Monthly Archives: March 2018

He was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.  (Isaiah 53:5)

It seems counterintuitive to refer to the day when Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried as “good,” but its goodness is so utterly glorious that it’s cosmic!

For the Christian, Good Friday begins the celebration of the most momentous three days in the history of the world. That weekend began on the Hill Golgotha, where . . . well, Scripture explains it far more eloquently than I ever could!

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.
(Psalm 85:10 ESV)

When Jesus cried out, “It is finished” from that cruel cross, He meant what He said! The demands of God’s perfect, righteous justice were fulfilled when Jesus paid the penalty for our sins in full. Because Jesus took our place on that cross, receiving the full measure of God’s divine wrath for our sin, we have now received the first fruit of justification: peace with God.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” so that the holy demands of His perfect righteousness would be completely satisfied by Christ’s sacrificial death, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 NKJV). God’s unwavering, steadfast love for you, Christian, met God’s faithfulness to administer justice, and both were fully expressed at Calvary. Righteousness and peace met at the cross and kissed one another. This really is goodness on steroids!

But it doesn’t stop there. The weekend reached its glorious conclusion when God placed His supernatural stamp of approval on all that Jesus had done by raising His beloved Son from death to life.

“He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” (Matthew 28:6 NKJV)

The angel reminded the women that Jesus walked out of the tomb, just as He predicted He would. You see, Good Friday’s goodness brings us to Easter morning and the Resurrection. If Jesus had remained dead in the grave, we would all still be dead in our sins. But Jesus was raised from death to life and showed Himself to hundreds of people during a 40-day period before He ascended back into heaven, where He now sits at the right hand of God the Father.

The “goodness” of Good Friday not only saves us from the penalty of our sin, it also begins the life-long process of saving us from the power of sin. Peter writes, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

Jesus Christ’s wounds witness to the wealth of goodness that we have been given through His unimaginable suffering on that dark, dreadful day more than 2,000 years ago. To the watching world, evil had triumphed, but that “victory” was short lived. On Easter morning, Jesus became the death of death; and that, beloved, is the ultimate goodness of Good Friday. Let that truth set you free on this Good Friday as you prepare to celebrate the Resurrection.

Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Corinthians 15:54-55)

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”
“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” (John 21:15)

As a pastor, I frequently encounter those who are struggling with their “fallible” faith. I always remind them to go back through the biblical record and see that this is the only kind of faith the people of God were ever able to demonstrate! We see the faith of Jesus and we marvel, as we rightly should, and it is this Christlike faith that we are to desire with every fiber of our being. But we must never imagine that this is the kind of faith we will demonstrate on this side of the grave. When we fall short—and we will, time and time again—we must remember that our salvation is not rooted in our faithfulness to Jesus, but rather in His faithfulness to us.

Let these few examples of fallible faith comfort you today:

• Abraham tried twice to pass his wife off as his sister to save his own skin.
• Jacob did everything he could to scheme his way into his birthright.
• Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster and hid in the desert for forty years.
• David slept with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to try to cover it up.
• Elijah cried out for death after defeating the prophets of Baal.
• Jonah ran from God’s call and spent three days in the belly of a great fish.
• Peter denied Jesus three times in the courtyard on the night He was betrayed.
• John Mark deserted Paul and Barnabas during a missionary trip.

Fallible faith that leads to failure does not end your relationship with Christ! Falling is only fatal if you fail to get back up. Wherever this finds you, know that God wrote your story before the beginning of time, and it contains moments of rock-solid faith and moments where your faith falters. Why? Because you are still a sinner in moment-by-moment need of a Savior. This is the condition of each and every one of us. Not one of the giants of the faith listed here was disqualified from serving their Savior, even though they failed badly—many of them on more than one occasion. God restored them over and over again, calling them to continue in their calling.

When Job said, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1), he was speaking of you and me! This was not a statement for the unbeliever and the ungodly. It is a biblical truth for everyone born of woman.

