Gospel Clarity

I had, and I have heard from many others, a lot of misconceptions about the possibility of enjoying a right standing and relationship with holy God. I hope these points will be clarifying and helpful to you, and I pray God will bless you as you honestly consider them and seek Him.

I. The Gospel (God's Good News) is NOT about being and/or doing good enough for God to accept you.

We cannot earn a right standing with God. All of our attempts to merit His favor through religious endeavors, good deeds, and high morals fall short. So, in the matter of gaining a right standing with God, it may surprise you to learn that it does not matter whether you have been religious or irreligious or even relatively moral or immoral. All of us begin at the same starting point relative to God. The Bible declares that we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – Romans 3:23.

II. The Gospel is about God being SO good that He has done everything required to accept us just as we are.

In spite of our rebellion against God (sin) and God’s perfectly just condemnation of it, God’s love moved Him to pay the highest price ever paid (the death of His only begotten Son) to purchase our full pardon and offer us eternal life with Him as an absolutely free gift. God’s Son Jesus lived the sinless life that we have not and voluntarily paid sin’s penalty on our behalf, so that in union with Him we can enjoy God’s fellowship and favor forever. The Bible declares “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”- Romans 6:23.

III. This Gospel must be believed to be received.

God wants to give people eternal life. Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid…your Father has gladly chosen to give you the kingdom”- Luke 12:32. In light of this, God has made receiving His gift uncomplicated. The most famous verse in the Bible states that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life”– John 3:16. God loved and gave. We believe to receive. By ‘believe’ the Bible means more than merely thinking something is true. It means trusting in and relying on that something or someone...betting your life on them.

IV. Accepting God’s acceptance in Christ will transform your life forever.

When a person receives God’s gift of life by trusting Jesus to be their Savior and Lord, they are not just receiving something from God. They are receiving God. The Holy Spirit indwells every true believer’s heart and transforms him or her to increasingly live a life of love and faithfulness that honors and pleases God. The Christian life is not a ‘white-knuckled’ experience of trying to do good enough to repay God for this kindness. Rather, it is a Spirit-empowered life of increasing freedom from sin’s reign and ruin. The Bible states “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law”- Galatians 5:22-23.

I hope you will turn to God and trust Him enough to save you from sin, self-rule and His condemnation of both. This requires trusting Him enough to turn your life over to Him. The move from self-rule to God's rule may be frightening and difficult, but it is infinitely worth it. Life with God, under His loving rule even in the most difficult circumstances, is truly life - one filled with faith, hope and love. Life, even in the best of circumstances apart from Him, is empty no matter how we try to fill it. Please earnestly turn to God and put your faith and hope in Christ. He will forgive your sin and give you true life with Him.

Sincerely yours in Christ,
Thame

God and Suffering?

Message Series: Q & A

Question: How can there be an all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good God in light of all the suffering and evil in the world?

When many people consider the excruciating suffering and horrific evil in the world, they conclude God cannot be infinitely powerful AND genuinely good. Some think God is willing to end suffering but unable to do so. Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote the bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People, speaks for this group when he writes, "(God) does not want you to go on having this problem, but He can't make it go away. That is something which is too hard even for God." Others think that God is able to end suffering and evil, but He is unwilling to do so. Job's wife believed this, and accordingly she told Job to "curse God and die!" - Job 2:9

The Bible reveals that God is both willing and able to eliminate both suffering and evil. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God declared, "I am the LORD, the God of all mankind," and rhetorically asked, "Is anything too hard for Me?” - Jeremiah 32:27. Jesus asked people prone to worry, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?" and then declared, "Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father” – Matthew 10:29. God is always completely aware of everything and always able to bring His good will to pass. When contemplating the combination of God's kindness and capability, the psalmist wrote, "God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; His understanding has no limit. The LORD sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground” – Psalm 147:3-6. Thankfully, Scripture reveals that God is not only willing and able to end suffering and evil, He has committed to do so. “He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove the disgrace of His people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken” – Isaiah 25:8. This, of course, begs the question: "What is He waiting for?!"

