Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Crazy Christian Conspiracies


Crazy Christian Conspiracies
Robert Withers

Crazy Christian conspiracies
O how they weary me
They are a trial to my soul
Where did the Gospel go?

Like children who cry to be entertained
We chase conspiracies in sunshine and rain
Forwarding emails to everyone
It’s all about politics, it’s not about the Son

We try to clothe Jesus with anger and hate
We make Him our hit man, if we take the bait
Down to the pig pen of this world’s desires
We trample the Cross, ignoring the cost

We are the lackeys of those who incite and inflame
They feed our base instincts to abuse and to blame
While Christ hung on the Cross to draw all to Himself
We condemn others and dishonor His name

“Blessed are the peacemakers” must not be for us
We are the inquisition! Surely you knew
The rack and the flame, the accusation too
We’ll destroy who we can and let God sort the rest


When we should be shining we walk in the dark
When we should be peaceful we rant and we shout
When we should be loving we harden our hearts
And as to forgiving, you’ve got to be kidding!

Crazy Christian conspiracies
Killing our witness, profaning the Cross
Caricaturing Jesus, turning gold into dross
The Gospel…we’ve lost.

Friday, April 24, 2020

Zinzendorf

"A Christian can be defined as one who has in separable friendship with the Lamb, the slaughtered Lamb."

"The nations know there is a god, but they need to know of the Savior who died for them. Tell them about the Lamb of God till you can tell them no more."

Count Zinzendorf


Thursday, April 16, 2020

Christ's All - Sufficiency


These are some thoughts I sent to the guys in my small group this morning, maybe there is something here for you.

Good morning brothers,

Here are some follow-up thoughts from our reflections on Matthew 5:27 – 48, with an emphasis on verses 43 -48, underlining verse 48.

The other passages we read were Romans 8:29, Colossians 1:28, Ephesians 4:11 – 13, and John 14:7 – 9.

Our collective reaction to the Matthew passage was, “No one can do this.” But is that true? While, as I said Tuesday, Jesus (and other Biblical writers) uses hyperbole and other literary and communication devices, what I didn’t say is that I don’t think Jesus teaches us anything that He doesn’t expect us to see fulfilled in our lives – and I think that when we think otherwise that we set ourselves up for failure.

To be sure, the purpose of the Law was to reveal our sin by forcing us to realize that we can’t keep the Law. But why can’t we keep the Law? It is because we have no power or ability to keep the Law. However, what is true of the Old Covenant of death is not true under the New Covenant of life – this is a primary distinction between the covenants. In the New Covenant, as new creations in Jesus Christ, the Law of God is written in our hearts and the Holy Spirit lives within us, indeed the Father and the Son live within us, and we are called to learn to live by the Holy Spirit of God – we are called to allow Christ to live in us and through us. (See John 15:1 – 5; Galatians 2:20).

A fundamental question when we look at a passage that challenges us is, “Am I going to look at my insufficiency or at God’s all – sufficiency?” Are we going to read the Bible through the lens of the Bible or through the lens of our natural thinking? In other words, are we going to allow the Bible to interpret itself, and the Holy Spirit to lead us in this process, or is our default going to be what “we” think about passages, what we “feel” about passages? Are we looking to God’s all – sufficiency or at our insufficiency? (See 1 Corinthians 1:18 – 2:16).

Glen has often said to us that, “We need the Holy Spirit.” One of the things this means is that we are to be men who live in the Holy Spirit, and who have the Holy Spirit living in them – by extension this means that we no longer live the way we used to live, and we no longer live as the world lives – because we have the very life of God living within us. The very experiences of the faithful men and women of the Bible are to be our experiences – in fact, the relationship that Jesus  Christ has with the Father is to be the very relationship that we have with the Father through Jesus Christ (see John chapters 13 – 17, especially chapter 17).

I haven’t said it for a long time, but if Satan can’t keep us from an initial experience of salvation, he will do his best to rob us of our identity! If we don’t know who Christ is in us and who we are in Christ, then we’ll always see our insufficiency and miss Christ’s all - sufficiency. As Paul writes, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” This isn’t about our abilities – we have none; it is all about Christ and His glory – and He is glorified when we live as He lives, and we live as He lives when He lives in us.