Near the end of his life, Paul wrote, “I have kept the faith.” Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Paul meant he kept the faith perfectly. Paul called himself the “chief sinner” (1 Timothy 1:15); everything he did he did imperfectly. His faith was as fallible as yours and mine, but Paul never let that stop him from doing what God had called him to do. May this be the confession of our lives as we seek to live, by God’s grace, for the good of others and the glory of God, in spite of a faith that will be fallible from time to time.

For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again . . . (Proverbs 24:16)

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

The disciples asked, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28-29)

We can get so caught up in doing, doing, doing, that we can forget that our first priority in our relationship with Jesus is believing, not achieving.

How does this truth resonate with you today?

The first thing we must keep in view is what we are called by God to do—believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we focus on what we are called by God to be—believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. If we exchange achieving for believing, our entire relationship will be rooted in merit rather than mercy . . . good works rather than grace. We will be slaves to the law rather than servants of our Lord. This was the condition of the Jewish religion in Jesus’ day: the Scribes and Pharisees were trying to work their way into the blessing and favor of God.

Notice that when the disciples asked Jesus what work God required, Jesus did not say, “No work at all.” Instead He raised the work of believing to the very top of the list for those who are called by the Lord. Before we can even begin to consider any kind of service and work for our Lord, we must be settled in what we believe. We must believe that Jesus is the promised and anointed Messiah. We must believe that Jesus lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the grave, is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Everything we achieve must flow from these truths we believe.

It’s a funny thing about believing; the more you believe, the more you will ultimately achieve. Achieving flows out of believing. This is a faith that is alive, and because it believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior, it achieves for the glory of Jesus as Lord and Savior. And all of this is a result of God’s grace in our lives. The more we believe, the more the Holy Spirit will guide us into the works that God foreordained that we should do. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

Knowing that Jesus responded to a cry for “action” with a profound statement of “belief” should be a source of great encouragement for you today. Regardless of where this finds you, Jesus wants you to focus your attention more on believing than achieving; when you do, achieving will naturally follow and flow from your believing. This is God’s perfect plan and purpose for your life. Live it today and every day until He calls you home!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. (Psalm 139:3)

How frequently I forget that God is concerned with the mundane and the minutiae of my life! How often I picture Him so high and so lifted up (as He is), but forget that He is also right here with me, walking by my side through the details of life. If you are anything like me, let this word encourage you today as you go about your daily routine, because nothing is “humdrum” for the Holy One.

We miss one of the great blessings God has given to us in this life when we see Him as only transcendent (existing outside of space and time) and wholly “other” and not also immanent (present within His creation). We must hold both these truths in an irresolvable tension. The Transcendent Creator of the universe is also concerned and intimately involved with your little world. The Almighty Architect of the universe is also the Architect of every seemingly trivial aspect of your life. He cares about your rising in the morning and your going to bed at night. He cares about your comings and your goings. He cares about your emotions and your mood swings. He cares about your aches and your pains. He cares about your highs and your lows. He cares about your joys and your sorrows. He who cared enough to go after one lost sheep, one lost coin, and one lost son also cares enough to go after you in every detail of life.

God is so immanent that He knows when one sparrow falls as well as the number of hairs remaining on your head. This must communicate to us at the deepest level that even in His transcendence, God is concerned with the seemingly trivial and the mundane. Peter beautifully expressed this truth in 1 Peter 5:7—“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

So . . . is there any anxiety that has been weighing you down lately? Why not do what the Spirit of God commands and cast all your anxiety on Jesus? He truly does care for you!

Notice that Peter provided no specific categories for anxiety. It could be anxiety over the big things of life as well as the little things. Truth be known, we often feel more anxiety over the small things than the significant; perhaps that is because we have more small things to deal with than significant things.

