of discussions that you can have in theology. Actually, the same can be said of politics, philosophy, or any number of topics. The first of these conversations is with someone who agrees with you. The second is one with someone who disagrees. I suppose you can have one with someone who is ignorant of the subject and seeking to learn, though that may be better placed into a teaching category rather than a discussion category, since if the other person is discussing his opinions, he must have formed them already.

Now, I enjoy having conversations about Christ with people who do not agree. This is called Evangelism. I am trying to explain what it is that Christ did for us upon the Cross in the hope that the Spirit will work on the man’s heart and turn Him to Jesus. These conversations can be very frustrating, and yet they are necessary. Before I was a Christian, people had these conversations with me, and I disagreed, but the truth had its effect on me, and God used these conversations, in part, to save me.

Conversing with someone who agrees may often be more helpful. This seems counterintuitive, but it’s true. See, when I speak to a nonbeliever, I rarely get any deeper into the theological pool than that we are all sinners and in need of Grace. I will explain these things, but I do not go into Reformed Theology or Eschatology. But if I am in a room with a fellow Calvinist, we will build on each other’s theology, and come away with a greater understanding of God.

John here is writing to Christians. He has already addressed them as such earlier, and now, right in the middle of a discussion of the antichrist, he brings this up again. He is writing not that they need the truth, but because they already have it.

This is intriguing to me, mainly because I was surprised at the force with which he says this. But I thought on it some more. You know, I don’t think I’ve had a conversation about the antichrist with an unbeliever. No, in those cases, when we speak of God, I will concentrate on the most basic matters. I don’t speak to unbelievers about predestination.

Some will tell you that those sorts of matters are unimportant. Stick with the “mere Christianity,” they will say. It may surprise some of us how little the Bible is interested in the mere Christianity. Instead, the Bible is constantly pushing us deeper. John here as well is distinguishing between the sort of conversations we have with unbelievers and those we have within the Church. There are things he says in this letter not because they are unbelievers, but specifically because they are believers. That initial call to Christ saves us, but we still have more to learn.

Let’s look at it this way. When a lawyer speaks to someone ignorant of the law, it is only on the most basic matters. The lawyer will not learn anything. But when two lawyers speak, they will both learn from each other. When a doctor speaks with a patient, the doctor teaches and explains, but learns nothing. But a doctor will learn from another doctor.

I hear about a lot of churches that have abandoned the teaching of God’s word in any deep sense in favor of attracting the unbeliever. It’s wonderful to teach unbelievers about the faith, but what happens to him once be first believes? Is there no one to teach him more of God at that point? Perhaps it is true that he has learned everything he needs to know to save his skin from the fires of Hell, but should that satisfy us? I would suggest the opposite. If I were so saved, plucked from my self-inflicted march steadily toward the gates of Hell, I would very much like to know more of my Savior. You couldn’t stop me from singing His praises.

In addition to simple gratitude, the believer, by the giving of the Holy Spirit, here described as an anointing, is given understanding of the truth of God. John says we have all knowledge. This does not mean that I can now fix a car perfectly because I have the Spirit. No, it means that I have been given a glimpse of God’s Holy Light, and in that light I am safe from damnation.

Look at the context here. John shifts back and forth between talking about the antichrist or plural antichrists and about believers. He contrasts the two. Here’s what he’s saying. People are going to be out there misleading the world about Christ. But you have the Holy Spirit, so you know Christ. That Spirit guides you in truth. Those who don’t have that Spirit will be tossed around as though in a storm, and they may follow the lies of the antichrists. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” John tells us this in verse 19.

John is writing to believers not because they do not know, but because they DO know, and with that knowledge they guided further. They know the truth of John’s words because of the anointing of the Spirit. They can understand spiritual things because God the Spirit is leading them.

The unbeliever may look at the doctrine of eternal security and scoff. They will say, “Well, what if someone accepts Christ, and then decides it’s not for him?” They ask that because they have not experienced something of that light. We don’t accept Christ – Christ reveals Himself to us, and we cannot help but to bow before him. He is not some toy that can be set aside! He is the Lord of all, the Creator of the universe, the King of kings and Lord of lords! If you have experienced Him, then you are changed. You are changed, and you hunger for more.

These things do not make sense to the lost, but they make sense to those who have been knocked over by the love, grace, and awesome power of our Lord. I can’t give that up! I cannot! It is like air to me. If I try to not breathe, my body will force me to breath. If I try to give Jesus up, His Spirit cries out within me and pulls me home.

There are a lot of people in church who have never experienced this. I was in church for two decades before I became a Christian. I didn’t know I wasn’t saved. I prayed a prayer once and that was good enough for the people around me. But they were just words. They didn’t make me a believer. God made me a believer!

And this is the promise that he made to us – eternal life. It is not promised to those who do enough good works. It is not promised to those who say enough Hail Marys. It is not promised to those who give away enough money, or who don’t drink, or who recycle, or who vote, or who work hard at their jobs. It is promised to those sinners – those wretched, weak, lustful, prideful, anger-filled, greedy, selfish, self-centered, hopeless sinners who are forgiven by His Blood.

If you repent and believe, you will be saved. If you prayed some prayer one time in your youth, I would have no confidence in your salvation. But if you repented – if you came face-to-face with your sin and were horrified at your own wretched nature to the degree that you could do nothing but to fall to your knees and cry out, “Lord Jesus, forgive me! I don’t deserve it! I don’t deserve anything but your wrath. I have nothing to offer, nothing to give, nothing to rely on except your grace. Save me!” If you repented, then there is hope. Look to the Cross, my friends. Look to the Cross, for by His Blood we are saved.

If that abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. You are secured by His Spirit. You will not be taken away by the false teachings of the antichrists.

Sons of the devil

2010-02-19T07:26:00.001-08:00

“A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech,”
-Proverbs 6:12

Who would you think of if I used the phrase, “a son of the devil?” I think we would immediately think of the worst people on earth, wouldn’t we? Maybe we wouldn’t even want to think of a person in those terms at all. Maybe we would shy away from calling even the worst human beings such a phrase.

This passage to me is so interesting because of how Solomon describes the evil men of whom he speaks. Their sins are very subtle sins. Unlike other places in Scripture where the evil are described as being murderous and laying in wait to rob people, this “worthless person” sins with mere lies and false dealings. We’re not talking about a tyrant here; we’re talking about a deceptive salesman!

More than that, we’re talking about us. We so often use words to our advantage. Sometimes, we will just flat out lie. Sometimes, we will just withhold truth. Sometimes, we will just tilt what we’re saying by the words we use. Telling your boss “I suggested that our customer may be able to find such products at another location” has a different ring to it than, “I yelled at the customer to get out and never come back!” I’ll admit it – I’ve done that. (Not those exact words, but I’ve manipulated the language to look better than I am.) I’ve been questioned one a decision I’ve made, and I’ll try to word it in the best way possible.

We use our tongues for gossip and slander, and usually we don’t even think about it.

You may be wondering how this makes us children of the devil. While this translation is very accurate, it loses something in the translation. “Worthless” here uses the Hebrew word “beleyah’al.” We may better recognize it as Belial. The word literally means worthless, but it also, over time, became another name we use for Satan. We can see this use in 2 Corinthians 6:15.

I don’t think that Solomon was intending that primarily, and yet it is a phrase that Jesus Himself threw against a group of Jews when they were trying to kill Him. The reasoning He gives for using such a phrase is interesting:

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.
-John 8:43-47

When we lie, gossip, slander, and generally use “crooked speech,” do we reflect Christ, or Belial?

We can see how truly serious even the common sins are when viewed in those terms. In truth, every lie is a rebellion against God. We are following the ways of Satan rather than of Christ. These things are so common that we tend to blow them off. Don’t do that. Don’t blow it off, because God doesn’t.

If we are to walk in truth and light, then we will walk with an honest tongue. That’s harder than it sounds, and yet by the Blood of Christ we will be forgiven when we stumble, and by the power of the Spirit we will be better conformed to the image of Jesus. So watch your tongue, knowing that it is God working within you.

If you have not been saved, perhaps this better understanding of the sin of lying will show you how critical it is that we have a Savior. You cannot earn God’s favor, but He loves us to much that He sent His Son to die for the sins of those He saves. Repent of your sins and believe in He who died for you, and you too can be saved.

The fierce dogs of debt

2010-02-17T06:28:00.000-08:00

“and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.”
-Proverbs 6:11

Solomon has been talking in these last verses about the slothful, or lazy. Here he has a very practical warning, but it is a warning that we too little heed.

Americans are loaded down with debt, and it’s usually over the silliest of things. I hear people complaining about how much they owe all the time, but they have really nice televisions and cars and go out to eat three times a week.

And it is really those little things that get you. You know, eating out a meal doesn’t hurt too much, but continuing to do it really bites into the budget (pun intended). For me, it was books and movies. One book doesn’t cost that much, but ten do, and I was having such difficulty with my budget because I kept buying books.

A small thing, but it can hurt.

A lot of that can be solved by eating at home more and going to the library rather than the bookstore. A lot of it is solved by settling for an ugly used car rather than the brand new one you don’t need. But a lot of it is your work ethic.

There are people who are deep in debt who just need to get a second job. And they don’t want to, because they don’t want to work that hard. Some people just need to get a FIRST job! Some people need to start working hard at work so they will get a good raise.

I’ll tell you the truth – if you get a steady job and watch what you’re spending, you’re probably going to do fine financially. If you work hard and get a raise or get promoted, you’ll do better.

If you spend all of your money on foolish things, then poverty is going to creep up on you fast.

God has given us time and money to steward, not to waste on whatever we want. It’s not our time. It’s not our money. It’s His, and He has given it to us to use properly. When we waste them, we are saying that our own desires for things, comfort, and pleasure are worth more to us than He is worth.

As Paul tells us, if we are saved, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). The context here is in sexual sin, but the meaning goes into all areas. How do we conduct ourselves with our time? Are you lazy? If you are not, are you trying to glorify Him with your time, or are you glorifying yourself?

If you are not glorifying Him, repent of this sin and have faith in Him. Jesus paid the price for your sins when He died upon the Cross. Confess your sin to Him. The Spirit will work in you for a change, but your hope lies in Him alone.

We will continue to sin in this way or another (or likely both), but Jesus continues to intercede for us with the Father. Trust in Him for your sanctification.

So many reruns, so little time!

2010-02-15T06:42:00.001-08:00

“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,”
-Proverbs 6:10

We could almost rewrite this warning against laziness to add a few modern conveniences. A little Facebook, a little television, a little movie-going, a little Wii, etc. Our time rests better than any other times. In the great scheme of history, our 40-hour work week isn’t terribly much. There usually isn’t too much to do around the house either. Modern conveniences have made cooking and cleaning much easier than in past generations. We don’t have many intellectual or spiritual pursuits. Our evenings are typically filled up with entertainment.

It is easy to see how too much of that corrupts us. Just look around. We have overweight children all over the place. I mean, I’m overweight now, but I couldn’t have been back then. Everything I wanted to do involved running! As many medical advancements as we have made in the last decades, heart disease still ranks as the number one killer in America.

We are drowning in debt, partially because we charge all of our entertainment, and partially because we’re not working hard enough to pay it off.

In the Church, we have malnourished congregations. So few (and even few preachers) take the time to try to understand our faith or our God. We go to listen to the music and get a pep talk, or to have the preacher tell us we’re awesome and we’re going to be rich.

Instead, the television becomes our little false gods. We turn every chair in the living toward it as though it were an altar, and we set our lives according to what it is going to show.

Slothfulness is a sin, and it’s a sin for exactly that reason. It causes you to focus inwardly only, to seek after your own pleasures and comfort, rather than outward toward God and toward others.

The effects of this sin can be seen on every street, in every company, and in every church. We have lost the will to make an effort.

These things may seem minor, but they are not. Laziness has an effect on your life, and it has an effect on your relationship with God. Worst of all, when we are lazy, we are rejecting God in favor of ourselves. We are rebelling against Him and His Law so that we can watch some mindless show on television. I mean, if my wife did that to me, I would be offended! If I had asked for an evening together, and she declined so that she could watch a rerun of Seinfeld, I’d be pretty hacked off.

But God is more deserving still, and we were created for His glory.

I am far too often in error over this one. I am far too often putting in a DVD when I should be reading the Word. It’s not that we should not rest. Obviously, we must sleep. God has set aside a day every week for rest as well. But we take that rest and spread it around to every evening and every day. We live for it!

Because of Jesus’ death upon the Cross, we can be forgiven even of this sin. Even though we turn away from Him in favor of playing on Facebook all day, yet still He would forgive us if we would turn from that in repentance and faith. He paid the price we owe when He was upon that Roman Cross. He paid the price even for the sin of ignoring Him.

We all, at times, are a little more interested in rest than we should be. But God has offered His life in our place so that we can be forgiven.

Crazy early in the morning

2010-02-13T04:08:00.000-08:00

“How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?”
-Proverbs 6:9

My friends think I’m a little strange. More times than not, I’m up by about 6:30 on weekends. Work days, I’m up earlier, but even if I don’t have to be anywhere, I get up rather early.

A lot of it is from habit, but most of the reason I get up early is because I was saved out of what this verse is talking about.

When I first started college, I would sleep late in the day, didn’t really clean up much, and basically lived a very lazy life. I played a lot of video games, watched a lot of television, etc. To an extent, it got better when I got a job in the evenings, but I would end up sleeping later in the day to make up for the time I spent at work late at night.

I was a complete night-owl, and I tried to schedule absolutely nothing, even classes, in the mornings so I could sleep in. On weekends, unless I was working, I would barely leave the apartment. More honestly, I would barely leave the couch.

Over the years, God has used a lot of different events and situations to convict me of my laziness. By His grace, I’ve gotten a lot better. I don’t like wasting time now. I really want to get up and get working on whatever it is that needs done now.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not perfect in this area yet. I’ve wasted time this very day, and probably will tomorrow too. I’m still not taking exercise as seriously as I should (which is evident by the shape I’m still in). But the Spirit is working on me.

Laziness is a sin. We don’t really want to admit that staying in bed is sinful, but often it is. Not all the time – we do need to rest, but to overdo it is sinful. We were made to bring honor to God, and we use the time He gave us for entertainment or just slothfully laying around.

