All posts by dax

Walking on Water

In Christ, Righteousness

I’ve been marveling this week over the presentation of truth in Scripture. Over the different ways that the Bible teaches and instructs and pushes us toward reality – toward the truth of the Gospel.

An example is Peter’s walking on water, laid out for us in Matthew 14. Here’s the text:

Matthew 14:28 And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” 29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Look at this with Gospel eyes.

First, Peter wants to walk on water; he asks Jesus to command him to. And Jesus does.

Isn’t that amazing, just on its own? I’d apply that to us in our desire to do the supernatural. Not walk on water, exactly… but to bear fruit. Fruit is supernatural, isn’t it? Love, joy, peace, patience… they can’t really be produced by our flesh, they take the supernatural Spirit… that’s why it is called the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22ff).

So we have this new heart that desires supernatural fruit and Jesus says… yes.

So, Peter walks on water.

Wow! Wow! He actually does the supernatural. Not him, obviously, he has no power to do this on his own. But, obeying Jesus… it happens. Wow!

I know… too many exclamations, right? But that’s really fantastic, that Jesus really does enable the supernatural. He really does produce things in us that we cannot do on our own. You really can display the supernatural fruit of the Spirit… because Jesus produces it in you. Like Peter, the production of the supernatural isn’t an innate ability we’re given (he doesn’t go around walking on water without Jesus)… it is a connection to a Savior.

Then, Peter sees his circumstances… the wind… and fearing… starts to sink.

Supernatural to Sinking... why?
Supernatural to Sinking... why?

We too. We take our eyes of Jesus, and put them on our circumstances. We’re victims, responders, self-promoters, reactors, those who stand for ourselves and not for Christ. If it were really up to us… even with the command of Christ… we’d sink. We fear man. We fear for ourselves, that we’ll be taken care of. And we sin. Because sin is not perfectly following all that Jesus commands… and we don’t.

Circumstances do start to sink us. And our circumstances include our continued personal pride and failings… taking us away from the supernatural (fruit-bearing) and into the mundane (sin-sinking).

Then, Peter cries out for help… and Jesus immediately takes hold of him.

Wondrous, isn’t it? Peter’s 3 words – “Lord, save me!” Not pretty or eloquent but true. Peter already following Jesus… now crying out for rescue just to do what the Lord has commanded him. He’d fail without Jesus. He has already started to… and his response is to turn to Jesus! O that this might be us when we fail!

And Jesus immediately grabbing him. He’s right there. The Son of God wouldn’t let Peter drown. Sink a bit? As a lesson? Sure. But go under? No way.

Finally, driving it home, Jesus says “O one of little faith, why did you doubt?” And they worship Jesus.

See, the whole lesson has been about faith. Faith, trust in Jesus, is the heart of the gospel for us. Faith leads us to want to bear fruit, to make effort for Jesus. But faith is the very ground we stand on… even when we’re walking on water. And faith is the means by which the supernatural – including bearing the fruit of the Spirit – happens. Faith in Jesus Christ. In His sure rescue. In His secure favor. In His ability, not ours.

Hope that as you live your life today, that you are doing the supernatural – bearing fruit. That you realize this is Christ’s power alone working through you, even as you follow his commands… and that when you start to sink… when failure comes… that you cry out to him… and that you continue to grow in your trust, moment by moment, that he’s absolutely everything.

Stories that Whisper His Name

Grace, Quotes

How eye-opening to be a parent! Not the least because of the fun books one gets to read. One of the very best bears the subtitle “Every story whispers his name.” It’s the Jesus Storybook Bible, and it is so good that I wish every adult as well as every child had read its wonderful presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ.Here’s an excerpt, from Acts 6-9, of Saul’s conversion:

“Of all the people who kept the rules, Saul was the best. ‘I’m good at being good!” he’d tell you. He was very proud. And very good. But he wasn’t very nice. Saul hated anyone who loved Jesus… he wanted everyone to forget all about Jesus. He didn’t believe Jesus was the Rescuer.

