Grace for the Race

A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3 ESV)

Today offers the second installment of Advent messages; this one focuses on preparing. And that makes sense, does it not? While we are waiting on the Lord—living a life of dependence on and trust in Him—we should be preparing for what we are waiting to receive from Him. No one just plants seeds in the garden and waits for the harvest to come in. They plant, water, nurture, and prepare in every way to maximize the harvest that will come in the fall.

So how are we to prepare for all we are waiting on from our Lord? Let’s look and see.

SIMPLIFY

Life is full of distractions, with countless voices and activities vying for our attention. Those voices amp up during the Christmas season, with one advertisement after another for the latest products blaring how our lives will be fuller and richer and happier if we will buy this or that new thing. Church, family and friends, and often even employers invite/expect us to attend holiday events that keep us moving from place to place. It is all too easy to forget the real Reason for the season when we are so busy being busy! With everything that seeks to divert our focus from the Lord, we must simplify, and we do so by learning the way of our Lord in two vital areas of our lives.

Prayer

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. (Mark 1:35)

No one lived a busier life than our Lord Jesus Christ, yet His life was saturated in communion with His Father in heaven. Jesus continually retreated to pray; we read that there were times when He spent entire nights in prayer. Notice that Jesus went early before the demands of the day engulfed Him, and He went to a solitary place to minimize distractions. Is this the confession of your life?

Word

“It is written . . .” “It is also written . . .” “For it is written . . .” (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10)

When Jesus fought His battle against the devil during His wilderness experience, He conquered Satan with the Old Testament Scriptures —which was all that had been written at that time. In order for Jesus to continually quote the Scriptures, He had to know the Scriptures, and to know the Scriptures, He had to be meditating on and marinating in them. Is this the confession of your life?

One of the very best ways to prepare for Christmas is to simplify our lives, and the best way to simplify is to consistently be on our knees with the Bible in hand.

On Friday we’ll look at the outcome of our waiting and preparing for the Advent season: joy.

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

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:14)

Throughout the next four messages leading up to Christmas Day, I would like to shift our focus onto Advent—a word derived from the Latin Adventus, which means coming—that period of expectant waiting and preparation for the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as a babe in a manger . . . and the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ as the conquering King. Most Bible-believing churches use the four Sundays and weeks leading up to Christmas to focus on the real meaning of the season.

Today we will sharpen our focus on waiting. As a child growing up, the hardest thing for me was waiting for Christmas Eve, when we would be allowed to open one of our Christmas presents under the tree. After we finished that family tradition, I had to endure the long night of counting sheep and waiting for the sun to come up to enjoy the day that I had I waited every day of the year to arrive.

Waiting today is just as difficult as it was for me as a child, for a variety of different reasons . . . my natural, sinful tendency to impatience being the primary one. And yet waiting is part of God’s perfect plan to mature each one of us and to grow us up in our Christian faith.

What have you been waiting for from God this year? The prophet Isaiah assures us that “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31 ESV). Isaiah is talking about the source of our power. When you picture the eagle in flight, you see that this magnificent creature is completely dependent upon the Lord, who has given it wings and the unseen currents of air on which it soars.

To wait upon the Lord is to live a life of dependence and trust in a power greater than our own, a power that will lift us up and give us strength and joy . . . and, yes, even patience! Waiting upon the Lord is trusting God even when we cannot trace Him. It is understanding that God’s will often requires waiting, because it is one of God’s great graces in our lives. And how are we to wait? We wait expectantly, hopefully, knowing that whatever we receive from the hand of our God is always what is best for us and it always does its best work in our lives when it comes to us in God’s perfect timing.

So as you are waiting to celebrate the birth of our Savior and waiting on God to answer your prayers as you confront life’s pressures, challenges, and difficulties, let the unseen currents of God’s Holy Spirit lift you up higher and higher—lift you up on wings like the eagle’s—knowing that your strength is being renewed by your Redeemer moment by moment and day by day.

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

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.  (Hebrews 4:9)

All Christian believers know full well the promise of the Sabbath-rest that awaits us on the other side of the grave. But is there any rest for us now? Does the writer of Hebrews have a promise for us concerning our day-to-day lives? Read on and be encouraged!

This Sabbath-rest will find its fulfillment when we are living in the new heavens and the new earth with our God and His people. But before we experience that fulfillment, we are to experience the first installment during our life here on this earth. We have received so great a salvation that we can rest from trying to save ourselves!