Regardless of where this message finds you today, take a moment to reflect on the truth that nothing is humdrum for the Holy One. It was His eternal love that sought you, caught you, and bought you. The blood of Christ shed on the cross communicates a care infinitely beyond what words can express. To be sure, there are some things in life that matter more than others, but there is nothing that doesn’t matter to God. And that includes the details of daily living.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Go up to Bethel.  (Genesis 35:1)

Perhaps you read that title and felt a stirring of disagreement; you may have recalled that the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians at Philippi that he was “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,” and that he would continue to “press on toward the goal” (Philippians 3:13-14). That certainly sounds like forward progress will not be made by going back. But when we look more closely at that passage from Philippians, we realize that Paul was speaking about the times when he fell short of God’s best for His life.

So . . . when is going back actually forward progress? It is progress any time we go back to an encounter with God. Often God sends us back to the place we first encountered Him.

When God told Jacob, “Go up to Bethel,” He was sending Jacob back to the place where he first encountered God. In the 28^th chapter of Genesis we learn that Bethel was the place where God first visited Jacob. You will remember Jacob’s dream, in which he saw a ladder reaching up from earth into heaven and the angels ascending and descending on it. This of course, was a forecasting of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who would reverse the curse of sin on mankind and once again unite heaven and earth. And there at Bethel, Jacob made his first vow of commitment to God.

What was good for Jacob is also good for us. We too need to revisit that place when we first encountered God. If you grew up in a Christian home and can’t remember a time without Jesus, think of a time when you were a bit older and made your vow of commitment to Him. Going back is forward progress when we are going back to our first, true love. Returning to the roots of our redemption is a return to our Redeemer—and that beloved, is always forward progress.

We can all find ourselves in a rut of religion. We grow up and show up for service without ever really connecting at a heart level with our God. We are simply busy being busy with the challenges of daily living. So, the call of God to “Go back to Bethel,” is a call for all of us to heed today, because we have all experienced a faith that falters and uttered vows that vanished.

• Let us go back to where we first found forgiveness.
• Let us go back to where we first found acceptance.
• Let us go back to where we first found rest.
• Let us go back to where we first found true love.

Going back is always forward progress when we are going back to the One who has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Even a live dog is better off than a dead lion.  (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

Oh, what a word of encouragement we have today in this verse from the wise preacher! Life with Christ at any level of living is better than a life without Christ. Regardless of where this message finds you today, do you agree with this biblical truth? What does the confession of your life say to those around you?

To be sure, the absolute least in the kingdom of God is better than the greatest in the kingdom of this world. Now, I know this truth flies in the face of the wisdom of this world. The world says the least in anything is to be abhorred and avoided at all cost. The world seeks greatness in its position . . . in its power . . . in its pleasure . . . in its prosperity . . . in its prestige. The world says Caesar in the palace is far greater than the Christian in the pit. Sadly, this kind of thinking has infected many in the church today. Far too many Christians are seeking the things of this world, rather than the things of the world to come.

But this is not for you! The wisdom of the world is wrong—eternally wrong. Who of you reading this right now would disagree with the Bible’s teaching about the brevity and fragility of this life? We are here today and gone tomorrow. The day after we take our last breath, the nameplate on the office door is replaced with another name. The prophet Isaiah hit the proverbial nail of this truth squarely on the head when he wrote these inspired words:

All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because of the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever. (Isaiah 40:6-8)

Nothing in this world will endure. Only the Word of God is eternal, and that Word tells us that our God is making a new heaven and a new earth for those who are His. Shouldn’t that change our perspective about who and what is truly “the least” and “the greatest” in this life? Wasn’t the good thief on the cross, who appeared to be least in the eyes of the watching world, far better off than the religious leaders in the Temple, who appeared to be greatest?

The prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, powerfully underscored this most encouraging biblical truth in his Morning and Evening devotional:

Lazarus among the dogs is better than Cicero among the senators; and the most unlettered Christian is in the sight of God superior to Plato. Life is the badge of nobility in the realm of spiritual things, and men without it are only coarser or finer specimens of the same lifeless material, needing to be quickened, for they are dead in trespasses and sins.  