To answer that, let's first consider our place in the history of God's Kingdom on earth. Generally speaking, we are in the Middle Age(s) of God's Kingdom History. In the First Age, God created a truly good world that humanity corrupted by rejecting God and rebelling against His rule. “God saw all that He made, and it was very good. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” – Genesis 1:31 & 2:9. To give humanity the capacity for volitional love, God gave humanity the liberty to choose against it. God gave our original ancestors paradise to live in, mountains of good options to chose from and one restriction for the sake of choice for the sake of love. Humanity followed the lead of a fallen angel who had apparently forgotten his place and thus lost his place in heaven. So in the first age, spiritual evil seduced humanity to moral evil and paradise on earth was lost. Ever since humanity's fall, everything on earth has been corrupted. We need to remember this when we feel tempted to accuse God of poor workmanship. He created it all very good, and our sin spoiled it all....thankfully not for good.

If I found a spoiled rotten fruit, I would throw it away - particularly if I had plenty m ore,b ut God did not chose to throw away His spoiled rotten earth. Instead He chose to redeem His corrupted creation by subjecting Himself to the very worst suffering and evil His gone astray creation can give. Scripture reveals that “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us - for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’”- Galatians 3:13. In the First Age of Kingdom history, God gave us the tree of life, and we lost it. Here in the Middle Age(s) of Kingdom history, God took our tree of death to put an end to death, destruction, suffering, sin and evil. Now, God is saving and preparing a people to inherit the paradise He has purchased with Christ's blood. In the Final Age(s) of Kingdom history, God will complete creation’s perfection and His people will inherit eternal paradise. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away"- Revelation 21:1-4.

Now let's look back at the question "What's He waiting for?" Thankfully, God has given us good reasons for this season of suffering. For one, God is being patient with those who are persisting in rebellion and giving them every opportunity to turn from sin to Him. Under the inspiration of God's Spirit Peter explained and warned, "Do not let this fact escape your notice…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up”– 2 Peter 3:8-10. Once the transition from this age to the next has been made, the window of opportunity to be saved will be closed. When the Biblical flood came, people were either on board God's ark of salvation or under the waters of God's wrath. Jesus said that it will be same when He returns. So one reason for the season is that God is graciously and patiently holding open the window of opportunity. During this age, God is also using the difficulties that His rescued people experience to grow our faith and faithfulness, which will result in tremendous blessing upon Christ's return. Writing to people who were suffering greatly, Peter wrote, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ"- 1 Peter 1:3-7.

So, how are we supposed to persevere through suffering and respond to evil in the meantime? I think three things will help us. One, we keep things in God's perspective by remembering where we are in kingdom history. Two, we trust in God's purposes for this season, and three, we rely on God's presence for the comfort, strength and wisdom we need to follow Jesus all the way home. God says to His people, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God…your Savior” – Isaiah 43:1-3. Awareness of God's presence can bring us extraordinary comfort as we walk through difficult days. As King David famously wrote, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me” – Psalm 23:4. I think Paul, who valiantly opposed evil and endured tremendous suffering to follow Christ, asked the best question for our closing consideration. “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us!” – Romans 8:32-37 Amen.

Faith and Science?

Message Series: Q & A

Question: How can I have faith in God’s existence in light of scientific reason?

To answer this question, let's first address the common misconception that faith and reason are opposites. Many naturalists contend that they are not people of faith and some even contend those who trust in God's existence are not people of reason. Both contentions are false. All naturalists are every bit as much people of faith as people who trust in the reality of God's existence. If the following sounds harsh, please forgive me. I share it with people's best interest in heart and as someone who placed his faith in nothing for many years before coming to reasonable faith in God. With that said, naturalists are people of faith who are banking on the false hope that nothing beyond the material exists. This is an often unrecognized escape attempt that is doomed to failure, and it is usually based on false assumptions about the consequences of reckoning with the reality of God. Such avoidance has many tragic consequences, including the distortion of logic and reason about spiritual matters in the minds of those who must twist them to continue hiding from ultimate reality. To help us better understand faith, let's consider the Biblical definition of it in Hebrews.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen…By faith we understand the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of visible things…Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”– Hebrews 11:1- 6

