Category Archives: Exposition

God Most Gracious in Guidance

January 12, 2010 By in Exposition, Personal Reflection Tags: , Leave a comment

Turns out I am a lot like Gideon.

As our growth group works its way through Judges, Gideon came on the radar screen recently in chapters 6-8. I was mega-encouraged by an insight I hadn’t seen before. God takes great pains to bring confirmation to Gideon as to His direction for him as a warrior against Midian, Israel’s oppressor.

Gideon, to say the least, stands in Scripture as a reluctant conscript for God’s purposes. He pleads a poor self-image in Judges 6:15. Nonetheless God assures him that He will be with him (v. 16). Gideon requires not just one fleece confirmation but two in Judges 6:36-40. God graciously accommodates him.

Then, after taking his army down in numbers to a paltry 300 so that they would not take credit for the pending victory, but rather boast in God their deliverer in Judges 7:1-8, God comes to Gideon in v. 9 of that same chapter with His command to go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hand.  And then, without any solicitation at all from Gideon, the Lord in His condescending grace adds this in vv. 10-11:

10 But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant. 11 And you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.” Then he went down with Purah his servant to the outposts of the armed men who were in the camp.

What happens in the camp does strengthen Gideon and he goes on to lead God’s people in a glorious rout of the enemy.

I read that and thought, how incredibly gracious of God! He knows the frame of His weak-kneed servants. He condescends to offer multiple confirmations to His will in a given situation.

Upon surveying all the biblical evidence for God’s commitment to offer guidance to His children, J. I. Packer concludes, in his book Knowing God:

The point is sufficiently established. It is impossible to doubt that guidance is a reality intended for, and promised to every child of God. Christians who miss it thereby show only that they did not seek it as they should (p. 233).

Where do you need to believe God as most gracious in guidance? Where do we as a church need to believe God as most gracious in guidance? Let you/me count the ways! He who gave Israel the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exodus 13:21-22) and who gave His church Jesus, the light of the world (John 8:12), will not fail us.

How to Stop the Sinful Self-Indulgence of the Flesh

January 10, 2010 By in Exposition, Sunday Morning Tags: , , Leave a comment

I know, I promised this morning I would post the study guide questions for this week’s study in Dr. Carson’s book. Actually, I have that file on my computer at the office. I am posting this from home. I promise, tomorrow I will put up the study guide.

But here is a review of the gist of this morning’s message (listen to the entire sermon here) from Colossians 3:1-4:

Sinful self-indulgence is progressively overcome by cultivating a thoroughgoing heavenly-focused orientation in this life based upon the realities of our identification with Jesus in His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. Since we have been identified with Christ in these realities we must commit to do three things if we are to overcome the sinful indulgence of our flesh. We must pursue the things of Christ in His exalted domain – seated at the right hand of God in heaven –  working hard at the various means of grace -, ponder – by memorizing and meditating upon Scripture –  the things of Christ in His exalted domain since we have died and our lives are buried with Christ and God within the unseen realm, and picture the return of Christ from His exalted domain when He and we will be revealed in the same glory.

So remember your position in Christ. This is all important. Make spiritual things the number one priority of your lives. Think on spiritual things in regular meditation. Give yourself to reading through the Bible this year and memorizing extended portions of Scripture. Pray come quickly, Lord Jesus, every day.

J. C. Ryle, in his book Holiness, writes:

Christianity will cost a man his love of ease. He must take pains and trouble if he means to run a successful race toward heaven. He must daily watch and stand on his guard, like a soldier on enemy’s ground. He must take heed to his behavior every hour of the day, in every company and in every place, in public as well as in private, among strangers as well as at home. He must be careful over his time, his tongue, his temper, his thoughts, his imagination, his motives, his conduct in every relation of life. He must be diligent about his prayers, his Bible reading, and his use of Sundays, with all their means of grace. In attending to these things, he may come far short of perfection; but there is none of those who he can safely neglect. “The soul of the sluggard desires, and has nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat” (Prov. 13:4). 

Let us be diligent that our souls may be made fat.

More Review of Our Fountain Privilege

January 4, 2010 By in Exposition Tags: , , Leave a comment

Yesterday’s message on the biblical docrtrine of adoption from 1 John 3:1a can be summed up like this:

The reality of our status as those born of God and thus belonging to Him as children in His family is owed entirely to the love He as our Father has bestowed upon us. With that love, an alien love in that it is other-worldly, there is a glory to be surveyed, a gift to be savored, and a grid to be secured.