I’m not telling you this to guilt you into jumping up right now and taking a jog. That’s not what I want from this. What I want is for you to do the only worthwhile thing we can do with any sin – to confess it to God and to look to the Cross for forgiveness.

It is the conviction of the Holy Spirit that changes us, not some pep talk. It is the work of that Spirit that forms us into something better, not self-help. Let’s face it, if we could really save ourselves, our lives wouldn’t look like they do. But in Christ, we can be reconciled with God.

I’m not talking about a prayer that will instantly make you thin. I wish! I’m talking about the conviction of sin that will bring about works in keeping with repentance. For me, being convicted over my laziness has resulted in me being a bit more careful with my time. It’s not something I have forced out of myself. Instead, it is the only thing I COULD do after being convicted by my sin.

It is the Cross that heals us. How long are you going to lay there? Repent and be forgiven!

Working by faith

2010-02-10T09:19:00.001-08:00

“she [the ant] prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.”
-Proverbs 6:8

All ages have had lazy people, but I think our age makes the problems so much worse. In older times, you could sleep late if you wished, but that would make it hard later to eat. When you had to grow your own food, the amount of work you put in had a direct result on the amount of food you got out of it.

But what if I slept late and didn’t work very hard today? It could be that my boss would fire me, depending on how late I was coming in and how bad of a job I was doing. More likely, I just wouldn’t get a very good raise at the end of the year. That might not be so bad. At my last job, in fact, everyone in the organization got the exact same percentage raise every year. It was a government job, and they cut out merit raises before I got there. So a little laziness there, as long as it didn’t get me fired, would probably have no effect at all!

So we’ve lost something in our understanding of laziness. We’ve lost that understanding that being lazy would have immediately and severe consequences. We could actually say that about a lot of the sins now. In a society that blames no one, we’ve done our best to get rid of any consequences at all for anyone’s actions.

Laziness is, however, a sin. And no matter what this society does to remove the consequences of sin, the heart of those consequences remain. That gradual numbing that sin brings remains, the numbing that continues unto death.

It is a deserved death too. We have lost the understanding of the value of things. We have lost the understanding of the value of time and resources. They are God’s! They are God’s, and He has loaned to us time, breath, resources, and even our bodies. They are not ours to do with as we wish. They are His, and we treat them so casually.

The wages of sin is death. We have offended God in all of our sins, including lust, pride, arrogance, hatred, greed, and even laziness. We have taken what we His and treated it with rebellion and distain.

The answer to this problem is not to try harder and see if you can earn your way into good favor. It’s faith. See, without faith we cannot please God. So the work of God is to believe in Him whom He sent. In repentance and faith we will be forgiven.

When we are forgiven, we are given His Spirit to guide us. The Spirit makes it so we can walk in accordance to His desires – no longer by sheer force of will, but by faith.

I don’t have to harvest my own food. But when I go to work, I can bring honor to God by working in faith. Even that, by grace, we can do in faith. It’s hard to be lazy when the Spirit has moved you so much.

If this is a problem, your first step is to repent and look to the Cross for forgiveness. If you fail tomorrow, then repent again. Over time, the Spirit will work in you. He will change you to look a little more like Him.

Hey! Get off the couch and get a job!

2010-02-08T16:00:00.000-08:00

“Without having any chief, officer, or ruler,”
-Proverbs 6:7

Have you ever just sat and watched an ant? I suppose everyone has in childhood. They are fascinating. You’ll see one ant scouting about. Talk about self-motivation! He doesn’t seem to ever rest. He finds some source of food, and before long, he’s told several hundred of his friends. Now they are lined up, back and forth, carrying food back to the anthill then going to get more. They are so efficient and quick about their work.

I would be able to get so much done if I have such focus and drive. I would be writing scores of pages every day. I would get more done at work. I would spend more time with my wife, and she would be thrilled at the attention. I’d have the Bible memorized, in Greek and Hebrew, in a couple of years. I’d also invent a transporter like in Star Trek. That’s right. And a phaser too. I would be awesome.

But I don’t. Solomon is pointing to the ant here to inspire us to action, but isn’t expecting us to literally act like ants. But in pointing to these, one of the least of God’s creation, he is pointing out something in us. The ant runs and works and does not stop, even if there is no supervisor around to force him to work. We, on the other hand, are prone to laziness.

And that’s a terrible thing to say in the grand scheme of things. We’re the ones made in the image of God, after all. We’re the ones who have dominion over the whole earth. And a bunch of ants show us up. Terrible!

In examining these ants, our own slothfulness reveals itself, doesn’t it? I mean, I will compare myself with coworkers and think, “Well, I’m working pretty hard.” I compare myself with the ant, and I realize how easy I have it, and how much rest I really take.

It’s convicting, and it should be. God has given us the time we have on this earth, and we basically waste it. We were given this time to glorify Him, but instead we use it to entertain ourselves.

Is it really that serious? I think so. What if you went to work every day and, instead of doing work, watched television, played on Facebook, and basically wasted your time there? If you had even a halfway attentive boss, you would be called in for a talk pretty quick!

God is infinitely more worthy of your time than any boss, especially because He’s the one who gave it to you. He is the one who gives you every breath you breathe. He is so gracious with what He has given you, in fact, that He asks you to take a day off every week to rest!

How easy it is for all of us to slip into a self-centered attitude. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. We just go about our day without given a second thought to how much time we are spending on ourselves rather than God.

These ants show us just how lost we are. When we don’t have to worry about our next meal, our minds go directly to whatever will entertain us.

When Jesus came, He showed us how it was done. He spent His life in service, in teaching, and in worship. He set a standard that I could never hope to meet. Thankfully, He did not come to just show us how it is done, but to bring forgiveness because we cannot do it alone.

Though I cannot count the minutes, hours, days, months, and years that I have wasted in chasing my own desires, Jesus paid for that time upon the Cross. In His Blood He paid for the sins that I have committed. Justice has been served, and I will be welcomed into eternal life because of what He did.

The Spirit is constantly convicting me on this one. By Grace, I think I’m getting better about using the time God has given me. I am so thankful for another day to give it a whirl, but I am more thankful for the forgiveness offered to me when I fail yet again.

Lazy bones!

2010-02-03T17:14:00.001-08:00

“Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
-Proverbs 6:6

I am still upset about my own laziness last weekend. Granted, it was a long week, and I am totally in favor of having a day of rest every week. Even so, I’ll still use one of the weekend days to get some writing done, record and post the podcast, and that sort of thing. Not last weekend. Last weekend, I couldn’t summon the energy to get anything done at all.

To my defense, I had worked a lot of hours last week, and I had to push myself even harder because I was behind on a couple of projects. I was just worn out. Still, come Monday morning, I was shocked at how badly I had wasted the time.

Not that I’m any stranger to wasting time. Especially in my late teens and early twenties, I spent all my time with television and video games and the like. That troubles me too. Somewhere along the road (and it was probably literally on the road – when an 18-wheeler almost killed me), I think God revealed to me that I don’t have all the time in the world, and that hours of Final Fantasy every night probably wasn’t a good use of the time.

We have been given a certain period of time in this life. It’s not long, even for those who live to be over 100. In the grand scheme of things, we don’t have much time. At the same time, these years we have are a gift from God, a little bit of grace for all of us.

Like the gift of money, resources, talents, intelligence, and the like, we are expected to steward our time well. How have you used your time? Has it been serving God or playing Final Fantasy?

I’m not saying that a little TV is bad. We need rest, and we are instructed by God to have a day of rest every week. Considering the benefits to stress level, health, family, and spiritual life this day has, it is a good way to steward your time.

The problem is this – I still waste time. I try not to, but I do. And it is a sin to serve my own self-interest with my time rather than to serve God. When we do that, we are putting our own desires about the God who created us and the world around us and gave us the time we are so casual about. If I were judged by the way I use my time, I would fall far short of the perfect standard set by God.

In Christ, though, I am forgiven. By His Blood He paid the price I owe for my own selfishness. In His death He made it so I can live.

And when He saved me, He gave to me the Holy Spirit to guide me in the ways of righteousness. The Holy Spirit points out to me when I’m wasting time, when I’m about to sin, when I am thinking of myself more than about God.

I still sin, and Jesus is still the means of my forgiveness. But by His Grace, I am studying those ants more now. I don’t want to waste my time.

Like a squirrel up a tree

2010-02-01T18:11:00.001-08:00

“save yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the hand of the fowler.”
-Proverbs 6:5

I very much like nature. I like watching birds and squirrels and the like. There is little much more exotic in the city where I live, but at times I can sneak up on a squirrel on a tree trunk. I never get really close, of course. Usually, if I’m close enough that I can see him well, I won’t try to get any nearer.

The squirrel doesn’t know that I don’t mean him harm. As soon as him figures I’ve gotten a little too close, he’ll scurry up the tree faster than my eye can even follow.

It’s this sort of image that Solomon is trying to convey here – that of speed. He has been talking to us about what to do if we find we’ve made some financial or social mistake. He tells us to go to the offended party and try to make it right.

Most of us know we should do that, but we try to wait. Let things settle down. Maybe the other person will forget. Solomon tells us to go immediately. Move as quickly as a squirrel up a tree to get yourself out of this trap.

The gazelle can’t always get away from the hunter. The bird can’t always get away from the fowler. I’ve never caught one, but I know that squirrels have been caught before they can get up that tree. It doesn’t mean they don’t try their best to get away.

In the same way, when we have wronged someone, we should hurry to resolution, even if we cannot achieve our goals here. If you’ve made a bad financial decision, go try to make it right. If you’ve said something that offended someone else, go try to make it right. Go this very day!

The Bible never assumes that we can actually live good and moral lives. The Word assumes that we will mess up. Other religions may tell you to work really hard to earn your way into heaven, but not Christianity. The very core of the Christian faith is the understanding that we are not perfect (far from it!), but that Jesus is.

That matters quite a bit, because Christians should never claim to be good people, just forgiven people. As Solomon here bids us do when making these errors, we confess our sins to the Father, and in Grace are forgiven. This can only happen because of the death of Jesus. God is holy and righteous, and He does not simply allow sin to go unpunished. But when Jesus died on the Cross, He took upon Himself the punishment for those sins.

When we repent and have faith, we are forgiven because of His action, not our own.

When you sin, take Solomon’s advice. Seek out Him whom you wronged and ask forgiveness. Don’t wait. Go to Him today. As quick as a squirrel up a tree.

Caffeine . . . need caffeine . . .

2010-01-29T15:39:00.001-08:00

“Give your eyes no sleep and your eyelids no slumber;”
-Proverbs 6:4

So we’re going to get two lessons for the price of one here. In the first, we will see how importance context is to biblical interpretation. I quoted this verse, as usual, without any verses around it. If you take the verse as it stands, you may start believing that to sleep is to sin.

Obviously, that is not what is going on here. But it stands as a good warning in an age when certain preachers will speak on a single verse, ripped out of context, to support what they wanted to say. Does the context support that, or has the loss of context caused the verse to lose its meaning? After all, I could do a whole sermon on this verse, telling people that sleep is evil and you have to stay up all night, and I would seemingly have biblical support.

Except that’s not what the verse means.

So next time I or any other teacher tells you to look at a verse, look at the verses around that verse to test us. It’s very easy to lose the meaning when the verse is not supported by the context.

So what IS this verse talking about? Let’s get to the real meat of this one.

Solomon has been talking about what to do if you make a mistake with your finances or in the way you speak to another. He advises us to go immediately to the person to explain and repent. Don’t even put it off until tomorrow, he continues in this verse, but do it today.

So often we put off things that are critically important. Everyone has good intentions, for example, with his money, but plans to do something about those intentions sometime in the future. That future never seems to come. When we have wronged someone, we try to put off apologizing as long as possible. I suppose we hope the other person will forget what was said. Fairly often, that does happen. I’m not sure it makes it right.

My wife and I had a little skirmish last night. It wasn’t a bad one, but it was bad enough. It was pretty late, which meant I was exhausted, and I really wanted to put off the rest of the discussion until morning. I’m glad we didn’t, because we ended up talking about things we never would have mentioned today. I didn’t get to sleep enough, but it was worth it.

It doesn’t turn out like that all the time. Repentance in this fallen world does not always mean you will be forgiven by the other person. But it just may be worth it anyway. As Paul tells us in Ephesians, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

Repentance is at the heart of the Christian faith. Being a Christian does not mean that we are more moral than everyone else or that we follow a bunch of rules. Hopefully, we are more moral, but that’s not what makes us Christian. We are Christian because we are forgiven. In faith we repent of our sins, and we are forgiven because of the Blood of Christ, who died on the Cross to pay the price for those sins. We have offended God with our thoughts, words, and deeds, but like Solomon bids us go and repent – this very night – God bids us to approach Him in faith to be forgiven.

This is something a lot of people put off, but we don’t know if we’ll have a tomorrow. My advice is to give no sleep to your eyes before going to the Lord for forgiveness.

Podcast: 1 John: Antichrist!

2010-01-28T04:39:00.001-08:00

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.

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. . . . Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
-1 John 2:18-19, 22

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle. You heard it right. Today’s episode is entitled, “Antichrist!”

We’re going to go about this one a little differently. John, in this section, is alternating between instruction about the antichrist and antichrists, and contrasting them with the faithful Christians within the Church. Now, this is a bit too much for us to tackle in our short episode today, so we’re going to handle the verses this time about the antichrists, and next time, God willing, we’ll look at the faithful.

This is a huge topic. We always see the antichrist in those big Christian apocalyptic movies and books, even if they seem a little ridiculous. He’s super charismatic and charms everyone with cheesy dialogue, and before long, oops, he’s taken over the world and killing Christians. No one really cares, of course, because he’s handsome, but so it goes. This word, antichrist, only appears in John’s epistles, but it is a word that has permeated our culture.

I don’t think a year goes by when some Christian group doesn’t stand up and say that some political leader is the antichrist, and they’re going to be raptured up pretty soon now. I am not one of these people. Frankly, I think most of their picks are pretty silly and their understanding of the end times probably a bit off. I heard of one guy in my childhood church who said that Reagan was the antichrist. The reason he thought this was because there are six letters in each of Reagan’s three names – Ronald Wilson Reagan. 666. Obviously, Reagan didn’t turn out to the antichrist.

