Only One Hero

April 19, 2011 By revheff in Spiritual Life Tags: grace, hero worship, power, sin Leave a comment

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.

No More "Nike" Christianity

April 12, 2011 By revheff in Spiritual Life, Uncategorized Tags: gospel, grace, justification, mercy, sanctification, spritual growth 2 Comments

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.

Amazing Grace Behind Bars

April 9, 2011 By revheff in Sunday Morning Tags: grace, John Bunyan, license, preaching, prison, sanctification 2 Comments

As I prepare today for another Lord’s Day and the challenging preaching assignment God has given me from John 12:20-26, particularly vv. 25-26, I find myself decidedly grateful for the grace of Christ and His gospel. That and that alone enables anyone to hate his life in this world that he might keep it in the next.

Reminder that only the grace of God can empower extreme devotion to Christ came to me today from some reading I did in Bryan Chapel’s excellent book, Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon. In the chapter entitled Developing Redemptive Sermons, he writes of John Bunyan, the famous hymn writer, noting how much of his theology came into focus with clarity from behind bars.

Historians tell us that one of the amazing features of the life of John Bunyan was his refusal to let prison deter him from his pursuit of ministry. The author of Pilgrim’s Progress wrote many of his most influential words while incarcerated. In fact, prison helped strengthen and galvanize much of his thought. Bunyan’s theology took more concrete form when, though facing great deprivations, he debated with fellow religious prisoners whether the assurance of God’s love promoted holiness or license. Fellow prisoners challenged Bunyan saying, “You must not keep assuring people of God’s grace because they will do whatever they want.” Bunyan responded, “That is not true for God’s people. If you keep assuring God’s people of his grace, then they will do whatever he wants” (p. 313).

Guess who is praying for grace this evening that tomorrow God will help him assure His people of His grace that they will do whatever He wants?

Gospel in Life – Fall 9:30 Equipping Hour for Adults

August 2, 2010 By revheff in Sunday Morning Tags: community, gospel, grace, mission, witness 1 Comment

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!

How Not to Waste a Serious Call to Consider Our Ways

May 3, 2010 By revheff in Exposition, Uncategorized Tags: capital campaign, grace, self-examination Leave a comment

Sunday #2 of 5 in our capital fund raising campaign for our building program is now history.

Praise God for fourteen intercessors that evening seeking God at the church office. We pleaded with Him to help us as a people not waste the serious call to consider our ways as commanded by the prophet in Haggai 1:5 & 7.

The second sermon in the series is now available on our website. You can access the audio file here. The text is Haggai 1:12-15. Here is a synopsis of the message:

Here is the banner we need to wave high over our capital campaign and eventually, Lord willing, over our construction project – Zech. 4:6 – Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Church, we are no more equipped or strong or numerous or rich to pull off a 2.5 million dollar building effort than these poor rabble were to rebuild Yahweh’s glorious temple, unless God stirs us up for the task. I can’t do that for us. The elders and deacons can’t. God alone can do this. This is what we need to ask for and see if we are to move ahead and succeed. Move ahead or not, I beg of you, let us not waste this serious call to consider our ways, even as the people of Israel did not. Make the most of this opportunity. Respond positively to the invitation. Listen for God to speak through His word. Look for God to support through His promise – I am with you. And live for God to stir up through His Spirit. Make these five weeks count. Exchange hours on Facebook for time on your face before God in His word. He will speak. However He does, through whatever promises He encourages, and in whatever way He stirs us to act, let us do all for His pleasure and glory and our great joy.

Be encouraged church of God. I received a gift of $1000 from OUTSIDE our church this week toward the campaign. This is only the beginning. God is working. He relishes the faith upon which we are acting and praying (Heb. 11:6).

When the Divine Collides with the Depraved

January 26, 2010 By revheff in Exposition, Sunday Morning Tags: gospel, grace, justice Leave a comment

Here, for your further reflection, is the conclusion to Sunday’s message in John 7:53-8:11.

Neither do I condemn you. That’s grace. From now on sin no more.That’s truth. How can He do this? On what basis can He forgive her sin and command her repentance? On what basis as the Holy One of God can He be just and yet the justifier of the likes of her, of you, of me? The cross! He sees the cross! He calculates the cross! He pleads the cross for her, for you, for me! For there in a matter of months He will give His life for her adultery and my lust and your deceit and our hypocrisy and an infinite number of other infinitely offensive sins by depraved sinners the likes of us. By that means and that alone can the wrath of God be satisfied, sin be punished, and the clemency of grace be bestowed. Hallelujah, what a savior! Jesus what a friend to sinners indeed!

Jesus is divinely flawless in His manner of dealing with both. The belligerent hypocrite He slams with conviction. Let him who is without sin judge. The broken prodigal He showers with compassion. Neither do I condemn you. But not a syrupy version of love so thus He transforms – go and sin no more.Which are we? Either way we need the promise of the gospel, the grace of God in Jesus on the cross to pay the penalty for our religious moralism and/or our shameful profligacy. See the Savior and His manner. He is the Messiah, repent and believe and go and from now on sin no more as a way of life in either error.

