Thursday, May 28, 2015

A Scandalous Relationship


This week in my preparations for Sunday I've been spending a lot of time in the book of Isaiah. One of the things I like to do as a part of my sermon prep is listen to other Pastor's sermons on the passage so as a result I've heard numerous sermons this week on Isaiah 6 most all have left me inspired and encouraged others have left me pondering why we teach half truths in an effort to make people feel better...

Let me elaborate... David Platt argues both in his book Radical and in a sermon I found on Isaiah 6 (linked at the bottom) that God is in midst of something scandalous. That for more than a generation we have been teaching and preaching that God hates sin but loves the sinner...  But that this isn't the whole truth... While these statements can be true in the right lens they only tell part of the story because as David so aptly brings out sin is not something that we do, it's not something that is detached from us - it is who we are.  Furthermore when we search scriptures we find that not only does God hate sin - God also hates sinners. Notice these two passages:

Psalm 5:4-6
For You are not a God who delights in wickedness;

evil cannot dwell with You.
The boastful cannot stand in Your presence;
You hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who tell lies;
the Lord abhors a man of bloodshed and treachery.

Psalm 11:4-7

The Lord is in His holy temple;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven.
His eyes watch; He examines everyone.
The Lord examines the righteous and the wicked.
He hates the lover of violence.
He will rain burning coals and sulfur on the wicked;
a scorching wind will be their portion.
For the Lord is righteous; He loves righteous deeds.
The upright will see His face.

God doesn't just hate the sinner he plans to see them destroyed! He's going to rain down burning coals and sulfur on them… This is where the scandal comes in though – stay with me! Because in that same instant that God hates the sin, that God hates the sinner God also loves the sinner.

HOW????

Through the cross…

God hates the sinner and loves the sinner through the cross of Christ. Isaiah 53 is a beautiful picture of this message in that Christ took upon us the payment for our sinfulness and now God can love the sinner – Because He loves the Son.

Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses,
and He carried our pains;
but we in turn regarded Him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But He was pierced because of our transgressions,
crushed because of our iniquities;
punishment for our peace was on Him,
and we are healed by His wounds.
We all went astray like sheep;
we all have turned to our own way;
and the Lord has punished Him
for the iniquity of us all.

We are nothing but dumb wayward sheep but Christ on the cross has provided a way for us all to be reconciled with God. By Christ’s sacrifice when God looks at those of us who have turned to Christ we are justified. God sees no wrong in us anymore because of the blood of His Son…

In Isaiah 6 we see our prophet in the midst of his vision experience coming to the understanding that he needs more than just a sacrifice to be made right - that he needs to be separated from his sin - it needs to be burned away... the only way that we can experience that today is through the cross of Christ, as Paul so aptly wrote we are to be crucified with Christ! This flesh must be burned away to allow for the righteousness of God to cloth us today! Just my thoughts on the matter... 

If you can carve out an hour of your time I’d encourage you to watch this video as David Platt expresses this truth far more eloquently than I ever could.

Have a blessed week! 


Friday, May 22, 2015

The Living Dead...

As I prepare for Pentecost Sunday, I've been reading and studying the different movements of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. Each story is unique and is important but God laid the story of Ezekiel on my heart as we share some of the same struggles.

In Ezekiel 37:1-14 the Spirit of God lifts Ezekiel up in a vision and takes him to a valley of dead, dry bones... Ezekiel is asked can these bones live? He has the correct answer in responding that only the LORD GOD knows!

Ezekiel then is directed to preach at these bones - so he does what is commanded and in verse 7  while he was yet preaching he heard this noise, a rattling sound (I'm imagining a old horror movie sound of bones clanking and rubbing together) - the bones were coming together... Then tendons began to appear, flesh grew, skin covered them... All the semblance of life yet there was no breath in them... It's as if he were watching an episode of Twilight Zone.... (which by the way does tend to be a reoccurring theme in the book)

These bodies were nothing more than empty shells...

Kinda sounds familiar doesn't it? Every day we get up and go about our lives, our routines become sacred, our time is precious to us, as is our public persona. Living our lives for ourselves we either go out of our way to avoid conflict with the lost world around us or we seek it out and abuse them to make ourselves feel better... The result?

We end up remaining nothing more than empty shells...

 Why??????

Because we haven't allowed the breath of heaven to penetrate us and fill us with the spirit of God...

If you follow the rest of the passage - when Ezekiel calls for the breath of heaven to come those lifeless forms are transformed, they come to life and stand to their feet...

Verse 14 explains is like this to us: "I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live..."

Without the Spirit in us we are dead... Galatians 2:20 says it all... "and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

This life that we are "living" is not our own, it has been been bought with a price, Christ paid the ultimate price that we could find restoration into the presence of God... WE need to get with the program and stop trying to dictate God's will and be obedient to his call today... Whose with me?

