Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Glorifying Christ in Marriage




INTRODUCTION Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He 
may exalt you.” I Peter 5:6 
 
     I feel the need to state at the beginning that the following discourse is not to be received and then carried out as a list of do's and don'ts.  As if by simply applying these truths to your marriage you can achieve a successful relationship that will be pleasing to God.  We do not need any more rules or laws to keep.  There is already a law given by God, and it's purpose was not that by keeping it  to make life better or somehow sanctify us.  Rather it's purpose was to make us aware of our sinfulness before a holy God.  “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” Romans 3:20
     Before applying the following truths to our marriage, we must first proclaim with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 We must approach our roles in marriage trembling and joyful before God, throwing off self and pride, clinging only to the cross of Christ and Him crucified. Then and only then, we may take our place in the glorious picture of marriage. Portraying Christ and His beloved Church upon the stage of the world. Proclaiming the love of Christ for His people to a lost and dying culture.

  Defining Marriage From the Bible

  Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Matthew 19:4-6

     Christ here, referring back to creation, describes marriage as the union of two people becoming one person. A union sealed by God and forbidden for man to separate. It is because of this “two becoming one” that allows Paul to compare a man's love for his wife to the love for his own body, for indeed she is his own flesh. Paul goes on to compare a man's relationship to his wife to Christ's relationship to His Church. He further says, quoting Genesis 2:24, that this is a “profound mystery”

      So, for whom is this a mystery? Psalm 104:24 says, “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all.” and Jeremiah 10:12 declares, “It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding stretched out the heavens.” God did not create first and figure out the details later!  He created with knowledge, He established with wisdom, He planned with understanding!

     Wisdom speaks in Proverbs 8:23 and says, “Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” and again in vs. 30, “then I was beside Him, like a master workman, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always.” God did not just create man and woman and then get the idea for marriage, nor did it suddenly come to Him after Christ established His church, all the striking similarities between the two and think, “I'll have Paul mention that in one of his letters.” No, He planned it all from the beginning. From the beginning wisdom was with Him. From the beginning He established how the world should and would work! Marriage as a picture of Christ and His Church was not an afterthought for God. It was not a mystery for Him; it was a mystery for us, until Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit revealed to us what God in His infinite wisdom had hidden through the ages.
    
     Marriage is a play, written by a Master Playwright, to be performed on the stage of the world, throughout all time, demonstrating to the watching world: this is how Christ loves His Church, this is how God loves His own. The husband, as one of the primary actors in this production, has a sacred duty to present it rightly. If we mistreat our wives, we are saying that, in this same way, Christ mistreats the Church. If we are sullen, prideful, abusive, manipulative, threatening or any other perversion of human relations, we are, in effect, speaking this of Christ. To pervert this role as husband is to blaspheme Christ. This is why the world, in their hatred of God, despise marriage and try to distort this picture. This is why we cannot look to our culture or secularism for answers to a Godly and God honoring marriage, but must look to God's word alone and His wisdom.

     In the book of James we are told to only ask for wisdom, in faith, and God, who is a liberal giver, will not keep it from you (James 1:5) but in Proverbs 8 we are warned by Wisdom, “whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” vs. 35, 36. If we reject the wisdom of God and follow our culture's wisdom, we become like the rest of the world, shaking our fist at God and become lovers of death.

        Now then, if this is God's wisdom on marriage, what is exactly being said here? Wives, you are to submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. The church's relationship to Christ is given as you example. Husbands, our example that we are given to follow in marriage is Christ Himself. It is put as follows,”Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” Ephesians 5:25

     Now Paul keeps going on, as if he has forgotten about marriage and is swept away in speaking about Christ's love for the church, but he is still speaking also of marriage. “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.” vs. 26, 27 We know that he is still speaking of marriage because of the next verse, “In the same way husbands should love their wives...” vs 28.