When I blogged last night’s follow up post to the message, my wife asked me to review the five parts of point three, the grid to be secured. Seems I flew through them quite fast! Here is that section from my manuscript in case you may have missed some of those items as well. 

He wants this grid, this way of thinking about ourselves, absolutely, positively secure. He wants us flabbergasted at the wonder/glory of the alien love behind it, like the prodigal in Luke 15:20, smothered by his father’s love upon his return from the pigsty.

He wants us anchored in a guaranteed certainty in hope of the future that with our adoption as children comes a promised inheritance of unspeakable eternal wealth (Romans 8:16-17).

He wants us solidified in our understanding that the ministry of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of adoption (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6) serves to make us realize with increasing clarity the meaning of our filial relationship with God in Christ, and to lead us into an ever deeper response to God in this relationship (Packer, Knowing God, p. 220).

He wants us sobered and gripped by implications of our adoption for our growth in Gospel holiness because as sons and daughters loved by God He disciplines us in order to produce a harvest of righteousness in us as ones so trained by that discipline (Heb. 12:6-11).

 He wants us comforted, encouraged and strengthened in the assurance of our salvation knowing that the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children and that if children, then we are heirs (Rom. 8:16-17).

That, dear ones, is a grid. It’s biblical. It’s yours as adopted children of God. May it be secure as secure can be. Nothing matters more to your spiritual growth in 2010!

May the Holy Spirit work deeply in us this year to walk in the complete security of this oh so precious grid!

Adoption – Our Fountain Privilege

January 3, 2010 By in Exposition, Personal Reflection Tags: , 5 Comments

I worked hard this morning in my message to persuade that adoption is the highest privilege afforded by the gospel.

It might be easier for me than some to embrace that, since I am an adopted son in the earthly realm.

I mentioned today that Nancy and I spent yesterday with my extended family to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday. That’s her along side my stepdad.

I never stop marveling at the alien love that causes a man to make someone else’s child his son and heir. See what kind of love is this!

If you still need convincing on this idea of the uniqueness of adoption as a gospel blessing, Wayne Grudem offers his take in his systematic theology:

God could have given us justification without the privileges of adoption into his family, for he could have forgiven our sins and given us right legal standing before him without making us his children. It is important to realize this because it helps us to recognize how great are our privileges in adoption. Regeneration has to do with our spiritual life within. Justification has to do with our standing before God’s law. But adoption has to do with our relationship with God as our Father, and in adoption we are given many of the greatest blessings that we will know for all eternity. When we begin to realize the excellence of these blessings, and when we appreciate that God has no obligation to give us any of them, then we will be able to exclaim with the apostle John, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).

It’s true. It’s really true. We are beloved children of our heavenly Father. See it. Savor it. Secure it by faith.

Where Did This Jesus of Christmas Come From & Where Did He Go?

December 13, 2009 By in Exposition Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

In this morning’s message I made much of the fact that the same words of Jesus get repeated verbatim in a very short span of verses in the text of John 7:34-36. 

34 You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.” 35 The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? 36 What does he mean by saying, ‘You will seek me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?” 

You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come. 

That’s one of the few places in the gospels where this phenomenon happens and for good reason. He uses such a literary device for emphasis given the importance of his purpose. Not to get this, not to understand the answer to the questions where did He come from – the Father in heaven who sent him, and where did He go – back to the Father in heaven – not to get that, not to embrace it, believe it, that He came to die for you and take the punishment of your sins on His head is to consign you to death and everlasting punishment in hell for those sins. Do not be overly hasty in the conclusions you draw in answer to these all-important questions, was the gist of my exhortation. 

I also drew attention to the way the people speculated about the answer to the second question they raised in v. 35. Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? That’s more of John’s irony. The dispersion was the term for the Jews who didn’t settle in Palestine, but went throughout the empire among the Greeks, the Gentiles, the non-Jews. In one sense that, as we saw, is not what He meant, but in another way it points to the future. They unwittingly prophesied here that Jesus was, to use the words of Luke 2:32 – a light of revelation to the Gentiles. 

Upon His resurrection and commission to His disciples and His ascension to the Father’s right hand He would send His Holy Spirit upon the apostles and they would go into Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and even the uttermost parts of the earth with the answers to the questions where did he come from and where did He go? He came from God and went back to God. Repent, believe these things, and live.

