Posted on

Build One Another Up

Whether photoshopped or not, this picture of a cyclist being chased by a bear is a great illustration for motivation.  In our Christian walk, however, we struggle to see the bear behind us and often fall into drudgery or complacency.  How do we find the enthusiasm for ourselves and then to encourage and build up others?

I.  1 Thessalonians 5:8-11.  First, we belong to the day.  This we should not forget.  When we came up out of that water of baptism, we set aside the deeds of darkness as a new creation and pledged to live for God and His will (Romans 13:11-14).  So, we live as children of light (John 3:19-21) with the protection of God’s breastplate of faith and love and helmet of the hope of salvation.  So many face the trials of the day not equipped with what God has provided.  They haven’t grasped their motivation.

II.  Colossians 3:1-17.  The world tells us that heaven is for all and hell for a few, and sadly many live this motivation-killing lie.  The Bible shows us that the opposite is true–that hell is for all (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23) and that heaven is for a few (Matthew 7:13-14).  We’re told to ‘obtain’ salvation.  This means we need to work it out with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12-13).  Even Jesus needed to do this (Hebrews 5:7-9) and used the joy of heaven as motivation to endure the cross (Hebrews 12:1-3).

III.  Ephesians 4:12-16.  In that is our motivation!  If in Jesus’ sacrifice we share in His glory, then we have reason to enthusiastically obey Him in our daily walk.  But that’s not enough.  We are to then encourage one another and build one another up.  Here’s the purpose of the church coming together each week and staying connected throughout the week.  Here’s why edification is so much more than just instruction.  It’s the application for our own lives and concern for others.  Because of Jesus, we do so.

God through Paul tells the Thessalonians “… just as you are doing.”  How encouraging it must have felt to know they were on the right track.  We too, if we do these things and rediscover our motivation for our Christian walks, can know that we are living out God’s plan for us.

 

Posted on

For We Cannot But Speak

People have done all kinds of things while sleepwalking–cooking, driving … even killing–to wake up without a recollection of their actions.  That’s how some believe the Holy Spirit works in our lives, that it takes us over and we have no choice but to do what it forces us to do.  Usually assemblies of these folks will have multiple people at once babbling in tongues, dancing, jumping, fainting, or rolling around.  But, is that how we see God’s Spirit working in the lives of first century Christians?  Rather, like a boy who has just caught a big fish and can’t help but tell others about it, we see the Spirit giving them boldness to edify and evangelize.

I.  Acts 4:17-31.  It must have seemed overwhelming to Jesus’ followers who didn’t yet have the Counselor to be told to go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that Jesus had commanded.  What a difference there was between the group in Acts 1 of about 120 huddled within the walls of the upper room with the gospel message hidden within them to the same group accused in Acts 5:28 of filling Jerusalem with their teaching.  That difference was the gift of the Holy Spirit given to them at baptism (Acts 2:36-39).

II.  1 Corinthians 14:26-33.  Without the complete Word of God written that thoroughly equips us today (2 Timothy 3:16-17), God used the lesser gifts of tongues, prophecy, and knowledge early in the first century to impart and attest to His Word, but these would end (1 Corinthians 13:8-13) and had largely ended by the time the gospels and epistles were written and circulated (Hebrews 2:3-4).  But, God was never about chaos.  Even when He chose to use lesser gifts to impart His Word, the spirits of prophets were subject to the control of the prophets.  Those through whom God used to speak in languages they hadn’t studied, prophesy, or present knowledge were to take turns and choose to remain silent at times.  God did not take them over but equipped them through His Spirit.

III.  Romans 8:9-11.  Though we were given the gift of God’s Spirit dwelling within us at baptism, we (probably in reaction to the misuse of how He works in us by groups around us) act like we don’t have the Spirit within us and largely ignore this gift.  Though we know the great commission that Jesus has given to us, we huddle within the walls of our upper rooms with the gospel message that a lost world so desperately needs to hear hidden within us.  Like Acts 1 followers, we pray that God will change the world to make it more receptive and tremble in fear of politically-correct persecution.  But, after the Acts 2 Christians had been beaten and threatened not to speak in the Name of Jesus anymore, they prayed instead for boldness to edify and evangelize … and the Holy Spirit equipped them to do so.

Understood within the proper context, we have an incredible gift–God’s Spirit living within us to guide, equip, strengthen, and embolden us to live as Acts 2 Christians.  Are you ignoring it or guarding it (2 Timothy 1:13-14) to use for God’s Kingdom?

