Saturday Night Thoughts

It’s Saturday night and I’m preparing for our worship time tomorrow.  Eternity is weighing in the balance every Sunday morning.  There are going to be people in your church who may never be there again.  And you have one chance to impact them for eternity.  That is why I always feel the weight of the pulpit every Sunday morning.  It is an awesome responsibility and one that I know I am not up for.  But thanks be to God that He is able and that it is His work.

If you happen to be reading this before your service, pray for those who will be with you.  Eternity hangs in the balance.

Headed to St Louis

God has surely looked down on us with compassion.  The car moving company has delivered our van 2 weeks early and so tomorrow, we are on our way to St Louis to pick her up.  I would never have thought that I would miss a 3 ton hunk of metal but it will be really good to have her back.  Once we get it registered, we will have finally completed the last item on our “move to Mooresville” list.  So I guess come next week we can’t make the excuse that we are still moving in

 Blessings

Being Good is Not Enough

God does not call a man to goodness.  He calls him to holiness.  Goodness is a halfway house that lacks substance.  It can be obtained by hard work, careful observation of circumstances and moral character building.   A man can be one of good character, upright and have a reputation in the community that is honorable.  Proverbs abound about a man who is good.  He is thrifty and wise.  He follows the penny saved is a penny earned philosophy (hat tip to Ben Franklin for that one).  His is as good as his word.  A good man loves his wife and children.  A good man is a hard-worker.  A good man is simply good.

However, goodness does not require a complete spiritual conversion.  It is like a tortoise shell found by the lake.  The exterior appears to contain life but inside it is empty.  Goodness is achievable outside of Christ.  Man can be moral (many of your neighbors are moral people) without God.  Man can have the outward appearance of rightness without inner purity.  The Sermon on the Mount screams that one thought.  Morality is not enough.  Holiness is the standard.

Holiness is not reachable though unless there is a dramatic conversion.  It takes spiritual surgery to remove the cancer of the self.  It is a purity that cannot be obtained through work but through surrender.  Purity is a God-given grace that is both declarative and progressive.  He has declared His children to be pure.  That is not simply a wishful thought on God’s behalf.  Through the cross and through the applied blood of Christ’s atonement we are justified and both made right with God and made holy to the Lord.  His declaration of our holiness is not because of our present outward standing but due solely to His holiness which is imputed to us.  On the other side of the coin, purity is also progressive.  It is a work of God in the present life of a man to continually remove the stain of sin.  It is a daily, hourly cutting away the old man and putting on the new man. 

God does not call us to goodness but to holiness.  As His children we need to guard against living a life that is merely good or merely good enough.  Commit yourselves to holiness.

Pastoral Politics

I try to avoid politics at most any level.  It isn’t that I am against the art of political maneuvering but that it goes against my nature.  I especially avoid the mixture of local/state/national politics with my pastoral duties.  As proclaimers of God’s Word, we are called to speak to the culture and to expose its failings to meet His standards.  That is the role that we find the prophets engaging in when Israel’s culture and political leadership failed to rise to the level of God’s holiness.  These prophets were not afraid to take on the politicians of their day and to take them to the proverbial woodshed when necessary.  Their view of God and the influence of His Word on their lives bled over and colored every aspect of their ministry, to include their political view.

 But what is not found is an union between their pastoral duties and the political realm.  For those of us who have the awesome responsibility of standing in the pulpit to proclaim, “thus saith the Lord”, it is a fine line between exposing God’s Word as it speaks to political issues and crossing over into a mixture of the two.  A case in point would be the controversy over the pastor of Barrack Obama. 

Has he crossed that invisible line between speaking to the culture the word of God or has he spoken to the culture just a message.   What do you think?  Where do you think the line should be at and how would you counsel someone on avoiding mixing the two?

Connections

From a Barna Report:

Results from a new study by The Barna Group reveal that a majority of Americans say their most important personal relationship is not with God, even though the U.S. has a global reputation for being religious. Family surpassed their Heavenly Father as the key personal connection. However, when asked to identify the most important group or network in their life, colleagues from their church topped the list, mentioned by three out of every ten adults.

