If any of you grew up in a church similar to mine growing up, there was probably a heavy focus on obedience to God.  Affections for God, and grace were nice, but really you were just encouraged to obey. This resulted in most people in my church at least whitewashing the exterior of their lives to maintain false appearances to others.  When I would go to a small group, there were certain “respectable sins”, like pride, that would be discussed, but never any mention of sexual immorality, greed, vanity, or other more “serious” sins.  In recent years, this has reversed.  The church as a whole has made a massive push back against the idea of legalism, the idea that someone could become “ok” with God based upon good works, and this has been very helpful in encouraging people to open up about their sin.  The catch phrase, “it’s ok to not be ok” get’s thrown around a lot, but I wonder if that idea has allowed apathy to grow in the hearts of believers.

My fear, and the topic of today’s Word for the Day, is that the push back against legalism has given way to licentiousness.  There is no longer a healthy fear and reverence for the holiness of God.  Moreover, there is not a passion to intentional choose to make a practice of righteousness day to day.  People want to sit back and “let go, and let God.”  I’ve got a response to that idea… it’s the same response Jesus gave to Satan when confronted with such foolishness – Matthew 4:7 – “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”  God isn’t apathetic about your sin, why are you?  Sin is so serious to God, that He came and died a gruesome death, bore the full wrath of God, to make a way to reconcile sinful men and women back to Himself.  So where is the Biblical ground that we are to walk on between legalism and licentiousness?  I want to suggest, and hopefully show with scripture, that there is a way to deeply thirst, hunger, and pursue full obedience to God, yet also rest in His grace, knowing that our righteousness is not our own, but Christ’s.  There is a way to work hard, to run hard after God daily, yet trust that any growth in personal holiness is only His doing, His work in us.  That is my hope, that people’s hearts and minds would be able to find a home there.  I want people to have a passionate pursuit of personal holiness, coupled with deeply rooted humility to not rest in “their” accomplishments, but in the grace extended to us through the shed blood of Christ.

First, I want us to see that obedience to God is not a “nice to have” on top of faith.  Obedience to God is a command, it is the fruit of authentic faith, and it was modeled for us by Christ.  Let me again be clear, we all struggle with sin, but if there is no desire in you to obey God fully, you’re not walking as a Christian.  That should not be comfortable place for you, knowing that God is not mocked and no one can serve two masters – we are called to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith, and unrepentant sin is not a mark of a Christian.  Faith is not a fact claim to be understood, but a person, Jesus Christ, to be trusted and followed.  If you do not want to follow Him, that’s where you need to meet God in prayer, pleading that God would grant you faith to believe Him, and follow Him.

Hebrews 5:7-9 – “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.  Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.  And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” 

Jesus was perfected through His obedience.  Does that mean that Jesus was not perfectly righteous prior to His obedience?  Of course not, He was perfectly righteous from birth.  What this means is that His perfect righteousness was manifested through His works.  His glory was made known through his obedience.  We would not know the love of God, unless Christ was obedient to go to the cross.  Romans 5:8 – “God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.  It wasn’t that Christ did not love us, but His love was perfected on the cross, because it was manifested in His death.  John 15:13 – “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”  Therefore, Christ’s love, being perfect, needed to be displayed in it’s fullest measure, to reveal the glory of God.  In this way, his obedience made Him perfect.

In the same way, we, who have trusted on Christ, have His perfect righteousness.  Just as the Holy Spirit led Christ to the cross, we are being led by the same Spirit, into obedience that reveals the worth and glory of God.  If we love God, we should desire to make much of Him with our lives, and we make much of Him by joyfully obeying Him.

John 14:15 – “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

1 John 2:29 – “If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”

1 John 3:9-10 – “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.  By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.” 

So how is it that we struggle daily to obey, yet we do not rest our salvation in our “successes” to become legalistic?  My answer is good solid Biblical theology, and constant prayer.

Philippians 2:12-13 – “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

I say good Biblical theology, because to get this, you have to believe Romans 3:10-18, that there is nothing good in you that would seek after God, in yourself.  If you truly understand that (and hopefully we all do!), then you understand that those good works that God is working in you, will be attributed to the Spirit of God, instead of yourself.  This is where Philippians 2:13 is so helpful… it’s not just the works that are attributed to God, but even the will, your desire, to obey comes from God, because the Holy Spirit is in you.  Now this is another point where I’m happy I’m not a pastor, because I know I’d get a 100 emails about me saying that your will is influenced by God.  Not wanting to go off on too much of a tangent I’ll defer all those questions to Jonathan Edwards’ book on “The Freedom of the Will”, the scripture listed above, Romans 9, and proverbs 16:9.  Hmmm, well ok, I’ll give it one shot real quickly – our wills are separate from God, we are accountable for them 100%, and God knowing our desires, ordains our path such that His sovereign will is accomplished, and He is perfectly good because He is always pursuing the greatest good, His glory.  Saying that I realize will not be sufficient for many, so again, there’s always the “unsubscribe option” – I don’t claim to understand all of God’s ways, I just call it like I see it from His Word, and know that He is good.