In a sense faith is non-sense...that is non-sensory. It is our convictions about things that we cannot perceive through our physical senses of touch, taste, sight, sound and smell. In another sense faith is wishful thinking. By that I don't mean irrational thinking, but that what we believe about non-sensory matters is greatly influenced by our core desires. The Bible declares that "the fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" People convince themselves there is no God because they do not want there to be a God. People think life and freedom are found in independence from God and God's rule -"Free at last...Free at last...Great nothing almighty...We're free at last!" In reality, the exact opposite is true, but our natural disposition since the rebellion of our ultimate ancestors has been to run from God rather than to Him. We do not naturally seek God for the same reason criminals don't naturally seek judges. We are guilty! Though we run and hide, God keeps seeking us and stirring us to seek Him. Contrary to our fears, God is not seeking us to condemn us, but to save us! It is just as Jesus declared, "I did not come to judge the world, but to save it" - John 12:47. When we avoid God, we are unwittingly avoiding true life, freedom, peace, joy, comfort, hope and meaning. With all this in mind, please consider the following statements of faith (one in nothing and one in God) from two notable scientists, who are both men of faith and reason, and then let's examine a couple good reasons for faith in God instead of faith in nothing.

“I cannot know for certain, but I think God is very improbable. I live my life on the assumption that He is not there.”– Dr. Richard Dawkins (Oxford, The God Delusion)

“When you make a breakthrough, it is a moment of scientific exhilaration…It is also a moment when I feel close to the Creator.” – Dr. Francis Collins (Director of Human Genome Project)

Good Reason for Faith in God from Without:

The Existence and Exactness of Creation

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness…of men who suppress the truth…because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” - Romans 1:18-22

The Bible declares that creation itself provides enough evidence to leave people without excuse for suppressing the truth about God's existence. If we think about it, we see that every effect has a cause. If we see light, we know there is a light source. If we hear a noise, we know there is a noise maker. If we apply that logic to the universe, we have good reason to expect there to be a universe source/maker. It is difficult to believe that nobody x nothing = everything. Some people ask "well, who made God?" The Bible declares that God is the alpha (first) and omega (last) - the self-existing Creator and self-sustaining Sustainer of everything else that exist. The magnificence and precision of the universe and the irreducible complexity of the life within it are also evidence of intentional design and thus a purposeful designer.

Good Reason for Faith in God from Within:
The Longing and Law in our Hearts

“God has…put eternity into man’s heart.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11

“When Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law…show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.” - Romans 2:14-16

If we think about it, the things we desire actually exist, though we may be deprived of them at the moment. For example, when I hunger for food, I am longing for something that actually exists - food. This even holds true for non-material things, such as love and peace. I may lack the present experience of real love and thus long for it, but I am not longing for something that does not exists. Real love really exists. I am just deprived of it in that scenario - not in real life, thankfully. So, what if we apply this to God? People in all cultures throughout history have expressed deep desire, even extreme longing, for God. Is God the only thing people desire that does not really exists or does the universal longing for God indicate that God, though people experience alienation from Him, actually exists?

Humanity also appeals to a universal code of right and wrong. Why? If matter is all that exists, nothing really matters in any ultimate sense. There is no real right and wrong or fair and unfair. There is only your opinion and my opinion and his and hers, etc. If there is no actual objective morality, then literally everything is relative and subject to "says who?" debates that set us up to slide down into 'might makes right' morality. The Bible says that we intuitively know that there is actual right and actual wrong and that we are accountable to live accordingly. The existence of universal objective moral law, points to a universal law giver. Please take a moment to watch this interview with Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the 3.1 billion letters in the human genetic code.