       So as we look at Christ as our example as husbands, we will look not only at how He gave Himself up for us in the past, but how He has continued to express His love for us up till even now.
Christ's giving up of Himself for the church did not begin at the cross, nor did His demonstrations of His love for us end there! Yes, it is true that Christ's greatest act of love for us was in His laying down His life on the cross, by this we know His love (1 John 3:16), but He was demonstrating that same kind of love from the beginning of time and He continues to express that love even to this present hour.

Christ our Example

     So now let us look at how Christ has given up His life for us and how He now expresses His love for us and follow Him as we, by the grace of God, love our wives in the same manner.

1. Christ loved us when we were far from lovely!

 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” Romans 5:6-10

     While we were still enemies of God, hating God, by nature dead to God, walking in hideous sinfulness, Christ loved us! God the Father sent His only Son to die for us! How then are we to deal with our wives, even when they only demonstrate contempt and hatred for us? We are to love them as Christ loved us! Our love for them, our actions toward them are not to be determined by their stance and attitude towards us. Yes, we must work to guide and counsel them, through prayer and the word, but we are still to love them with the love of Christ.

  2. Christ made peace with us!

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Ephesians 2:13-19

       What do you do with enmity when it comes between you and your wife? What do you do in the face of hostility? Do you attempt to assuage it? Do you use soft answers to turn away wrath? (Proverbs 15:1) Or do you escalate it? During a time of conflict, we may be tempted, through our own sinful pride, to hold on to our assumed rightfulness, but when we were at enmity with God, even though He was right, even though He was actively against us because of our rebellion in unrighteousness, He broke down the wall between us and made peace with us. We are not God, obviously, and we cannot change the heart of our wives, but it is still our duty to love our wives and seek peace. We must put away our pride and love them as Christ has loved us and actively seek to initiate peace with them.

  3. Christ is faithful to His Church!

  “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” Hebrews 13:4

     Christ does not look at other churches. He does not desire that His Church was more like His neighbor's church. We are to love our wives and only our wives like Christ loves His Church! Wandering eyes and unfairly comparing our wives gives a distorted image of Christ as He loves the Church. To accurately depict Christ in this we must desire and love on our own wives.

  4. Christ works to sanctify the Church and cleanses her through the word.

  “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.” Ephesians 5:25b-26

       We, as Christ following husbands, have the great duty of washing our wives with the pure water of the Word of God. We are to edify our wives and encourage our wives with God's word. Why are we to do this? Ephesians 5:27 would seem to indicate that God in His infinite wisdom uses us in this act to work in the sanctification of our wives. Through our loving edification of our wives through the Word, we are aiding the Holy Spirit in sanctifying our wives. Just as Christ, through the Holy Spirit is washing us and sanctifying us so that He might present us to Himself glorious, without spot or blemish, we are taking an active role in that sanctification process with our wives. What an honor! What a sobering responsibility! Not only are we, to some degree, responsible for the spiritual growth of our wives, but also to neglect this responsibility is to pervert the image of Christ to the world and to blaspheme His name. We must also take care in this duty to use the Word lovingly with our wives. We must not be guilty of beating them with the rod of the Word. Instead, we are instructed to lovingly wash them and sanctify them. Jesus, when He dealt with those that He said were not His sheep, dealt harshly with them and used the Word to cut them, but when He dealt with His sheep, His Church He handled them lovingly, even those in great sin. Likewise, we must not hit our wives over the head with the Word of God. We must not use it to shame them or debase them, but gently encourage them and build them up in the Lord. This is indeed one of the greatest challenges of the husband, but if we fail in this, we have missed out on one of the greatest honors with which God has entrusted us.

  5. Christ cares for the needs of His Church.

  “And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19

        Not only are we to care for our wives emotional and spiritual needs, but we are to provide for their physical needs to the best of our ability. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, “if any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he has denied the faith, and is worse that an infidel.” As much as it is possible, we are to provide for the physical needs of our family. Circumstances may prevent us from adequately caring for our family, but as much as we can do, we must do. To do nothing while our family suffers is a sin that the Bible compares to apostasy.