Posted on

As They Did To Me

As the anniversary of 9-11 came around this week, many still want vengeance for what happened to us.  But, is that what we should be seeking?  Both had the Spirit of the Lord, but isn’t it good that Jesus, while on the cross, sought forgiveness rather than vengeance for us like Samson would have done?

I.  Judges 15:1-15.  Back and forth Samson waged war with the Philistines, each seeking vengeance for what he or they perceived the other side had done to him or them.  They literally fought fire with fire, and it all came from worldly thinking: “As they have done to me, so have I done to them.”

II.  Romans 9:20-24.  God’s sole right to vengeance is rooted in His sovereignty.  Since He made everything, everything is His (Colossians 1:16).  Since God has the sole right to reveal His wrath (Romans 12:19), He also has the sole right to bring mercy.  His wrath will be wreaked against those against Him or who don’t know Him (Romans 1:18-21) and those in the church who deliberately sin or shrink back (Hebrews 10:26-31).

III.  Romans 12:14-21.  Since we’ve all sinned (Romans 3:23), we’ve all earned His wrath (Romans 6:23), but He has shown mercy to those in His Son by Jesus’ work on the cross (Romans 8:31-39).  So, rather than waging war as Samson or the world does (2 Corinthians 10:3-5), we who have escaped God’s vengeance by obeying the gospel, persuade men instead and reconcile them to God’s mercy through the gospel (2 Corinthians 5:11-21).

Realizing that you have escaped God’s vengeance through the gospel, do you seek vengeance or mercy for others?

Posted on

Rushed Upon Him

Throughout the Avengers series, Bruce Banner struggled to control the Hulk from taking over.  That’s how many believe the Holy Spirit acts in our lives.  Samson seems to exemplify that, but with a closer look we see that those with the Spirit of the Lord choose their actions.

I.  Judges 14:1-20.  It’s clear from the onset of Samson’s story that God knows our terrible choices ahead of time and uses them for His will.  The ‘lawless men’ who sent Jesus to the cross were not thwarting God’s plan but falling into it (Acts 2:22-24).  It’s also clear throughout all of Samson’s life that despite having the Spirit of the Lord that he acted out of selfish motives and anger, something that could not please God.

II.  John 2:13-17.  Jesus had God’s Spirit (Matthew 3:16-17), and many might have thought that there was another Samson in their midst when He overturned tables and drove money-changers out of the temple with a whip.  But, John explains that the source of Jesus’ anger was different.  Jesus who never sinned (Hebrews 4:15) had an anger not rooted in sin (Ephesians 4:26) but rather zeal for His Father’s house.  Like Samson, though, Jesus chose His actions.

III.  Acts 2:16-39.  We too choose our actions.  Given the Spirit of the Lord as a gift at baptism, Christians choose to either take the route of Samson and grieve the Spirit by our sinful choices (Ephesians 4:30) or serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13).  With His Spirit, God has given us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-21) to bring others to Christ the choice of waging spiritual war differently than the world does (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).  But we have to choose these!

If you have obeyed the gospel, you have the Spirit of the Lord.  With it dwelling in us, teaching us, and equipping us in various ways, we each need to choose what we will do with this new life we have been given.

 

 

Posted on

Greater Things Than These

Usually a death bed promise works the other way.  The one who will continue on promises to do something after the loved one is gone.  As further proof of the resurrection, Jesus, while still alive but soon to die on the cross, makes a promise to His church that through Him (alive again and interceding for us at the Father’s side) we will do greater things than He did while on the earth.

I.  John 14:12-14.  There’s no doubt that Jesus did great things in His three-year earthly ministry.  After all, He was God in the flesh.  But the King of Kings showed Himself to be the servant of servants with great compassion: touching the leper, raising the widow’s only son from death, multiplying food to feed the hungry masses following Him, casting out demons from a man long bound.  And while He did these things, He spoke of how we would become parts of His body (Matthew 16:18), bought with His blood (Acts 20:28) and disciplined to share in His holiness (Hebrews 12:7-11).  Why?  So that we might serve as He did (Galatians 5:13).

II.  Romans 12:4-8.  Belief in Him is essential for the various body parts to work together to do great works (John 10:37-38).  We are to walk by faith (2 Corinthians 5:7) and walk as Jesus did (1 John 2:6).  Not awkward like the participants in a three-legged race, we are to move together as one body, seeing ourselves as parts of the body contributing to its working and connected to the Head (Colossians 2:19).  Whatever your function, you are essential to Christ’s body serving properly.