While these external and internal evidences point to God, they do not prove God's existence. As Scripture declares "he who comes to God must believe He exists and rewards those who seek Him”– Hebrews 11:6. I hope you will genuinely seek God with all your heart, and I know from His promises in the Bible and my personal experience that you will find Him when you do.

The Pursuit of Holiness

In our personal and corporate pursuit of holiness, God leads us to walk a narrow road with dangerous cliffs on either side. To the right of God's holy way, legalism seeks to pull us into pits of spiritual pride and to the left, lawlessness entices us to slip into depths of spiritual sloth. The same dangers have faced the church from the beginning. God inspired Paul to warn the church in Corinth about the "leaven of lawlessness" (1 Corinthians 5:1-8) and the church in Galatia about the "leaven of legalism" (Galatians 5:1-14). God warns us that allowing even a little of either will trip us up in our pursuit of holiness. So, with this in mind, let's look at God's narrow way ahead.

God's expectations for His people: Holiness and Fruitfulness

Texts: 1 Peter 1:15-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8; Matthew 23:25-26; John 15:16

What would happen if, in an effort to increase enlistment, an army lowered its standards to the point that virtually nothing was expected of soldiers? Imagine the boot camp announcement- "Good morning - We're having drill today, and you are all invited. We would love to have you, but hey, if you're not in the mood this morning, that's okay. Have a great day!" Or later perhaps..."Hey, we're going to battle, but if you want to go the beach, it is okay. It is your call in the new Army." Such a low expectation army might grow larger, particularly if paychecks came no matter what, but would an army like that be able to fulfill its mission in the world? How safe would you feel guarded by such an army?

I am all for growing the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I am concerned that too often, in an effort to grow the ranks, churches lower their standards. This seems more like Satan's strategy to grow the world in the church than God's strategy to grow the church in the world. Following such a course results in churches that look no different, in terms of character, than the world around them, and such churches are unfit to fulfill their mission in the world. God expects, that is requires, His people to live up to His exceptionally high standards of holiness and fruitfulness. He requires us to be without a trace of moral impurity within and without. Thankfully, He does not require us to do it in our strength.

God's provisions for His people: Holy Savior and Holy Spirit

Texts: Luke 1:68-75; Philippians 2:13; Romans 8:1-14; Galatians 5:16-25

God knows that our very best falls short of His expectations. Thankfully, Jesus' very best did not. He perfectly fulfilled God's perfect expectations and then in obedience to God's will offered Himself up as the perfect sacrifice for our sin. In short, God's perfect love moved Him to satisfy the demands of His perfect justice that He might show His people perfect mercy. So, who are His people? Well, God invites everyone, no matter how relatively good or bad they have lived, to come just as they are to Christ for the forgiveness of and cleansing from all sin. He gives everyone who comes to Christ a right standing before Him. The Bible says that we are "clothed in Christ's righteousness" before God. Our sin and shame are mercifully covered by His goodness and that spiritual reality in the heavens changes our life on earth. We do not behave well enough to earn God's favor, and we never will. God gives us His favor in Christ and receiving that gift changes the way we live. We could say our standing in heaven impacts our walk on earth. It is a bit like Elvis impersonators. Here is what I mean. People who dress up like Elvis sadly begin to take on His mannerisms...thank you very much, and thankfully people who are clothed in Christ and thus indwelt by God's Holy Spirit are inspired and empowered to take on His holy characteristics. This is a patient, at times painful, process, but it is the inevitable fruit of saving grace. Those who sell heaven without holiness sell counterfeit cheap grace. Grace that actually saves lives actually transforms lives. As it has been said many times...God loves us enough to accept us right where He finds us, but He loves us too much to leave us there. So, clothed in Christ and indwelt by God's empowering Spirit, what is our role?