Overall, seven out of ten adults mentioned family or family members as their most significant connection. One-third said their entire nuclear family is tops, while one-quarter (22%) named their spouse and one-sixth (17%) identified their children. (An additional 3% mentioned their parents as their key relationship.)

The only other relationship mentioned by at least three percent was various iterations of people’s deity. God, Jesus Christ, Allah and the Trinity were among the names listed by one out of every five adults (19%).

Although adults listed numerous groups or networks that they deem to be most important, those groups generally fit into five categories. Three out of every ten adults (29%) said their church was the most significant group affiliation. The people they affiliate with at their place of work represented the top choice for two out of every ten people (18%), followed by loose associations of friends that regularly gather together (14%), a hobby club or social group (12%) and interaction with people in the neighborhood (7%).

Various subgroups displayed divergent priorities.

• People 25 or younger listed friends as their most critical network; church ranked fifth on their hierarchy. In contrast, adults over 25 ranked church as their key social group, followed by their work relationships.

George Barna highlighted one of several intriguing outcomes: “People were more than 50 percent more likely to say that their church’s congregation is their most significant group than to say that God represents their most important personal connection. That certainly reflects the interpersonal comfort that millions of people have developed at their church, but also indicates that people may have forgotten the ultimate reason for belonging to a Christian church.”

From me:

While it is really good that family occupies our most valued relationships, they can never replace a vibrant living relationship with Jesus Christ.  When asked about my friendships, I usually acknowledge that Kellie is my closests and dearest “earthly” friend.  I just want to make sure I don’t put her in God’s place.

What do you think about the Barna report?

Good Friday?

Levi asked me the other day why we call this Friday “Good Friday”.  It was a great question and makes a lot of sense.  From a worldly perspective this Friday doesn’t represent much that could be called good.  The leader of a great moral crusade was turned in by a close associate to the authorities.  Those same authorities set up a kangaroo court that employed illegal methods to bring about a conviction.  They pushed for the death penalty even though the law neither demanded it nor allowed for it.  This great leader suffered humiliation that today’s Supreme Court would never allow.  He was stripped of his dignity and his clothing.  He was tortured for hours prior to the execution of his sentence.  There was no appeal.  There was no mercy.  The one pardon that was available was given to a murderer.  Being innocent of the charges trumped up against him, he was executed alongside of common thieves in the public arena.  There doesn’t seem much that would make this a good Friday.

But we do not view the death of Christ from a worldly vantage.  Instead we are compelled to examine His death from God’s perspective.  Isaiah writes that He was “pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities…but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” (Isa 53:5,6)  It is a good Friday because it is the day that atonement was made on our behalf.  Paul notes that we are “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation (or atonement) in His blood through faith.” (Rom 3:24-25)  We call it a good Friday because there was a transaction that took place on that hill we call Golgotha.  Our humiliation became His humiliation.  Our suffering became His suffering.  Our sin became His.  “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Cor 4:21) 

So this Friday is not simply another day.  For those who have the day off from work, it is not simply a vacation day.  It is a sacred day in which to remember the work that He accomplished on our behalf.  It is indeed, a very Good Friday.

Selah!

Sunday

Full.  That is about the best word I can use to describe how my soul feels right about now.  There are just some seasons in your life when God seems to pour down blessing after blessing (it sure makes up for the dry ones   Yesterday was our first Sunday at FBC and it was a bit overwhelming.  Not in a bad way but because God just seemed to be very, very good at that moment.  Our prayers, waiting, watching and hoping all seemed to coalesce at the 1000 hour.  But probably the very best part was prayerwalking last night.  As a congregation, we went outside the 4 walls of the building and spent time in the neighborhoods of Mooresville, praying for spiritual and physical needs.  It was a great reminder to me that our whole purpose in gathering together as a body is then to turn and go out into our world with the gospel.

This week is Holy Week if you follow the liturgical calender.  In the middle of your busyness make sure to take some time to meditate on the passion of our Lord.  The cross was due to our sin and not His.  But praise be to God He took it on our behalf.