You see, Saul had never met Jesus. So one day, Jesus met Saul.”

The book then relates Saul’s Damascus Road experience… his name change to Paul, and has fun insights on Ananias. And then look at how they convey the message:

“‘It’s not about keeping rules!” Paul told people. ‘You don’t have to be good at being good for God to love you. You just have to believe what Jesus has done and follow him. Because it’s not about trying, it’s about trusting. It’s not about rules, it’s about Grace: God’s free gift-that cost him everything.’

What had happened to Paul? He met Jesus.”

O how I pray you’ve met Jesus!

Perfection: Isn’t It Required?

In Christ, Righteousness

We’ve been in 1 Samuel as a church. This week we saw that perfection was indeed required.

The mission was given, and Saul didn’t do it all. He didn’t kill the king, Agag. And so ch. 15 ended with old, feeble Samuel hacking away and completing the mission, doing what Saul didn’t. And Saul was rejected as king.

“Put yourself in Saul’s shoes.” Easy for me to take that thought and go completely sideways with it.

Something along these lines: “Doesn’t God require more of you than you are doing? Shouldn’t you be better than you are? God doesn’t want your fellowship, he wants your obedient action. Put yourself in Saul’s shoes – are you really, really, really paying attention to Yahweh your God? How are you doing with the 10 commandments? How are you doing with the Sermon on the Mount? Don’t you know that God doesn’t just desire perfection – he demands it! Take a good look at Agag, hacked to pieces, blood spattered on the ground.”

And I’m tempted to take another sideways step as I look at my life. Because I don’t see perfection in my behavior. Not even close. So here’s guilt. Or here’s blameshifting. And certainly renewed effort. Ending in continued failure, if I’m honest. But I need to be better. So honesty goes out the window. And I act as perfect as possible. Because if true holiness isn’t visible in my behavior, then putting on a show will have to do.

Dangerous misinterpretation, to put ourselves in Saul’s shoes. Why?

Because Saul was the first king of Israel. The first king of God’s people. Who he points to is the King. What he was to live up to was the office of the King. That’s the King of Israel. The King of Kings. We know him as Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, you see, was utterly perfect.
Jesus Christ was perfectly obedient.
Jesus Christ so perfectly followed the Father’s will that he said that every single thing he did was from the Father. That God spoke perfectly through him, by who he was, what he did. That level of perfection to the mission.

There’s one and only one way for me to get that kind of perfection.
It is not through some sort of Holy Spirit anointing toward enabled behavior. Saul had an anointing. It is not by making myself the center, the hero, even with powerful help.

Perfection’s required… how can we get it?
It is through identification with the one who did perfection.
It is through union with the one who obeyed to the final dot, the final iota.

This union, which is the work of the Holy Spirit, is embodied in the new birth, is spoken of in the new covenant. The blood and body of the King, for us. His righteousness, ours. God looks at us… and sees the perfect obedience of this King… forever.

Instead of us being the hero… we have to be taken out… that we might live only through and in Jesus.
Thus Colossians 3:3: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Incredible.
And this brings us back to Saul.
Because what God desired was a humble heart, a broken heart, a heart that followed God’s ways. Following God’s ways means realizing that perfection would be God’s, that perfection would come from God. That’s the sin that God rejects Saul for… not his imperfection, but his arrogance, his presumption, his lack of humble dependence (see 15:23).

Humility of heart, the kind that forsakes self and trusts in Christ, will lead to great usefulness, fruit that truly exalts the one who is doing the work (our God), and a life of wondrous joy.

So perfection really is required. The perfection of Jesus Christ, our King. Thankfully, He’s entirely perfect. And our work is to keep our eyes on him and our faith in him… and not on ourselves.

He’s the hero. Now and forever. May we humbly trust our Lord and Savior… our perfect King.