You can listen to the entire message here.

God Most Gracious in Guidance

January 12, 2010 By revheff in Exposition, Personal Reflection Tags: grace, guidance 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.

A Particularly Disturbing Question

December 22, 2009 By revheff in Books Tags: God's love, gospel, grace, legalism 4 Comments

I have just finished reading Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Dutton, 2008, 138 pages).

In it he presents a treatment of the familiar story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. He is inclined to rename the parable The Two Lost Sons. He believes that Jesus takes aim in the story at both irreligious outsiders and moralistic insiders. Both, Keller claims, are lost and in need of salvation. Jesus, in particular, he argues, targets moralists in telling the story to show them their need for the gospel as much as the younger brother types who give themselves to profligate waste.

Early on Keller tips his hand where he is headed with all this by offering his answer to the question why people like Jesus but not the church.

Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsider Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think (p. 15-16).

When I first read that I put a question mark in the margin. I am not entirely sure I agree with the logic behind Keller’s argument. I’ve learned to do that over time rather than just take everything that comes down the pike from a respected author (and make no mistake, I highly respect him – I just purchased copies of his book The Reason for God for several members of my family for Christmas).

My question to his question is does the conclusion in the last sentence from that quote hold water? I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since. Is the church in corporate worship as an entity of God’s called out ones supposed to be inherently attractional to either kind of brother? It seems to me that rightly done the church gathered may be offensive to either crowd and only attractive to the gospel enthralled given its unique purposes.

I haven’t come near to the end of my reflections on this question but I wonder if we simply need to be more concerned with taking the gospel of our extravagantly gracious God “without” to the lost (that seems to me to be the thrust of the story in Luke 15 as far as Jesus’ aim is concerned) and “within” the church more consistently rebuke both the wayward and the legalistic who think they know Jesus but deny hin by their actions until they do come to grips with the heart of the Christian faith which is gazing upon the glory of the grace of Jesus.

What do you think?

By the way, I recommend the book. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Reflections on My 37th Birthday

December 14, 2009 By revheff in Personal Reflection, Uncategorized Tags: grace, perseverance, regeneration 2 Comments

Spiritual that is. December 14, 1972, Berwyn, PA, 10:30 AM. The man came to my house and preached the gospel to me. I believed and was baptized. While the ride has been wild, to say the least, I have never once looked back. For that I am most grateful.

My gratitude for getting to be this old in Jesus recently got a jolt of intensity thanks to Facebook. An old prof from seminary found me through the friends network. I emailed him to get caught up. He commented how good it was to hear from a former student noting his joy whenever he discovers someone who has gone on with the Lord over time. “More often than we would like that doesn’t happen,” he said.

To what should I or any aging believer attribute staying power in the spiritual life? There can be only one answer for surely there is nothing particularly devoted about my flesh. The amazing keeping power of God alone keeps one persevering toward the finish line. Consider verses like 1 Peter 1:3-5 for example:

3 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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (emphasis added).

Or Jude 1 where the writer calls us kept for Jesus Christ and in v. 24-25 where he concludes his letter with this doxology:

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen (emphasis added).

So I appear thus far to be among the kept of God. That makes me a blessed man. By God’s grace I, the kept of God, intend to go on keeping myself in His love (see Jude 21) unto my 40th, 47th, and whatever7th birthday He may allow should I enjoy length of days.

I’ve got my eye on the reward. I am one day closer to hearing, I trust, Well done good and faithful servant! I long to finish well. The vision of the end I imagine is not unlike this lovely section of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress:

After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant–for–Truth was sent for by a summons, by the same party as the others. And he had this word for a token that the summons was true: ‘The pitcher was broken at the fountain’ (Eccl. 12:6). When he understood it, he called for his friends, and told them of it. Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s house; and though with great difficulty I have got here, yet now I do not repent me of all the troubles I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles, who will now be my Rewarder.’ When the day that he must go home was come, many accompanied him to the riverside, into which, as he went down, he said, ‘O death, where is your sting?’ And as he went down deeper, he cried, ‘O grave, where is your victory?’ So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

Trumpets. I really like trumpets.

Somebody Please Say Something Redemptive about the Tiger Woods Scandal

December 4, 2009 By revheff in Cultural Issues Tags: confession, grace, sin 2 Comments

Someone has. C. J. Mahaney of Sovereign Grace Ministries put things in biblical perspective this week.

Among other things he said this:

Tiger is being hunted by something more menacing than journalists. Tiger’s real enemy is his sin, and that’s an enemy much more difficult to discern and one that can’t be managed in our own strength. It’s an enemy that never sleeps.

And this:

This story should humble and sober us. It should make us ask: Are there any so-called “secret sins” in my life? Is there anything I have done that I hope nobody discovers? Is there anything right now in my life that I should confess to God and the appropriate individuals? And this should leave us more amazed by grace because there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Read the entire post here.