Strength from the God of Keen Senses

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Today’s message from Genesis 16 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

Charles Spurgeon made this comment about the grace of God that pursued Hagar through the angel of the Lord:

I think I see her there, her eyes red with weeping, her spirit broken down with the hunger of her journey, sitting a while and refreshed a moment, and resolved not to stoop and never to go back—and then, again, shuddering at the darkness that lay before her and afraid to go on. It was in such a state as that that God met with her! To all intents and purposes she was a friendless, outcast woman. She had left the only tents where she could claim a shelter. She had gone into the wilderness—no father, no mother, no brother, no sister to care for her. She turned her back upon those who had any interest in her and now she was left alone—alone, alone in a desert land without an eye to pity or a hand to help! It was then, under those peculiar circumstances of trial and of sin commingled, that God met with her.

When you least expect it, when you least deserve it, the God of keen senses will find you and give you strength.

Stand4Life

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Somebody handed me a postcard last Sunday with this picture on it.

Needless to say, that got my attention.

The flip side contained this information:

It’s time to leave our beautiful churches and stand in the streets and cry out with wisdom.  We CAN change public opinion about abortion in our region! As we pray for our government to uphold life, we have a responsibility in our own region to be a witness.  After all, abortions are not happening in the Supreme Court building, they happen in our neighborhoods!  The church is required to be the conscience of America.  Let’s start in our own backyards. This is a call to action!  On May 7, thousands will gather in silent prayer from 10am-12pm, covering every abortion center in Florida.  We will lay aside our denominational differences and preferences to be the demonstration of justice for those who have no voice.  We will come as a silent force with one message: LIFE.

I checked out the website and found this video:

Turns out the All Women’s Health Center at 431 Maitland Ave, Altamonte Springs, just north of our meeting location, is one of the targeted abortion clinics.

Why not consider participating?

Bin Laden's Death in a Different Light

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As one might expect, the blogosphere is alive and well about someone who isn’t. I refer, of course, to the death of Osama bin Laden.

The flurry of activity on this score, some of it excellent (see Justin Taylor for example), gave me pause about piling on to the discussion.

Obviously, I gave in. Blame it in part on yesterday’s message in John 12:34-36, The Parting Plea of the Public Christ.

Two billion inhabitants of the planet earth have never heard the blessed gospel of the glorious God, the good news of Jesus Christ, the light of the world, come to live a perfect life and die a substitutionary death on behalf of undeserving sinners, so that they might know forgiveness, have credited to their spiritual account the 100% righteousness of Christ, and receive the gift of eternal life.

I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Osama bin Laden was one of them. More than likely he never even had a chance to walk in the light that the darkness might not overtake him, as it most surely did given the acts of evil he perpetrated.

Oh how grateful I am, who except for the grace of God may well have gone the way of bin Laden, for the mercies of God which opened my eyes to my rebellious heart, and brought me out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14). If He hadn’t shown me such mercy, how easily the same darkness, to one degree or another, could have overtaken me.

Can we see this poor, evil, got-what-we-all-deserve man in this light? Have we in the west, with so much greater access to the gospel of Jesus, heard His plea to walk in the light while we have the light? Spurgeon warned:

I put before you this serious consideration, that you are at present favored with the Light of God, but you are only favored with it for a certain term. Do not reckon upon always having it, for the Light may be removed from you. My dear Hearer, the day may come when you will have to go away from this country and be found far off in the bush of Australia, or the backwoods of America. Or you may even, in this country, be located where you will not be able to hear the Gospel, for what you will hear will not be the Gospel, and you will be obliged to confess that it is not! Therefore, while you have the Light of God, remember that it is a favorable season for your decision for Christ. The day may come, as I said before, when the voice that has thrilled you, again and again, and that wakes the echoes of your soul’s most secret chambers, shall be silent in death. The time may come when, although your minister and you, yourself, are still left in the same place, yet, so far as you are concerned, the Holy Spirit will be gone, and so the Light will have departed from you. Take heed, I beseech you, lest it really be so, and use the Light while you have it.

Can we who by virtue of our union with Christ gained the privileged and responsible identity of sons of light see this man’s death in yet another light? Does it not call us to double and triple our efforts to shine like stars (Philippians 2:14-16) in bringing the good news to those near and far with gospel works and words?

Lord, shine your light in our hearts regarding this state of affairs and more that we might look beyond the obvious, the superficial, the carnal, the political, that we might see with the spiritually discerning eyes of the gospel.

Nursery Numbers Gone Wild

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They have. Last Sunday, twenty six little ones. And we haven’t even occupied a building yet.

Wonderfully scary to think what having our own place might mean for growth in our ministry in all kinds of areas, let alone this strategic one.