When Jesus shows up, He puts an end to our self-salvation projects. When He cried out from the cross, “It is finished,” He meant what He said! The work of salvation has been freely and fully completed. We can cease from trying to earn God’s favor through our good works, which, as Isaiah 64:6 tells us, really aren’t that good at all—they are mere “filthy rags” compared to the glory and goodness of our holy God.

There is no more fatiguing and fruitless a work than to try to earn our way into God’s continued favor and blessing. And there are millions who are burdened under this great weight week after week, month after month, and year after dreary year. The joy of the Lord is as far from them as the east is from the west, because they are buried under the weight of working for a blessing, rather than resting in the ones they have already received from Christ. You see, only by trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ can we experience this Sabbath-rest in a world that is marked by restlessness, turmoil, and discontent.

Remember this truth: Jesus Christ not only earned this perfect rest for us, He is this perfect rest. By resting in Him we begin to experience in part what we will one day experience in full: that Sabbath-rest that remains for the people of God. So if you need a little rest, rest in the shadow of the cross, where your Lord paid the penalty for your sin, satisfying all the demands of God’s justice. Living in the light of this truth will set you free to enjoy the fruits of His work in you, rather than laboring for the fruit that Jesus has already freely given you in love.

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

As for me, I will be vindicated and will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness. (Psalm 17:15)

Today we have a twofold blessing uttered to us in the Word of God: we have been promised God’s presence in this life right now, and we will be conformed to His likeness in the life to come. Let these blessings be a word of comfort to you today, right where this finds you.

The apostle Paul described our first blessing this way: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). We have been promised the blessing of seeing, through the eyes of faith, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. To be sure, we see only dimly now, but we do see, and in seeing we are given a foretaste of heaven above. But that is only the beginning of the blessing, as we progress from seeing to being.

Throughout this life, God is at work conforming us into the image and likeness of His beloved Son. What we see today, we shall be tomorrow when we cross the Jordan. When we are received into glory, we shall see ourselves as reflections of the beauty and perfection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I know this promise may seem too good to be true, as we struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil on this side of the grave. But we have been given this promise, “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). To rightly rephrase an old bumper sticker, “God said it. That settles it. I believe it.” And so should you!

Are these promised blessings not a cosmic comfort to you today? To go from seeing to being is a promise that you can count on just as surely as David did when, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he penned our verse for today. Do you see it? Do you believe it? Let that confident assurance be the confession of your life, that what you see now as the glory of God in the face of Jesus, revealed throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, you will one day be when you breathe your last.

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

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. (John 16:13)

Today’s verse provides us with a great word of instruction for the humbly inquiring mind that desires to know all truth. Is that you today? Let’s take a brief look at three wonderful truths that are contained in these words from our Lord today.

First, let us rejoice that the Spirit of Christ has come to every believer. Earlier in this same Upper Room Discourse, Jesus told His disciples, “I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor [Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). Jesus has ascended into heaven and is now sitting in the position of power and authority at the right hand of God the Father, but He has not left us alone. He has sent His Holy Spirit to be with every one of His children.

Second, let us rejoice that the Spirit of Christ has come as our Guide. We all know that we are as prone to wander as we are prone to err, and so we are in great need of our Guide. Operating under our own strength, we will invariably drift away from the truth. We need our Guide to keep our feet on the straight and narrow path, lest we stray to the left or to the right. Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit as our personal Guide and Teacher, and the Spirit will transmit the truth of God’s Word to our hearts and our minds.

Third, let us rejoice that the Spirit of Christ has come to guide us into all the truth. We do not want a portion of truth, which would lead to living a life that is out of balance. Without the whole counsel of God, we would grow only into a fraction of the person He is calling us to be. Only when we are guided into all truth will we be prepared to weather any storm wind that blows our way. Those who receive only a portion of the truth will find themselves consumed by the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth, and will fail to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God (Matthew 13:22).

Do you have an inquiring mind that wants to know all truth? You have the perfect Guide who has promised to guide you into all the truth, creating in you a joy and a fruitfulness that will exceed all understanding. And all you need to do to receive this truth is ask . . . seek . . . and knock (Matthew 7:7).

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

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. (1 John 4:16)

Tom Hanks uttered a line in the movie Forrest Gump that surely resonates with all of us: “I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.” Is this not true of each and every one of us? Do we not all know, regardless of our age or station in life, what love is? And why do we all know this? Because God is love, and the entire story line of the Bible is God’s unfolding plan of redemption—in a word, His love for us!

