1 Chronicles 2 and the Glory of God

I had a day where a lot of work was done in the important but not urgent category. I hate to sound sacrilegious but reading genealogies can be the same way. They don't necessarily feel redemptive, yet they are Holy Scripture and they are part of the full counsel of God. So much church work is administrative in our era and it to has that quality of not feeling redemptive.

But remember that the genealogies follow God's chosen people. The people of Israel where the cradle into which the Christ was born and by his blood we are all redeemed. Today's church work was the means by which we cradled the message of the gospel at Royal Redeemer so that it would be heard and would change lives.

Remember when you realized that God had taken hold of your heart. Where you at camp, church, or some function. Did you pray with a co-worker. Some one did the seemingly humdrum work of praying for you, tithing to keep that church open, landscaping at the camp. These are the 1 Chronicles of church life, unsung, misunderstood even, but essential to God's mission, to display his Glory through the sacrifice of his Son.

Sola Christus

When the a Holy God ordains it, the Holy takes place.

So as I finished up with the Gospel of John (you may have noticed I never blogged on St. John's passion feeling wholly inadequate for that portion of scripture.) I decided to use the reading plan in my Bible to give the next season of my devotions some organization. Even though it is 8.25.2014 I started with January 1's reading. The first reading was from Ecclesiastes. 

A Time for Everything
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV)




For wise King Solomon, all the things listed above have a time and place in the history of man, which is wrapped up in God's salvation history. I admit that I come to the text for a Calvinistic view point so as I read I felt the Holy Spirit tickle my reformed intellect and communicate this; these things listed above at shown to be equal in the text. Birth, death, planting, reaping, seeking, losing, peace and war. All have been ordained by our Holy God and are therefor all part of his Holy plan. For the display of His Glory, His Grace, His Holiness. Do I enjoy death? Nope I shed tears. War? Never, I continue to pray for peace? Loss has even been a part of my daily life now that I have a growing family, career and a shrinking pool of independence and free time. I morn the loss of those things even as they are sparked by celebrated life events

God has ordained it. The Muslims pray "En Shallah," "God wills it." Its not often we say together amen, but to my Muslim neighbor I say a hearty amen, then in the next breath, explore what the Koran says about "Isa," for if he is God then we need to also pray "Jesus wills it."

The events of your life are initiated for the display of our Holy God's glory. Cry when it is time to morn, weep at loss, dance at celebrations. Sow fields and reap harvest but do not despair. God holds you close waiting too show you in his Heavenly courts so that he will be more fully revealed to you, what Saint Paul calls "... the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2:7 ESV)

That is the kind of God we serve!

Sola Scriptura!

ISIS, Resurrection, and bringing home a new baby.

Today I brought home a new baby. I was so pumped. But on the ride home I kept thinking about what would happen if I were gone, or one was taken from me. That got me to thinking about what I have been reading about Iraq today. There was a lump in my throat. That very fear I had was the reality of those folks in Iraq. Then I began to think about how this violence has been with us for a while. The reality that violent death has been in the news a lot and I have been ignoring it. I had been reading about it hearing about it dispassionately because the victims where not of my religion, or on my continent or I was too selfish to let the problems of other humans ruin my day.  I felt shame, suffering people may not believe in Christ as Lord but the Lord Jesus Christ made them preciously and wants to be in relationship with them.

Then I remembered how I pulled out of this guilt spiral the last time I was burdened with these feelings. The last time I caught myself turning off the radio because I did not want to know what what going on. There is hope in the Resurrection. There is hope that Heaven will come here. We pray in the church "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again." When he returns Jesus will right all wrongs. There wont be martyrdom anymore. Hunger and oppression will cease, the world will be border-less for it will all be under his rule.

Sleep tight tonight Samuel and Isabel. God does not delight in the death of his people, and when death comes to take one of us, both of us, all of us it will only be temporary.  For we believe in the Resurrection. We will rise from the grave victorious in Jesus. So will those who died in faith in Iraq today. So will every person who ever lived. We will all stand before the Judge and those whose names are written in the lambs book of life, will enter in to eternal Glory.