Our leadership team is working on the present challenge in this regard as well as thinking ahead to what the future might bring.

Mike and Peggy and Joyce, along with the help of a corps of other faithful volunteers have worked heroically over the years to serve our body in this area. Praise God for them! What a fabulous job they have been doing.

But truth is, things are getting a bit unmanageable. The leadership team decided some time ago to pursue hiring a paid nursery worker to serve on Sundays from 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM to coordinate our team of volunteers week-in and week-out and to help us ensure the safety and excellent care of our little ones. All our attempts to acquire this person from outside the body, for various reasons, have not succeeded.

On Thursday night we agreed as a team to bring on, on an experimental basis for the next four months, someone from within our own body to attempt to address this area. Beginning tomorrow morning, Katie Fairey will assume the post. We praise God for her willingness. We will make every effort to make sure she gets to be in most of the service each week, but for set up, the 9:30 hour, drop off for and pick up after the service, and take down, she will be present in the nursery. Please pray for her and us as we give this strategy a shot and see how things work out.

One other item has come to our attention as we have sought to address this area of need in our ministry. The load of care is falling on too few servants. Some simply aren’t willing to serve. Others call at the last minute or fail to show up as scheduled at all.

Please, I beg of you, dear sisters in Christ, for the sake of the gospel, the love of Christ’s family and the care of our little ones, let’s rally around Katie and one another and do better in this regard. I realize it isn’t everyone’s favorite ministry and nobody wants to miss the service. But if everyone pitches in no one has to serve more than once every six weeks or even more. And I see that the message of the day gets posted on the website that very afternoon so folks don’t have to miss the feeding of God’s word.

If the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these, let us show our affirmation of that by working together to have the best of all possible nursery environments for our children of today and tomorrow.

Man as Shepherd-Lord

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This Saturday in our Oxford Club for Men meeting we turn to chapter five in Richard Phillips’ book The Masculine Mandate. This chapter lays the final section in the doctrinal section of the book before turning to practical application in chapters six and beyond.

In it Phillips makes an urgent plea for men to live out the image of God within them by exercising servant lordship or leadership in keeping with texts like Genesis 2:19-20.

19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

Even as Adam exercised lordship dominion in the right to name all the animals in the garden, men are to assume responsibility for their roles of servant leadership in all the spheres of their lives. He argues from the shepherd model of leadership plastered all over the word of God, especially in the ministry of Jesus (John 10:11), in his appeal for men to act as leaders who make the well-being of those entrusted to their care their ultimate concern.

He writes:

The way for Christian men to leave a lasting legacy is for us to embrace the Bible’s model of servant-leadership. Our goal must be not just to carve out success for ourselves but to leave a blessed imprint on the lives of those who are under our care. This can happen only when we as shepherds are ready to give our lives for the sheep, as did Jesus, our Good Shepherd. . . . Christian leaders must learn to measure our success in the security and inspiration of those who follow us, in their growing confidence and ability, and in the achievements of others rather than our own (p. 47).

Brothers, join us on Saturday morning at 7 AM at the church office as we consider how to embrace our roles as shepherd-lords that we might leave a blessed imprint on the lives of those who are under our care.

Seeing & Savoring the Savior’s Superior Sacrifice

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Today’s Good Friday message from Hebrews 10:11-14 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

Here’s how I summarized the theme and aim of the sermon:

In vv. 11-14 he puts the capstone on this argument. He drives it home with full force. Let me put it into the form of a theme: Because Jesus made a superior sacrifice for sins in every way we should not return to our old ways but persevere in holding fast the confession of our hope in the gospel of Jesus. I want to show you from the text four things that make the sacrifice of Jesus superior in every way, especially to Old Covenant Judaism, but essentially to every other religion or system of dealing with the human dilemma. My aim is that we will do anything but shrink back from our faith in the face of trouble rather even joyfully accept the plunder of our property (10:34) if necessary because of these things – His power in the sacrifice, His place after the sacrifice, His plan since the sacrifice, and His perfection by the sacrifice.

All hail to King Jesus who gave His body an offering for sin once for all and who now waits until all His enemies are brought under the footstool of His feet.

The Power of Moods to Shape the Mood

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For years, even after my conversion, I went about my days often as a pretty moody person.

Back in the time when Tim LaHaye’s temperament categories captured the evangelical imagination, I always got stuck with the same label of the four: melancholy (choleric, sanguine, and phlegmatic rounding out the group). Ask Nancy and she will probably tell you that this moody blues pattern in her husband during far too many of those early years made for one of the biggest challenges to her marital adjustment.

I am happy to say after nearly forty years of walking with Jesus that the label doesn’t stick so well anymore. That’s not to say that I don’t struggle with melancholy from time to time. I do. But things have changed by God’s grace and the power of the gospel.