The Ordinariness of Christ

Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to have grown up with Jesus?  I have spoken with the kids about this and they seem to think that it would have been annoying.  Jesus always did what was right.  He never needed to be in trouble.  He never talked back to Mom and Dad.  He didn’t complain about going to Sabbath worship, ect, ect, ect.  I’m not exactly sure about their viewpoint on Christ’s siblings and friends perspective although we do know that prior to the crucifixion and resurrection they didn’t believe (John 7:5) 

But what about everyone else?  Did they sense that there was something more to this Jesus Ben-Joseph of Nazareth?  Probably so from His character but there wasn’t anything to His outside appearance that would have attracted attention.  The prophet Isaiah tells us that “He had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.” (Isa 53:2)  This Jesus lived an ordinary life, if you can call a virgin conception and a sinless life ordinary.      He suffered pain like we suffer pain.  He had to go through the toddler years and teething just like everyone else.  Puberty with all of its struggles were His.  There were friends who teased and friends who consoled.  He experienced the death of relatives and the suffocating presence of the occupying Roman army.   Even the presence of temptation was a constant for Jesus.  While He never sinned, the temptations He faced throughout His life were the same ones we face (Heb 4:14-16).  In short, His life was much like ours today. 

That is what makes the cross so incredible.  The God-man came out of obscurity, living a life that seemed so ordinary but whose death accomplished the incredible.  He identified with each one of us in order that He might be our kinsman-redeemer. (Hebrews 2:9, 14)  His was a common life on our behalf.

Isaiah 53

There are few passages of Scripture that resound with the vividness as that which is found in Isaiah 53.  Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), Isaiah was able to see through the centuries and record in intricate detail the crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah.  This suffering servant passage continues the main thought of the previous chapters by revealing the servant of God who will bring salvation and redemption not just to the house of Israel but to the whole world.  Chapter 53 begins the climatic conclusion to this tremendous promise of a saviour.  God is not done with man.  Despite our sin, despite our rejection of Him, He continues to work in order to redeem for Himself a people who will be “holy unto the Lord”.  And it is to the working out of this redemption that Isaiah brings into focus.

 Chapter 53 continues to answer the question of how God will bring comfort to a people who have been experiencing His rejection. (40:1, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”)  If God will bring comfort and if He will raise up one who will bring justice even though bruised (42:1-4), then how will this come about?  How will God bring good out of bad?  How will He bring redemption from sin?  How will be bring deliverance when all that is seen is bondage?  Or as Isaiah writes in 53:1, “And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” 

The rest of Isaiah 53 answers that question.  Salvation is found in the suffering servant.  It is found through a man who lived a simple life, died a significant death and lives again to bring a secure future for His people.  As we draw nearer to Easter Sunday I encourage you to focus on Isaiah 53 and meditate with me on its truths.

Maranatha!

New Beginnings

Tonight in our family devotions, I read to the kids the account of God’s call to Abram to leave his country, his family, his previous way of life (Genesis 12).  In doing so, God pledges Himself to be Abram’s blessing and his protection.  God pledges Himself to use Abram to bless many.  Moses records that all of this was despite a lack of knowledge on Abram’s part of where he was going or what awaited him there.  He lived among a people who were not his people (the Canaanites), never owning the land himself.  All God desired from Abram was faith that God would be who He said He was and that He would do what He said He would do.  In other words, Abram was to have faith that God was faithful.

Today we crossed over from Louisville Kentucky into Indiana.  Following I-65N we arrived in Mooresville being conscious that God was again proving Himself faithful.  We are trusting that God will be our blessing, that He will protect and that if we remain usable, He will do what only He can do in and through us.  My desire is to be like Abram living among a foreign people…purposefully demonstrating the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ in every situation.  I’m no Abram and the people in Mooresville are no Canaanites.  But I am committed to being a light in a dark place and to seeing my fellow Christ-followers at FBC living lives that reflect their Master’s glory.

Tomorrow will be our first full day in Mooresville.  I wonder if Abram felt the way I do when he crossed into the land?