Rainy Day Quote

Quotes, Righteousness,

Windy, cold, and rainy today. Great day to sip hot tea or cocoa… and think about the incredible truth of our righteousness in Christ captured so well by Horatius Bonar, a prominent minister in 1800’s Scotland (quoted from The Everlasting Righteousness):

At the cross this “righteousness” was found; human, yet divine: provided for man and presented to him by God for relief of conscience and justification of life. On the one word, “It is finished,” as on a heavenly resting place, weary souls sat down and were refreshed.

The voice from the tree did not summon them to do, but to be satisfied with what was done. Millions of bruised consciences there found healing and peace.

Belief in that finished work brought the sinner into favor with God, and it did not leave him in uncertainty as to this. The justifying work of Calvary was God’s way, not only of bringing pardon, but of securing certainty.

It was the only perfect thing which had ever been presented to God in man’s behalf; and so extraordinary was this perfection that it might be used by man in his transactions with God as if it were his own.

May we praise our Savior forever for what He has done!

A Sunrise for Today

Christmas, In Christ, Righteousness

There’s a sunrise at the end of Luke chapter 1.

A sun rising on those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.

His name is Jesus.
He comes because of the tender mercy of our God.
He gives knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sin.

And he does not only bring forgiveness of sins past, thereby giving you a chance to be better. He makes something true that wasn’t true before – he makes us holy and righteous.

Here’s what Zechariah says:

“that we… might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” (Luke 1:74-75).

That’s the truth of Jesus Christ.

When the fullness of time came (oh, all the years spent in darkness!), God sent forth his son (oh, blessed sunrise!), born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4-5).

Praise God for the righteousness and holiness given us in Christ, that we are redeemed, adopted, and serve our God without fear all our days.

Merry Christmas!

Grace in Tolerance?

Grace,

Tolerance is a bad word in many Christian circles. And rightly so: what it often refers to is an indifferent attitude toward sin.

Sin rightly defined is horrible. We ought never to be indifferent. We ought to help people out of it by pointing them to Jesus Christ. Our tolerance often is driven by fear of man or a desire to not ‘ruffle feathers.’

So how does tolerance reveal grace? Well… when there’s a different subject. Not our tolerance. God’s tolerance.

God’s tolerance isn’t indifference, or driven by fear.
God’s tolerance is more rightly defined as permitting behavior that is at odds with His holiness for a season. Perhaps it could be summarized “delayed judgment.”

Just ran across this in 1 Samuel. Eli’s sons are absolutely positively acting horrifically as representatives of a holy God. Very great sin, the Bible tells us.

No lightning bolt. No fireball. Their actions continued.
And thus we see God’s tolerance of sin. Of besmirching of his name. Of dishonor, for a season. Years, apparently, going by with common people looking on as God’s priests ran amok. Apparently not caring.

I think this is so incredible.

In the case of Eli’s sons, it is a tolerance of a fixed duration… because it fit God’s plans. He’s got plans. He’s willing to suffer external shame for his plans to come to fruition. In the case of Hophni and Phinehas, his patience is revealed as he waits for Samuel to grow… to contrast God’s deliverance through a child, God’s Word through a child… as opposed to man.

God’s plan has always been that in the fullness of time, he would send a child. A messiah. A prophet, priest, and king. And he bore with constant and continual sin… seeming defeats, seeming setbacks… when he was waiting patiently for his plan.

Amazing.

And what drives home the amazingness (is that a word?) for me is one of the reasons for his temporal tolerance. It is found in Hebrews 11:39-40:

“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”

The author is saying that God allowed his people to suffer and perish and be afflicted and not receive what was promised… because he was waiting for us. We needed to be added in. He loved us so incredibly much… that he tolerated much affliction in his people, and apparent shame and setback for himself.

2 Peter 3:9 has the same thought:

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

See… God is tolerant… patient… because he wants to include all that are his.