III.  John 13:12-17.  We stand in awe of what the Amish can accomplish in just one day by working together … and without power tools.  But Jesus promises the body that we will do even greater things than what He did while in his body.  We certainly see His enemies powerless from the start (Acts 4:14-16) to thwart a unified body.  Even their efforts to smash the hornet’s nest in Jerusalem (Acts 8:1-4) backfired as the scattered disciples preached the gospel wherever they went.  So, as an individual body part, how are you serving in your personal ministry?  And, as a member of Christ’s body, how are you working together with others to serve and function as one body?

Jesus built His church with His own blood so that Christians around the world could serve together in local bodies and together be the body of Christ with Him as its Head.  It starts with you.  How are you serving as Christ did?

Posted on

Teach Us What We Are To Do

As we brought our first child home from the hospital, we wished newborns came with instruction manuals.  To live our lives, we have one–it is written by God and is full of His perfect teaching!

I.  Judges 13:1-12.  When the angel explained the rules to govern Samson’s life as a Nazirite, his father was wise enough to ask God in prayer to teach them what they were to do.  Before the age of synagogues, what would a man of the fields know about the Lord’s instruction except that many years before, a covenant with God had been made on Mt. Sinai that God’s people had agreed to obey (Exodus 19:5-8)?  Yet, this father-to-be, faced with a great challenge, knew not to trust in his own understanding.

II. John 16:12-13.  Since Eden, we have understood the world through learning (Genesis 3:22), and so the first covenant God made with His people came by instruction (Exodus 24:12), and promises that God would teach us for a second covenant were made (Jeremiah 31:31-34).  God’s Son came as a master teacher (Mark 10:1) and just before the cross promised that God’s Spirit would lead his followers into all truth.  Indeed, the Thessalonians were told that they were taught by God to love one another (1 Thessalonians 4:9).

III.  Proverbs 3:5-7.  The big question is–will we submit to God’s teaching or lean on our own understanding?  Like the man who assembles something from a box without consulting the instructions, if we do this with our lives, we’ll end up with a pocketful of extra parts and a product that doesn’t work well or at all.  Instead, we need to delight in God’s teaching (Psalm 1:2) and not be a fool who despises it (Proverbs 1:2-7).  We must say with the Psalmist, “Teach me” (Psalm 25:4-10).

We are surrounded by sources of teaching that would have us living our lives in many different ways, some that even sound wise, but the only instruction for life and godliness comes from God.

Posted on

You Would Not Save Me

“In God We Trust” is printed right on our money, yet do we trust Him or the money itself?  Most of us would exclaim that we trust God, but in reality trust in others, circumstances, or ourselves.  We trust that the money we’ve paid into Social Security will be there to fund our retirement; we insist that we do certain jobs because “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself; and Grandma always believed this, so it’s good enough to get me into heaven.

If we truly examine our motives, we might be surprised what we truly trust in!

I. Judges 12:1-7.  A gentle word is supposed to turn away wrath (Proverbs 15:1), but Jephthah learned with first the Ammonites and then the Ephraimites that that doesn’t always work.  He had tried to put his trust in his fellow Israelites to save him from a foreign invader, and they didn’t like him putting his trust in God when they refused his request.  You may experience friends’ or relatives’ pressure for you to follow their advice or examples, but often their ways run counter to God’s Word.  Adam and Eve experienced this in Genesis 3:1-6.  As a Christian, we must always follow God’s way.

II. 1 Samuel 13:8-12.  We can misplace our trust by putting it in others, circumstances, or ourselves.  When Samuel was later than he said he would arrive and King Saul was watching his army grumble and disperse, he justified in his own mind that offering the sacrifice, a job only for the Levites, was okay for him to do.  God ripped the kingdom away from him because of his disobedience.  Sin is not trusting in a good God to follow His perfect plan in His perfect way in His perfect timing for you.  Worry is trusting only in ourselves (Matthew 6:25-33) as is having little faith (Matthew 14:28-31).

III. Psalm 20:4-7.  A Christian will firmly place his trust in God, knowing that His ways and thoughts are so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8) and that God never forsakes those who put their trust in Him (Psalm 9:10).  Indeed, for that which is most important–salvation–Jesus Himself tells us to put our trust in Him (John 14:1-3).

We might examine ourselves in light of Scripture and ask if we are placing our trust in God and He is just using the people and circumstances around us as tools for His plan or if we are trusting in those people, circumstances–even ourselves–to save us.

Posted on

Teaching Them

The Christian Walk has been described as one beggar showing another beggar where to find food.  This illustrates wonderfully how one of our primary missions on this earth is to instruct others in the way of salvation.