Understanding the power of the gospel and living in the grip of grace that delivers one from melancholy depends a great deal on grasping the relationship between the moods of Greek verbs. Gotcha thinking now, don’t I? You probably didn’t guess that trajectory in my thinking.

But it’s true, entirely true, in the relationship between the indicative and the imperative moods. The indicative mood in languages states what is. The imperative, on the other hand, declares what should be. The former is descriptive; the latter is prescriptive. To put it another way, the indicative tells us who we are in Christ because of the gospel while the imperative tells us how we should live in light of the gospel.

For example, Ephesians 2:4-6 states what is. Because of God’s great love, even when we were dead in sin, He made us alive together with Christ, raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places. We refer to that as positional truth. That’s our position in Christ. Ephesians 4:1-3, on the other hand, declares what should be in light of what is. Because of what God has done for us in Jesus we should walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. The rest of those verses goes on to unpack what worthy walking looks like.

That’s only one of a myriad of examples from the New Testament. Here’s the point. Don’t confuse your who with your do. Don’t switch your indicative with your imperative. The Bible never does. The indicative always precedes the imperative, never the other way around. In Christ what you do does not determine who you are; who you are determines what you do! We don’t obey the commands of Christ in the word of God to make ourselves pleasing to God; we obey the commands of Christ in the word of God because we are pleasing to God in Christ.

This is huge in terms of shaping emotional moods! If you confuse your who with your do, if you switch the moods, you will end up either despairing because you never measure up, or you go the other way and end up bragging at how much you have it together. Neither of those moods pleases God.

I was reminded the other morning just how much the gospel has changed my moods by a rather silly incident. Nancy prepared a dynamite egg & cheese strata for our weekly staff meeting. I get up earlier than she does on Tuesday morning so it fell to me to preheat the oven and get the thing cooking while our guys prayed. Sounds simple enough.

But when she came out to the kitchen I heard a gasp and wondered, What did I do wrong now? Turns out I had preheated the oven but never put the casserole in there! Poor Nanc had to scramble literally, whipping ups some eggs. Plan B she graciously called it. How cool is it to live with a wife constrained by the gospel?

Tell you the truth, I was tempted, really tempted, to do that silly thing I have often done. I thought seriously about playing that game I play so well called beat up on PC. I know it’s silly, but that’s the very kind of thing that can put me into an emotional tailspin!

And then I remembered the gospel. It’s not about my performance; it’s about His provision. He has perfected me for all time (Hebrews 10:14). I am complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). I have been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20). The pleasure of God with me His child does not depend on remembering to put the strata in the oven or any other assignment for that matter. It depends upon my union with Christ and God’s absolute delight with Him.

If we get this, if we keep our moods in the right order, then the joy of the Lord really will be our strength (Nehemiah 8:10), and our moods will be shaped for the glory of God and testify to the beauty of the gospel.

The Way of the Devoted in the Throes of the Desperate

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Nicholas Wolterstorff, in his little book Lament for a Son, writes of the loss of his twenty-something boy to a fatal mountain-climbing accident. He asks:

What do you say to someone who is suffering? Some people are gifted with words of wisdom. For such, one is profoundly grateful. There were many such for us. But not all are gifted in that way. Some blurted out strange, inept things. That’s OK too. Your words don’t have to be wise. The heart that speaks is heard more than the words spoken. And if you can’t think of anything at all to say, just say, “I can’t think of anything to say. But I want you to know that we are with you in your grief” (p. 34).

Were we to have accompanied David from Aphek to Ziklag in 1 Samuel 29-30, delivered from one trial only to encounter a fiercer one, perhaps no words would come in the face of such momentous grief. I can imagine David traveling the miles from Aphek thinking, how gracious of God to extricate me from having to go to war against my own people (see chapter 29)! But life is like this. Just when you think things can’t get worse, you suffer another staggering blow. David and his men return to Ziklag to discover nearly the worst – the city burnt to the ground and their families taken captive, destined, no doubt, for a future of slavery and abuse.

Their reaction is understandable in v. 4. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. Even David mourned in grief, his wives taken by the marauding Amalekites. For him however, grief came in an even greater wave as v. 6 records. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter of soul, each for his sons and daughters.

On top of staggering loss for David comes devastating threat. His band of men pin the blame on him for the turn of events. Their bitterness of soul overflowed in making their leader the scapegoat for whatever reason. David can attest to the truth of Psalm 34:19 – Many are the afflictions of the righteous.

The good news in the midst of this horrifying text is that he can also testify to the truth of the remaining half of that verse. But the Lord delivers him out of them all. David models for us an important principle for responding to trials, even the worst of them.