Jesus was serious when he said that he would not lose any that God had given him. That’s how serious God is about redeeming every single person on whom he has set his love.

And once his… we are a new creation, righteousness given not earned, sin forgiven through the finished work of Jesus… no longer aimed for certain wrath delayed only by temporal tolerance, but rather gloriously redeemed and united and adopted into God’s family forever.

So yes, grace in tolerance. In God bearing apparent shame and apparent loss and apparent setback and apparently doing nothing about evil and sin… because his plan is sure, his love is set, his reason includes you.

Fantastic. May his kindness pull us toward repentance and trust in him alone.

The critical contrast

In Christ

Continuing to walk through James, a wonderful book which gloriously reveals the depth of the gospel as it works into our lives. Living for Christ is so much more than a moral checklist or cultural conformity. Our faith in Christ will produce much – but the incredible thing about gospel-based progressive sanctification is that we bear more fruit as we more fully understand our relationship with God – especially that it is based on Christ’s performance for us, not our performance for him.

So even beyond the wondrous truth that “faith works,” James reveals how it works. And even more critically, James reveals the contrast of this fruit-producing faith with the world’s view of religion. There’s a variety of ways that pastors say this… here are a few phrases that draw out the contrast of works grounded in unbelieving religion… or gospel faith:

Our works drive God’s love for us… or God’s love drives our works.
Our good works direct God’s favor… or our good works reflect God’s favor.
Our actions are the root of God’s favor… or our actions are the fruit of God’s favor.
Obey so God will be happy… or obey because God is happy with you.
Our obedience motivates God’s infinite happiness… or God’s infinite happiness motivates our obedience.
I am obligate so that God will love me… or I’m free to live this way because God loves me.
I obey therefore I’m accepted… or I’m accepted therefore I obey.
If I behave, then I belong… or I belong, that’s why I behave.

O the glories of what our Savior has done! May our hearts be more and more grounded in the gospel, that we might more and more see the reality of who we are in Him.

A few words from James 3…

In Christ

Several have asked me to post the week-long speech check referred to in last week’s sermon. Here it is, adapted loosely from World Harvest Mission, via Tullian Tchividjian.

The exercise is to spend an entire week (start with a day) without protecting yourself with your tongue. So:

Don’t gossip
Don’t complain about anything
Don’t blameshift
Don’t defend yourself
Don’t boast at all
Don’t criticize (yes, there is good criticism… but not for this exercise :>)

Do speak only good
Do encourage
Do speak only of your weaknesses (not strengths)
Do admit quickly when a hint of wrong

The point in this exercise is to see what James is proclaiming… that no human being can tame the tongue, and that the one who does is perfect (not you or me).

That’s so we can come back to the hope that we do have… of Jesus Christ, His work in the Gospel. May our eyes be fixed on Him, may our hope be ensconced in Him, may our speech more and more reflect our awareness of our identity in His family!

Identity thoughts

Quotes,

A beautiful Monday morning, another day to marvel at God’s grace in giving us life and breath. O that we might use it to reveal that our identity has been radically changed — as we’ve been redeemed and adopted into Jesus Christ’s family… by His wondrous work alone!

Along the lines of a new identity, here’s Tim Keller from King’s Cross:

“Are you beginning to see how radical Jesus is? It’s not a matter of saying, ‘I’ve been a failure, I’ve been immoral, so now I’m going to go to church and become a moral, decent person. Then I’ll know I’m a good person because I am spiritual.’ Jesus says, ‘I don’t want you to simply shift from one performance-based identity to another; I want you to find a whole new way. I want you to lose the old self, the old identity, and base yourself and your identity on me and the gospel.'” 

No, Commands don’t Enable

Grace, ,

I’m hoping to get back to weekly thoughts on Scripture and daily living… as we (hopefully) finish up with our several-month-long move to a new facility.