I. Matthew 28:18-20.  Animals know how to live by instinct, but human beings need to be taught (Genesis 3:5-22).  God has given us the Bible to instruct us in the way of salvation (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and displayed His power in creation to know that He is God (Romans 1:18-22).  So, it is no wonder that Jesus seeks and saves the lost (Luke 19:10) today by equipping us to make disciples through teaching others the gospel.

II. Ephesians 4:11-16.  But, the teaching does not stop there.  After making disciples, we are to teach them to obey all of Jesus’ commands.  To do that, Jesus established His church (Matthew 16:18) as a center of learning, where the lost can hear the gospel, yes, but where the church, speaking the truth in love, can build itself up in love.  Our teaching should not be confined within the walls of buildings, however, but the church, attaining unity and maturity in Jesus, should go forth and teach.

III. John 13:13-34.  We glimpse Jesus’ great love that motivated Him to live a number of years in the flesh to instruct us in the way of salvation before going to the cross for us in love.  In Matthew 23:37, He laments that Jerusalem persisted in sin while so many prophets had come to teach the city and the nation throughout the centuries.  That same love is our motivation as we take up Jesus’ mission to teach others by word and by deed, by our very lives, the way back to God.

By learning do we now understand our world, and so God, in His infinite wisdom, taught us who He is and how to return to Him.  Then, having come to know Him, we are, in turn, told to teach others.

Posted on

Speaking the Truth in Love

What chance does the gospel have to be heard in a world that has become so competitive with waves of noise, each more flashy and entertaining?  So many have closed their ears.  How can we be God’s megaphone, speaking the truth in love, and get them to listen?  Should we beat the world at its own game in order to be heard?

I. 1 Kings 19:1-18.  After Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, he becomes discouraged by Jezebel’s death threats and runs away.  After refreshing him, God shows Elijah His power not in the wind, earthquake, or fire but in the gentle whisper.  Then, God shows him that He works in our weaknesses.  It’s the same with the gospel (1 Corinthians 1:18-31).  God’s grace is as sufficient for us as it was Paul (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).

II. Ephesians 4:11-16.  Jesus, our Head, supplies us with truth that equips us to attain to unity and maturity in Him.  This seems strange in the boisterous world that believes that truth is relative.  But, the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth, who speaks the truth in love.  That truth, His Word, is a living and active, double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12-13) that we wield as part of the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) as we wage war differently than the world (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).

III. James 3:1-10.  So, in our weaknesses, Jesus’ body, the church, supplies the tongue.  What a difficulty this is with such an untamable appendage!  Yet, speaking the truth in love, we reach the lost with a low whisper and grow up in Him, working together to build ourselves up.  Much like an adolescent must choose healthy food for his various body parts to grow up correctly into his adult-sized head, so the church must commit to knowing and living out truth to grow up properly into Him.

It’s God’s power and work, but He entrusts His weak and fallible servants to speak His words of truth in love to lead the lost and strengthen the saved.

Posted on

I Will Offer It Up

God made us in His image, but so often we try to make God in ours.  We want a god we can control, and so we’ll try to bargain with God by making promises or deals that usually begin with “If You will …, then I’ll ….”  But, God doesn’t operate that way; rather He works through love.

I.  Judges 11:1-40.  Despite a similar start to life, Jephthah nevertheless had a different spirit than the judge from previous chapter, Abimelech.  Jephthah tried to reason with the Ammonite king to avoid war, but war came anyway.  Rather than trusting God, however, Jephthah made a rash vow to God to sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house, which sadly was his daughter, if God would give him victory.

II.  Isaiah 44:9-17.  In making us in His image, God put us in dominance over all the earth, but that does not include God Himself (1 Corinthians 11:3).  We turn to idols even today because we can control them rather than submitting to, trusting in, and obeying God.  Even Job thought he had a few points that he would like to argue with God (Job 13:3), but how can creation argue with the Creator (Romans 9:20)?

III.  Romans 8:28-32.  Instead of coming across as a used car salesman with God (Do I have a deal for You!), we must realize that God loves us unconditionally, will give us whatever we need in line with His will, will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), has thoughts and ways so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8), and has a perfect plan for the perfect time in the perfect way (Galatians 4:4-5).  And sometimes we have something to learn from His discipline (Hebrews 12:7-11).

Therefore, love is the coin of the Kingdom.  Just as we do for those we love without bargains, promises, or vows, how much more will God do for us as He’s already proved His love through the giving of His Son on the cross (Romans 5:6-8)?