Remember, a live dog can do infinitely more than a dead lion. If this truth resonates with you today, celebrate your “least,” knowing that your greatness awaits you on the other side of the grave.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)

To be sure, the flesh is weak, but it will fight tooth and nail, every step of the way, trying everything within its power not to die. How long do you need to prayerfully consider this truth before it resonates deep within you?

The flesh loves to sit atop the throne of life, even when it is engaged in religious and spiritual duties. We have been saved to serve, and there are countless ways in which we invest our time, talent, and treasure for the expansion of the Kingdom of God. Yet we all have that old, proud pharisaical heart within us that beats for the applause of man rather than the approval of God. Make no mistake, the flesh has no problem being dressed in “religious robes,” just as long as it is not required to surrender and die.

The question that we must ask ourselves is this: Who is on the throne of our lives?

Jesus went from the throne to the cross and back to the throne. He no longer hangs upon that old wooden cross, nor does He lie in the tomb. He is back where He belongs, on the throne of the entire universe, upholding and “sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus is now seated on the throne of grace at the right hand of God the Father.

Did you know that there were no seats in the Tabernacle or the Temple? That was because the work of the High Priest was never done; he never had occasion to sit down, so there was no need to provide a seat for him. But when Jesus said, “It is finished!” He meant what He said. His perfect, atoning work on behalf of all those who will believe is fully accomplished, and He now sits in the position of power, glory, majesty, and dominion.

Is Jesus sitting on the throne of your life? Remember, the cross no longer holds our Lord. It has been emptied for us to carry. This is the great supernatural switch for every saint of God. We are not to fear the crucifixion of the self, because to die to self is not to be dead. Rather, to die to self is to become alive to Christ, as we see in today’s verse.

Don’t mistake the crucifixion of our Lord as a symbol of the crucifixion of the flesh. He died for sins once for all (1 Peter 3:18). We are to die to self daily—not only daily, but moment by moment. Dying to self is never over until it is actually over and we are received into glory.

When the apostle Paul said he had been “crucified with Christ,” he was telling us that Jesus was sitting on the throne of his life. And with Jesus on the throne of his life and Paul off of it, Paul was now free to carry his cross all the way into glory. May that supernatural switch be the confession of our lives!

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.(Proverbs 3:5)

You’ve heard it said that “Nobody likes change except a wet baby!” That certainly is true of me; I’m not that crazy about change. I tend to like routine and living within the walls of my comfort zone. But just when I am settling happily into the “same-old, same-old,” Jesus shows up with a little change He knows I need . . . and that brings me to our verse today.

Every disciple of Jesus must learn the discipline of change. Our God is unchanging (Malachi 3:6), but He constantly introduces change into our lives. We settle on a particular direction, and God steps in and changes it. We start to pursue a certain goal, and God steps in and changes it. We begin a new project in life and God steps in and changes it. The key to growing and maturing in our faith is not getting frustrated every time God sends us a bit of change. Rather, we are to echo Jesus and say, “Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do” (Matthew 11:26).

One of the most important life lessons we can learn is how often God takes us down the path of obedience before understanding. Noah had no understanding of the flood waters that were on the horizon, but he committed to a 100-year boat-building project, acting in obedience before understanding. Abraham had no understanding of where He was going when God called him to leave the home of his fathers, but he walked in obedience before understanding. Moses was adamantly opposed to going back into Egypt as God’s deliverer of His people, but he went in obedience before understanding.

When you think about it, much of life is simply lived in the dark. But this should not surprise us or shake our confidence in the One who is leading us every step of the way. We can face and accept change because we know it comes from the hand of our changeless God, who is working all things for the ultimate good of those who have placed their trust in His Son. When you look back on every change God has brought you through, are you not now thankful? We must remember that God changes us because He loves us. He is conforming us into the image of His Son, and that requires significant change!

Here is a word that can help you along the way as God sends you seasons of cosmic change:

It is not for you to know . . . (Acts 1:7)

We won’t always understand what God is up to in our lives and much of it won’t fit into our plans, but to know our changeless God intimately and personally is to know enough about the inevitable change that will come to all of us.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. (John 17:15-16)

When we understand the dictionary definition of the word camouflage—“to disguise personnel or equipment to make them blend in with their surroundings”—we know, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that there must be no such thing as Christian camouflage!