But John here is telling us to watch out for that. Now, we don’t need to do it stupidly, going on talk shows and calling in radio programs to make fools of ourselves and Christ, but we need to watch out. And in addition, we need to watch out for antichrists – plural. Let’s examine how these two relate.

John defines antichrists as those who lie and deny Jesus is the Christ. They will often come out of the church, but were never true believers. And there will be many. We should remember that we’ve been in the last days since Jesus ascended into heaven, and antichrists will permeate the last days.

There are a lot today. Some of them preach in supposedly Christian churches.

I think we’ve really missed the boat on this one. Evangelical Christians are so busy sometimes looking for THE antichrist that they fail to see the little ones. We have so many religious leaders who either deny or don’t even understand the Gospel. We have people saying that Jesus died so that we can be rich. We have people saying that Jesus died to end imperialism. We have people saying that Christianity is all about helping the poor, not as much trusting the Blood of Christ for forgiveness for our sins. We have people telling you that you have to be super-holy, or God will be mad at you.

These are antichrists, who have read the truth of the Bible, the truth of Jesus, but deny it. We forget to look for these guys, and so Christians are taken in under their false theologies. Evangelicals actually embrace these people as though they were brothers. If you want proof, look at a list of the biggest churches in America. At the very top is a church that does not preach the Gospel, but instead talks about getting promotions, getting rich, and having a wonderful life. That is a lie about who Christ is and what He accomplished. Look at the list of most influential preachers. You will find names on there of people who twist God’s word so that it seems like the Bible is about finding purpose rather than telling us about Jesus.

It is astonishing and frightening to me how many wolves we have in the churches today pretending to be shepherds. And the people in those churches will come up with the wildest excuses for them. They don’t want to have any conflict in the church, and they see the biblical Christians who point out the wolves as people making waves. Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Hold fast to the Gospel that saved you. Hold on to it for dear life. There is nothing that should be more important than Christ. There is no compromise that is worthwhile if you are giving up something of Him. I don’t care how popular a preacher or movement is – if it isn’t Gospel-centered and Christ-focused, then it is of Satan. It exists under the spirit of the antichrist.

We know these people because, while they claimed to be Christian, they separated themselves from the truth of the Gospel. They went out from sound doctrine. By walking away from the Gospel, they prove that they never believed it. This verse is often used to prove the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints, and rightfully so. If you have come to an understanding of your sin and have been saved by Jesus, there isn’t anything that could pry you back. It is the strength of Jesus that saves us, and the effort of the Spirit to keep us until the Day of Judgment. You cannot encounter God in this way and not be forever changed. He makes sure of that. “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If you have been saved, then you have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved. You will sin, yes, but you will not fall away. And those who walk away from this faith probably only do so because they never had it in the first place.

Finally, let’s look at the antichrist. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter announced that we were in the Last Days. We are still in the Last Days, and it is a mercy to all those who are unsaved that Christ has not yet come. He will come, amen, but it is a mercy that He has not yet.

As we are in the Last Days, we must understand that the antichrist is coming. While the word itself is peculiar to John, his concept here seems to be connected with other writers, such as Paul’s in 2 Thessalonians 2:4-5:

For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

We’re going to talk more about this antichrist in episodes to come, but there does seem to be coming a man or organization that will seek to draw people away from God and toward himself. And it looks like he will be largely successful. At least until our Lord returns.

I say that it could be an organization specifically because of a tradition amongst some of the Reformers that the antichrist is not one man, but rather the office of the Pope. As much as I love and respect my Roman Catholic friends, the Pope does not teach the Gospel, but instead denies it for a works-based salvation that is contrary to Scripture. He denies the finished work of Christ on the Cross, but rather claims that Christ must be re-crucified in the Eucharist, and that His death can only get us so far. For the rest, it must be achieved by our own righteousness. And if that doesn’t work, then we will spend time in purgatory to pay for our sins. I don’t know if the Pope is THE antichrist, but he does teach a false gospel, and we should be aware of that.

Christ teaches us something else, and those who deny His Gospel and teach another are anti-Christ. The Bible is clear that we cannot earn our own way to Heaven. We cannot repay all the wrong we’ve done by a little while in purgatory. The wages of sin is death, not a temporary punishment. We all deserve death for our rebellion and offense against God. We all deserve Hell for the evil we have thought, said, and done.

The Gospel teaches us that Jesus died in our place so that we could be reconciled with the Father. He lived the life we could not live, but still died, even though He did not deserve it. In that death, He took the punishment for our sins. If we repent and believe in Him, we will be justified, forgiven of our sins. He clothes us in His righteousness so we will be found innocent on the Day of Judgment.

As we’ll see next time, if you know this Gospel, you ultimately do not have to fear antichrists. Let us watch for them, speak against them, and teach people the truth of the love of God. But for yourself, cling to this Gospel, for it has the power to save you, no matter what the rest of the world believes. Let’s pray.

I was wrong!

2010-01-25T17:58:00.001-08:00

“then do this, my son, and save yourself, for you have come into the hand of your neighbor: go, hasten, and plead urgently with your neighbor.”
-Proverbs 6:3

There are few things more difficult in life than admitting you are wrong. I hate it. I still hate it. I’ve been a Christian for several years now, and while I can see the Spirit working in my life toward more humility (which is a relative term, considering the vast amount of pride with which I started out), I can’t stand to admit I’m wrong. Whenever I get into a situation where I might my wrong, my mind immediately starts looking for excuses or ways to make my failings seem less drastic.

My wife has picked up on this. Whenever we argue, she always brings up that I never want it to be my fault. She does this too, which isn’t always a good combination. No matter whose fault it is, we tend to argue that it is the other person’s fault.

This verse comes right after Solomon brings up a couple of situations – the first is where you cosign on a loan you shouldn’t have or made a bad financial decision, and the second is when you say something you shouldn’t. In either case, there can be dire consequences.

His solution is very straightforward – go to the source and repent. Go right away. Don’t wait. Confess your wrong and ask for forgiveness.

In this age, there are a lot of people who won’t forgive on a bad financial decision. There are a lot of people who will not forgive an ill-chosen word. There are some who will.

The purpose of this verse is not to show us a sure-fire way to get out of a bad decision. It’s to promote a principle of honesty and integrity, even after you’ve made the bad decision.

In many cases, you will be forgiven. In others, you will not. Either way, the best course of action is to be honest and humble. It’s not the most comfortable one, but it’s the best one. It’s strange, but when I’m with my wife, the argument usually ends very quickly once someone admits fault. That pride will cause us to bicker for some time, but once that pride is broken and honesty is restored, we’ve come very near to the end of it.

In a greater sense, this strategy ALWAYS works with our Heavenly Father. We sin so often against Him. We break His Holy Law every day. We sin against Him in our pride, our selfishness, our hard-heartedness, and our lust. We don’t deserve to get out of that debt. And yet, when we confess and believe in the One sent to die on our behalf, thus taking our sin and debt upon Himself, we will be forgiven.

Go to Him. Be honest. Seek His forgiveness in true repentance. Then look to the Cross for your salvation, because Jesus paid the debt we owe to God.

Podcast: 1 John: Lust and Pride, Part 2

2010-01-24T11:54:00.000-08:00

This is a transcript of one of our recent podcasts. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 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. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
-1 John 2:15-17

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle. Today we’re going to be finishing up in our discussion on “Lust and Pride.”

If you were with us last time, you’ll probably remember that we were talking about these three categories of sin listed by John in this passage. They are “desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions.” Let’s quickly review them.

The “desires of the flesh” are simply those urges of your senses. It is the desire for sex, food, drink, or the like. None of these things are inherently bad, but they become idols when put before Christ.

The “desires of the eyes” can be described as coveting. We desire things that we see, but are not ours. We desire things, women, families, or even a full head of hair. Again, this is a form of idolatry, because instead of being content with what the Lord has given us, we desire more.

That last one, “the pride in possessions,” is normally translated “pride of life,” which I think is a better translation. This isn’t just being proud of what you have, but also who you are, your abilities, etc. This is the category of sin that tells you that you deserve better pay or a better house. It tells you that you know best in certain situations and do not need God’s direction.

I wanted to a take a second look at these three categories because of what they teach us. The first thing they teach us is that we aren’t good enough. We fall for these three things daily. If this is the definition of loving the world, then we have fallen flat on our faces. But the second thing it teaches us is of the character of Jesus.

To learn that, let’s turn quickly over to Matthew 4. This is a familiar passage for us, one in which Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Let’s start reading from the beginning of the chapter.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Let’s stop right there for a minute. What just happened? Satan has tempted Jesus based on the desires of the flesh. He is trying to get Jesus to turn from His Father and, in essence, love the world.

It’s not wrong to eat, but it is not okay to put that before God. That is the temptation here. The Holy Spirit has led Jesus out into the wilderness, but Satan is trying to get Him to turn away from his purpose there, which is to walk in submission to the Father. So Jesus turns to the written Word for His answer, reminding Satan that it is by that Word that there is true life. Let’s continue.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

“Declare yourself!” says the devil. “Teach all these crowds who You are by letting your angels take you up. In this You will prove to everyone that You are the Christ.” Surely Jesus is the Christ, and surely He deserves to be recognized as such, but in this Satan tempts Him with the pride of life, to be recognized immediately and worshipped.

But Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. He came not to receive accolades, but to lay down His life for us. No, He tells Satan. He remains humble and in submission to the Father.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

Finally, Satan tempts Him with the lust of the eyes. He puts everything in front of our Savior’s eyes to try to get Him to swerve off His mission. Think about this. We covet over simple things like our neighbor’s new lawnmower. Think of that! Satan offers Jesus all – every bit of it.

Jesus will not have it. Remember this – all of that is Jesus’ for the taking! It all belongs to Him. He created it all. But He will not be tempted into blasphemy. He will not bend a knee to the devil. He will not look away from the Father for even a moment!

Satan tried to get Jesus to love the world in the same ways that he tempts us to love the world. But Jesus stood firm, living without sin.

Oh, how I wish I had even half such resolve. I wish I had half so much faith! I fall for these same lies every day. Every day I let food and sex become my focus. Every day I get puffed up about what I have accomplished and desire for others to be impressed by me. Every day I falter and covet after something I see. Every day! Every day I do it.

I do not deserve His grace. I do not deserve His mercy. I have failed my Lord and my God in every way imaginable. I have chosen the world over and over again.

But the good news is this – that when Jesus walked through this life without sin, He was walking it for me. When Jesus resisted the devil in the wilderness, He was resisting for me. When Jesus was raised upon the Cross, He died for me. And when they buried Him, they buried Him in my place.

I owe a debt that would take me eternity to pay, and yet Jesus, perfect and sinless, paid that debt for me with His Blood. It is a free gift to those of us who repent and believe in Him. By His death, we can have eternal life.

This passage teaches us that we are not good enough for Heaven. This passage also teaches us how Jesus lived a life that WAS good enough so that we could have the Heaven we could not earn. Let’s pray.

Watch your mouth!

2010-01-20T04:10:00.001-08:00

“if you are snared in the words of your mouth, caught in the words of your mouth,”
-Proverbs 6:2

My mouth gets me into trouble quite a bit. There have been quite a few times when I have inadvertently insulted someone. On a few occasions, it was quite on purpose. There have also been times when I told someone I would do something, to help in someway, or to make some purchase, that I regretted later. But I had already agreed, so what could I do?

The first verse of this chapter warns us against getting caught up too much into debt. Many people connect these two verses, saying this one speaks to your word when entering into that debt or becoming a cosigner for another.

There is certainly that aspect. We’ve probably all gotten into sticky financial situations simply because we spoke to hastily at some point. I recall quitting one job too hastily (as in, before I had secured another), and I was left unemployed for a few months.

But those are not the only situations we can get into with a hasty word. We have made promises before that we shouldn’t have made. We have told people things and turned out to be wrong. We have insulted one another out of anger and pride.

James, in his letter, spends more time on the tongue than any other topic. He goes as far as to say that if someone is perfect in what he says, then surely the rest of him will be perfect too (3:2). It’s a safe bet, because we’ve all stumbled in lies, gossip, and insult. We have all sinned in those areas.

The next verse will give a good plan of action – go to the person you wronged in this way and pled with them. If you insult someone, go apologize. If you have made a bad decision, go to the person involved and explain what is going on.

Confess what has happened, in other words. Sometimes it may work out. Other times it will not. But do not be so prideful as to stand by every flippant remark. Go make it right.

When we sin, the one we most wrong is God. He has created us, given us all things, and provided for us. And yet we insult Him in sin by turning away from Him, but rejecting Him. Every sin is a rebellion against God.

Verse three works well in this case too. In sin we have offended God. Go and speak with Him. Repent upon your knees. Throw yourself on His mercy. He is faithful to forgive.

It was Jesus who made this possible. We cannot make up for our sins. We cannot just pay a fine and get out of them. But on the Cross, Jesus took our sins upon Himself and paid the price for them. When we repent, God accepts the price Jesus paid on our account. Jesus also clothes us in His righteousness so we will be seen as sinless before a holy and just God.

Go to Him in repentance. Do not stand pridefully by your sins, but go to Him. By the Blood of Jesus, it will be made right.

Cosigner beware!

2010-01-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

“My son, if you have put up security for your neighbor, have given your pledge for a stranger,”
-Proverbs 6:1

There are a couple of stories I could tell with this one, one of which is a little close to home right now. Many years ago, I helped a woman get a car and put my name on the title as well as hers. Just today, though I haven’t spoken with this woman in years, I was on the phone, trying to get my name off of a fine incurred when she was caught by a red light camera.

Most of the other stories I could tell, however, come from my own debt. I was more foolish with my money when I was coming out of college. Add to that the fact that I wasn’t really making very much of it, and we have a problem. The problem wasn’t terrible – I didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars in debt or another (unless you count student loans) – but it was bad enough.

Except for those student loans and a car, the debt is gone, I am pleased to say. I have to say, the difference is tremendous. There’s a definite freedom to not having a credit card payment. The car should be (God willing) paid off in a couple of months, which should prove an even greater freedom.

Money is an important topic in the Bible, but not in the same way that many think. The Bible is not a how-to guide to getting rich. God doesn’t promise that we will be rich. But it does give us some instruction on stewarding money.