In the throes of desperate circumstances the devoted intentionally make their way toward God in every respect.

And the first way to do that is to find your strength in God (1 Samuel 30: 1-6).

At the end of v. 6, Ziklag smoldering around him, family taken from him, embittered comrades preparing to stone him, what does the man do? But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. He strengthened himself. The force of the Hebrew verb is reflexive. This is a choice he made. David takes an intentional direction. He moves toward God not from Him. He doesn’t blame God, he doesn’t rail on God, he doesn’t question God; he strengthens himself where? In the Lord his God (emphasis added). Yahweh is not just Israel’s covenant-keeping, faithful God; He is David’s God. This is David demonstrating the force of his words in Psalm 23:1 – The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want (emphasis added).

David possesses composure and takes courage in a way no one else on the scene at Ziklag seems prepared to do. He finds strength in God. Perhaps he remembered a former day in the Wilderness of Ziph, on the run from Saul, where he found strength in God, but not of his own accord. First Samuel 23:15-16 records:

15David saw that Saul had come out to seek his life. David was in the wilderness of Ziph at Horesh. 16And Jonathan, Saul’s son, rose and went to David at Horesh, and strengthened his hand in God. 17And he said to him, “Do not fear, for the hand of Saul my father shall not find you. You shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you. Saul my father also knows this.”

In the throes of those desperate straits, God sent him Jonathan, his fiercely loyal, covenant-bound friend. He helped fortify David’s weary hands. He had the right words in the suffering. You shall be king over Israel. He reminded him of the promise and decree of Yahweh. But here in 1 Samuel 30 there is no Jonathan. Deeper currents of spiritual commitment now course through the veins of David as he draws nearer the throne. On this occasion, though all desert him, he will find his strength in God alone. He will preach to himself the promises of God that do not fail. He will live and breathe the words of Psalm 73:25-28.

25Whom have I in heaven but you?   And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail,   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  27For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;   you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. 28But for me it is good to be near God;   I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.

Andrew Bonar, Free Church of Scotland pastor, did just this in the face of stunning loss.

[He] wrote in his diary for October 15, 1864, of his grievous “wound”; Isabella, his wife of seventeen years, died, apparently of complications following childbirth. He wrote that on the day of her death he had, according to his custom, been meditating on a Scripture text between dinner and tea. On that day it had been Nahum 1:7 – “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him” (RSV). Bonar adds, “Little did I think how I would need it half an hour after (quoted in Dale Ralph Davis’ Looking on the Heart, p. 172).

Countless numbers of devoted saints through the centuries have turned to God in His word to find their strength in Him. They treasure His presence there. They calculate the certainty of His promises. They remember the virtues of His character. They come forth like Job in 13:15 – Though he slay me, I will hope in him. The way of the devoted in the throes of the desperate leads toward God in every respect. They find their strength in God.

Do you find yourself in the throes of desperate straits? Is there no Jonathan to strengthen your hand in God? Maybe the Lord would have you move toward Him in dependence upon Him alone for the strength only He can give.

Only One Hero

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Every kid hero worships. I did. Zorro was my man. Dressed in black. Magnificent with the blade. Astride “Tornado” his steed. Champion of the oppressed. I never missed a Zorro movie or TV show growing up.

Christians can tend to do the same with characters in the Bible. Most of us have our favorites. Abraham for his faith. Moses for his humility. Joshua for his leadership. David for his courage. Paul for his missionary zeal. Just to name a few.

I have been reminded recently by Dr. Bryan Chapell in some messages I’ve been listening to that most of our Bible heroes suffer from some pretty ugly blemishes on their resumes. In fact almost all of them do apart from the rare exceptions like Enoch, Caleb and maybe one or two others.

Our heroes didn’t always act so heroic. Abraham gave away his wife, not just once but twice for fear and cowardice. Moses murdered an Egyptian and lost his temper (that kept him out of the promise land). Joshua got duped by the Gibeonites. David committed adultery and arranged for a man’s murder. Paul seemed to have gotten testy over John Mark in a dispute with Barnabas. On and on I could go.

What’s the point? The Bible doesn’t whitewash the faults of its characters. Some are downright scandalous. There are no human heroes. God is the only hero. What makes Him heroic is that by His grace He can and does use the likes of us, weaknesses, sins, et al, to accomplish His purposes.

Feeling like you don’t measure up. Guess what? You’re in good company. You don’t, any more than the litany of characters in the Word of God. Wondering if God can use you in spite of what you’ve done, where you’ve been, how your resume reads? No question about it. He can, He does, and He will.

Whether we’re Rahabs or Mary Magdalenes, Samsons or Peters, we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Look relentlessly to the only Hero in the book and the God-Man He sent to rescue us from our resumes.