Final thought. From time to time I read the Voice of the Martyrs web site (http://www.persecution.com/) and they end every story of atrocities against believers this way, "let us also pray for their persecutors, that some of those hunting believers today will become believers themselves in the days and months to come." 

Lord I pray for ISIS. Send them your Holy Spirit, to convince them of righteousness and judgment. Firmly convert them to belief in Christ. Show them their sin and you Grace displayed on the cross." Make them our brothers and sisters in Christ through the power of repentance. Lord it seems impossible but I believe that you do the impossible. I pray for those whom they persecute, let there blood be a witness to you blood, the blood I will claim when I stand before your throne

Amen

John 16 and the Holy Spirit

The Work of the Holy Spirit

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
(John 16:4-11 ESV)

It would seem that often people in the church would trade any moment of their current experience to be with Jesus and his disciples in those moments recorded in the New Testament. I admit as a Christ follower and as a historian I would trade functioning parts of my body to witness the events of the Gospel in real time. In contrast to that desire Jesus tells us we are better off now for we have access to the Holy Spirit. In the Spirit we will experience things that are bigger and better than those of the biblical accounts of the Gospel.

Even now God in then the Spirit is holding the universe together, molecule by molecule. Not impressed yet? He infects the hearts of those who would believe and turns them to Christ making his Glory so beautiful that they would forsake this world and say “Lord Lord.” Not impressed yet? He does an illuminating work in the hearts of believers that when they would read the Bible they would understand and be changed. Not impressed yet? Any time any where in the world the soundly converted pray to Jesus they are motivated by the Holy Spirit at work in them.

Any time we feel guilt from our sin and ask God to forgive, that is the Spirit, any time we see injustice and act, that is the Spirit at work in us. The work of Christ is now spread from the God man in Palestine to the hands of the many  Christians around the world whom the Holy Spirit uses as his means of Grace.

I have been following the Gospel of John Chapter by chapter for months now. From God's revelation of himself in Jesus to his first signs. I have followed him through the requirement of being born again to have saving faith, to saying so hard that all but the twelve leave him. Chapter seven he shows himself as living water and in chapter fourteen he tells us that to be in Heaven is to be where he is and now he is describing how he will empower us, the church, to make his a kingdom a reality here. He sends us the Spirit. It changes us, the Gospel in us will give birth to good works not because they are required but because to behold Jesus in the power of the spirit does something to us.

I would argue that the Gospel of John is proposing that conversion and sanctification is all the work of the Spirit. How then do we act in helping to bring His kingdom here? Pray, pray that the Holy Spirit unbind hearts, that he would make Jesus so wonderful to our eyes that we would forsake yet again the pleasures of this world and desire his will to the display of his Glorious work in the Son.

Sola Deo Gloria

Where I am you will also be.

Where I am You will also be. When asked about heaven I hear almost no one quote this verse, but it is the reality of our eternity. Jesus explains to His disciples that being with Him is Heaven. Being in Christ enjoying the love and fellowship of the Trinity is the only all satisfying reality that could hope to hold our attention for eternity,

Think about eternity. Doing any thing or any number of things for eternity. The culmination of your earthly experinces would eventually get boring. Heaven only escapes being a devine torment in that it promises the infinite ability to be interesting or satisfying. Being with the infinitly satisfying God is our only hope to not falling into dispair.

Hell's infinite nature conversly makes it threatening. Tim Keller encourages an audience to think of the worst part of themselves having for ever to cultivate and isolate. Heaven is Jesus forever, hell is us forever. The same people who have had either 6000 years of millions of years to think up new ways to torture each other will get eternty to continue this unbroken streak of attrocity against fellow man unless redeemed from the outside.

