For a sight and sound treatment of the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Timothy 1:11) in a way you may never have experienced before check this out.
G.O.S.P.E.L. from Humble Beast Records on Vimeo.
The above is taken from Timmy Brister’s blog site.
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.
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.
After the picnic on Sunday I crashed in front of the tube to watch the final round of the Masters golf tournament.
Have to admit, I was curious to see if Tiger would rise from the ashes and win his first major since his crash and burn.
As always he sported the Nike insignia on his person, a living billboard for the sportswear giant. Who doesn’t know the motto that goes with the logo?
I wonder how many Christians approach their spiritual lives with the same mentality. I just need to do it. I’ll just try harder. I’ll spend more time in the Bible, pray more, memorize more Scriptures, etc, etc, etc. Just do it. That’s the ticket to God’s being pleased with me.
Don’t get me wrong. These means OF grace matter. But when they become means FOR grace we’ve missed the boat altogether. Means of grace serve to connect us to the One who died for us to wipe the slate clean of the guilt of our sin AND to apply the 100% righteousness of Christ to our spiritual accounts. This is huge. It means that God looks on us and deals with us as if we had perfectly obeyed the law because Jesus obeyed it for us. He is our righteousness and we are complete in Him (Colossians 2:10). They do nothing in the way of meriting acceptance before God. There is nothing more we can do in that regard. Jesus did it all for us.
This is why we must not live a “Nike” form of Christianity, but rather a Cross-centered form of Christianity.
Lane and Tripp explain in How People Change:
Do you know what it means to live a Cross-centered life on a daily basis? Some Christians think that the Cross is what
you need to become a Christian and get to heaven. They think, I need my sins forgiven so that I escape God’s judgment when I die. But once that is taken care of, what matters is that I follow Christ’s example. I need to roll up my sleeves and get to work! The tricky thing about this perspective is that it is partially correct. You do actively pursue the obedience that comes from faith (Rom. 1:5; 16:26; Gal. 5:6). You do engage in spiritual warfare! However, you are never to minimize your continuing need for the mercy and power of Christ in the process of becoming like him (emphasis added, p. 183).
This means that we need daily to keep coming back to verses like Romans 12:1 – I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. The mercies of God make us holy and acceptable in His sight. That’s why we can present our bodies to Him for His use.
We need daily to keep coming back to verses like Hebrews 10:14 – For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Jesus’ death accomplished our perfecting in God’s sight. The tense of the verb communicates a past action with ongoing consequences. This status never changes regardless of our goof ups! It’s on that basis that we experience the ongoing transformation that is our sanctification, being made holy as He is holy.
We need daily to keep coming back to verses like Romans 8:1 – There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But PC, I just lost my temper for the umpteenth time. I just took another look at that website I had no business clicking on. I just turned yet another time to my idol of choice for comfort in the face of temptation. What do you mean there is no condemnation for me in Christ Jesus? Just what I said. Paul’s words not mine. This deal is not about our performance; it’s about His provision.
Forget about “Nike” Christianity. Just do it gets you no where. Why not rather adopt the Cross-centered Christianity motto?
Just believe it.
I’d like somebody to make a logo for that. I’d put it on my sport shirt in a heartbeat.
Like the rest of you, I suspect, Nancy and I have remained glued to the TV the last twenty-four hours watching the horrific images coming out of Japan after the devastating earthquake hit yesterday afternoon. Not even one week’s vacation to rural NC will allow an entire escape from reality in our age of near instantaneous global communication.
In the interest of rest and ministering to Nan’s dear aging mother, I have kept blogging at arm’s length thus far. But catastrophic events like 8.9 magnitude earthquakes demand some kind of pastoral comment, particularly when one’s church hosts students from Japan at the same time their homeland gets rocked by creation groaning beneath the weight of the futility to which God has subjected it (see Romans passage below).
Rather than give my own take from the Scriptures for biblical perspective on the crisis and in the interest of preserving as much rest as we can summon from our week-long trip, I will turn to Dr. R. C. Sproul for his help. My mother-in-law happens to keep a copy of his book Now, That’s a Good Question! on one of her book shelves.
He answers the question Why does God let random shootings, fatal accidents, and other horrible things occur? this way:
Since we believe that God is the author of this planet and is sovereign over it, it’s inevitable that we ask where he is when these terrible things take place. I think the Bible answers that over and over again from different angles and in different ways. We find our first answer, of course, in the book of Genesis, in which we’re told of the fall of humanity. God’s immediate response to the transgression of the human race against his rule and authority was to curse the earth and
human life. Death and suffering entered the world as a direct result of sin. We see the concrete manifestation of this in the realm of nature, where thorns become part of the garden and human life is now characterized by the sweat of the brow and the pain that attends even the birth of a baby. This illustrates the fact that the world in which we live is a place that is full of sorrows and tragedy. But we must never conclude that there’s a one-to-one correlation in this life between suffering and the guilt of the people on whom tragedies fall. If there were no sin in the world, there would be no suffering. There would be no fatal accidents, no random shootings. Because sin is present in the world, suffering is present in the world, but it doesn’t always work out that if you have five pounds of guilt, you’re going to get five pounds of suffering. That’s the perception that the book of Job labors to dispel, as does Jesus’ answer to the question about the man born blind ( John 9:1-11). On the other hand, the Bible makes it clear that God lets these things happen and in a certain sense ordains that they come to pass as part of the present situation that is under judgment. He has not removed death from this world. Whether it’s what we would consider an untimely death or a violent death, death is part of the nature of things. The only promise is that there will come a day when suffering will cease altogether. The disciples asked Jesus about similar instances—for example, the Galileans’ blood that was mingled with the sacrifices by Pilate or the eighteen people who were killed when a temple collapsed. The disciples asked how this could be. Jesus’ response was almost severe. He said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish,” again bringing the question back to the fact that moral wickedness makes it feasible for God to allow these kinds of dreadful things to take place in a fallen world.