Jesus Christ expects us to be overcomers (Romans 8:26 – 39; 1 John 4:4; Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26 – 28; 3:5, 12, 21). Christ does not give us commands that, in Him, cannot be fulfilled in us – to think otherwise is to think under the Old Covenant. This is not about us, this is all about Jesus Christ and His glory – it is about us living lives that glorify Jesus Christ. Jesus does not set us up for guilt and failure – He opens a door for abundant living, joyous living, powerful living! (John 10:10).

Let us learn to be “perfect (mature, complete) even as our Father in heaven is perfect”. Let us embrace and respond to this call of Jesus Christ!

This is not about our insufficiency, it is about Christ’s all – sufficiency.

1 John 3:1 – 3.

I love you!

Bob


Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Can We Tell the Difference?

It seems like a good time to ponder Ecclesiastes, a reminder of the vanity and emptiness of so much of what we value - the present distress ought to cause us to recalibrate our priorities, but I fear it hasn't.

Here's a quote to ponder...I wonder if we can tell the difference between a wise person and a foolish person. Between a wise leader and a foolish leader.

"Words from the mouth of a wise man are gracious, while the lips of a fool consume him; the beginning of his talking is folly and the end of it it wicked madness." Ecc. 10:12 - 13.

What do you think? Can we tell the difference? Can I ? Can you?

Saturday, April 11, 2020

An Easter Poem by Jeremiah Denton




"The soldiers stare, then drift away,
Young John finds nothing he can say,
The veil is rent; the deed is done;
And Mary holds her only son.

His limbs grow stiff; the night grows cold,
But naught can loose that mother’s hold.
Her gentle, anguished eyes seem blind,
Who knows what thoughts run through her mind?

Perhaps she thinks of last week’s palms,
With cheering thousands off’ring alms
Or dreams of Cana on the day
She nagged him till she got her way.

Her face shows grief but not despair,
Her head, though bowed, has faith to spare,
For even now she could suppose
His thorns might somehow yield a rose.

Her life with Him was full of signs
That God writes straight with crooked lines.
Dark clouds can hide the rising sun,
And all seem lost, when all is won!"

Admiral Jeremiah Denton, Vietnam, Easter 1969
Written as a POW

Monday, April 6, 2020

This devotional from Charles Haddon Spurgeon seems to be a "Word in due season" to me. Our life in Christ is organic, He is the Vine and we are the branches. Christ is our nature, displacing all that has gone before Him. As Paul writes, "...old things passed away, new things have come" (2 Cor. 5:17). In this present distress, let us not live as who and what we once were outside of Jesus Christ, let us live as who are are in Him, the sons and daughters of the living God. For as He is, so are we in this time of distress (1 John 4:17). The creation is not groaning that we would live as we once were, but rather that we would live as the sons and daughters of the living God (Romans 8:18 - 25). 

Why do we eat pigs food when we could live in the House of our Father? (Luke 15:16 - 17).

From Spurgeon:

"The trees of the Lord are full of sap."
Psalm 104:16

Without sap the tree cannot flourish or even exist. Vitality is essential to a Christian. There must be life--a vital principle infused into us by God the Holy Spirit, or we cannot be trees of the Lord. The mere name of being a Christian is but a dead thing, we must be filled with the spirit of divine life. This life is mysterious. We do not understand the circulation of the sap, by what force it rises, and by what power it descends again. So the life within us is a sacred mystery. Regeneration is wrought by the Holy Spirit entering into man and becoming man's life; and this divine life in a believer afterwards feeds upon the flesh and blood of Christ and is thus sustained by divine food, but whence it cometh and whither it goeth who shall explain to us? 


What a secret thing the sap is! Hidden below the surface of the soil the roots search for the life force of the tree. This work is done down in the dark. Our root is Christ Jesus, and our life is hid in him; this is the secret of the Lord. The source of the Christian life is as secret as the life itself. How permanently active is the sap in the cedar! In the Christian the divine life is always full of energy--not always in fruit- bearing, but in inward operations. 