Friday, May 15, 2015

Lessons from Titus Part 1

Over the next several weeks, I plan to share from my personal readings and study. Currently I am spending my time studying Paul's letter to Titus. While it is a short book (you can sit down and read it in about 10-15 minutes with ease) it has some very important truths for the church today as it carries very important instructions regarding both church organization and Christian conduct. 

Let's look at some of the historical context first before we get any further... 


General consensus here is that Paul wrote this letter after his first imprisonment in Rome in between 1st and 2nd Timothy somewhere between 63-66 A.D.

Like most of Paul's letters Titus starts off with a fairly usual greeting, 


1 Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to build up the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, 2 in the hope of eternal life that God, who cannot lie, promised before time began. 3 In His own time He has revealed His message in the proclamation that I was entrusted with by the command of God our Savior: 4 To Titus, my true son in our common faith. Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

Paul is setting the table here, he begins by identifying himself as a servant and as an apostle chosen by God and by sharing what that calling means to him in his life; "to build up the faith of God's elect and their knowledge". He then greets Titus --   his "true son in our common faith" -- now what we know about Titus is that he was a Gentile by birth (Ga 2:3) and had traveled with Paul in the past on his missionary journeys, including to Jerusalem during the controversy over circumcision (Acts 15:1-2; Ga 2:1-5) Titus was also Paul's personal emissary to the church at Corinth, carrying the letter that we call 2nd Corinthians to the church. 

Now when Paul is writing this particular letter, Titus had been left on the island of Crete by Paul to "set in order the things that are lacking, and appoint elders in every city" (Titus 1:5)




5 The reason I left you in Crete was to set right what was left undone and, as I directed you, to appoint elders in every town: 6 one who is blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of wildness or rebellion. 7 For an overseer, as God’s administrator, must be blameless, not arrogant, not hot-tempered, not addicted to wine, not a bully, not greedy for money, 8 but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled, 9 holding to the faithful message as taught, so that he will be able both to encourage with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict it.

This brings us to Titus' ministry in Crete. As mentioned Titus was there to help set the organizational structure of the church in place. Paul now provides Titus a pretty exhaustive listing of both positive and negative qualifications to be an Elder (Leader, Pastor, Bishop, or Overseer) in the church. 

Those qualifications are:
Positive qualifications
  1. Blameless 
  2. The husband of one wife
  3. Having faithful children not accused of dissipation or insubordination
  4. Blameless as a steward of God
  5. Hospitable
  6. A lover of what is good
  7. Sober-minded
  8. Just
  9. Holy
  10. Self-controlled
  11. Holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught
  12. Able by sound doctrine to exhort and convict those who contradict

Negative qualifications
  1. Not self-willed
  2. Not quick-tempered
  3. Not given to wine
  4. Not violent
  5. Not greedy for money
Titus was to take this process very seriously, for while there were many Christians on the island the church organization was far from perfect and the Elders occupying such a prominent position  needed to be able to demonstrate that they were capable of leading the flock, evidenced by the way they carried themselves and led their own families. Now blameless is tough because we know that we are all sinners saved in by grace but in context with the rest of the passage we see that the men Titus was to be looking for to lead the church were to be men seeking after God's heart, who demonstrated faithfulness in the small things as well as the big things, being faithful to ones wife being a key part of that.

As a Pastor, Husband, Father, I often find myself looking for the big win and overlooking the small victories. God is satisfied when we give him glory in all things not just the big wins and I think that this plays into this passage.

Another thing that Paul points out is that an elder is to have "faithful children" this means exactly what it says! That as a father it is my responsibility carry out Proverbs 22:6 and train up my children so that they might be faithful believers in Christ now this verse does not mean that we are to hold our children to standards of which they have no concept. You cannot expect a non believer to behave like a believer. This holds true in this passage as well, you cannot expect a young child to have the same understanding as a teen or an adult, nor are their behaviors even comparable. In the case of young children, children that are yet to have the capacity to understand what do you do? You seek to be blameless before God! You be obedient to the word, teaching them, training them, preparing them for that day when they come to know Christ. That is how you find your children faithful... 

In the rest of this list we find (vs 7-8) that  an Elder must possess a high moral character (blameless as a steward of God, hospitable, a lover of what is good, sober-minded, just, holy, self-controlled) and they must be a competent preacher (holding fast the faithful word as he has been taught, able by sound doctrine to exhort and convict)... 

All of these things are important in a man of God! They speak to his character, they speak to his desire to be faithful, and blameless before God, and they speak to his calling. 

There lessons I take away from this passage are this... 
  1. Church government is an important duty, not to be taken lightly or frivolously
  2. Governors of the church should possess both grave and gifts 
  3. Preaching occupies a prominent place in building up and extending the Church. 
Whether you feel God calling you to lead or you are searching for the man God desires to lead, understanding these truths are crucial. 