This love is unlike any other kind of love. God’s love is a saving love. God’s love is a sacrificial love. God’s love is a supernatural love. And there is no better picture of this love than the one we find in our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Is this not what our Lord did for you and me? Did He not come into this world to lay down His life so that we could have eternal life in Him?

Here is something we must remember regarding the love God has for His people: it is a love that is ready, willing, and able to afflict both the One who is demonstrating the love and the object of its affection in order to work a greater good that could be accomplished in no other way. We should draw great comfort from this truth. God does indeed love us just the way He found us (dead in our trespasses and sins), but He loves us too much to leave us in that condition. God is at work, both in and through us, to make us alive in Christ and to change and conform us into the image of His beloved Son, and He will stop at nothing to complete the good work He has begun in us.

So regardless of where this message finds you today, remember the wisdom of Forrest Gump and keep the love your Savior has for you in constant view. He bore the unimaginable cosmic punishment for your sin in order to have a personal relationship with you forever and ever. He took your condemnation. He took your scourging. He took your crown of thorns. He took your nine-inch nails. He took your cross. And He took your death. Why? Because He loves you enough to die for you! He knows what love is.

Perhaps committing the following verse to memory will prove profitable during those times that will inevitably come when you feel a bit unloved or unlovable:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. (1 John 3:16)

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

Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble. (Psalm 119:165)

The truth contained in today’s verse may come as a surprise to some, but it is as certain as the sunrise: Those who love the Word of God have great peace, and the path to great peace is found in the place God’s Word holds in our hearts.

If you have not read Psalm 119 lately, let me encourage you to do so today. Psalm 119 celebrates the Word of God—its comfort, its challenge, its correction, and its commandments—and rejoices in the covenant promise made to all of God’s people. It is the longest psalm in the Bible, longer than many of the books of the Bible, and only a handful of its 176 verses do not explicitly mention the Word of God. It opens with, “Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord,” and closes with, “I do not forget your commandments.” And all the verses in between paint a glorious picture of the path to great peace.

Look at the promise in today’s verse for those who love the Law of God: nothing can make them stumble. The reason for this promise is not found in our faithfulness to God, but in His faithfulness to us. God has given us a power that is greater than any power that can come against us; when we stay connected to that power, we experience that peace that passes all understanding.

Think about it this way: When you love someone, you want to spend time with that someone, do you not? If we truly love God’s law, we will want to spend time in it each day. We will read it through from beginning to end. We will meditate on it and marinate in it. When we do, we can rest assured that we will truly experience great peace.

Even when we do not understand what is going on around us, we can still have peace deep within us, because we know our God is in control of all things. When chaos comes knocking at our door, a crisis that makes others cry out in fear, “Lord, we’re going to drown” (Matthew 8:25), those who love the Word of God trust in His promises and pass through the storm with confidence and peace. Remember, if you are lacking this promised peace in any way, you probably need to spend more time in God’s Word, knowing that God will graciously give you His love and peace all the way into glory.

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

This is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3)

When you read today’s verse, do you wonder why John added the words “his commands are not burdensome”? I’m sure we all remember times when God’s commands seemed like an incredible burden. Forgiving someone who has wronged us . . . loving someone who is unlovable . . . serving someone who is never satisfied . . . saying “No” to sin when our flesh is urging us to say “Yes” . . . all these things are difficult! They certainly feel “burdensome,” if not impossible.

The reason John could say that the commands of God are not burdensome is provided in the front end of the verse, where John tells us that we are to express our love for God by obedience to Him. When we keep our focus firmly fixed on our love for God, obedience is no longer burdensome. This is how we move from obedience feeling like a duty to becoming a delight.

In the parable of the prodigal son, we see just how odious obedience had become to the elder brother. When his younger brother returned home after squandering his inheritance and their father welcomed him with open arms, the elder brother was furious. “Look!” he fumed at his father. “All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders” (Luke 15:29). Do you see it? He was perfect in his obedience to his father, but his obedience gave him no sense of satisfaction, much less joy. It was simply a burdensome duty that had descended into drudgery. He was not obeying his father out of love; he was obeying out of self-love and a desire for what he hoped to get from the father.

So let me ask you: Is your obedience to God a delight? Have you found the path of righteousness and holy living to be not burdensome? Are you able to say along with the psalmist, “I delight to do your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:8)? Only to the extent that your heart beats for Jesus will your answer to those questions be a resounding “Yes!”