Ok, back on track.  We passionately pursue righteousness, but we do not fall into a pitfall of pride, because we cannot take credit for one bit of true good in our heart/actions, it is the work of God, the Holy Spirit, in us.  We do not become legalistic, because from the beginning anything good we have is a gift; the Holy Spirit is a gift given to us by faith, and faith itself is a gift by the will of God the Father (Eph 2:8-9) purchased by the grace extended to us through Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.

So there is a tension here, and I believe it is a good tension.  On the one side, you a person that is potentially erring by being overly zealous for obedience believing that God’s affection or acceptance of us is tied to our works, indicating a lack of faith in the finished work of Christ.  On the other side, you have the person who LOVES grace, is apathetic towards the Bible and God’s call to personal holiness through obedience, who wants to rest in the grace of God through faith, but in reality, that person may not have had saving faith to begin with – there is not evidence that the Spirit of God dwells in them.  Usually people will fall slightly on one side or the other.  My exhortation today is to push towards the middle.  Meditate on the scripture above, and live passionately for the glory of God through grace driven effort.  Righteousness is meant to be the choice of a believer, a new creation in Christ, that is practiced every day.  Let the joy of God, and His acceptance of you as a sinner, move your heart to turn away from sin, and run towards Him.  Let all of this be blanketed with prayer, that in all things God would lead in us, and His glory be revealed through us.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

Ok… so I was writing a nice Word for the Day, and was about wrapped up when I had a power outage and lost everything.  I’m going to take that as a sign to go in a different direction… guess God didn’t like that WFTD, ha ha.  So, my burden as always is to challenge and encourage.  Hopefully my message this past week before the break was helpful.  I feel like most Christians struggle with really understanding the gravity of sin, and so it is helpful to expand on that at times by looking at how God views sin, and how sin will be punished.  Understanding the gravity of sin is directly linked with the affection you have to Christ, who bore the punishment for that sin, and freed you from it.  That is always my end goal – not that you wallow in brokenness over your sin forever (although some people should be broken more), but that your affections for Christ would grow, leading you to joyfully obey Him.

Jesus commanded the people in His preaching to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matt 4:17) and again in Mark 1:15 – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”  You cannot follow Christ if you have not repented of your sin.  This is why John the Baptist came before Christ, saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah when he said, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.'”  (Matt 3:2-3)

It’s amazing to me today to hear Christian’s views on repentance.  Most people misunderstand the word to mean “feel bad about”, or “be sorry for”, as that is how it is normally used in English.  While those emotions ought to accompany and follow repentance, Biblical repentance is not first a matter of the heart, but of the mind.  The greek word for “repent” is metanoeo.  This word literally means to perceive afterwards, signifying a change in mind or purpose, and it always involves a change for the better.  So here is a question, if you’ve never thought about repentance in this way before, how do you feel about sin in your life?  Have you changed your mind about the supposed benefits of sin, such that you perceive a greater worth in Christ, and following after Him?  Or are you still in a mindset of the flesh, pursuing joy apart from God?  When you are tempted, are you able to say with conviction, that whatever gain was to me, I count as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus?

Look at Paul in Philippians 3:3-11 – “For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more:  circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

This is a picture of repentance.  Paul thought one way previously, and now he has found a better way.  Following Christ to Him, whatever the cost, is gain.  He changed his mind, and it was a change for the better.  My friends, I’m speaking to all of you, but especially those of you who have long-lasting sin festering in your lives, keeping you from the fruitfulness in Christ you were made for.  What do you think about your sin?  Do you minimize it, perhaps even convincing yourself that it’s not sinful because of your circumstances?  That way of thinking is deadly.  My encouragement is to take your sin before the Lord, pray that God would let you see your sin for what it is, and grant you repentance that leads to faith.  Find in Christ everything you need, and know that His shed blood is payment in full for your sin, not merely to cover it, but to give you grace to pursue Him in righteousness.  Therefore, repent and believe, and may your repentance and obedience well up in you a joy of the surpassing worth of Christ.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

I’ll probably get a few “unsubscribe” requests after this, but that’s ok.  Every day I pray, and share what is on my heart as God leads.  So basically on any given day, God is teaching me something, and likely has something that others need to hear.  So with that, I’m definitely wondering who all will receive this, and how God intends to use this message, but my curiosity will wait until I see Him face to face.