Dios te Bendiga!

Staying Silent

Sometimes life just seems to throw everything and the kitchen sink at you and you just want to scream... You want to fight it with every bone in your body, you know you shouldn't you know you should just walk away and call it a day but it's like those kung-foo movies from the 80's where the acting is horrid and the fighting is worse but your eyes are glued to the screen...

This is so often my life it seems... 


I can't seem to ever get ahead, and I wonder is there every really a point where I can achieve victory? 

Now don't hear me and think oh he is depressed, he's throwing in the towel or something like that because you couldn't be further from the truth - there are just days that I feel so completely overwhelmed I don't know what direction is up... 

Earlier this week as I was reading preparing my thoughts for my day I read a passage that I wasn't as familiar with, I know I've read it before but it had been a while and as I read those words it was as if I light went on in my head (don't you love it when that happens?) I began in that moment to be reminded of things all be it in a small scope from God's perspective...

The passage I read was Acts chapter 4. In Acts 4 Peter and John had been been speaking in the temple and some 5000 men came to believe in the resurrected Christ. While they were there they were confronted by the temple police - the priests, and the Sadducee's, they seized them and took Peter and John into custody... The next day the rulers, elders, & scribes began to question Peter and John ultimately trying to bully them by forbidding them to preach or teach in the name of Jesus, now they thought they could get away with this because Peter and John were uneducated fishermen and they hoped that the men would be swayed and this budding movement would fade away but their response would be click bait in today's social media driven society... verse 19-20: 

19 But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it’s right in the sight of God for us to listen to you rather than to God, you decide; 20 for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

Peter and John knew that whatever came their way God could handle it, they knew that they must keep their eyes on Christ no matter the cost... Sounds a lot like three young men in the Old Testament Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who got tossed in the furnace or another guy by the name of Daniel who was tossed in the lions den... They had done nothing wrong, they were being obedient to live out what they had seen and heard...

Our answer today should be the same... when the world attacks us, when our friends betray us, when the car dies, and nothings seems to go right rather than trying to defend ourselves, rather than trying to be the loudest voice in the room, rather than giving up or getting angry - stop and pray... Stop and pray because God is in control of that situation just as He is in control of every other situation that we find ourselves in each day... 

Peter and John had the right idea, they were going to do what they had to do - be obedient to God's call on their life - they knew that the elders and rulers of the day were going to do what they were going to do, and I am sure that it wasn't easy listening to their threats wondering if they were bluffing...

Peter and John held the course and preached what they had seen and heard - they preached the Gospel of Jesus to the people regardless of what might befall them now or at a later date... 

Can you say that? Are you willing to make yourself hated for the name of Jesus? Are you ready to endure the threats and personal attacks for your faith? I know I am!

Friday, May 08, 2015

Not mouthwash

Call it divine revelation or call it gas doesn't really matter but I think I have stumbled on something with this so hear me out -- the other morning I got up early (for me that is) to drive up to Homestead and have breakfast with Pastor Victor before he was to head back home to Cuba. I'm in the bathroom brushing away that lovely morning breath and I reach for the mouthwash... I take a swig and while I'm swishing this verse comes into my mind -

"But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again -- ever! In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up within him for eternal life."  -- (John 4:14)

Here I am with a mouthful of mouthwash thinking of water that won't make me thirsty. At this point all I want to do is spit out this mouthwash and go get a glass of water and that's when it hits me...

So many people treat Jesus's living water like mouthwash... using him only to freshen up and then spitting Him back out and going about our day...  They come to come to church on Sunday for the social status or because it's what they do every Sunday but at the end of the service they just go home they don't take anything with them, they are not changed, they see church as something to do not who they are...

Folks forgive me but hear me yelling this at my screen right now -- Sunday morning (or when ever you gather as a full body) is a time of corporate worship and prayer it's not church... When you gather on Sunday's you are not gathering at church -- you ARE the church!!!  This also means that when you leave and you go to work - you are still the church! when you go to the grocery store, to the gas station, sitting out in the sand at the beach doesn't matter... where ever you go you are called to be the church!

Being the church is a choice... it is literally a way of life. When you look at the early church, and even the persecuted church around the world today, for these folks church was and is a literal life or death decision because there's a good chance that you could very well not make it back to corporate worship the next week (or even the next day). These folks couldn't afford to treat Jesus like mouthwash, they need to drink in that living water that will bring eternal life not just a momentary freshness... So do we!

Friends American Christianity has become soft and comfortable and is straying from the path - I believe that a time is soon coming in which God will cause us to seek Him out with renewed zeal... and to not treat the living water offered by Christ as meaningless mouthwash!

Now don't go and drink the mouthwash - but I would suggest that you look for how God is moving in your life today! Don't wait till Sunday to hear from Him!