As we engage various people about the situation in Japan, let’s watch for opportunities to bring, with sensitivity, a biblical worldview to bear on the conversation when the Lord opens the door for the same.
People may not like the answer, but the Word of God does speak to a theology of horrible things meant to lead ultimately to another theology, the good news of the gospel of Jesus, who will deliver creation from its groaning by making all things new, including us (Romans 8:19-24).
One of our Oxford Club brothers sent me an intriguing article on the gospel and responsibility.
The author shows how the gospel can make a difference in one’s motivations when it comes to work of all kinds.
For example:
God’s action to save the world was born out of His love for the world. The lazy man will have a hard time loving others
rightly if he does not understand how he has been loved. He must be affected and empowered by love before he can genuinely and energetically love others. Otherwise, his love will be various forms of self-interest. Until a man has been changed by the Gospel he will not be able to model the Gospel in his life. Rather than being motivated by the Gospel he will be motivated by behavioralism. He may do good deeds, but he has not been rightly affected at the level of his motivations. For example, the Gospel-centered man gets up in the morning and says, “I get to serve God today because He is happy with me.” The behavioristic man gets up in the morning and says, “I have to serve God today so He will be happy with me.” The former is motivated by love, while the latter is motivated by either guilt, fear, shame, duty, or self-interest.
Check it out by clicking on here.
And brothers, hope to see you tomorrow!
If the way you share your faith at this point looks something like this (or worse you don’t share Christ with others at all):
But you would like the way you share your faith to look something like this:
Then make plans to join us for our new 9:30 equipping hour emphasis, Two Ways to Live – Know and Share the Gospel – starting January 2, 2011, in the SDA sanctuary.
Participant guides for the class are available on Sundays in the church entryway for $7.50 a piece, or whatever you can afford.
Please note, at 9:30 this week only we will conduct a Skype video call with Julia Mitchell from Laos. The intro to 2W2L will begin at 10:00 AM.
No, I haven’t gone into denial about my age. I refer to my spiritual birthday. Thirty-eight years ago today, by God’s grace, I trusted in Jesus Christ. Due to His keeping/preserving power I have never looked back in my walk with Him.
Each year on this significant date in my journey I reflect in some way on what God has done and where He has me in my pilgrimage toward the celestial city.
It started early this morning with this Operation World entry regarding spiritual conditions in Uzbekistan:
Uzbekistan’s government relentlessly persecutes the Church. Dynamic and evangelism-oriented churches,
especially Uzbek churches, are particularly targeted. Uzbek Christian leaders have extensive files on them compiled by the 14 different government agencies that monitor religious activity. Persecution tactics include: public humiliation, property seizure, book and Bible-burning, expulsion of Christian students, dismissal of Christian employees, arrests (followed by beating and torture) under the flimsiest of pretexts and massive fines for first offences [sic] (up to 50 times the annual salary), (p. 874).
Upon reading that I wondered, What if God in His sovereignty had determined that I should have lived out my days in a place like that? He could well have. Acts 17:26 teaches us this truth: And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.
I found myself filled with gratitude for His kindness in putting me in a place like the US where free and abundant access to the gospel is more than not the norm.
From there I went to my reading in J. C. Ryle’s Holiness with this confirming thought:
How thankful we ought to be that we live in a land where the great remedy for spiritual thirst is known, in a land of open Bibles, preached gospel, and abundant means of grace, in a land where the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice is still
proclaimed, with more or less fullness, in twenty thousand pulpits every Sunday! We do not realize the value of our privileges. The very familiarity of the manna makes us think little of it, just as Israel loathed ‘the light bread’ in the wilderness (Num. 21:5). But turn to the pages of a heathen philosopher like the incomparable Plato, and see how he groped after light like one blindfolded, and wearied himself to find the door. . . . Turn to the accounts which trustworthy travelers and missionaries give of the state of the heathen who have never heard the gospel. Read of the human sacrifices in Africa, and the ghastly self–imposed tortures of the devotees of Hindostan, and remember they are all the result of an unquenched thirst and a blind and unsatisfied desire to get near to God. And then learn to be thankful that your lot is cast in a land like your own. Alas, I fear God has a controversy with us for our unthankfulness!
I have no wish for a controversy with God over anything. I am indeed thankful that my lot is cast in a land like our own.
Are you?
I am super jazzed that the leadership team recently agreed to offer Gospel in Life, a DVD/Bible study/group discussion series featuring Tim Keller of Redeemer Pres in New York, during the 9:30 hour for adults this fall.
Gospel in Life is an intensive eight-session (we plan to stretch things out through the end of the year) course on the gospel and how it is lived out in all of life—first in our hearts, then in community, and out into the world.
Here is the video trailer:
We chose to adopt this curriculum for a church-wide emphasis (we’ll be offering another edition of Discover OGC, our newcomer orientation series, as well) this fall in keeping with our mission to do bridge building into the surrounding community for the sake of the cause of Christ.
The subtitle for this series is Grace Changes Everything. Pray with me that God’s grace works powerfully through this curriculum as we continue to seek to be a church on mission in Central Florida.
More information and details coming soon!
Someone sent me this great word by J. C. Ryle recently:
Look not to yourselves! You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked; you cannot make atonement for your past transgressions, you cannot wipe out a single page in that long black list. And when the King shall ask you for your wedding garment you will be speechless. Look simply unto Jesus, and then the weight shall fall from off your shoulders, the course shall be clear and plain, and you shall run the race which is set before you.
The Puritans used to say for every one look at self you need to take ten looks at Jesus. May the gospel of Christ empower us to live a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called.
curtheffelfinger.com 