And that’s the big concept. We have no money of our own, really. It’s all God’s money, and He lets us use it. He encourages us to be wise with it, not to waste it foolishly. He wants us to be generous, but also smart. He warns against debt or being a cosigner for a debt simply for greater spiritual reasons.

The reason is that our lives are borrowed from Him just as much as our money is. If we are Christians, then we have been bought by the Blood of Christ. Paul reminds us that “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men” (1 Corinthians 7:23). Isn’t that what we do when we borrow foolishly or cosign a loan for someone else foolishly? Become slaves of men?

When we enslave ourselves financially, our efforts become directed to that rather than directed to Christ. So Solomon tells us to work toward freeing ourselves. Don’t refuse to pay your debts or something like that, but work toward freedom.

And in all of this, we should remember the biggest debt of them all. In sin we owed a price that would take eternity of torment to pay. In our lust, pride, hatred, and greed we have offended a just and sinless God. It is a debt terrible to consider.

Jesus came to earth and died upon the Cross to free us from that debt. In death, He took our sins upon Himself and paid the price we owe. If we repent of our sins and believe in Him, He will wash us clean by His Blood and give us eternal life. To flee this debt, we need only flee to Him.

Justice for the wicked

2010-01-13T17:52:00.001-08:00

“The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin.”
-Proverbs 5:22

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. That frustrates us quite a bit. I know it frustrates me. I see so much wickedness in the world, and usually the worst people are those with the most money and the most power.

Sure, some crimes are punished in this life. Sometimes we catch the bad guys and give them what they deserve. But sometimes they get a great lawyer who gets them out of the punishment.

I think we would all wish for a more just world. One where there’s always a cop around right when someone cuts you off. One where every criminal leaves behind a vital clue to his identity. One where nice women stop going out with total jerks.

But the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, and it doesn’t seem like that is ever going to change.

That phrase is based on something Jesus said in His Sermon on the Mount. It is in the context of loving your enemies. That’s a difficult thing to command, but it comes because of an important truth – vengeance is the Lord’s.

Bad guys aren’t always going to have it so sweet. One day, they will have to stand before God and give an account. They will be punished for their sins. And not just their overt crimes, but also their thoughts and words. Every moment of their lives will come under examination, and they will be punished.

I take comfort in that, but it also concerns me. See, I haven’t really committed any crimes (besides speeding once in a while or something like that), but I have certainly committed sins, which is far worse. In crime we offend as fallen law, but in sin we offend a perfect God. When the Bible tells me that my thoughts will be judged, I suddenly remember all the times my thoughts were drenched in lust, pride, and hatred. What is it that I deserve from God? Nothing good – that is clear. I may not have killed anyone, but I have wanted to before. I may not have committed adultery, but my thoughts have not been pure. And Jesus tells us that to look with lust on someone is to commit adultery in your heart, and to be unduly angry at someone will be liable to Hell.

On second thought, I don’t want justice. I don’t want justice at all, because that rain is falling on me not as a just man, but an unjust one. I don’t even deserve that much. If I get judged by my own sin, then I am a dead man.

Death would be the right punishment for me, but that doesn’t mean I have to pay it. In love, Jesus came to earth to die in my place, so that I may have eternal life. On the Cross, He took upon Himself my sin and clothed me in His righteousness, so I can stand before the Father unashamed.

We are given this gift through faith. If you repent of your sins, rejecting them and turning toward God, and believe in Jesus, you can be saved.

The other option is to be ensnared by your own sin. You may feel the rain on your today, but there is a day coming where you will have to answer for what you’ve done.

Podcast: 1 John: Lust and Pride

2010-01-12T19:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 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. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
-1 John 2:15-17

When I was a senior in high school, I had a weekend routine I would always follow. When I got home from work, I would watch The X-Files and MASH, and then I would play video games until I fell asleep. On Saturday morning I would watch The Tick, and then play video games until I needed to go to work. I usually played role-playing games like Final Fantasy, and when I would finish one, I would stop by Wal-Mart to get another.

I still like video games, but I don’t play them nearly as much. Frankly, I have more fun now reading about theology and working on my seemingly futile quest to learn Biblical Greek.

The Tick and Final Fantasy are my examples here of “the things in the world,” but not great examples. I do believe that Christians can play a video game without sinning. Christians just can’t love them.

There are better examples in my life, and some that have not drifted away into my past. There are things I try to be prayerful of every day, because I don’t know when particular sins are going rise up in my heart again. Pride is a big on for me. When production reports come out at work, and I’m higher on the list than I expected, I get a little grin that is pure pride. I want everyone to see it. I want everyone to recognize what I did.

That’s something we can remember right off the bat – John is not saying that Christians do not sin. He’s already made it very clear that we do. But he’s putting forth a standard here by which we can look at our lives.

Right before this, he was listing some reasons why he is writing to us. These reasons include that we know Christ, that we have been saved from our sins. These are all reasons why we should not love the world. These are all alternatives, in fact, to the world.

And here’s where we will get a better understand of what John is saying. He is not saying – “You claim to be Christians, so throw away your television!” Rather, he is saying this – “You’ve experienced God! That television shouldn’t look as good now. And if it still does, then you may want to figure out if that was really God you experienced.”

See, the experience of Jesus is something that will profoundly affect us. If we really experience Jesus, we will be forever changed. And in that experience, the things of this world won’t have nearly the same appeal. The more we experience Him, the less attractive the world will seem.

I don’t play as many video games today. Why is that? Is it because I beat them all? Of course not! It’s because I have better things in my life. My wife is much better than a video game, and God is better still than that. It’s not that I don’t like them; it’s that I have other things I like more.

This is what happens in the Christian life. God reveals something of His glory to us, and the stuff around us just isn’t the same. We can’t say we love the things of the world, because our love for Him overshadows everything.

And if the world remains more important, then it may be that we never experienced Christ in the first place. If you say you found Jesus, but Final Fantasy still is first in your life, then you probably didn’t meet the real Jesus.

John will define “the world” a little for us here – “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions.” Let’s look at these individually.

The desires of the flesh are, quite simply, those things that seem good to the senses. Sex is our prime example here. How many have put God aside for a romp in the sack? How many seek after sex almost exclusively rather than seeking God? But don’t think this warning ends with only that sex-crazed guy at work. No, we have sought our own pleasures above God. Many times it is sex, but it can be with food or drink. These things are not bad things, but the world tries to make them more important than God. When we do this, we have loved the world, and we have sinned.

The desires of the eyes may be more insidious. A lot of times we can control our appetites so that we do not indulge in sex outside of marriage, or gluttony, or drunkenness. But who can keep his eyes from roaming? Who has conquered lust, greed, selfishness, ambition, and covetousness? When we desire something above God, we have loved the world, and we have sinned.

The pride of possessions is a big one. A lot of translations will use the phrase “the pride of life,” which I think is closer to the original. It’s not pride in the stuff you have, though it can be. It is PRIDE, plain and simple. Pride is the sin that got Satan booted out of heaven, and it’s still the sin that gets us every day. Every day at work I think that I deserve some recognition for something I did. Every day I think I deserve a raise. Every day I think that I’m doing well with my finances, or my home life, or something of the sort. Every day these thoughts go through your head too. Instead of humbling ourselves before God, we are exulting ourselves above men. When we have such pride, we have loved the world, and we have sinned.

These things of the world are passing away. Sex doesn’t last that long. Food doesn’t last that long. The nice house will fade away. You job will be gone some day. Your money will be gone someday. God will not.

And here is the great foolishness of it all. God is the greater joy, the greater life, and He is forever. He is the Creator of this world, its purpose and its maintainer. By His Grace we can live forever. And we trade that for Final Fantasy.

Jim Elliot was a missionary in the 50s who was martyred at the age of 28. In his journal, he wrote these words – “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” The truth of this is profound. Elliot realized something that should be obvious to us all – that this life is temporary. That this world is temporary. But the things of God are forever.

“Whoever does the will of God abides forever.” This promise ends our passage for today, and the implications of this are staggering. Whoever does the will of God will not fade away, like every tree, blade of grass, book, video game, or house in this world, but will live forever with God.

The question must come – what is the will of God? Is it to renounce all the things of the world, live on top of a pole, and whip yourself? No. Is it to burn your Beatles albums and watch nothing but the Trinity Broadcasting Network? Heaven forbid! Is it to not sin? That would be nice, but we’re already failed at that, haven’t we? If we look back at the previous verse, we’ll find that we’ve indulged the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions. Lust and pride pretty much makes up our lives. We’re already neck deep in sin and sinking.

So what is the will of God? Faith. John 6:29 tells us this: “Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’” Look, there are a lot of commands in the Bible, but if you don’t have this one, you don’t have anything, and if you have this one, you have it all. Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that “without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

You can’t earn your way into His good graces. You can’t try hard enough to please Him. Take another look at those three categories of sin that John listed out for us. We are guilty of all of them. And frankly, the idea that we can be good enough for Heaven is pride, which is sin!

We have already failed to earn our way to Heaven, but there is still a way. In the greatest act of love in history, Jesus came to earth to die in our place. On the Cross, He took our sin upon Himself. He paid the price that we owe. In exchange, He can clothe us in His righteousness so we will be judged blameless on the Day of Judgment.

This is why the work of God is to believe. We’ve already failed in keeping God’s Holy Law. But in repentance and faith we can be saved. By looking to the Cross for our salvation, He will save us.

We will fall for these three temptations over and over again. The solution is not to try harder and maybe it will work out better. The solution is to do the work of God – to believe. In that belief we will be cleansed. In repentance the Holy Spirit will guide us to greater holiness. It is His work to change us. Our work is to believe.

Many people are amazed at this teaching, saying that it is a license to sin! If all we have to do is repent, then we can do whatever we want! You misunderstand what repentance is. To repent is to turn away from sin. By the help of the Spirit, we will be hardened against sin and softened toward the Lord. By sheer force of will, we will have ups and downs, moments of weakness and strength. But by His power we will persevere. We will not be able to help but to change, because the experience of God is something that cannot leave you unchanged.

Repent. Believe. Look to the Cross for your salvation. This is the work of God.

He knows if you’ve been bad or good

2010-01-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

“For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths.”
-Proverbs 5:21

I used to pride myself on being a good kid. I didn’t sneak out or sleep around or even cuss. Outwardly, I was a moral kid. I grew up in the church and knew all of the rules, and I followed them. Even after I left the church, I still kept myself away from those blatant sins.

It’s really not that hard to keep sins hidden, even if they are blatant. People have affairs for years and are never caught. People do drugs for years and no one ever knows. People will lie every time they open their mouths, and we will elect them to public office. If you are careful, you can keep a public image that is very different than your private one.

Sometimes these sins are exposed, and we, as the public, gasp in surprise and horror. We had no idea that person was like that! The tabloid papers live for this sort of thing.

I was like that. I had my private sins that no one knew about. My thoughts and desires were littered with pride, lust, hatred, bitterness, and ambition, but I didn’t let on in front of others. To everyone else, I was a good kid.

You can get far in life hiding your sins, but there’s a big problem – you can’t hide them from God. Verses like this remind us that God knows even our thoughts.

This verse is in the context of sexual sin. Don’t have sex outside of marriage, it tells us, and a good reason why not is because God sees you, even if no one else does. Even if you are just looking at porn in a dark apartment with the shades drawn, God knows. Even if it is only in your thoughts, He keeps record of it.

A lot of people question whether a good God can condemn people to Hell. The real question is this – how could a good God NOT condemn you to Hell after what you were thinking about yesterday? See, goodness cuts both ways. God is good, yes, but you are not. What is God supposed to do with you?

What He does with us is the most loving act in all of history. He sent His Son to die on our behalf. Jesus, when He was on that Cross, took the penalty for our sin upon Himself. In repentance and faith, we can accept His free gift of eternal life, even though we don’t deserve it.

I haven’t stopped sinning since I became a Christian. I don’t try to hide them nearly as much, but I fear that people still think I am a good person. I’m not. I’m just a FORGIVEN person. There’s a huge difference.

In that moment I was saved, I was given the Holy Spirit to help guide me. While I still sin, He is there to help me not to sin. He is molding me into something better. He is molding me into someone who actually gets excited by the thought that God is watching. I know He is taking care of me. I know He has secured me for forever. And I know that I am still forgiven, even when I stumble.

Drunk on sex

2010-01-06T17:54:00.001-08:00

“Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?”
-Proverbs 5:20

It’s interesting that this passage contrasts two feelings of intoxication. In the previous verse, we are urged to be intoxicated on the love of a spouse. In this one, to avoid the intoxication of extramarital sex. The first intoxication is seen as something really wonderful; the second something not so great.

What strikes me immediately is the source of the intoxication. With your spouse, that intoxication should be because of the fullness of sex, which includes love, the joining of two into one, the spiritual and physical, the caring and compassion. It is an intoxication from the full expression of what God created for our satisfaction. It is not just a roll in the hay, but something so deeply spiritual that it takes two people and makes them one.

The world urges us to do something else with sex. It wants us to remove it from the context that God intended and turn it into something cheap. It wants us to remove all the things that make sex special and turn it into something quite ordinary. We’ve become drunk on it – but not in that way of being intoxicated with God’s provision and love, but in the sort of way where we act like idiots, throw up, and don’t remember any of it in the morning.

So many of the sins we commit are committed because we have a small view of something. Our pride comes from a small view of the world – we think we’re actually worthy of something. When you begin to understand the power and majesty of the Father, it is hard to have pride anymore. Greed comes about when we have a small view of wealth. If we had an inkling of the power of the love of God, a love that last forever, money would begin to seem like a very small matter.

C. S. Lewis once used an analogy of a boy playing in the dirt. His father told him that they would go to the beach. The boy was not excited. He had never been to the beach, but he enjoyed his dirt pile very much. At last the father had to tell him, “Son, you must trust me. The beach is much, much better.”

So it is with God. We are so content with money, pride, casual sex, lust, etc., when He intends so much greater. Our problem is that our desires are too weak, not that they are too strong.

Ultimately, the greatest joy, the greatest provision, the greatest awe we can experience is in Christ, and in Him we have all of these things eternally. So great is His gift to us that it is not something we could earn or ever pay back. His is a love so great that He died for us, even while we were distracted with so many small matters. When we were willing to trade His love for a little sex, He still died on our behalf.