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world — the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does — comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17)

To be sure, Christians are still in this world physically, yet we are not of this world. Having been raised from death to life, we are called to stand out from the world, not to blend in with it. We are saved to serve and to make an eternal difference in this world by being different from this world. We are not to submit to the corrupt values and evil systems of this world. The world says, “Take!” The Word says, “Give.” The world says, “Pay back evil for evil.” The Word says, “Pay back love for evil.” The world says, “Success at the expense of others.” The Word says, “Success is the service of others.”

In order to put the Gospel on display for the world to see, we must be both salt and light. The salt of the saint is designed to slow the corruption of the surrounding world and preserve what good is left. The light of the saint points the way to the Light of the world. But the world must see this salt and light in us. We cannot be camouflaged Christians! To stand out is to stand up for our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, even the unbeliever knows that “by their fruits you will know them,” so we should be doing everything we can, by God’s grace, to put the pure, unspoiled fruit of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us on display.

There is no greater need in the world today than for our God to become more and more visible. Yes, God is visible in the natural world around us. He created everything and wrote the book of nature. The beauty, creativity, and order of the universe clearly points to our Creator. But we must add our witness to the witness of creation by incarnating (that is, embodying) Christ as we live out our Christianity before the watching world.

How do we incarnate Christ? One word, four letters . . .

LOVE!

So . . . have you been blending in more and more with your surroundings, or have you been standing out for the glory of your Savior? Do those who come in contact with you in this world see the Word that is in you? Can they see how much you love the Lord and others?

The more you do this, the more you will stand out from the surrounding culture and bear witness for the One who died on a cruel cross to save your soul. There must be no Christian camouflage for those who have been bought, sought, and caught by Jesus Christ.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.  (Isaiah 53:10)

Those of you familiar with the Peanuts cartoons may be thinking I have misspelled the title of today’s word of encouragement. (Charlie Brown was fond of saying, “Good grief!”) No, today I want to look at God grief, because understanding His grief will take us a long way into growing and maturing in our faith.

The dictionary tells us that grief is the pain of mind produced by loss or misfortune, injury or evils of any kind that lead to sorrow. With that in mind, let’s first see that the grief that God the Father put God the Son to was our grief. Jesus suffered our grief. He took our sin, our beating, our crown of thorns, our nine-inch nails, our cross, our condemnation, our death, and our tomb. This God grief was our grief. Yet when Jesus willingly took our place on a cross and paid the full penalty for our sin, drinking the full cup of God’s wrath, He took our grief too.

Second, our God is a grieving God because of His eternal and sacrificial love for His people. We read in the Old Testament that the Lord said of Israel, “I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols” (Ezekiel 6:9). God is grieved as His people turn, time and time again, to the false gods of the pagan nations. The psalmist lamented, “How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert” (Psalm 78:40).

Like any parent whose children rebel is grieved by their poor choices, so too is our God grieved when we turn away from Him and embrace the way of the world. Jesus Christ, who made God known to us (John 1:18), wept as He drew near to the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), reflecting on His people’s unbelief and idolatry. He told the crowds there, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). Christian, God loves you; He is love (1 John 4:16). When we reject His love and follow our own paths, we put Him to grief.

So . . . if you take a few minutes to prayerfully consider the life you are currently living, is it possible you are responsible for a bit of God grief? Fear not; we all find ourselves grieving our God from time to time. There are times when we would rather do our will than do the will of God. There are times when we want what we want rather than what God wants for our lives. Our rebellion which leads to God grief should lead us to a godly sorrow, just like Peter experienced on the night Jesus was arrested. After Peter denied Jesus three times and heard the rooster crow, he went outside the courtyard and wept bitterly.

God grief led to godly grief, and it is my prayer that this would be the confession of our lives. May that godly sorrow produce the good fruit of repentance in you and me.

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!