Have you ever wondered why there is difficulty talking about Hell?  The doctrine of hell is as important as any other, yet it is often absent from sermons preached on Sundays.  The understanding is that Christians will say, no, we do not want to hear about that negative stuff, just give us a happy song, a good comedic pastor, and we’ll all move along with our lives slowly inching closer to death, day by day.  Just tell everyone they’re going to be “ok” if they’ve said a prayer, read their Bibles every once in a while, belong to a small group, and pay their tithe – no one grows their church through being “negative”.  That’s all just fear-mongering anyway, right?  People who talk about Hell just want to scare people into becoming little zombies that they can control, right?  If that is true – why did Jesus talk about Hell so much?  Why did Jesus over and over and over again warn people of the judgment to come?

Often times you’ll hear people explaining away the severity of Hell.  Our friends, the 7th Day Adventists for example, want to say that Hell isn’t real, that it is just a way of saying that people will cease to be.  There’s just one problem with that idea, it’s not what the Bible and Jesus said.  Other times people want to say that the descriptions of Hell are metaphorical, and shouldn’t be taken literally.  The Bible describes Hell as outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt 8:12), a fiery furnace (Matt 13:42), where one will be cut to pieces (Matt 24:51), a place of eternal fire (Matt 18:8), eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord (2 Thess 1:9).  Here I would agree with the scoffers – these words we use in the English language are metaphorical.  Just as we cannot explain the joy that awaits us in heaven, and thus use words as metaphor, so too words for Hell are metaphor.  There is one important point that is missed though – whenever metaphor is used in the Bible, the reality of that metaphor is always MUCH greater than literal interpretation.  So then, if the metaphor is unbearably horrific, how much more horrific must the reality be?

John the Baptist, the herald of our Lord and King, Jesus Christ, came to prepare God’s way by piercing the hearts of the people, especially those who were resting in the grace of God amidst sin, to repent.

Matthew 3:7-10 – “But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Let me be direct.  If you are holding onto sin in your heart, if you find yourself struggling with sin, and you want to play with it, and hold onto it instead of saying “No”, I am going to follow Jesus, my Lord, you are not repentant, you are not walking with the Lord, and you are not covered by grace.  Let me add one more to that list… if you hear all of this, and you do not break down in tears before the Lord, seeking His forgiveness and grace to turn from your sin, you are a fool.  You do not know the day the Master will come for you.  Good intentions are the pathway to Hell.  Today is the day of salvation for you.

You hard-hearted, stubborn sinner.  Do not presume upon the grace of God – He is not mocked!  Galatians 6:7 – “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”  You know what the Bible says about those who continue in immorality that profess to be Christians?  It says that they will be thrown into Hell with everyone else (Matt 7:21-23)  If you are sowing to your own fleshly desires, you will reap eternal destruction, the infinite all powerful wrath of God poured out on you for a second, then a minute, then an hour, then a day, then a year, then 10,000 years, and on and on until your life now is but a glimmer in the past, with no hope for the future – ever.

If you don’t understand the justice of God in pouring out infinite wrath, then you do not understand the horror of your sin to an infinitely Holy God who created you in His image.  Do not think to yourself, I am covered by grace, because of a prayer, or a confession, there is no grace for an unrepentant heart.  1 John 3:9 – “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.”  Stop your blasphemous claim to be a Christian if you are unrepentant… all you are doing is storing up wrath for the day of judgment.  It would be better for you to admit your depravity, than to smear the name of our Holy God with your profession to belong to Him.  Repent!  Do not give God your words merely, give Him your heart and mind.  Count the cost of following Jesus, and decide today who you will follow, your own will or Him.

The wrath of God is more horrific than we can imagine.  Hell is more horrific than we can imagine.  Therefore, repent and believe the gospel of Jesus.  Our great God loves us enough to come in the flesh and die in our place, shedding His blood on the cross, bearing the full infinite wrath of God – experiencing Hell – the judgment we deserve.  But death could not contain Him, Jesus rose, His infinite righteousness and holiness victorious over sin, and we too have a similar hope if we would believe in Him, and His atonement for our sins, and turn our lives over to Him to follow after Him.  If the darkness of Hell is unfathomable, how great is the Light that conquered it?  Oh, what a savior!  What infinite joy must await us there, in His presence for all eternity.  What grace must He be desirous to extend to us, if we turn to Him.  Do you love Him enough to turn away from your sin, and intentionally choose to follow Him every day?  He loves you today – He came to die not for the righteous, but for sinners, that they would be reconciled to Him.  Therefore, my exhortation is the same as that of Jesus in Mark 1:15 – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”   May the our savior, Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit bring brokenness, and repentance to us, and have His way among you all.