6. Christ intercedes in prayer for His Church.

  “6 I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17

       Here Christ prays for His Church and only His Church. (vs 19) He prays for our protection (vs 15) and for our sanctification. (vs 17) This is a great duty, that if we neglect, we neglect to our wives ruin and our own shame. We must be diligent to pray with our wives and we must, above all, pray for our wives. Notice Christ says that He prays not for the world (vs 9) but for them which the Father had given Him. We should pray for others, but we must have a special burden to pray for our wives. This obligation is ours and ours alone.

The Church as the wife's example

Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” Ephesians 5:22-24

     Early theologians spoke often of the church as the “visible church” and the “invisible church”. The visible church being composed of all people everywhere that claimed to believe and confessed Christ. Those that we see with our physical eyes as the Church of Christ. The invisible church refers to the Church as the Father sees it. Those that truly believe and are being sanctified by the Word of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus referred to these two groups as the wheat and the weeds. Augustine said of the church, “many sheep are without and many wolves are within.” Paul says, “The Lord knows them that are His.” 2 Timothy 2:19 The invisible church is the church as God sees it. This Church, the invisible church, is the church that wives are to emulate. The Church that is faithful to her Husband, Christ, and although not yet perfect, is seeking and desiring Christ.

1. The Church submits to Christ and obeys Him.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” John 14:15

 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.” 1 John 5:3
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

Likewise, wives, be subject to you own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. Do not let your adorning be external – the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear – but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious. For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.” 1 Peter 3:1-6

        Notice that according to Peter, wives are not to be submissive to their husbands based on their husband's worthiness, for he says that submissiveness to even unbelieving husbands might be a means of their conversion. By watching your lifestyle and by your submitting to them in your role as wife, they might see this and be won to faith. Submitting does not mean to be a slave, obeying without question every command of your husband as unto a ruthless dictator. Obviously, we are to “obey God rather that man.” Acts 5:29 We are not to obey in sinfulness. Submissiveness means to not be quarrelsome, not disagreeable, not starting fights, but to be agreeable, peaceable and patient. Titus 2:5 says to be “self controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive.” “That the Word of God may not be reviled” or blasphemed. Your conduct and attitude at home in the marriage says something about the Word of God to your husband, believing of unbelieving, and to the world who is watching. If you claim to be a lover of God, a follower of Christ and yet the world sees you railing against and nagging on your husband, they will not only think little of your testimony, but it will be an occasion for them to blaspheme God and His Word as well. Just as the husband portrays the love of Christ for His Church to the world, so also the wife is displaying to an unbelieving culture how God's people respond to such a loving and holy God.

2. The Church loves Christ.

 You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep His charge, His statutes, His rules, and His commandments always.” Deuteronomy 11:1

        Many would say that there is no command for the wife to love her husband, but if the wife is to portray the Church in the picture of marriage, then we must look at how the Church responds to Christ as a guideline for how the wife is to respond to her husband. “We love Him, because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 This does not mean that we will always feel loving towards our husband or wife, but we must always act loving. Just as God loved us, not based on our loveliness, we sometimes must love, in action, our spouse even when they are at their most unlovely moments. We must always strive to demonstrate the love of Christ to our spouse despite their deservedness. Also Titus 2:4 instructs the more mature wives to teach the younger to love their husbands. How are they to teach them unless they have learned to do this themselves? In all of this wives are to follow the example of the ideal church, Christ's Church. The people of God, as God Himself sees them, clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

Conclusion

       For both husbands and wives, this sort of marriage requires us to die to ourselves and to throw ourselves daily on the mercy of God and plead for the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Again, this is not to be taken as a list of new commandments or principles to keep to produce a happy marriage. These are all truths from the sacred scriptures to be taken in context with the Word of God. The same Word of God that reminds us that we are weak and sinful and prone to failure. That tells us to “walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh” Galatians 5:16 This is not a righteousness based on works that we are trying to achieve, this is about the glory of God. This is about glorifying the name of Christ. All of the conflicts, all of the problems that come to us in marriage or any other relationship are not the result of God looking away and Satan slipping one in on us, but it has been ordained by God Himself to achieve glory to Himself and our good through sanctifying us and making us more like Christ.