Nothing Matters More in the Battle Against Sin that Enslaves

November 24, 2009 By in Exposition Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Among the things I give thanks to God for this Thanksgiving week is the grace He has given in delivering me over the years from enslaving sin.

How does that happen? We find a significant key in Peter’s second epistle.

Second Peter addresses a threat to the church of Jesus Christ in Peter’s day in the form of heresy, false teaching. Chapter 2:1 says – there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them. Their error was libertinism. They promoted license. They preached a perverse understanding of freedom and grace that entice by sensual passions of the flesh (2:18). Anything goes was the name of the game for this bunch. Grace covers.

Peter aims in this book to take such foolishness to task and arm the church with weapons of warfare to counteract the attack. He begins this letter with the indicative before ever stressing any imperatives. He talks of what is before what should be. He lays out a grand description of what God has done in saving His people. He bases his prescriptions for godly behavior on an eloquent description of what God has done. 

In so doing he tips his hand at what makes for the key idea in the entire book. We see it in 1:2 – Grace and peace be multiplied to you. That’s not an unusual opening to any epistle. We find it often. The writer expresses a profound wish or hope that the letter to unfold in their hearing will prove to channel rivers of grace and oceans of peace to their lives – that such blessing be multiplied, be ever increasing in their lives. Where? Look at the rest of the verse – in (or through) the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. 

Who doesn’t want the favor of God in his life? Who doesn’t want the peace of God in her life? Who doesn’t covet ever increasing doses of grace and peace? Such can be found in only one source – the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Don’t miss the connection in v. 2. You have no true knowledge of God if you do not claim Jesus as Lord. Jesus Christ is God. He is divine. In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col. 2:9). John 17:3 – And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. There is no true knowledge of the Father apart from an intimate knowledge of the Son. 

Grace, peace, life, godliness, all the things that truly matter, the ultimate treasures, come from the knowledge of God in Christ. So we don’t miss it he says it again in v. 3 – His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him (emphasis added). The words know and knowledge appear some sixteen times throughout the three chapters of this little book. Peter is trying to tell us something! It matters what you know. Perhaps it would be better to say it matters Whom you know.

There is nothing that matters more in our battle against sin than a passionately personal, thorough going, ever increasing knowledge of God and His Son the Lord Jesus. 

Do you want to win the battle over sin and its grip in your life? Give yourself to the vigorous pursuit of the growth of your knowledge of Him.

An Acts 9:31 Birthday Wish/Prayer for OGC

November 3, 2009 By in Exposition Tags: Leave a comment

Our church turned 18 on Sunday. Thanks be to God. We sang Happy Birthday to Us the previous Sunday night. Different, but sweet. This is my personal birthday wish/prayer for our church. My hope is you will join in making it with me.

It comes from Acts 9:31.

So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied.

By peace Luke means rest from persecution. The previous chapters record the hits taken by the fledgling church throughout Palestine in the form of heavy persecution. But now, following Saul’s conversion, she enjoys a widespread, relative peace.

But that’s not all the author tells us about the church in this season of blessed rest. He mentions two other significant realities about her. First, she was being built up. Edified. The Greek word gives us a word picture of a house under construction. We might say she was becoming more spiritual.

Second, she multiplied. The church grew. Numbers we added. Souls were saved. People were converted. The kingdom advanced.

How did these two things occur? Walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Walking conveys the idea of an everyday kind of experience. It was second nature for this church of the first century to reverence God and to be strengthened by His Spirit. In other words they were a Godward people in every sense of the word. As a result, they were edified and multiplied.

G. Campbell Morgan, in his commentary on this verse, wrote:

It is impossible to read this verse without being reminded of the missionary vocation of the Church. Here the Church is seen going on its way, going in the way the Lord commanded it, going to the nations to disciple them, going into the cosmos to suffer in order to save; and going on its way in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. These two things are closely united. The first part of the verse ends “being edified”; the second part ends “was multiplied.” The underlying thought is exactly the same. Consequently if the Church is to be missionary, she must be spiritual; and if the church is to be spiritual, she must be missionary.

Spiritual and missionary. Edified and multiplied. To be one or the other we must be both. That is my prayer for OGC as we move into our 19th year. May God make us spiritual and missionary, edified and multiplied, to a greater extent than we ever have before!

Will you join me in praying this birthday wish for our church?