Grace and Peace,
Adam

In the Bible, there are a multitude of passages that talk about salvation, faith, love, and obedience.  For many, salvation by faith is merely an intellectual decision about the fact claims of Jesus, but the Bible pushes for a much deeper definition of salvation.  Much could be said about the intersection of the head, heart, and hands, but I want to go one step further… they are inseparable.  Distinct, yes, but inseperable.  You cannot have salvation without faith, you cannot have faith without obedience, you cannot have obedience without love, and you cannot have love without faith.

The picture of a Christian we see in the Bible is markedly different from the world around him/her.  They are in the world, yet clearly separate.  In 1 Peter 3:15, we are told – “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,”.  When was the last time someone asked why you were living your life the way you were, and the answer was Jesus?  Why do many people sit in comfort passively, professing Jesus as savior, fading into their surroundings?  Where is the gap?  My answer is that there are many who have deceived themselves with counterfeit faith.

What does it mean to have faith? It may be interesting for you to know that the word for faith has much more to do with actions as it does about intellectual agreement.

The greek noun for faith is “pistis” is used around 250 times in the new testament.  Common uses of this word in Greek was to refer to trust in others, persuasion of a thing, confidence, assurance, trustworthiness, and faithfulness.  The greek verb for faith is Pisteuo, which is usually translated “to believe” in our Bibles.  This word in Greek would mean to trust, or to rely on.   Now, what’s interesting about this words is that nowhere is their definition remotely close to “intellectual assent to a fact claim”, yet that is usually how most church-goers would define their “faith” in the gospel of Jesus.

Each of these words for faith by their very definition, have implied actions.  If there is an unwillingness to obey God in an area of life, this is not a sin issue, it is an absence of faith.  That person’s faith is counterfeit.  You cannot trust God, and not trust Him at the same time.  That’s rediculous, right?  Yet through their lives, that is what many professing Christians today, are holding onto.  It would have been understood, especially in the time the New Testament was written to a first century person living under Roman rule, that having faith would necessitate their obedience to Christ, which would come at great personal risk.  Christians were being martyred and persecuted – faith was not a thing to be taken lightly.

Likewise, what brought a person to faith, was the love of God in the gospel, wrought in their hearts by the Holy Spirit.  What is irresistible about the gospel, is not escape from hell or a promise of heaven, but Jesus Himself.  God, infinite in power and perfectly happy and content in Himself, came to die on a cross, shedding His blood for those who stood in the crowds mocking Him.  You cannot have faith without love.  Authentic faith is not merely a change of one’s mind about a fact, but a turning of affections towards God.  The inclination of one’s heart is drawn by faith towards God, and godliness, rather than fleeting worldly pleasures.  1 John 4:19 – “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 

If you are not a Christian, you cannot love.  If you are a Christian, you cannot help but love because Love dwells in you.  Does you see that?  If the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the ultimate seal of authentic faith (Eph 1:13), you cannot rest in the assurance of your professed faith is real if you don’t love like God loves.  You cannot have saving faith in God, and not love Him, and love others, because God Himself dwells in you as the Holy Spirit.  Moreover, loving God is not primarily an emotion, but a matter of obedience to Him from the heart.  Your love for God is evidenced in obedience.

1 John 5:1-4 – “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.  By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.  For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world— our faith.” 

Friends, we take the word faith too lightly.  This is not a condemnation of struggling sinners – we all struggle to obey, and are dependant upon the grace of God to cover our sins, and grant us repentance and greater faith daily to follow Christ and put sin to death.  However, we are commanded, as those who fear a righteous and holy God to test our faith.  Matthew 7:22-23 are the scariest verses in the Bible – “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”  I care about everyone too much to not risk offending someone at the cost of their salvation.  2 Corinthians 13:5 – “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”  That is my hope and exhortation – examine yourselves, turn from sin, run from it and towards God.  Find love and joy in the cross, and let God guide you in the ways you ought to go.  I want every one of us to burn brightly for God, to have our lives marked by a joy in God that world marvels at, and at the end of our time here, for each of us to be able to say as Paul did (2 Tim 4:7-8) – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”

Know that you’re loved and prayed for.  Grace and peace be with you.

In Christ,
Adam