      Before we can submit to one another in marriage or any other relationship, we must first “submit yourselves therefore to God” James 4:7 and “Humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift us up.” James 4:10

Friday, July 15, 2011

A Violent Faith





From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” Matthew 11:12

    
      John the Baptist has been imprisoned, and he is beginning to doubt if Jesus is the one. The promised Messiah. He sends his disciples to question Jesus, “Are you the one, or should we expect another?” Jesus tells his disciples to go back and tell what they have seen. He then goes back to teaching and lays on the crowd this teaching that seems so out of place with everything else that Jesus has taught up to this point.

      The literal translation of the first part of verse 12 is, “The kingdom of heaven violences” or as some translations put it, “The kingdom of heaven is advancing violently.” It could be interpreted two different ways and indeed Jesus could have meant it to be taken both ways. Both the kingdom of heaven is being reacted against violently (as in the case of John the Baptist or even the reception of Jesus by the religious leaders, He could even be foreshadowing His approaching death) and the kingdom of heaven is advancing violently and those who enter in do so in a violent way.


      But in this second interpretation we have this problem of, “What is the nature of this violence?” and “Who or what is this violence against?”

    Is this violence against others? Is Jesus suggesting that we take up swords and violently bring the reality of God's kingdom to earth? Or is this another reversal of the way that we look at the world and our relationship to the things of it that Jesus is telling us that we must violently fight against?


      We will look at two different ways in which the Bible tells us that we are to take up arms and fight against our own lives. Not acts of violence upon our own body (self-mutilation or suicide) this is not what we are talking about, but against our own kingdoms, built up in opposition to God's kingdom, and the sin that is reigning in our own lives.


      First, let's look at our situation at salvation:


     “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Ephesians 2:1-3

      Before Christ we are dead to the things of God and definitely not concerned with building His kingdom. But we are building our own kingdom. Piling on all the things that please us, with no concern for pleasing God or shining forth His glory. But it's even worse than that. The Bible describes us as enemies of God (Romans 5:10) before Christ died for us. We are building our own kingdom in direct opposition to God's kingdom. We are against God and (while chained in our sins) rebelliously throwing off the idea of servitude to Him as something to be despised. This is our position when Jesus comes and burst through the doors and rescues of from our sinful imprisonment.

      So now what? Did Jesus do all of this just to give us a new, better life? A more peaceful marriage? A better career? More friends? No! He has not called us to Himself only to further build up our own kingdom of luxury, but instead He calls to us, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” Luke 9:23-24 Jesus is not calling us to make our lives better but He is calling us to lay our lives down.

      Are you getting the idea? The violence that we are to perpetrate is against our own kingdom. We are called to violently tear down our kingdom and begin working with Christ in building His. In Christ we have changed our allegiance! We are to be traitors to our old country and patriots to Christ's!

      This may look differently for different people, but for some it may look exactly like this. Friends and family might think you've lost your mind. “Don't you know that's not the way it works?” Some might say. “You're doing it all wrong!” But isn't this what Jesus teaches all through His ministry? He'll say, “The world is like this.” and then He'll say, “But the kingdom of God is like this.” and it will be a complete turn around from the way the world seems to work. “The first shall be last!” (Matthew 19:30) or how about “Don't worry about what you are going to eat or wear or where you are going to live!?” (Matthew 6:31) Seriously?! Isn't that what life is all about? What do you mean, don't worry about it? If we don't worry about it, then what will we eat? Where will we live? But what does Jesus tell us to 'worry' about? “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”(Matthew 6:33)

    
      Do we live like this? Are we violently tearing down our own kingdom and building God's? Are we laying down our lives only to pick up a cross and follow Christ? Is this not what He has called us to? And not just pastors or missionaries or the few religious wackos, but everyone He calls!