God's conditions for His people: Reliance and Repentance

Texts: John 15:1-8; 2 Chronicles 7:13-14; 1 Corinthians 9:25-27; Hebrews 12:1-14

We are to prayerfully rely on Christ as our Savior and humbly obey Him as our Lord. This includes praying privately, passionately and purposefully for the experiential holiness we lack. This also requires discipline from within and without. The Bible says athletes discipline their bodies for perishable wreaths and honor. We are to discipline ours, individually and corporately, for God's honor and His imperishable purposes. God works within each of us to will and work for His good pleasure, and when we humbly follow His lead the result is self-discipline. When we don't, He works within those around us to prompt them to help us move forward. When those around us follow His lead, it results in loving church-discipline that brings restoration and holiness. When none of that works, God lovingly, though often painfully, disciplines us Himself - not to harm us but to heal us and make us holy. God's love for us is perfect and continuous, even when He is "pruning" us for greater fruitfulness. We are to rely on God primarily and each other secondarily, and we are to repent (turn) from all the sin God brings to our awareness. This is a constant, lifelong process, and we will not cross some holiness finish line this side of heaven. We will never arrive at perfect sanctification (experiential character holiness) until we arrive in paradise, where there is no sin. We need to also keep in mind that this lifelong process is the fruit of God's gift of salvation - not the root (or source) of our salvation. We will always need to fully rely on Christ's finished work for our standing before God - rather than on God's ongoing work in and through our lives. As we do, God will make us increasingly holy as He is holy.

The Presence of Holiness

God's moral perfection is absolute and absolutely incorruptible. God is infinitely holy, and He alone is independently holy. Everything and everyone else depends on God for holiness. In fact, the degree of any thing's holiness is based on it's spiritual proximity to God. Spiritually speaking, the closer something or someone is to God the more holy that something or someone is. Jesus once declared of hypocrites, "These people honor Me with their lips but their hearts are far from Me." They were far from God and thus far from holy. Let's look at Isaiah's close encounter with God and learn what we can about true holiness.

"In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of His robe filled the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!’ And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: "Woe is me, for I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’ And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I! Send me’” – Isaiah 6:1-8.

The Pull of Holiness: (Show Me!) Because of sin, we all begin very far from God. Thankfully, God does not leave us there. Here is a picture that may help us visualize our spiritual situation. Imagine floating in space far from any source of gravity or light. In that environment, could you feel even a massive load, the equivalent of thousands of pounds on earth, without gravity's pull to make you aware? Could you see any dark stains on you in the absolute darkness? Of course not, and so it is when we are far from God. We do not feel the heavy burden of our sin or see it's very real pollution of our lives. We stay relatively oblivious to our true condition until God begins to draw us to Himself. Once He does, we begin to feel the weight of our sin in the pull of His gravity and to see the foulness of it in the brightness of His light. What seemed like no big deal drifting in the false comfort of spiritual darkness becomes crushing in the light of ultimate reality. God is so fantastic that the greatest known angelic beings in the universe are utterly overwhelmed in His presence. Awestruck, they continually burst forth in praise - not out of duty, but because He is literally an inexhaustible supply of greatness. It is impossible to exaggerate God's worthiness of worship, and once God has us close enough to truly see ourselves in His light, we cry out like Isaiah in our text, "Woe is me...I'm ruined!" In God's gravity, we know we cannot get our crushing sin off of us, and in God's light, we know we cannot get ourselves clean. We are absolutely crushed, completely exposed and utterly helpless to do a thing about it. We are, in Isaiah's word, ruined, but thankfully this is not the last word. In the last word - God's word, we are ready. The pull of God's holiness prepares us for the touch of God's holiness by changing our cry of "Show me!" into a sincere cry of "Save me!" which God is eager to answer.