Today I’m tackling a particular catch-phrase that I’ve occasionally heard echoed through modern Christianity. A brief Google search reveals sermons from Seoul to California promoting this saying:

“God’s commands are his enablements.”

This is at best misleading, and when not understood correctly, hurtfully wrong.

What is meant, charitably, by this statement is that God helps us do what he wants us to do. He says what we are to do, and then he gives us the strength, the power, to do what he commands.

This is fine, as far as it goes (which isn’t far enough, but we’ll take a look at that in a moment).
But that charitable reading is not what the phrase actually says.

“God’s commands are his enablements” is a clear equation: the commands of God = (“are”) the enablements of God.

This equation does not appear to be in the Bible.

Perhaps the closest echo is in 2 Peter 1:3.

“His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness…”

So God’s power has given us what we need for godliness. Godliness in turn would seem to embody a life of keeping his commands. But it does not say that the commands are the power. Quite the contrary, the power is, as Peter goes on to write, “… through the knowledge of Him who has called us to his own glory… by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises.”

Catch that? The power is in the true knowledge of Jesus. The true knowledge of Jesus… by which we are implanted, united to Him. Made new by the power of the Holy Spirit. His promises are to make us a new creation… these very great and precious promises are the engine of our obedience.

In fact, the Bible consistently points to God’s commands, sometimes called law, as powerless rather than enabling (see, for example, Romans 8:3 or Galatians 3:21). That doesn’t make commands bad – to the contrary, they help reveal God’s heart and character and give us rails for living. But the commands aren’t shown to be empowering.

So if the commands themselves aren’t enabling, what does enable the believer?

What enables God’s commands is the gospel. The good news of Jesus. The indicatives of the Bible. The reality that your sin has been paid for, that a way has been made, that an inheritance is yours forever, the truth of a new birth.

Michael Horton uses the analogy of a sailboat:

“Think of a sailboat. You can have all the guidance equipment to tell you where to go, to plot your course, and to warn you when you’ve been blown off course. However, you can’t move an inch without wind in your sails… the law directs, but it cannot drive gospel sanctification.”

See the difference?
God’s commands are not his enablements. The gospel is. The gospel is the motivator, the gospel is engine, the gospel is what enables response to God’s commands. The desire for you and for me to follow God’s commands is in no way the commands themselves. It is a new heart.

This difference is incredibly important to Christian living in several ways. Here’s two:

First, if you realize that your enablement is Christ, when you fail… you run back to Christ. Your prayer focuses not on impartial empowerment to overcome a particular sin, but dependent pleading to have a life more focused on Jesus. Sin is a result of unbelief and pride… not only (or even primarily) the failure itself. Since that sin has been paid for by Jesus Christ, there’s not an accompanying guilt of despair with failure (as opposed to the ‘it is all up to you’ flavor of God’s commands being his enablements).

Second, omitting the gospel from the equation of keeping God’s commands blurs the distinction between moralism and true Christianity. True Christianity is firmly founded and centered on Jesus’ finished work. He kept the commands, so now I’m saved… and that salvation pushes me to want to keep God’s commands. That last phrase is decidedly subservient to the first. If it isn’t, I’m headed toward moralism.

Tim Keller puts it this way:

“…modern and post-modern people have been rejecting Christianity for years thinking that it was indistinguishable from moralism. Non-Christians will always automatically hear gospel presentations as appeals to become moral and religious, unless in your preaching you use the good news of grace to deconstruct legalism.”

It really is important not to skip over the gospel, nor to skip over how a gospel-driven life is fundamentally different from God’s commands themselves being the empowerment for your obedience.

So I’d propose we should stop using “God’s commands are his enablements.”

We could replace it with Tullian Tchividjian’s “Imperatives minus indicatives are impossibilities;” or “Jesus plus nothing equals everything”… or “God’s gospel is his enablement”… may we joyfully exult in following our Savior because of who he is and what he has done for us!