      The second type of violence prescribed by the Bible is against sin and it's power in our lives. Listen to the language Paul uses in describing how we are to react against this sin as we see it present in ourselves.


     Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5 “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24 “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Romans 8:13 “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.” 2 Corinthians 10:5-6

     Put to death! Crucify! Destroy! Take captive! Punish! Do you see the warlike quality to Paul's speech? We are at war!

      Listen to what John Piper says on this,
“There is a mean streak in the Christian life. There is a violence. There is a militancy. But it is exactly the opposite of selfish violence against people. It is a violence against the "flesh" or against "the deeds of the body" – our flesh and our body. The Christian is not mean to others. He is mean to his own sinfulness – his own flesh.”

     We are at war! Not with individuals, not with ethnic groups, not with governments, but with our own fleshly desires!


      The violent take it by force! Jesus doesn't call wimps. He calls us to man up (men and women) and lay it all down! “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” 1 Corinthians16:13 Not by our own strength, but in His. “Come to me,” Jesus says, “all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 This is not a life of constant labor that Christ is calling us to. He has done the work to be done. We tried to work out our own righteousness in the past under the law and He called it futile. (Romans 8:3, Hebrews 7:18)  Now He is calling us to rest in Him, to abide in Him. (John 15:1-17)  It's not a matter of try harder, it's a matter of stop resisting and yield to Christ everything. (Romans 6:13)  Stop trying to build your kingdom outside and surrender everything and come inside His kingdom.


      Stop trying to keep up with the world and rest in Christ.







Monday, July 4, 2011

Amazing Grace Part Six: Will Be Forever Mine



-The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
 The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
 Will be forever mine.-

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

      “And so we will always be with the Lord.” That is Heaven. Not to spend eternity reunited with your family and friends, not to be done with your labors here below, not the mansions and the streets of gold, not even the new body, but that we will be always with the Lord and He will be forever ours! 
    
  Does that sound like Heaven to you? To spend eternity glorifying God and enjoying Him forever? The very idea should be bliss, for this is the very purpose of our creation. To glorify God, “Ascribe to the LORD, O heavenly beings, ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name; worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness.” Psalm 29:1-2 And to enjoy Him forever, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Psalm 34:8

    God is the supreme good! In Him (Jesus) all fulness dwells. (Colossians 1:19) How can we help but enjoy Him? Everything that is good is in Him. He is the ultimate prize! Anything in this life, good or bad, can only satisfy for a season, but in Him is eternal satisfaction. Imagine endless days with such a God! This is the ultimate reward!
    
  If such a future doesn't appeal to our souls, then we must examine our hearts and find the cause. Possibly sin has crept in and captured our hearts. We must reject anything that takes the place of God in our hearts as our supreme treasure and prostrate ourselves before Him and plead for Him to show us His beauty and holiness. 
  
  If we cannot see His worthiness to be glorified, and He is not valuable to us above all earthly treasures; then we will never, in this life, live out our divinely appointed purpose and we will never aspire to spend eternity with Him. For such a one to die would not be gain (Philippians 1:21) because they would not see more of Jesus as gain. Admittedly, we are all subject to being dazzled by the things of this world and losing focus, but this should be the exception rather than the rule. If in any area of our life, Jesus is not supreme and precious (1 Peter 2:6) above all then we must fling those things away from us and run to the one who has loved us and saved us by His own blood.