He does not tell us to work harder or do better to gain His forgiveness. Instead He bids us repent and have faith in Him. By Grace we are saved.

We have all betrayed Him in sexual sin. Even those who have not had sex outside of marriage have still betrayed Him with lust, which Jesus said was adultery of the heart. None of us deserve the life He offers. Yet He gives it. Don’t trade it away for something so small as sin.

Drunk on love

2010-01-04T17:22:00.001-08:00

[The wife of your youth is] “a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.”
-Proverbs 5:19

My wife’s alma mater is in a rather undeveloped area of Laredo. Basically, it’s the school and some wilderness around there. That will change in time, but for now it’s a wonderfully peaceful place. There are deer all over the campus, and if you drive around in the mornings or evenings, you will see them in the grass, eating or resting. One night we sat in the car, just watching one particular doe walk around. There is something magnificently beautiful about deer. They are amazingly graceful, strong, vibrant, and, frankly, cute.

Solomon picks up on these characteristics when talking about our wives. See, he’s already talked about sexuality as a fountain that should remain clean. Now he will speak of it with a metaphor of animals. Don’t go messing around with other women, he is saying, because something really wonderful is waiting for you at home.

This is sex the way God intended it. He is not a prude who forbids us from enjoying ourselves in that way. He created sex to be enjoyed. The trouble is not that people concentrate too much on sex – it’s that they think to lowly of it.

Sex within a Christian marriage is something beautiful, graceful, satisfying, intoxicating, pure, refreshing, and spiritual. It is the joining of two into one. God’s intention for sex is so much better than we ever consider.

We often reduce sex to just something satisfying, leaving off all of the things that make it truly wonderful. When it is only something to do to be satisfied, our view of sex becomes very cheap. It becomes very small.

And that’s the sin of it – we are taking something that God has given as a gift, to be experienced and enjoyed in a loving and spiritual way, and dragging it through the gutter. We are taking this thing He has given, something so big and wonderful that it can barely be explained, and making it small.

A lot of us have cheapened it in the past. Some of us are doing so right now. It’s not too late for you. This sin does not have to ruin everything. It’s interesting that Ephesians 5 describes a marriage as a symbol of Jesus’ love for the Church. Think about that, because one party in that marriage is pure and innocent – Jesus. The other party is unworthy, unclean, and defiled. That’s us – the Church.

It is Christ who cleans us. By His Blood He washes away our sins. He does not turn away His bride because of her sins, but cleans her, dresses her in fine clothes, purifies her, and marries her.

We have all sinned in the past, but in repentance and faith we can be forgiven and washed clean. In the same way, it is not too late to repent of sexual sins. Whether you are having sex before marriage, or committing adultery within a marriage, or looking at porn, or are a practicing homosexual, it doesn’t matter. Repent for the forgiveness of sins. Repent and be washed clean.

If you are married, go home and enjoy your spouse. Be intoxicated by her, and let her fill you with delight.

See? Who said reading the Bible wasn’t inspiring?

Podcast: 1 John: The Child, the Young Man, and the Father

2010-01-03T15:15:00.000-08:00

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.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
-1 John 2:12-14

In a lot of ways I’ve never grown up. I still like video games, Star Wars action figures, baseball cards, etc. I like stupid comedies more than serious dramas. I would much rather have pizza rolls for dinner than a gourmet meal.

These are minor things in my life though. Most of my day is spent at work. I come home and try to help with the house and spend time with my wife. I go to sleep rather early, because I have to get up early to head back to work. I have a budget and a car payment.

A lot of things I used to do as a child have been put away. I have other priorities now.

There are undoubtedly stages in life. As a child, certain behaviors and activities are expected. We don’t expect a five-year-old to be working a 40 hour-a-week job. But we do expect that five-year-old to get there within about twenty years.

We have these same sorts of stages in the Christian life. When we are reborn in Christ, we start off as a spiritual child. Unless you grew up in the church or something, you’re not going to know much about propitiation or hermeneutics or eschatology. To use another phrase in the Bible, you are still sipping on the milk of doctrine, not having moved on to solid meat yet.

John here addresses three groups, and these groups line up exactly with these stages of spiritual maturity. You have children, young men, and fathers. And for each he has a different reason for writing.

And let me point that out again – he’s writing to all of them at the same time. You know, it seems like some people think that certain parts of the Bible are only for the spiritually mature. Or that some doctrines are more for the very learned rather than the new Christian. That’s not it at all. All doctrines are for all people, but it may take some training to get into the depth of it. Think of a particular doctrine as a pool. This pool of ours is the doctrine that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins. Maybe that’s as far as you get when you are a new Christian. You are in the shallow end. But as you study, you begin to understand phrases like “penal substitutionary atonement” or how Jesus takes the place of a priest for us. As you get into the deep end, you start learning about the Aaronic priesthood verses the Melchizedek priesthood. You start learning about Limited Atonement. You haven’t left the pool. No, we never leave the pool. Jesus has still died for our sins, and that sacrifice is still what saves us. We’re just starting to get into the deep end.

So this letter is for all of us. This letter is our pool, and he has written it for different reasons, depending on the maturity of his audience.

The mature Christians are called “fathers” here. The reason behind that is that these people, assumedly, have brought other people up in the faith. They are spiritual fathers. John writes them for two reasons: “because you know him who is from the beginning” and “because you know him who is from the beginning.” No, I didn’t stutter. John repeats this reason twice.

Truly these mature Christians do know him who is from the beginning, who is Jesus. They have spent time walking with Jesus, being formed into something more like Him. The Spirit has been sanctifying them, molding them in love and truth. They know Jesus, and know who He is – the Christ, the Savior, the Messiah. These men are probably the ones teaching the church, and they are passing this knowledge on to the young men and children. So John is writing to them because they know Jesus. They will see the truth of what John says, and they will teach others the truths of this letter.

To young men he also writes. These are people in the church who have been Christians a while, but are not quite mature enough to be Elders yet. To them he writes “because you have overcome the evil one” and “because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

To these people he reminds them of their youth and strength. They are beginning to put away the sins of their old ways and walk with the Lord. They are beginning to learn more fully the truth of the Gospel. They are starting to take larger roles in the church, spreading the message in evangelism, serving others, and using their strength and energy to expand the Kingdom of God. Their eternities were secured in their salvations, but now their lives have begun to show fruit as well. The Spirit has shown Himself in their lives.

John is writing to them so that they can be yet more secure by the power of Jesus, and to teach them more on how to love their neighbors. This group is moving from that milk into the meat of the Word, and so John’s instructions on how to be sure of their faith and loving one another would find a good appetite.

The new Christians are addressed for two reasons, as stated in the text – “because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake” and “because you know the Father.”

Does it strike you how even the youngest Christian, the newly converted, is promised the greatest promises in the Bible? I think of cults like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have their followers climb a ladder of succession, promising bigger rewards the more you work. That seems natural, doesn’t it? You have to spend a little time in the organization to work your way up. Jesus addresses this in one parable in Matthew 20, in which a landowner hires some men to work the day with him. Throughout the day, he adds people to his workforce, even up until evening. At the end of the day, everyone is paid the same amount, whether he worked all day, or just an hour.

So it is with the Kingdom of Heaven. All Christians are co-heirs with Christ of this Kingdom, whether we worked our whole lives for God, or repented on our death beds. These incredible promises – that you know God and are forgiven – are true for every single person who repents and believes in Jesus. This speaks to the nature of Grace, because Grace is not something we can earn. Jesus earned it for us. So it’s impossible for us to “earn more” of something we could never earn in the first place. Jesus did the work, and we get the reward. And it will be our reward no matter when you repent, so long as you have faith in Him.

Notice also that this is the same reason John gives for writing to the fathers – that you know God. That “know” there is used in a slightly different way, but the parallel should be noted. The mature Christian knows the theology, the character, the attributes of God. But the youngest Christian knows the same God – the one who died on the Cross for us.

If you know Christ, your sins are forgiven. I don’t care how long you have been a Christian, your destiny is to be united with Him in paradise. It is not by your maturity, your good works, or some sort of point system that will get you into a higher heaven. It’s by Jesus alone. That is the wonderful message to even the children amongst us. If you know Him, you are forgiven.

Here’s another very practical point to this passage, and that is to tell us a little bit about where we are spiritually. Have you confessed Christ as your Savior? You are in this group, if only a spiritual child. Has God’s work in your life begun to drive out sin and to change you? Has your zeal for His Word and Gospel begun to take root in you? Perhaps you are now a young man. Has your study become advanced? Do you teach others in the faith? Are you raising up spiritual children? You may be a father in the Church.

Where are you in this group? Where are you in the pool? Learn from those who are swimming father out than you are. As you learn more, invite more people into the water. Look back and help those who are in shallower water. But do not be confused – if you are in the pool, then you are a child of God. He has adopted you, and this wonderful message is for you.

Podcast: He's Come

2009-12-23T16:29:00.000-08:00

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.

1

In darkness trapped, in cold confined,
I had heard tell of fire’s glow.
Yet in this deadness that was mine,
It ’twas a mercy I could not know.

I could not tell it clearly then,
but that, my cell, by me was built.
With every single hateful sin
the last of life did I there melt.

In every thought of lust and pride,
with every action, wrath I stored.
Yet darkness here this call can’t hide:
“He’s come, He’s come: the Christ, our Lord.”

2

So long had I attempted good,
and tried to earn a better place,
to stand upright, do as I should,
But ’pon the Law, I am disgraced.

In every lie I do offend
the righteous glory of our God.
So tell me how I am to rend
unto the throne but filth and sod?

No, this I tell in truth, at last,
that evil ’lone our hearts can bring.
But still a mercy such is cast –
“He’s come, He’s come: the Christ, our King.”

3

So small a thing my life has been,
yet I was so consumed by this,
until His glory I had seen,
and knew that I, in all, was His.

Upon the Cross He died for me,
banishing this dark and cold.
By wounded hand He set me free,
and breathed His life into this soul.

Upon Himself He took the shame,
so by His Blood, He’s conquered Hell.
And by His Grace, I can proclaim,
“He’s come, He’s come, Emmanuel!”

Podcast: 1 John: The Rule of Love

2009-12-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

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.

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
-1 John 2:9-11

Welcome to the Christian Pilgrimage Podcast; I’m your host, Paul Lytle. Today, we’re going to be discussing “The Rule of Love.”

Does it surprise you when people in a particular family look alike? Now, certainly, it’s a little strange when they all look TOO much alike, but we would expect a family resemblance within a family. We would expect siblings to look somewhat like each other, and somewhat like their parents. In my case, there’s not much doubt that I’m my father’s son. You see us together, and you will see the resemblance.

And as often as I see, in the Bible, that the Church is described as a family, I sort of wonder why I don’t see more family resemblance there. Obviously, I’m not talking about physical appearance here. We’re not physically related that closely. But the Bible is clear about how we are supposed to act, and most people who say they are Christians don’t act that way.

And this brings up the dreaded topic of works when it comes to salvation, which has only been argued for a couple of thousand years.

We can describe this debate as happening between two basic camps. These camps have a distinct view of works in relation to the Christian. The first is that Jesus’ Blood forgives us to a point, but we really need to earn our way into Heaven by our actions. So if there are people who claim to be Christian and yet aren’t acting very well, they probably need to look out, because they may not earn their salvation. The other camp will say that faith alone saves us, and works don’t really mean anything. We would like all Christians to be good people are leaders in their community and love everyone, but it’s not always going to happen. It’s the faith that matters, not really anything else.

Verses like this seem, at first glance, to support the first theology. It seems like John is telling us that we need to love everyone if we claim to be Christian. But there are clearly other verses in the Bible that tells us that faith alone saves us.

I don’t think we’re going to end this debate today, but we can try to help. Let me see if I can explain it briefly, and this explanation brings me back to what I was saying about family. We are part of a family, and so there is a family resemblance. Let’s look at the text.

John has previously set up this extended analogy of light and darkness representing where we are in this life. We all start in the darkness, in sin and death. But because of Jesus, because of His death, because of the gift of faith, we are able to move into the light.

The only thing required to go into the light is faith. Don’t lose the context here. If you lose the context, you’re going to miss the point. John states over and over again in this letter that we are saved by Jesus’ finished work on the Cross. Jesus did it all for us. We don’t deserve it, certainly. We have all sinned, which is rebellion against God. We have all sought our own selfish desires, which is an offense to Him. We deserve death for these crimes, but Jesus died on the Cross to bear our punishment for us. He has made a way for us to walk in the light.

In repentance and faith we walk there with Him. It’s not that we have earned it, or even can keep it by being good. Jesus did that part of it for us. It is by faith.

But there is more going on there than just praying a prayer and then going on our way. When we are saved, God takes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh. Jesus clothes us in His righteousness and gives us Holy Spirit as a guide. He changes us. As the Reformers used to say, it is faith alone that saves us, but faith that saves is never alone.

So when we look at passages like this, where it tells us how people of the light act, we’re not looking at a list of requirements to get to Heaven. Again, Jesus already took care of those. We are looking at how children of the light act. We have a saving faith, and that faith brought some friends.

We do what we do because we are what we are. Sinners sin. Why? Because they are sinners. Children of God, bought by the Blood of the Lamb, love. Why? Because they are children of God.

This is important to get. True Christians act in certain ways. Why? Because of the family resemblance. All Christians have the Holy Spirit. All Christians are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We act differently because we are different. We have been changed.

So John is not here saying, “Love your brother or you won’t get into Heaven.” He is saying, “Loving your brother is evidence of Jesus’ work in your heart. It’s a way to KNOW that you are going to Heaven.”

In other words, if you took a poll amongst true Christians (and pay attention to the word “true” there), you will find a real concern and love for the people around them. Why? Because we are Christians. That’s who we are.

The Holy Spirit’s guidance is like a light for us. Those people in the darkness cannot help but to sin. They’re in the darkness; they don’t know where they are going. But in the light, things are more clear.

It is important to remember that we are not saying that Christians do not sin. John makes it clear that we do. Even in the light, you sometimes trip over a rock. He’s not saying that you won’t make it to Heaven if you don’t unconditionally love every person you see. That’s not it. He’s talking about a change in you.

