Holiness: Beautiful & Distasteful

The concept of holiness is just as beautiful and distasteful these days as it was when the book of Hebrews was written.

It is beautiful in that is the attitude and activity that directs our minds away from sin and self and points us to Jesus. It calls us to obey Him and enjoy sweet fellowship with Him as sin and its consequences loosens its grip on us.

It is also distasteful because it goes against our natural inclinations, especially those who are not followers of Jesus. Someone who is not saved will settle for a high degree of morality but they will not pursue holiness (being completely set apart for God). If they claim to be saved (and are not) they will find it appalling to spend regular time in God's Word putting into practice what they learn and repenting of their shortcomings. They want to settle for a salvation that keeps them out of hell ... and that is all.

The writer of Hebrews warns us that for those who know the Gospel and yet continue pursuing a self-directed life (sin) rather than holiness are held more guilty before God than those who have never received the knowledge of the truth.

Those who have never heard that Jesus died to save them will still spend eternity apart from God. We MUST tell them! Yet, those who have heard (and maybe even superficially embraced the message without any life change) and continue to live a self-directed life are held more guilty before God. Their punishment will be more severe throughout eternity.

This is serious!

Hebrews 10:26-29
26 Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. 27 There is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies. 28 For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us.

Sharpen the saw

Ecclesiastes 10:10

"If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed."

This is a simple principle, isn't it? It paints the picture of someone who is cutting down a tree or something of the sort with an axe or saw. The principle is: If we don't sharpen the saw, then the amount of effort we must put into the task gets greater and greater as the saw gets duller and duller. If we are to make the task easier again,... we will need to temporarily stop working and sharpen the saw.

So, keep the saw sharp. This plays out in a multitude of ways in our life:
- Keep your spirit in shape. Sharpen it with prayer time and Bible intake.
- Keep your body in shape. Sharpen it with a proper diet and exercise.
- Keep your mind in shape. Sharpen it with reading and studying.
- Etc., etc., etc.

Life can get tough but we compound the problem when we don't keep ourselves sharp. So, take time today to sharpen your saw.

Ecclesiastes 10:10
"If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed."

Sin distorts our ability to help others

Sin distorts our thinking. How? Here's one way ...

In my Bible reading this morning, I came across the story in Genesis 38 where Judah had sex with his daughter-in-law thinking she was a prostitute because she had covered her face. (Yep, the Bible doesn't gloss over anything. God tells us the good, the bad and the ugly.)

So, Judah committed adultery and thought no one knew about it. Three months later, someone tells him that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, is pregnant. (Remember, he doesn't realize that the child she is carrying is his.)

How does he respond to the news? He gets livid! He is furious that someone in his family has engaged in such sin!

Genesis 38:24 "About three months later Judah was told, 'Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.' And Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned."

There is no grace at all in Judah's words. He's ready to wipe her out. Destroy her!

That's one way that we often think about others who are engaged in sin. When we have the proverbial beam in our own eye (Matthew 7:5), we often tend to deal very harshly with others who are in sin. Because we subconsciously want to get our mind off of our own guilt, we project it onto others, get angry and refuse to evidence any grace whatsoever.

Note to self: You don't want to be the one caught in sin by a legalistic hypocrite. You're going to get hurt and hurt really bad. They are dealing with the guilt of personal sin and they are going to project their anger onto you.

But, there is a second way that personal sin distorts our ability to see sin in others. When we have engaged (or are engaging) in sin we feel guilty. We feel like we would be a hypocrite if we pointed out sin in others. So, when we see someone caught in a sin (Galatians 6:1), we don't step in to help them get rid of the destructive choice they are making. We let it go. We look over it. We think: "No one's perfect." And sin continues.

I think this scenario plays out much too often in the parent / child relationship. Parents are all too aware of what they did as a child or young adult and so they let their children go down sinful, dangerous roads because they would feel like a hypocrite if they told their children to stop it. Or, they are presently involved in sin so, once again, they would feel like a hypocrite to expect their children to live to a higher standard than them so they don't address it.

Or, they may feel so guilty about what they have done or are doing that they come down hard, really hard, on their kids. They are unrelenting. They are merciless. And if their children ever had a sin struggle and wanted someone to talk to about it, their parents would be the very last ones they would consider.

So, the two ways that sin distorts our thinking when we see sin in others are: 

• law without grace (the sinner gets slammed) 
• grace without law (the sinner gets a pass)

Neither of these options are healthy or biblical. So we need to do ourselves and others a favor by taking our walk with Jesus seriously. We need to kill sin and pursue personal holiness first. Then we can correctly and compassionately help others.

Matthew 7:5 "You hypocrite, FIRST take the log out of your own eye, and THEN you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye." (emphasis mine)

Trusting God when life doesn't make sense

God is actively at work all around us. No matter what happens, God's fingerprints are all over it. Either He willed it or simply allowed it - but nothing can happen unless it gets God's approval.

That being said, we often struggle with how to reconcile bad things with God's sovereign control. "How can a good God allow bad things and injustice to take place?"

Well, that is a huge question that is worthy of a much larger post. For now, let's settle on just one of the possible answers that I came across in my Bible reading this morning ...

Sometimes God allows (or wills) bad things to happen because they are a means to bring about a greater good (Romans 8:28). In Joseph's case (Genesis 37-50), God was going to take a young spoiled brat and turn him into a man that could competently claim the enormous responsibility of being second-in-command of the most powerful nation at that time.