If there be so much delight in God, when we see him only by faith, 1 Pet. 1:8, what will the joy of vision be, when we shall see him face to face! If the saints have found so much delight in God while they were suffering, oh what joy and delight will they have when they are being crowned! If flames are beds of roses, what will it be to lean on the bosom of Jesus! What a bed of roses that will be!”
Thomas Watson

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Amazing Grace Part Five: Grace Claims Us



-Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.-

"And he said to them, 'Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.'  And he told them a parable, saying, 'The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. ’But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.'" (Luke 12:15-21)
      Death! A certainty indeed! How like the rich man in the story are many today. Planning for a future where we can sit back and retire from our labors and do what we want to do. Putting our hope in our 401k's, pensions, etc. There is nothing evil in planning for our future. It is godly and biblical to do so but not to retire from everything and to live to please ourselves. This is never prescribed in the Bible. In fact, if God ever had a retirement plan for Christians it would be this, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21
      The difference, we would say, between the rich man and most like him is that God has not said to them, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you.” But hasn't He? “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” James 4:14 So short are our lives that we could be said to be born in the morning and gone by the night. In the vast scheme of the history of the world, what is our life but a blip on the screen. If all of history were a movie most of us wouldn't be the hero or the heroine or even making a cameo appearance, but we would be more like an extra in the background of one scene. If you are putting all your hopes and dreams on a future of sitting back and taking it easy while the world passes by; you could safely take God's warning to heart.
      This life is a pilgrimage. We are not here to merely make the best of it or enjoy it while we can. God has placed us here to work! While here He may, by His grace, give us many things to enjoy, but we are not meant to live unto those things. “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” James 4:3 We are put here to glorify God and to live unto Him. We are to be delighted in Him, not in His gifts. 
      We are not to hold on tightly to this life and the things of this world, but instead let go of our death grip on this world and cling unto God. In Him is life, our life! We are to spend our time here preparing to spend eternity with the Lord and in the presence of His amazing grace.
The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Romans 13:12-14

Amazing Grace Part Four: Grace Sustains Us



-The Lord has promised good to me.
  His Word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.-

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus,” 2 Timothy 2:1

     Have you experienced the goodness of the Lord? Who of us has not seen Him work mightily in our lives to bring about good for us and glory for Him? He has promised good for us, and we know that we can trust Him, both from our experience and more importantly because, “His Word my hope secures.” We have seen Him be faithful to us, even when we have not been faithful to Him. (2 Timothy 2:13)

     God's promise of good to us does not mean everything is going to necessarily be smooth and without troubles. He has warned us that there may come hardship and persecution and even death, but He has promised good nevertheless. Paul, sitting in prison, tells Timothy not to be ashamed of his testimony of the Lord but to share in his suffering for the gospel. Not by some “grit your teeth and bare it” kind of faith, but by “the power of God, who saved us and called us.” Not because of something wonderful in us “but because of His own purpose and grace, which He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” (2 Timothy 1:8-9)

     Paul wasn't ashamed of his chains, because he knew the God who had allowed them to be placed on him. Paul didn't see God's promise of good as some hope of heaven here on earth, but knew that his hope and his life was in Christ. (Colossians 3:3-4) He knew he had entrusted that life to Him (as indeed all of us have who belong to Christ) and that He is able to be trusted with that until the day of His appearing. 

     We too can have that same confidence! The Lord has indeed been good to us. I think it is safe to say that most reading this have never known true hunger or deprivation. None of us have ever had to worry where our next meal will come from or where are we going to sleep, or has had a lack of clothes to cover our nakedness. Not that suffering is limited to food, clothing and shelter. Many have suffered greatly under these conditions, but those who belong to Christ have known His goodness even in the midst of suffering. He has been faithful to bring us through times of painfulness to come out stronger and more confident in His faithfulness and more in love with Him. Knowing our suffering is not in vain, but that He is working out His sovereign will in our lives both to our good and His glory. (1 Peter 4:12-13)

     He is our Shield (Ephesians 6:16) and He is our portion (Psalm 73:26) and His Grace is amazing!