He’s writing these things so that we will know that we are in the faith. And this is how you know. Look at your life. Do you love people or hate them? Do you want to help those people in church who are having a rough time? Do you want your friends and family to know about Christ so they can be saved? Are you looking out for your spouse’s good above your own? Do you pray for those people around you?

If you answered no to any of these questions, the solution is not to try harder. No, the solution is to make sure you are in the light. Repent of these sins and believe in Him. When you fail to love the next time, repent. Jesus will be your advocate with the Father if you are in Him. The Spirit will continue to work in you. Faith brings about the change, not force of will.

And here’s why we have people in the churches who do not love – because they are probably not Christians. Being Christian is not about going to church every week, but about being transformed by the power of God until salvation. If you have not experienced Jesus in that way, then look at your life and figure out if you have experienced him at all. That’s why John is telling us these things – so we will know.

So many times I have heard these passages preached as goals for the Christian. No, they are descriptions of a Christian. They talk about who we are in Christ. Let’s pray.

Sweet, sweet lovin’!

2009-12-18T04:28:00.001-08:00

“Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth,”
-Proverbs 5:18

There’s a long debate in the Church on if people should preach on sex. I know why this debate is around. It’s not because the Bible is vague on the subject. It’s not. It’s not that fundamentalists don’t think we should teach the Bible. They do. It’s because the subject is so darn awkward, both for the teacher and those listening. Sometimes it’s just easier to pretend like the subject isn’t there.

Well, the whole idea behind this blog is to walk through Proverbs verse-by-verse. And guess what? Chapter 5 is mostly about the adulterous woman, and now we come to a verse that basically says, “Go home and enjoy your wife.”

And it’s doesn’t add “only when necessary” or “about once a month.” Actually, it talks about your fountain being blessed, and if you look back at the previous verses, that fountain is your sex life.

It sort of seems as though Solomon is saying, “Go home and enjoy your wife. A lot.” It seems that way because that’s what he’s doing.

Here’s the truth of it. God invented sex. He designed it not just for procreation, but also for pleasure, comfort, and connection. It is supposed to be a matter for, to borrow the word from the verse, “rejoicing.”

In fact, the Bible commands more sex rather than less: “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5).

That’s right. God is not a prude. He wants us to make love to our spouses. It’s only that He wants us to have sex in its proper place – marriage.

Does that surprise you? Why? Marriage has been given as a gift. It is a reflection, in fact, of the love that Christ has for His Church. It is not wrong to enjoy each other. It is not wrong to burn in passion for one another. It is not wrong to want to come together all the time. It’s not wrong, because we’re supposed to be talking about the same sort of love that took Jesus to the Cross for His Church. That sort of love that brought Him to His death for a people who did not deserve it.

Don’t misunderstand. The Church does not have a sexual relationship with Jesus. But marriage is reflecting that sort of love that is so strong that it conquers death itself. We should be passionate about each other!

Do you feel that way about your spouse? Are you unmarried, but have sinned sexually? Have you betrayed a spouse? You can’t fix it. You cannot make things right. But Jesus can. Repent and accept the forgiveness of sins by believing on Him who can save you. See, this love that He has for His Church is not based on what we can do for Him, but based on Him alone. He is faithful to forgive, even when we do not deserve it.

Prayer and repent. And then, if you want to, go sleep with your wife.

The beautiful first kiss

2009-12-17T04:21:00.001-08:00

“Let them [your springs] be for yourself alone, and not for strangers with you.”
-Proverbs 5:17

I had some friends several years ago who had never even kissed someone romantically until the day of their wedding. It was in that church that each of them experienced that first kiss.

There’s something special about that. In an age where sexuality is quickly becoming a assumption rather than exception, where sex is more and more common in high schools and even middle schools, where homosexuality no longer is shocking, and where even parents are telling their children to move in with their boyfriends or girlfriends before getting married, there is something profound about viewing sexuality as a treasure or gift rather than a pastime.

It’s not that kissing is wrong. I’m not even saying it is wrong before marriage. There is no Scripture forbidding kissing before marriage, so long as it does not arouse lust.

And it’s not that sex is wrong. Within marriage, sex is not only not forbidden, but it is encouraged. These are wonderful things, gifts from eternal God. No, the issue is WHEN it is right, and WHEN it is wrong.

Solomon is giving us a metaphor between sex and a spring of water. The question he is asking is whether your water is contained properly and clean, or is it running through the dirty streets. Is your sex life good and God-honoring within a marriage, or is it muddied by the world, available to whomever wants it.

This isn’t an idle comparison. There are things in this world that are good, but when misused, they become sinful. Food is a gift from God, but when overused, it becomes an idol of its own. Money is a gift from God, but when misused, can cause all sorts of problems. So too is sex. Sex was designed by God as a joining of two people into one, to be a symbol of the love and devotion that Christ has for His Church.

To misuse the gift is to sin. It is a betrayal against God. And you can blow that off, saying that God is a prude, or that He doesn’t understand. Which is weird, because He’s the one who invented sex in the first place, so we might assume He knows the best ways to go about it.

In truth, when we do things against God’s commands, we do it because we have decided that we know better than Him. That, even though He has given us guidelines on how to behave, we have found something more pleasurable than God. We have chosen something created over the very Creator.

My friends had the right idea. Sex is a treasure and a gift. And I don’t care what reasons you come up with that you need to get laid now, the truth is that there is something truly wonderful and beautiful about two people who have never known anyone else before becoming one on their wedding night. More than that, there is something godly about it.

Even if some of us managed to hold out that long, don’t get too proud about it. Jesus tells us to even look upon another person with lust in our hearts is to commit adultery. The true beauty of a perfect marriage is that even our thoughts are wholly devoted to our spouse.

We don’t meet that standard. We have fallen a hundred times today. Even if you are a virgin, you still fall short in lust or pride. But here’s another really awesome thing about the relationship between Jesus and His Church, that relationship that is supposed to be mirrored in our marriages – we can be forgiven.

We deserve death for our rebellion against God, but Jesus, upon that Cross, took our place in death so that we might live. He paid a bride-price for His Church that cost Him His life. He bought us by His Blood. In repentance and faith we can be forgiven.

We have not been perfect, but we have a Savior who was. Cling to Him, and He will guide your steps.

The fountain

2009-12-15T17:01:00.000-08:00

“Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?”
-Proverbs 5:16

I’ve met a lot of people in my time that say that Christianity is stifling, that it’s oppressive. “The rules of the Bible just ruin our fun,” they might say. Others have told me that they will think about God when they are older, but now they just want to have fun.

And let’s be honest, this is one of the main reasons people avoid God. They see Him as sort of this cosmic principal just waiting to call you into His office to punish you for some minor infraction.

But that’s not really true. And this is exactly why I love this image so much. If you take a look at the surrounding verses here, you’ll see that Solomon is advising his sons to not stray from their wives, to not chase after sex outside that relationship. Sex is metaphorically seen in this section as water, and Solomon tells us to get water from our own well.

Now we’re going to see the other option, and he has in mind here a spring that flows from the ground. Think of a fountain. What happens if the water from that fountain just hits the dirty ground and flowed off whichever way gravity took it? It wouldn’t be very clean. You definitely wouldn’t want to drink any of it. But what if the waters were contained into a pool?

Sometimes it is better to be constrained. Sometimes it is better to have boundaries. Sometimes freedom isn’t all its cracked up to be. Sex is one of those areas. Sex was designed as a joining of two people, of love and sacrifice, under the blessing and care of our Lord. When we turn it into just something to do on Saturday night (with whomever is willing), we’ve lost that. The water from the spring is just muddying up the area. But in the confines of a godly marriage, it becomes something deeper and more satisfying.

Maybe we lose some of that image in the way we go about marriage. We go into a marriage expecting the other person to satisfy is in every way, but not really willing to change at all for the other person. It so often becomes a selfish act rather than a loving one. When the other person fails to satisfy, we go looking for that satisfaction elsewhere – the internet, a club, another woman. The borders of the fountain become cracked, and the water starts spilling out. It sounds like a good idea at first. After all, that little pool was so confining!

But a marriage is supposed to be a picture of Christ’s love for his Church. It is something we do not deserve, but is a mercy – a gift that is so wonderful, that it could only have come from God. Jesus so loved us that He came to earth to die for us, even while we were still in sin and rebelling against Him. Such giving love and devotion is that. It is He who purifies us in His Blood and then clothes us in His righteousness. He keeps us for eternity and never betrays us.

It is only through Him that we could ever hope to be like that. It’s not something we can force ourselves to do, because it is a divine love that comes from God. Repent and believe in His sacrifice, and by His Spirit He will begin to work on you.

Has your spring been spilling out into the streets? Repent and believe, and let Him build that fountain for you.

Podcast: 1 John: Old is the New New

2009-12-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

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.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.
-1 John 2:7-8

Just recently, my family was going through a rough time. My wife was particularly affected by things. I tried to react with patience and love, and by God’s grace I think I was relatively successful. A couple of nights ago, my wife hugged me and thanked me for how I had helped. And I told her I loved her.

Certainly it wasn’t the first time I had said those words. I’m not one of those guys who shy away from an “I love you.” I tell my wife that multiple times a day. So I wasn’t saying something new. And yet, with everything that had gone on in these last weeks, and everything that was happening in that moment, and in the context of the conversation, I have no doubt that there was something new to it. My wife knew the words, but she had learned something new of the depth.

That’s the sort of thing I was thinking about when I came upon this passage. We can certainly get confused by John’s words here. “It’s not a new commandment, but it is.” You have to reread the text just to make sure you didn’t misunderstand the first time. And you may start to wonder if John is confused here, because we certainly are!

So let’s slow down a little and figure this out. I’ve mentioned this before, but we need to address it again. Some of the epistles of the New Testament address doctrine – what we should believe. Others talk about how that belief should be lived out. John just takes both of them and shoves them together and shows us how it mixes. This is wonderful of John, but it also means we need to be a little more careful to figure out exactly what he’s talking about.

A little context will help. John sets up this image in the first chapter of light and dark. Those who are without Christ are in the dark, trying to hide their sins away in the shadows. Those who come into the light to walk with Christ have their sins exposed to the light. It is not that they are without sin. John makes that very clear in verse 10: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” No, it is that we have confessed our sins, and Jesus has forgiven them.

But now we are walking in the light. We don’t walk perfectly, but John again reminds us that Jesus is our advocate with the Father to forgive sins. But walking in the light does bring about a change. Simply put, if we want to be sure we are walking with Jesus, we should look at our lives and see if there has been a change in us that has brought about obedience to God. That is a sign that we are in the light.

What about this obedience? What does this obedience look like? And here we get to today’s passage. John is not talking about a new set of rules here. We’re not suddenly given new restrictions and expectations. In other words, God hasn’t suddenly changed His mind about what He expects from us because Jesus died on the Cross. He’s the same God He has always been.

This is very important. There are a lot of people who will talk about an “Old Testament God” and a “New Testament God,” as though there is a difference. There isn’t. If you read the Old Testament, you will find a God who is longsuffering, merciful, loving, personal, as well as just and wrathful. In the New Testament, you will find a God who is just and wrathful as well as longsuffering, merciful, loving, and personal.

The people of the Old Testament and the people of the New Testament (and after) are all saved or damned in the same way – by their faith in Jesus or their lack thereof. The people in the Old Testament did not know His name, and yet we read how, for example, Abraham was saved by faith. They had faith in a hope yet to come, while we look back upon our hope, who is named Jesus.

John is not throwing out the Old Testament here. He is affirming it. He tells us that the old commandment is the word that you have heard. In other words, this revelation from God in Holy Scripture has been given to you. John is building on that foundation, not laying a new foundation. Christianity has not done away with Judaism, but it is a COMPLETION of Judaism.

And here is where is gets to be new. In Jesus, we have a freedom to be lawful. Let me explain a little here.

We all know basically what is right and what is wrong. At the same time, we have all done wrong, probably more often than we would admit. At the very core, we are greedy, lustful, selfish, ambitious, and proud. Even if we can control our actions most of the time so that we appear to be good people, we cannot control our hearts. We are sinners, hopeless to control ourselves by sheer force of will. We are corrupted to our very cores.

So when we look at this Law, we are helpless before its holiness and purity. Oftentimes, we pretend that we are abiding in it, but in truth, we are sold out to sin in our hearts.

But then Jesus came, and He died upon a Cross. He lived perfectly, right down to His thoughts and words. He did not deserve to die, but in that death He took the punishment we deserve for our sins. He put them to death upon that cross so that we may live.

When we repent and believe in Him, He takes our sins from us and clothes us in His righteousness. He gives us His Spirit as a guide. He gives us a new heart, one that is spiritually alive and able to love as He intended from the beginning. In other words, by His Grace and the guidance of His Spirit, we are able to do good without them being corrupted by a sinful heart. Romans teaches us that we have died to the Law and have been born again in Christ. It is no longer by works that we succeed (because we never could with works), but in faith.

This is part of what John is talking about when he speaks of how we are now walking in the light. We have left the darkness, exposed our sin to the light, and they have been forgiven. We walk with Jesus in that light. Everything has changed.

So we get back to the commandments. Now the Law is not this mountain that we cannot climb. It’s not a wall we cannot go around anymore. The Law has been fulfilled in Jesus, and we are walking with Him. Let me repeat that, because it is important – The Law has been fulfilled in Jesus, and we are walking with Him.

Do you see the difference? We are able to obey not by the effort of our wills, but because of the One beside whom we walk. It is not a new commandment, but it is. It’s not a new one because it’s the same one we’ve had all along. But now WE are new.

The darkness is passing away. The true light of Christ is shining. It changes everything. And in that light, we can go back to thaw which has come before in a new way. The Law is not new. But it is.

Stay home, make love, read your Bible, repeat

2009-12-11T04:10:00.001-08:00

“Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well.”
-Proverbs 5:15

Chapter 5 of Proverbs mainly focuses on the “forbidden woman” or “adulterous woman.” Solomon is going to turn away from her for a little while and to someone a little more close to home – your spouse.

This analogy of drinking water from your own well may be a little lost on our generation. We have filtered water, bottled water, and laws that regulate the quality of tap water. But still, there is something about the water you have at home. Hopefully it is water you can trust. You never know what you’re going to get when you drink the water somewhere else. When you go to Mexico, for instance, people will tell you to stay away from the water completely.