The Touch of Holiness: (Save Me!) Once God had Isaiah aware of his reality and thus sincerely ready to ask for and receive forgiveness, He relieved his unbearable burden with a single touch. What Isaiah could not have done in a million years, God did in a moment. He sent His heavenly host with a burning coal from His alter to apply it to Isaiah's mouth, the spot where he was most acutely aware of his sin. Interestingly Jesus, who pointed out the hypocrisy of lip service, also said the things that come out of our mouths (the overflow of our corrupted hearts) defile us. It is also interesting to think about the sin-atoning offering on God's alter that was applied to Isaiah's mouth. In the Book of Revelation, John describes a similar scene of God's temple filled with glory, smoke, a censer of holy fire from God's altar and bowls (or cups) of His wrath that angels pour out on the earth to judge humanity's sin. I think that scene has connection to our text and to Jesus' cry the night before He went to the cross to be crushed under God's judgment of sin. That night our Savior cried, "Father, if it is possible, take this cup (or bowl) away from Me. Yet not My will but Yours be done." Here is the connection. Jesus was looking into the mouth of the heavenly cup (or bowl) full of God's burning wrath against our sin when He cried out. Thankfully, He humbly endured the outpouring of undiluted wrath in our place to provide the only holy sacrifice sufficient to atone for humanity's sin on the altar of God, namely Himself. Interestingly the Bible declares specifically that God never found any deceit in Jesus' mouth (1 Peter 2:22). He was and is God's perfectly holy offering, and when God takes of that holy offering and applies it to someone, their guilt, just like Isaiah's, is completely taken away. As King David cried out to God when God made him acutely aware of his sin, "Wash me and I will be whiter than snow...Let the bones You have crushed rejoice" (Psalm 51). What we could not do in a million years, God does perfectly in a moment with a touch of holiness. If God is privileging you to experience the painful grace of conviction over your sin and you have not yet turned to God and sincerely cried out for Him to save you, I prayerfully plead with you to do so ASAP. Just as God's revealing pull prepares us for God's saving touch, the touch of God's holiness prepares us for the push of God's holiness. It changes our cry of "Save me!" into "Send me!"

The Push of Holiness: (Send Me!) Time and again in the Bible and in life experience, I notice that you do not have to work hard to fire up people who have been touched by God's holy fire. Once Isaiah was white as snow, he was ready to go. I know it is corny, but it's true. God asked, "Whom shall I send?" and we get the impression Isaiah was bouncing up and down, raising and waving his hand, exclaiming "Here am I - Send me!" That is an often repeated pattern. God calls people into His fiery presence where they are transformed, and then He sends them out as white-hot ambassadors in His service. In light of this, I think the church wastes mountains of fruitless of energy trying to motivate people to go out in God's service instead of helping them come into His presence. Genuine worship of God transforms and fuels God's people for service. Finding enough people to serve is typically not an issue in churches where worship is truly the primary focus. Where the people can not wait to gather with their brothers and sisters to sincerely draw close to God together, they usually also cannot wait to go out in His service. We do not have to push those experiencing the push of God's holiness. Wherever you are in your life with God - in the pull of His holiness in desperate need of His saving touch or having been touched by His holiness desperately crying "Here I am - Send me!" - we want to be there for you and help you move forward with God.

The Resurrection Life

John 11:1-45

Have you ever experienced difficulty or hardship (maybe an illness, troubled relationship, or financial crisis) and in the midst of it turned to Jesus hoping for deliverance only to be disappointed? In spite of your petitions to the Lord, the financial pinch became bankruptcy, the troubled marriage became the bitter divorce, or the illness did not end until the loved one died. As most of us know painfully well, life can not only be very disappointing – our disappointments can be compounded by wondering why God did not rescue us when we seemed to need Him most. We can be left wondering where was God? Why did not He come when we called? Have we upset Him? Have we lost His favor? If He loves us so and He is all-knowing and powerful, why did He let this happen? Those who don’t believe don’t have this problem. Life stinks then you die, but those who know God need answers. Thankfully, our text has some.