Our Lord Jesus provided us the most magnificent model of delighted obedience, saying, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Think about it this way: Jesus forgave those who treated Him terribly; He loved those who were unlovable (sinners like you and me); He served those who were never satisfied; and He was tempted in every way, just as we are, yet did not sin (Hebrews 4:15). And He said that obedience was His very sustenance! He delighted in doing good for the glory of His Father in heaven. Obedience is never a burden for those who love God, because one of the primary blessings God gives to His children is a heart that turns the duty of obedience—a duty that we all owe to the One who gives us life and breath and everything else—into an unimaginable delight. May that delight be the confession of all our lives!

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

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say . . . “The accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” (Revelation 12:10-11)

As a child of the Most High God, it is right and required for us to repent of our sins, but it is wrong to rehearse our sins over and over again. This is one of the great goals of the accuser. Satan wants us to repeatedly rehearse our sins, because when we do, we take our eyes off our Redeemer and fix them on ourselves.

Rehearsing our sins again and again is not of God, who sent His Son into the world so that you and I can know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that those sins are freely and fully forgiven. Repentance of our sins is of God; rehearsing our sins is of the devil, who takes perverse pleasure in shifting our focus away from our Savior and onto ourselves. Satan delights in reminding us of our failures; the more he can keep us focused on our failures, the less we stay focused on our Lord, who has redeemed us from all our sins. Life at that dreary level becomes all about us, and that focus on self, as I’ve said here many times before, keeps us from growing into the person God is calling us to be.

I speak with far too many Christians who are locked in a rhythm of rehearsing and revisiting past sins. The malevolent enemy of the saints has convinced them that mulling over past sins and repenting again and again is a sign of maturing in the faith, as if wallowing in the depths of despair over past failures will convince God that we are truly sorry. This, interestingly enough, was once the mindset of the great Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, who went to extraordinary lengths in castigating himself for his sins, until the day that God opened Luther’s eyes to the glorious truth of Romans 1:17 – “The just shall live by faith.”

The sign of truly maturing in our faith is taking God as His word. He has promised us that He has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12); He has hurled all our sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19); and He has cast all our sins behind His back (Isaiah 38:17). Oh, what an encouragement this is to be to all of us! God is plainly saying to you and me, “Why would you continue to rehearse your past sins when I have promised you that I will remember them no more?” (Hebrews 10:17).

Remember, self-condemnation is one of Satan’s sharpest arrows, one designed to weaken our faith and water down our witness in every way. What we must keep in view is another promise from God: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1) When we sin, we are to repent and rejoice, because in Christ we have conquered the attacks of the accuser, who has been hurled down for all eternity by the blood of the Lamb.

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

We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and this hope does not disappoint us, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5:3-5)

On Monday we looked at the kind of hope that will only disappoint us, because that hope is put in imperfect people and things that are much smaller than God. Today we will plumb the depths of a hope that cannot and will not disappoint, because that hope rests on the only perfect One, the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ Himself. And for that truth, we must be eternally thankful.

When the Bible speaks of “hope,” we are to understand it as a calm, confident assurance that our good God is working all things together for our good, no matter what. Scripture does not present the word hope in the way you and I typically use it, meaning that we wish something will or won’t happen (such as, “I hope it won’t rain during the picnic”). Our worldly use of the word “hope” is grounded in uncertainty.

In Scripture, hope is as certain as the sunrise, and because this hope springs from the heart of God, we can rest assured that it cannot fail, it cannot falter, and it absolutely will not disappoint. This holy hope that springs forth from our Holy God is the message we must preach to ourselves, not just daily, but moment by moment. It is, as the psalmist shows us, a kind of arguing within the soul, what I call preaching to yourself:

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God.” (Psalm 42:5 NKJV)

Our sinful nature is continually cast down and daily disquieted, which is why we must be proactive and intentional about keeping our hope in God before us. We must see it, we must speak it, and we must savor it, regardless of the circumstances we are facing in life. We must always see this hope that cannot disappoint like the author of Hebrews, who wrote, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). You see, this hope that is rooted in Jesus is full of faith, and the faith that is rooted in Jesus is full of hope . . . a sure and certain hope that will never disappoint.

So as you ready yourself for Thanksgiving tomorrow, would this not be a good time to prayerfully consider just how thankful you truly are to the One who has given you this hope? Remember, the certainty of this hope that promises the blessings of God comes through the presence of the promised Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). And if this message finds you in a season of storm winds and challenges, remember the ultimate hope: the return of Christ, who will wipe every tear from our eyes and promises us an eternity with no more pain, no more sorrow, and no more death. Oh, what a glorious hope we have that cannot disappoint, because our hope is in Jesus!

I pray that you will have a hope-filled Thanksgiving.

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