The believer's graces are not every one of them in constant motion, but his life never ceases to palpitate within. He is not always working for God, but his heart is always living upon him. As the sap manifests itself in producing the foliage and fruit of the tree, so with a truly healthy Christian, his grace is externally manifested in his walk and conversation. If you talk with him, he cannot help speaking about Jesus. If you notice his actions you will see that he has been with Jesus. He has so much sap within, that it must fill his conduct and conversation with life.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Musings in Samuel (10)




“Now the people of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and were glad to see it. The cart came into the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite and stood there where there was a large stone; and they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to Yahweh. The Levites took down the ark of Yahweh and the box that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone; and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices that day to Yahweh. When the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned to Ekron that day.

“These are the golden tumors which the Philistines returned for a guilt offering to Yahweh: one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, one for Ekron; and the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both of fortified cities and of country villages. The large stone on which they set the ark of Yahweh is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite.” (1 Samuel 6:13 – 18).

Here comes a new cart with two boxes on it; one box is the Ark of the Covenant, the other box contains golden mice and golden tumors - a guilt offering to Yahweh from the Philistines. The Philistines were aware of Yahweh’s dealing with the Egyptians, they were aware of the danger of “hardening” their hearts, and they were aware that they ought to “give glory to the God of Israel” (1 Samuel 6:4 – 6). They also had a sense that there ought to be a certain way in which they handled the Ark (1 Samuel 6:2).

Sometimes the children of the world and the adversaries of God’s Kingdom have a greater sense of the Divine than those who profess to know God. I have often witnessed a greater reverence for prayer and Divine things from the children of the world than from professing Christians who treat the Holy One as a kind of ATM machine or magic genie. Professing Christians often have a presumption about them that the sincere children of men rightly consider sacrilegious. Why have we lost a sense of the Holy One? How has this happened? Can it be recovered?

The people of Beth-shemesh were initially glad to see the Ark, but they wanted the Ark on their own terms. The Levites initially did their job by handling the Ark, removing it from the cart and placing it on a large stone – but then the Levites failed God and the people by allowing the people to look into the Ark:

“He [God] struck down some of the men of Beth-shemesh because they had looked into the ark of Yahweh. He struck down of all the people, 50,070 men, and the people mourned because Yahweh had struck the people with a great slaughter. The men of Beth-shemesh said, “Who is able to stand before Yahweh, this holy God? And to whom shall He go up from us?” So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, “The Philistines have brought back the ark of Yahweh; come down and take it up to you.”” (1 Samuel 6:19 – 21).

The Philistines repented and offered guilt offerings when Yahweh judged them, the Israelites of Beth-shemesh mourned but, as far as we can see, they did not repent. Here again we see the children of the world, in this case the adversaries of the people of God, with a greater honesty and sensitivity than the people of God. Ought this not to convict those of us who profess to follow the Way?

We say we want the Ark, the Presence of God, in our midst – but we want it on our own terms to do with it as we want. We will take the cart and the cows and we’ll sacrifice them and we’ll have our worship services and we’ll rejoice and have a good time, but we will not reverence the Holy One. Should God hold us accountable we’ll simply ask Him to move on and hope that the people of Kiriath-jearim will come and take God and His Ark from us – thank you very much.

When we turn the holy things of God into Jesus junk, God will hold us accountable. To whom much is given much is required. When we merchandise the Holy One the way celebrities are merchandised, we will be held accountable. We have an earthly example of this the way Prince Harry wanted to use his royal title to make money – the Queen would have none of it. If this is true of an earthly monarch, how much truer is it of the King of kings and Lord of lords? Will the Father allow His Son to be made merchandise of? Will the Son allow His Father’s House to be made a place of profit and marketing and merchandise?

In our present distress, I occasionally hear about our need to pray – but I have yet to hear about our need to repent. We are a barbaric people, a people who have sold souls for gain, a people who delight in wickedness, a people and a church who believe we can flaunt our sin and reject the Holy One.

Yet the Stone of witness remains (1 Samuel 6:18); Christ desires us to come to Him and accept His love, forgiveness, and reconciliation – He desires that we, by His grace, repent and confess our sins and take up our cross and follow Him.

Let us confess our sins, repent of our sinful ways, and intercede on behalf of a world in darkness. Perhaps God will grant us hearts for repentance, perhaps we can emerge from this distress with a new appreciation for His goodness and the worth of our neighbor.

He is the Holy One. The Church is His sanctuary. His Ark is holy. We are not called to mimic a theme park – we are called to display the Crucified One.