How did God choose to develop character in Joseph and get him to Egypt? He allowed him to be sold into slavery by his brothers!

Genesis 37:28
"Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt."

So, sometimes when life just doesn't seem fair, it may mean that God is using that event to accomplish a greater good. We may never know this side of Heaven what that greater good is. In fact, I am convinced that God doesn't simply work out 1 greater good at a time but thousands of objectives (or more) at a time. We can't possible fully understand why He is doing what He's doing.

So, just trust Him. Never doubt the Lord. He knows exactly what He's doing. Just roll with it and trust Him. It will make sense one day.

Preparing for Worship

https://flic.kr/p/5ua2ka

In three days, I will gather with my church family of friends for Sunday worship.

As a pastor, I had better be ready. When I stand to preach, there are many people who will expect that I have prepared. They want to hear a fresh word from the Lord from the Bible and they have every reason to expect that I am prepared to deliver it.

But there is another level of preparation that everyone must make, including me, if we are to get the most out of the worship service. If we are to have any expectation at all that God will speak to us and meet us in our deepest need, we must get our hearts ready before the service begins. 

Here are the Big Rock items:

ACKNOWLEDGE OUR SINS AND STOP THEM. If we have held a grudge against someone during the week, we'd better try to work it out before church. If we have hurt someone with our gossiping tongue, we must stop it and make it right. If we have taken something that doesn't belong to us, we had better return it. Etc., etc., etc.

REPENT OF OUR SIN AND RECEIVE FORGIVENESS. No matter what sin(s) we committed and who was affected by them, our sin problem is ultimately against a holy God. So, we have to make it right with Him. We must spend time in repentance (agreeing with God about the offensiveness of our sin and turning our back on it not to do it again). But, it is possible to plead with God for forgiveness and never consciously receive it. We must accept the cleansing that God is willingly offering to us.

SUIT UP IN THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF CHRIST. We must realize that what makes us fully pleasing to God is not our good deeds. It is the righteous garments that Jesus gave us when we were saved. We shouldn't go to church feeling like we've measured up to God's standard (pride) but realizing that Jesus is the One who makes us acceptable to God (humility).

Then, when we have made to spiritual preparations for worship it is quite possible that God will speak to us and meet us in our deepest need as we gather to worship Him together.

Genesis 35:2-3
"So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, 'Put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.'"

Don't just whimsically show up for church. Prepare for worship! One is a dry, boring religious practice. The other can satisfy our deepest longings.

God never promised that life would be fair

Have you ever noticed that life isn't always fair? Of course you have. We all have.

In Ecclesiastes 7:15, the writer says: "I have seen everything in this meaningless life, including the death of good young people and the long life of wicked people."

You've seen things like this before. The hard working employee gets overlooked and the lazy bum with seniority gets promoted. The healthy driver takes the handicap parking spot while the elderly lady has to park far from the store entrance. The crook goes free and an innocent man gets jailed for years. 

On and on this list could go. We all know that things like this happen all the time.

... and we get frustrated. We throw up our hands and say, "Why, Lord?" "Why do the wicked prosper, growing old and powerful? (Job 21:7)."

Or as the prophet Jeremiah put it: "LORD, you always give me justice when I bring a case before you. So let me bring you this complaint: Why are the wicked so prosperous? Why are evil people so happy?" (Jeremiah 12:1)

Well, let me tie this up quickly with a few observations:

1) The propensity we have of getting frustrated with injustice simply points to the fact that God "has put eternity in our hearts" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Created in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27), we have a deep-rooted desire and expectation that righteousness will prevail and be rewarded. This knowledge of right and wrong and a craving to see right rewarded is a strong argument for the existence for a Law Giver in arguments for God's existence.

2) The key to understanding the book of Ecclesiastes and the frustration that the author wrote about is found in the phrase "under the sun." He discovered that life was utterly meaningless if we only looked at the hear-and-now - "under the sun." But, when we look OVER the sun and try to see things from God's eternal perspective, life begins to make a little more sense. The purpose of meaning of life begin to come into focus.

3) Right will not always be noticed or rewarded in this life and wrong will often prevail. But, we know that there is coming a day when Jesus will judge everyone of us in righteousness (Acts 17:31). That is when righteousness will ultimately be acknowledge and rewarded while wrongs will be exposed and punished.

So, will life be fair today? Not necessarily. But God is taking notice and will one day set things straight. Just live your life with the knowledge that one day you will stand before Him and give an account (Romans 14:12) of how you lived. If possibly, stand up for those who are being wronged. Be "salt" and "light" (Matthew 5:13-16) and stand against injustice. But, when things don't go well, rest assured that God is taking notice and will one day set things straight.

Some thoughts…

The country was no longer proud of itself. In fact, it's citizens despised the fact that they were so trivialized by other nations. They had been weakened in every way: militarily, economically, etc. They longed to be great again and respected by the world.

Then, along came a leader who promised to make them great again. He promised that their glory days were ahead of them. The citizens put little thought into the fact that he was a narcissist, had no signs of meaningful moral character, and he was planning to get rid of a group of people within the nation's borders. Even Christians and churches came on board to support him and bring him into power.

The country took a gamble and lost the bet. Little did Germany know what Hitler would become.