First, let's look at God's big-picture timing. In an outtake from the movie Bruce Almighty, God (Morgan Freeman) calls Bruce's (Jim Carey's) attention to a painting. He compares the dark tones in the painting to the painful life experiences needed to create an overall masterpiece. From Mary's and Martha's perspective, it looked like Jesus arrived painfully late. God was painting a dark stroke in their part of life's big picture. They sent word to the Christ that their brother, His friend, was deathly ill, but Jesus did not show up until four days after his death. It gets worse before it gets better. Our text reveals that Jesus intentionally delayed His arrival in order to let Lazarus die. Why? The answer is that He was up to a greater (more God-glorifying, more faith-building, and more life-saving) good. He not only intended to save Lazarus' life. He meant to glorify God in a mighty way and save many others in the process. God, who did not even spare His only begotten Son the agony of suffering for other's good and God's glory, does not promise to spare us life's dark tones either. He does promise that He is always up to the greatest good and that He works all things, the painful and the pleasant, together for good to those who love Him. We also need to never forget that it is never too late for God. We need to remember time does not control God. God controls time and always uses it for the greatest good. So, when God's painful delays compound our painful experiences, we need to trust the reality that God, who has the whole picture in mind, is up to a greater good that we cannot see. Just as Mary's disappointment gave way to extravagant worship when she anointed Jesus with her expensive perfume, our disappointments give us a way to worship God with expectations of faith in the midst of His apparent delays. If we will seize these disguised opportunities to worship God, He will turn our dark days into beautiful displays for His glory, others good and our best.

Next, let's look at God's heart-rending love. Our text emphasizes Jesus' love for Lazarus and his sisters. His intentional delay had nothing to do with a lack of love, and we don't need to doubt God's love in the midst of our difficulties. God loves us with an everlasting, perfect, continuous love that never lets us go no matter what we are going through. Often times, we shut down and block out our emotions in order to cope with difficulty. We are too weak to emotionally deal with the toughest stuff otherwise. Notice Jesus does not protect Himself in this way in our text. He leaves His heart wide open. He fully experiences their pain, grief, loss and suffering with them. In the midst of the record of Him doing so, we find the shortest verse in the Bible - Jesus wept. Jesus does not isolate Himself from our pain. Instead of saving Himself, He saves us and loves us enough to go through the worst with us. He empathizes with His people so completely that at the Judgment He will say what people did to or for the least of His people they did to or for Him. He says that He will say that He experienced our hunger with us and He experienced our thirst with us and our loneliness with us and our illnesses and our grief with us! So, how else can we worship God in the midst of difficult disappointments? We can worship Him by trusting His unfailing love and by loving His hurting people. We can worship God by not sheltering ourselves from other's pain. Like Mary irrevocably sacrificed the vessel that held her perfume to show her love for Christ, we can be irrevocably sacrificed vessels that unleash a fragrant offering of love for Christ as we allow our hearts to break with others. We can also be living sacrifices whose hands and feet and ears and shoulders become instruments God uses to bring relief and comfort to others. As we worship God this way, He will grow us more and more into the likeness of Christ.

Finally, let's look at God's life-giving power. Again, it is never too late for God! When things look over and utterly beyond recovery, God can still show up and change everything. He is God! Nothing is too big for Him to do or too small for Him to care about. God tells dead people to live, and they live! I'm drawn to the point in our text just after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. He told the others to help Lazarus get his grave clothes off so that he could go free. I mentioned Morgan Freeman playing God in Bruce Almighty. He also played a prisoner in Shawshank Redemption. In that role, he was concerned about becoming 'an institutional man'- that is someone so accustomed to life in prison that they come to prefer it to a life of liberty. In probably the most famous line in the movie Tim Robbins' character scolds Freeman's for giving into that pull and says, "I guess that it's then - Either get busy living or get busy dying." God declares that before He gave us eternal life, we were spiritually dead and buried. Like Lazarus, it was over for us until Jesus called our name and raised us from death into life everlasting. This resurrection life is not just for then and there. It is meant to be abundantly lived right here and now! The problem for too many Christians is that we have been 'institutionalized' by the dead lives we knew in sin's penitentiary. We still have our grave clothes (that is our old rotten ways of living) on, and so we still look half-dead to the world around us. We need to worship God by helping each other get our grave clothes off so that we can all live transformed lives of freedom clothed in the righteousness of Christ. When people see God's people living genuinely transformed lives of increasing freedom from the death-grip of sin and fear and isolation, they see the life they are missing and find good reason to put their faith in the One who is the Resurrection Life.