Look to the map! "I am the way the truth and the light," He promises. The only way to the father. Cling to that promise or cling to despair those are our options. Unless you truely believe we can self invent something that is all satisfying for eternity? Excuse me if I am a skeptic.

Sola Gratia

Look the whole world goes after him!!!!

May 16 2014
I just read the most interesting verse. In john 12 Jesus reenters Jerusalem. There is of course the hubbub of his triumphal entry. The account of John gives it less treatment than other Gospel accounts, but the end of Johns account, at least as the NASB writers edit, has this line; "So the Pharisees said to one another, "You see that you are not doing any good; look the world has gone after Him."
 When I read blog materials about the movment of the Gospel in the world I see two views at odds with each other. There are the champions of the American church who talk about its decline and the loss of younger people. They talk about the focus of the church on right belief over right practice as a turn off. There is merit to this if you are in a European mainline denomination. The numbers are not great. But even in the United States the statistics are not universally applied. There are main line church plants and independants that are growing through converstion.
If we get outside the United States the growth is even more significant. Asia and South America seem to be great bastions of Christian growth. Interestingly enough they do not seem to share the view the lower views of right belief are nessicary for greater expansion of the Gospel globally. I have one friend who I would often spar with (me a conservative Calvinist, he a progressive emergent,) when he returned from Uganda he was frustrated on two fronts. Like most progressives he thought the traditional church view on marraige was outdated, and was surpriesed that the churches on africa for the most part held the line on the ancient definition of marriage. The other thing he found frustrating was that most Christians he interacted with where tea todlers.
There are a lot of writers who have been writing about the decline of the the church. What they mean is the western church. Soon commeth the day that the minority of believers in the world are western. Christian thought will be driven by people who speak asian languages or South American spanish. Yes the church in America shrinks, loosing mostly nominal believers while those commited to the cuase of Christ seem to grow and get more innovative in reaching the unchurched or de-churched. This happens at a rate where we will soon see a minority of the population of the US claim faith in Christ. But the church is not thwarted. The Holy Sirit is not wandering around heaven wishing we would find new strategies to making Jesus famous.
God in Christ reigns supremem over his created order. All creation remains a stage to the discplay of his goodness. The only people who need worry are those who would complain with the pharisees, "look the world has gone after him."
Sola Christus

John 11, meaning and trials.

It is a little embarrassing to declare to the whole world that I was going to start blogging and then to suddenly stop. Yet I kept looking at John chapter eleven and could not figure out how to process it. I know what encourages me, but what do I want “out there” so that my kids can read it one day. Luckily I believe the Lord initiated my brain freeze. In the past couple of weeks I have heard this preached on twice and both time I was really encouraged by it.

This portion of scripture really shines a light on my theology of suffering. Suffering, as horrible as it is has a checkmate. That is resurrection makes it tolerable. Without resurrection I am not sure how people process the meaninglessness of suffering but I would have no categories.

Jesus hears that his friend Lazarus is sick. His response, he waits a couple of days. Here is where the text gets tricky. Is says “so he waited a couple of days.” He is waiting on purpose. He knows what the outcome is going to be but he allows the death and suffering to happen. I believe with all my being it was so that he could check that suffering with the resurrection of Lazarus.

Both theists and Atheists alike have to deal with suffering. For us it points to Christ and his redemptive work on the cross and the grave. For our detractors it is the accident that follows the other accident, life. I no longer hate atheists, I feel for them. Death is just death. Suffering has no larger meaning. I don’t see any way around it. As for the people of resurrection we still don’t know why but we do know how it ends. We don’t ask JK Rowling why Harry's Parents die but we rejoice at the proof of love in how Harry’s mom dies. We don’t ask why Gandalf died but we cheer when he comes back. God the ultimate dramatist gives us the ultimate thing to celebrate. His resurrection and that we share in it.

New bodies wait, untouched by cancer, depression, violence. Glorified bodies, the us we always knew we could be. Hallelujah, Christ is risen.

Happy Lent ;)