So this is something we can understand, but it had even more meaning then. A well was something you probably dug yourself, or one of your ancestors did. It was YOURS, and no one else’s. You put the work into it, forming it as you desired. By your sweat it was perfected, ready to offer clean water to quench your thirst.

The Bible speaks in much the same way about marriage:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
-Ephesians 5:25-30

It is something you put your heart into, something that becomes so much a part of you that to dissolve it would be almost like death. Not that there isn’t work. Not that there aren’t problems. But by grace these come to produce something truly wonderful.

A thirsty man may think that any water fountain is okay. But like that well at home, a wife has been given to satisfy those longings. Like the water produced by the well you built, the satisfaction you get comes from the marriage of your making.

God is not opposed to sex. We may look at this whole section of Proverbs and wonder about that. No, God invented sex, and He’s plainly telling us here how to have our thirsts sated, so to speak. That’s not why He tells us not to have sex outside of marriage. It’s that He’s going for something here that cannot be accomplished with the girl in the bar, or on the internet, or in the magazine. He’s going for something that more reflects the relationship between Christ and His Church.

The love Jesus has for His bride cannot be compared with anything we have encountered before. Though we were lost in our sin, He came from heaven, lived on earth, and died on our behalf. He bought us with His very Blood. He purifies us in His sacrifice and prepares us, sanctifies us, for eternity.

And He is true. He does not stray. He is faithful to us in all times. There’s something beautiful about His love for us. The love God desires in our marriages looks more like that. It goes beyond sex and into something far better.

A good man is hard to find

2009-12-09T19:00:00.001-08:00

[On your deathbed, you will say,] “I am at the brink of utter ruin in the assembled congregation.”
-Proverbs 5:14

Hopefully, this day will be a long way off still, but I can almost picture my funeral. I don’t know who will be there. You never know what friends you’ll keep and which ones you will gain over time. I don’t have children yet, but I imagine that I’ll have some children who will come. I’m hoping to draw a little crowd. I’m not greedy – it doesn’t have to be a lot.

The pastor will say something about how dedicated I was to the church. After all, by that time I will have been writing about Proverbs for decades. I was always there, ready to help out. He will talk about the great books on the faith that I have written (or will write at this point). He will talk about my devotion to spreading the Gospel and to my family. My daughter will be so distraught that she will be overcome with tears at this time. He will say that I was a GOOD MAN.

Two or three people will stand up then to speak. Each one will have personal stories to tell, many of them funny to lighten the mood. Then they will speak of how they will miss me, but that I am in a better place. I was a GOOD MAN, they will say.

And they will be LYING.

The scene in before the throne of God will be much more accurate. All my thoughts, words, and deeds, will be laid out before me, and there will be far more bad than good. How many times will my own lust be shown to me? How many times my hatred? How many times my greed? My ambition? My selfishness? How many lies? How many hateful words? How many moments of covetousness? How many times when I sought my own goals rather than God’s? How many times when I loved myself more than I loved others?

We have such low standards for a GOOD MAN. We think someone who gives a little money to charity and seems to love his wife is a GOOD MAN. We think that someone who goes to church every week and seems to have his life together is a GOOD MAN. We think that someone who occasionally seems giving is a GOOD MAN.

If that’s the standard you are relying on, let me fill you in to God’s standard of a GOOD MAN. He will judge your every thought to see if you loved Him with everything you have and that you loved other people as much as you loved yourself. How are you going to do against that standard?

A lot of us are going to be faced, at the end of our lives, with the understanding that we were not good in the least. We are going to be faced with shame and regret. I pray that you face that shame sooner rather than later.

Not that you can fix it. You can’t. You’ve already rejected God. You’ve already decided that you are more important than everyone else. But you can be forgiven.

We deserve death by our sins, but when Jesus died on the Cross, He paid the price that was meant for us. He died so that we may live. In repentance and faith we will find life when we deserved death.

It is a gift from God against the worst of sins, and also those little thoughts that no one knows about but you. It is a gift against murder and blasphemy, but also those things we usually ignore, like gossip and pride.

It is His gift of life, a gift that cannot be earned.

The common rebellion of us all

2009-12-08T15:33:00.000-08:00

[On your deathbed, you will say,] “I did not listen to the voice of my teachers or incline my ear to my instructors.”
-Proverbs 5:13

It seems the curse of every generation to make the same mistakes as the previous ones. You see this in every area of life. Politically, we continue to try the same programs that failed ten years ago. Children generally turn out like their parents, even in those faults that they despise in their parents. Even churches do this. I have seen so many churches, in trying to be hip and new, fall into the same heresies that have been around since the first century.

And this is what it is – there is something in us that just wants to rebel. If our elders are telling us to do something one way, we will run in the opposite direction, not thinking that our elders may be telling us to go this way because they’ve already been the other way, and it was no good.

It’s a strange truth, but a truth nonetheless – in our rebellion we tend to conform to every generation that has come before. We don’t know this, of course. We just think we’re looking out for ourselves, having a little fun, seeking pleasure, and finding our own identity. But that’s just what our parents did, and their parents before them. We rebel, and in rebelling we prove that we are just like them.

Here’s the other truth of it – normally we sin for our own self promotion. We sin to have more fun, or to climb higher, or to be better. And in the end, we find out that we’ve had less fun, we’ve sunken lower, and we’ve been worse than we could have dreamed.

Our lives are driven by sin. We follow our greed, lusts, ambition, pride, and selfishness for almost every minute of the every day. We have not sought God, the very Creator who gave us life. We have not loved one another, but used one another for our own advancement and pleasure.

Some of us come to this realization before we die. Some of us discover it on our deathbeds. There are so many people, at the end of their lives, looking back in disgust and regret.

In our rebellion against God, we all end up in that place. Some of us get there before death. For some, it won’t be until the Day of Judgment, standing before the throne of God, when every sinful thought, word, and deed is revealed.

I don’t want to be there on that day, thinking, “I didn’t listen to the warnings. I didn’t listen when they told me to seek God and love first. I didn’t listen, and I fell into the same trap that everyone else did.”

We have all spent our lives in rebellion against God. But it’s not too late for it to be fixed. It can’t be fixed by you, but it can by Jesus. In love, He came from Heaven to die in our place. He paid the price for our rebellion. If we repent and believe, His righteousness will be credited to us, and our sin will be paid for by His Blood.

This is the wisdom passed down through the Word of God. Don’t ignore the voice of this particular teacher.

Can you tweet the Gospel?

2009-11-25T17:26:00.000-08:00

We've posted a podcast on this topic, so please give it a listen. To subscribe to the podcast using iTunes, please click here. To listen to the podcast without iTunes, please follow this link.

Updates at the bottom.

Can you tweet the Gospel?

Maybe we should give it a try. You know, we tell everyone about our dental appointments on Facebook and Twitter, we talk about our latest accomplishments on Gang Wars, we complain about work, we flirt, we converse, and most of us never mention the one who saved us from our sins.

So here’s the idea. On December 24 (Christmas Eve), we post the Gospel. It will only take a minute. You can do it while your spouse is in the shower, while dinner is being cooked, whenever. Whenever you have a minute, post it. If you have a minute later in the day, post it again. How many friends do you have on these sites? That’s potentially how many people will read the Gospel this Christmas.

That simple? Pretty much, but there are a couple of things you can do to help spread the word.

1) TELL YOUR CHRISTIAN FRIENDS ABOUT IT. Use that same Facebook or Twitter account to spread the news about this effort. What I plan to do is to put a link to this post up with a brief explanation of what is going to happen. “Join us in Tweeting the Gospel Dec 24. Click for details.” It could be that simple.

2) KEEP TELLING YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT. Repeat the post, send messages, remind them of the date. A lot of us will want to participate, but will forget during the Christmas rush.

3) MAKE SURE YOU KNOW THE GOSPEL. Do you know why we need a Savior? Do you know why Jesus died on the Cross? Do you know why it is important to repent and believe?

Jesus didn’t come to earth to make you rich. He didn’t come to fix your marriage. He didn’t come to give you purpose. He came to solve a terrible problem. The problem is that God is just, good, and righteous. And you aren’t.

We so often compare ourselves with those around us and assume we’re doing okay. There are murderers and thieves out there, and at least you’re not like that. You think of yourself as a good person. You aren’t too worried about the judgment of God, because God is good, and so you think that He’ll see that you’re okay as well.

Or maybe you’re active in the community or the church, and you see yourself as very spiritual and righteous. You do all of the right things, and you believe God will reward you for that.

Or maybe you’ll admit that you’ve made some mistakes, but you’ve always heard that God is good and loving, and so you think you’ll be alright.

Well, God is loving, and He is good. But you are not, and He’s going to have to do something about you.

God’s standard is not like ours. He is righteous and holy, and no sin is acceptable in His sight. He does not grade on a curve. He will judge us even by our thoughts.

Think about that. Maybe outwardly you’re better than average, but what are your thoughts like? Are they filled with blasphemy, lust, pride, greed, selfishness, hatred, and covetousness? What is God going to think of that?

If an admitted murderer tells his judge, “Judge, you are a good man, so I believe you are going to let me go free,” what would the judge say? If the judge IS a good judge, then he’s going to punish the murderer. Why do you think that God, in His goodness, will ignore your crimes against Him? In truth, we have offended God in our sins, and we continue to do so.

But God is a forgiving God, and He is a loving God. He desires to restore our relationship with Himself, but He must first deal with our sin. That is why Jesus came to die. Jesus took our place in death so that we may live. Jesus took our punishment for our sins so we would not have to suffer that punishment.

It is not something we can earn. We’ve already failed to earn salvation. But God, in His love, gives us life freely.

It is not for everyone. In our sin we are rebelling against God. Some people, continuing in that rebellion, reject Jesus and continue to rely on themselves. They do not recognize that they need a savior, or they look to some false god to save them rather than Jesus.

For some, however, the understanding of their own sin burdens their hearts, and they understand too well that they need someone to save them. They see that they cannot make it alone. For those people, God offers the forgiveness of sin through repentance and belief in Jesus.

This is our only way to eternal life. Jesus did not die to simply create another possible way to heaven. He did it because it is the only way. We all owe a price, and He paid that price for us.

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Now, all of that is a little long for Twitter. No worries – we have about a month before Christmas to get some options. We’re going to be updating this post in the next month with some possible tweets that we can use when the day comes. If you have ideas, please post them as comments below. (I am moderating the comments, of course, for those of you who want to slip in another gospel.)

Come back soon for some updates. In the meantime, please be praying for this day, that God will use it for His glory and to advance His kingdom. God bless!

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UPDATES: Gospel presentations under 140 characters!

God is good. You aren’t. But in love He sent His Son to die in your place. If you repent and believe in Him, you will be saved!

What is in your heart? Is it lust, pride, & hatred? In love, Jesus came to die for those sins. Repent and believe to be saved!

Podcast: 1 John: The Nature of Love

2009-11-24T16:17:00.001-08:00

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.

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
-1 John 2:3-6

Would it seem strange to you if I told you that I wanted to go see my grandmother? Would you give me a weird look and ask, “Why?” Probably not. Or even if you did, I would just answer, “Because I love her,” and all would be explained.

That wouldn’t seem so strange to us. What perhaps would seem strange is if I claimed to love my grandmother, and yet never had the slightest desire to even speak with her. If that were the case, you’d probably start questioning me.

I think we have conflicting definitions of love in our brains. In many ways, love is just something we claim. It doesn’t seem to have any meaning. If you ask the normal person, that person will probably say, “Sure, I love God.” But it’s just a word to be claimed. It doesn’t have any teeth to it.

In real life, this use of the word love looks a little odd. We would question the love a man has for his grandmother if he keeps avoiding her calls. We would question the love a man has for his kids if he refused to spend time with them.

But let’s get things straight here – the love produces the action, and not the other way around. Let’s pretend I said to someone, “Man, I have to ask you about your supposed love for your kids. You never spend time with them!”

If that man replied, “Fine, I’ll spend more time with them!”, we wouldn’t be more confident in his love. See, you can spend time with your kids from obligation as easily as you could from love.

Which brings us to 1 John. John has been differentiating between walking in the light and walking in darkness. Walking in the light is walking with Christ, and remaining the darkness is remaining in sin. But He has made it clear that we don’t get into the light by being perfect, because no one is, but because of the grace of God. It is by the Blood of Jesus, who is our advocate with the Father, that we can be in the light.

That eternal life is something we do not deserve. In our sin we deserve death. We have offended God with our lies, lusts, ambition, stealing, adultery, selfishness, and pride. Being just as He is, God must demand punishment for those sins. That is the only right thing to do. But in love, Jesus came to earth to take our punishment for us when He died on the Cross. He has paid our way so that we can walk in the light, even though we deserve to be in the darkness.

So the question John now tries to answer is this – “How do I know if I’m walking in the light?” And the answer is a simple one – “If you obey the commandments.”

But didn’t John just tell us that we have all sinned? Yes. But now we have to be perfect? No, because at the beginning of the chapter, John tells us that Jesus remains our advocate, even if we sin again. So what’s going on here?

What happens is that something changes us when we know Him. When we are saved, God, as Ezekiel put it, gives us a new spirit. He will remove the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.

It’s like what we were talking about with love. Can you love your grandmother and not care about what’s going on with her? Can you love your kids and not want to spend time with them? In the same way, you cannot know God and not follow Him.

We will still sin. John spoke of that in the previous two verses. We are not talking about a perfect walk here. We’re talking about a change. Are you less interested in sin now? Do you have a desire to read the Bible? Have you stopped sleeping through the sermon at church? Do you have a fading interest in worldly things while your interest in spiritual ones is growing?

If you said no, the answer isn’t for you to try harder. The problem is not your actions, but your relationship. Sanctification is the process in which the Holy Spirit begins to conform you to the image of Jesus, but it doesn’t work if you don’t have the Spirit. You cannot force yourself down that road.

The problem isn’t that you just don’t want it bad enough. The problem is that you need Jesus.

I cannot stress this enough. I could feel guilty for not speaking to my grandmother more, so I might force myself to call every day for a month. But does this mean I love her more? In the same way, we may try to be better people out of guilt, but does that mean we really know Jesus? No.