The Son of God

John 10:27-42

Many people live with great insecurity. Life seems so unstable and often with good reason. Marriages, and thus families, fail daily rendering them an untrustworthy source of security. Economic situations can fluctuate wildly ending jobs, careers, and retirement plans. Even nations rise and fall. World maps today look different than they did just twenty years ago. All of this is not to even mention how fleeting good health and life itself can be. The fact is we can not find a solid foundation for true security anywhere in this world. That is not pessimistic. It is reality. Thankfully, there is a deeper reality - one that cannot be shaken or taken. If you are currently finding security in holding onto something that can possibly be lost or destroyed, the security you can enjoy is quite limited. If we will let go of the things of this world and take hold of the truth God reveals in this text, we will find unshakeable ground for true security.

First, Jesus declares that God gives (we don’t earn) His people eternal life. Lest anyone think this is just the quality of life people tap into and experience for a while, He adds the life He gives His people never ends. To drive home His ability to make good on such a remarkable claim, He emphasizes His oneness in purpose and power with God the Father. Since He is in perfect step with His Father's will, to mess with Him is to mess with God. Jesus declares that His people are in the supremely secure grip of almighty God's grace. Once our sin completely alienated us from God, but now in union with Christ God has dealt our sin the death blow, making us inseparable. I used to think of G.L.U.E. to keep this reality fresh in my mind. It stood for God Loves Us Eternally - us being everyone united with Christ and thus sharing the great common destiny of eternity in paradise with God. Of course, those not trusting Christ for salvation, including the religious leaders in the original audience, often find Jesus’ claims to be the eternal Son of God and Savior of the world ridiculous and offensive. In fact, they picked up stones to condemn Jesus for blasphemy. In response, Jesus directs them and all who doubt to seriously consider His works, word, and witness.

First, He directs them to the works, that is the miracles, that He has been doing. They not only authenticate His claims to have supernatural power over the physical and spiritual realms. They are also completely consistent with the goodness of God. Jesus’ works make sick people well, blind people see, hungry people full and even dead people live. Jesus’ works bless people with a foretaste of the future fullness the coming of His kingdom will bring, just as God’s written word declares.

Jesus calls the religious leaders to re-consider the written word they are using to justify their judgmental accusations and actions. He calls their attention to Psalm 82, where God gave the word to set people apart as judges over His people. In that text, He called them ‘gods’ or ‘mighty-ones’ in their positions of service. This is not to say they had any actual divinity - far from it. God who raised them up was about to humble them for failing to judge justly and help the helpless in their midst. In the last verse of that psalm, it is God Himself who will rule and judge. Launching from there, Jesus tells them that if it is acceptable for people who were set apart to be judges by God’s word to be called ‘gods’ how much more it is right to refer to Him, the eternal Word of God set apart as the One through whom God will judge and rule His creation and the One sent into the world to save and redeem it, as the Son of God!

Finally, God uses this text to call our attention to His witness, John the Baptist. John’s main mission was to prepare the way and point people to Christ. Thankfully, many of them took his message seriously and honestly examined Jesus for themselves. They found John’s testimony to be true and put their faith in Christ, who saved them from God’s judgment and gave them eternal life that can never be taken away. How about you? Are you convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal Son of God? Are you trusting Him to rescue you from God's judgment? If so, the security described in Romans 8:38-39 is yours, and if you will rest in that reality, it will empower you to follow Jesus' example in the face of His accusers and share God's Good News with confident assurance when you face opposition. If you are not convinced Jesus is God's Son, I pray that you will prayerfully re-consider the evidence God has given with an open mind and heart. Your security and so much more depend on it.