Test yourself by this standard. I know a lot of churches out there tell you never to question your salvation. This is a lie born out of the pit of Hell. This is a scheme of the devil to tell lost people to not worry about really knowing Jesus. The Bible tells us to test ourselves. 2 Corinthians 13:5 tells us, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? – unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”

John here is telling us to do the same thing. There are so many of us who had an emotional experience at church camp and now think that we are Christians. Test yourself. Look back on your life. Was there a change there? Was there something that happened in your life that could not have been anything but the power of God?

Ask God for the wisdom to know. Seek His counsel in this. And when you find those places in your life that have not been touched by Him, fall upon your knees and repent of them. You may find that you have never truly experienced Jesus. Repent and believe! We have all fallen short of the glory of God, but by the Blood of Jesus we may be judged righteous on the Day of Judgment.

And on that day, those of us in Christ will find that His love in us has been perfected. At last we will be conformed to His image, and there will be no more need for tears or pain.

Podcast: 1 John: Our Great Lawyer in the Sky

2009-11-21T12:41:00.000-08:00

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.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
-1 John 2:1-2

I’ve spent a lot of time in court. Not on my own cases, but as a court clerk for several years. It was a misdemeanor court, and I saw literally thousands of people charged with crimes go in and out of that courtroom. Some charges were just dismissed, others pled out. A small portion of these cases went to trial.

You know, it’s sometimes our impression from watching the news and hearing about cases that the defense attorney is really the deciding factor in a case. If you can afford a good enough defense, you’ll beat the charges.

It’s not supposed to happen like this, and it usually doesn’t. Of course, it sometimes does. What’s supposed to happen is that everyone will get a fair trial no matter who is sitting beside that person, and the verdict will be rendered according to the evidence. But then, some lawyers are very persuasive, while others can’t seem to hold a sentence together. Some lawyers work really hard to examine the evidence and test the case against the defendant, and others are just there to get paid. It happens, but I don’t think anyone likes it that it happens.

But in truth, this is sort of what happens with God. When we get to Judgment Day, a lot is going to depend on our defense attorney.

John does not want us to sin. He wants us to be good people who don’t mess up. Most of us want this for ourselves too. But John knows something that most of us won’t admit. We are sinners.

Oh, sure, most people will admit to making a mistake here or there, but the truth of the matter is much more severe than that. The previous chapter tells us something about the meaning behind sin. Verse 6 tells us that “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” We haven’t gotten this far yet, but verse six of chapter two tells us that “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”

John will continually tell us how someone who walks with the Lord will act. He makes it very clear that if we sin, which is disobedience, we are not walking with Jesus.

This is what is really happening in sin. We are turning from God and racing back into the darkness for sex, money, power, prestige, or just a little entertainment. We are betraying the only true God, Creator of all things, and racing away for something far less wonderful.

In sin, we are betraying God.

Listen, we are all going to stand before His throne and give an account for our lives. We will have to give an account for every sin. They will be stacked against us, countless ones of them! How many times, even just today, have we turned from God, betrayed God, for something else? We will have to answer for that.

But in Christ, we have an advocate. We have an attorney, so to speak.

Now, it is not the slickness of this attorney that will free us. It is not that He is good at public speaking and can sway the Judge. No, God does not show partiality (Romans 2:11). Our defense attorney doesn’t have any sort of trick to get the evidence thrown out. No, it will all still be there. Our defense attorney is different.

Our defense attorney comes in and says, in essence, “Yes. Yes, Paul Lytle is guilty. Yes, he deserves to die. By his sins he has earned that punishment. But it is a punishment that I have already paid, and this one belongs to me.”

See, Jesus lived a perfect life. He did not deserve to die, but he died anyway. In that death He paid the price for our sins. In love He took our place in death. In repentance and faith we can be given life when we deserve death because of Jesus’ sacrifice.

It is not that Jesus manipulates the court to get us a “not guilty” sentence. It is that we are guilty, but that the punishment has already been paid.

That is what the word “propitiation” means. It means that Jesus substituted Himself in our place to satisfy the wrath of a vengeful God. He was the substitutionary atonement for us. He took our place in death so that we may live.

We have to wonder now if everyone is forgiven. After all, it says that Jesus died for the “whole world” here. This is not a universal statement by John, that every single person in the world will be forgiven. Let’s look at the context. Only three verses before he tells us exactly who will be forgiven – those who confess their sins.

So for whom was Jesus a propitiation, if not literally “the whole world”? This is very hotly debated, whether Jesus died for everyone, and we can choose whether to accept or reject Him, or whether he died for those people who would be saved. I fall into the latter camp. I believe Jesus died for those God chose to be saved. God willing, I may try to discuss this in more detail in an upcoming episode. For now, let me point out that when John uses the word “world,” he is usually talking about races and nations. He is countering here the notion that only Jews can be saved. This was very big issue at the time, and so John constantly reminds people that Jesus didn’t just die for “us,” meaning the Jews, but for Gentiles too.

This is the only reading that makes sense, because the other alternative is to think that the “us” means Christians. In other words, you don’t have to be a Christian to be saved, which contradicts all of John’s other writings, where he states plainly that Jesus is the only way to salvation. No, he is talking about racial and social lines here, not religious ones.

Now, let’s go back to the first part of this section. “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” A lot of people tie this back to the previous chapter and John’s discussion on God’s holiness as the light. I don’t agree. I believe John is tying this to the main force of the chapter, and that is the forgiveness of sins by the Blood of Jesus. The incarnation of Christ is described in the first three verses, and then both verses 7 and 9 speak of the good news of the gospel directly. Literally half the first chapter is dedicated to Jesus and the forgiveness of sins.

And the gospel is about the forgiveness of sins. He has told us that we are all sinners and need Jesus, so don’t sin, but when you do, Jesus will take care of it. Why insert that part about not sinning?

Because the gospel is going to change us. Look at this. John tells us that he is writing about the forgiveness of sins so that we will not sin. He is talking about that transfer from darkness to light that comes in repentance and forgiveness.

By the Blood of Christ, we are drawn into the light, where we need not sin again. That change in us from wretched sinners to children of God is what allows us not to sin. You don’t want to sin? Well, John is telling you about the gospel so you don’t have to. It can’t be done by your own will (John has already said that no one can claim to be without sin), but it can be done with God’s transforming Spirit.

When we repent and are filled with the Spirit, we will turn from sin and focus more on Christ. It doesn’t mean we won’t mess up. We will. But we have an advocate with the Father in Jesus when we do. But that change will refocus us on His path, not our old sinful one. This isn’t a battle you can win, so John is telling you about the One who can win it for you.

How do we react to criticism?

2009-11-20T04:23:00.000-08:00

“and you say [on your deathbed], ‘How I hated discipline, and my heart despised reproof!’”
-Proverbs 5:12

This is my fear for our generation.

This is my real fear, that we will find ourselves upon our deathbed, wondering why we were so proud as to not take correction.

Or worse still, that we will find ourselves before the Lord on the Day of Judgment, wondering why we didn’t listen to those who were trying to point us in the right direction.

We have this idea in modern America that I am the one who decides what is right for me, and that no one can say anything otherwise. We tell each other this all the time. We say, “Don’t judge me!” over the slightest criticism. We hang out with people who will defend us no matter what, even when we are wrong, as though it is a virtue to ignore the evil things we do.

We have so completely been sold on this “virtue” of individuality that we have forgotten what true virtue is. We have marches celebrating terrible sin. We legislate “rights” to do whatever we want, and then complain when someone frowns on our behavior.

I would agree that a lot of this frowning misses the point. A lot of it is just self-righteousness spewing out. But I tell you the truth – love will correct when needed. Love steps in when needed.

The parents who refuse to punish their children are not loving parents. No, love will punish a child when the child needs punishment. The friend who sits by and lets someone sleep with everyone he meets isn’t a good friend. Love will sometimes say, “Hey, this is destructive behavior.”

We don’t want love in this country. Not really. We want license. We want people to tell us that we are doing fantastic, that everything we try is perfectly fine.

It’s not.

And if we are lucky, when we reflect on our lives upon our deathbeds, we will realize how far astray we have gone.

We have spent our lives in pursuit of lust, greed, ambition, pride, hatred, and selfishness. We have put all our efforts into those things instead of love. And when love does come and try to correct us, we scold it and throw it aside. All it does is get in the way of our fun.

It is my prayer that we will realize how bad we have made things because of sin before we die. It is my prayer that we will realize, turn our eyes to Jesus, and repent of those evils we have done. We will believe in Him and His death upon the Cross, how He took the punishment for our sins there. We will believe that because of His finished work, we will be saved, not because of our own good works.

It is my prayer that this will happen. My fear is that we will go into death, still seeking license rather than love. If so, all we will find in death is justice. And that’s not something we really want.

Don’t wait for a deathbed confession

2009-11-18T15:45:00.001-08:00

“and at the end of your life you groan, when your flesh and body are consumed,”
-Proverbs 5:11

You’re going to die. I can say that with almost 100% certainty. Now, I’ll allow for the possibility of Jesus’ return before that happens, which is why I’m not quite ready to say 100%, but I am almost certain of your eventual death.

You know it too. You may not want to think about it or acknowledge it, but you know. Maybe you’re a little closer than you would like. Maybe it’s so far off that it never crosses your mind.

Sometimes I think about it, but not too often. I’m not in great shape, so it crosses my mind that I may be facing an earlier than desired death, but I’m also in better shape than I’ve been since I was a teenager, so it seems like I may be pushing it out some.

Of course, the truth is for all of us that we could get run over tomorrow. We could go to sleep tonight and not wake up in the morning. Perhaps these things are unlikely, but they are not impossible.

Solomon is doing something interesting here. He is telling his sons to not go in to the forbidden woman, sometimes known as the adulterous woman. He has listed a couple of reasons for that – spiritual standing with God, your reputation amongst men, and possible determents to prosperity.

But here he begins a new reason, one that is all too true, and yet so rarely heeded. Don’t chase after sinful pleasure, because you’re going to die someday.

And this is the ultimate reason. Look, you could commit all the sins of the world and still prosper and still have a good reputation. You could get away with it, but then you’re going to die. And that may not be far off. It may be tonight.

We will all die, and we will face judgment. God will judge us according to our thoughts, words, and deeds. That’s right. It’s not just about doing the right thing, it’s about THINKING the right thing too. We will be held accountable for every sin.

And the wages of sin is death. Not just the physical death that we will all encounter, but an eternal death in hell.

Solomon is telling his sons to consider where they stand with God now in preparation for that day. Don’t put it off, thinking you can worry about it tomorrow. We may not have one.

One that day, it’s not going to be about how good we are. Let’s face it, we all at least thought an evil thought, which is enough to get us tossed into hell forever. Most of us have acted on those thoughts occasionally. It’s going to be able who we have with us.

In His death on the Cross, Jesus took upon Himself our sins. He paid the price that we owe. If we repent and believe in Him, He will be our advocate with the Father. If we reject Him, we will stand before the Father on our own.

It’s so easy to wait until tomorrow. You may end up on your deathbed, desperately trying to figure out where you went wrong. Worse still, maybe you won’t even consider it then.

The money pit

2009-11-16T17:40:00.000-08:00

[Avoid the forbidden woman] “lest strangers take their fill of your strength, and your labors go to the house of a foreigner,”
-Proverbs 5:10

When I worked in the court system, I came across the case of a man who was arrested for violation of a protective order. He was divorced from his wife, and due to various circumstances (some his fault, and some beyond his control), a protective order was granted against him. He was no longer allowed to see his children. He was broke and could not pay child support, but he did find a little money to buy some cloths for his kids. He left them on the doorstep of his ex-wife’s house while no one was home and left.

And he was arrested for violating that order.

I don’t know the full story. Maybe something else happened to suggest that he would be a danger to the kids. I don’t even know what caused the divorce, but I spoke with him some, and I felt sorry for him. I believe that he was really just trying to do something nice for his kids, knowing that he probably wouldn’t be allowed to see them for years. What he told me was that he just wanted to remind them that he was thinking of them, and that he loved them.

So many of our problems in life can be traced back to one point in time, one decision. Usually, it’s our own doing as well. This verse speaks of the consequences of adultery. How much has been lost over that particular sin? How many families destroyed? Not many of them end up in such a terrible situation as the man I met at the courthouse, but how many are today trying to schedule weekends with their kids because of that one moment?

How many people are sending money to an ex every month because of adultery? How many are paying child support because of adultery?

It’s not just adultery that can ruin us either. Any sin has the power to do it. It doesn’t always happen (some sinners flourish), but sin has a way of bringing us to ruin. Pride will cause us to overextend our bank accounts. Selfishness will drive off those who love us. Sex outside of marriage has ruined many people’s lofty dreams when the reality of a pregnancy brings them down to earth. Lying can ruin the trust of your customers. Stealing can land you in jail, without much hope of getting a good job when you are released.

Solomon is telling his sons to stay moral for two reasons. In this section, he is reminding his sons that acting morally will keep you from these traps that will destroy your bank account, reputation, and health.

It doesn’t always happen like this, of course, but it does enough. I can tell you of many people who have been ruined over adultery. I can’t tell you about any who have been ruined by faithfulness.

The other reason Solomon gives to his sons for moral living in a spiritual one, mainly addressed in verse 5 of this chapter.

And this, to me, is the far more important one. After all, the Christian life could quite possibly lead you to prosperity and a healthy life. It could just as easily lead you to a martyr’s death in the Middle East. The Proverbs often give us truisms that are usually true, but not always. This is very important to remember when reading them – they are guides, but not always promises.

And yet, when we are in Christ, the end will always be the same, whether we are gunned down by Muslim extremists or die of old age surrounded by family – eternity with God.

It is not something we can earn of ourselves. God is holy and just, and we have fallen far short of his glory. Maybe it is with an adulterous woman. Maybe it is simple pride that is eating away at us. Whatever it is, we have been overcome with sin. But in the death of Jesus we can be forgiven. He took the punishment for us.

By all means, try to avoid sin. Try to live righteously. But when you fail, repent and believe in Him that you may live. Maybe it’s too late for you to avoid the forbidden woman. It’s not too late to deal with the next life.