Proverbs 12:16
The vexation of a fool is known at once,
but the prudent ignores an insult.
How is your temperament when hurt or insulted? When you are vexed, when you become angry with someone for some reason, how do you react? Does your anger flash out quickly? Do people know the instant you are perturbed? If so, look at the words of Proverbs 12. God says to us that, if we are the kind of people whose tempers flare up and are instantly visible, we are acting like fools.
Remember also that the proverbs constantly talk about the fool as the person who says in his or her own heart that there is no God. Thus, for us to allow our tempers to flare immediately is for us to act like the godless. When we cannot hold our anger in check, not even for a moment, we show that we lack trust that God is there and that God will handle the situation. We say with our flashing anger that we are the deity, that we are the ones most offended, and that it is our justice that must be served. However, none of those thoughts are true. God is God; we are not. God is the one whose justice will always be satisfied in the end. God is the one who is always most insulted when wrong is committed.
Ponder the proverb the next time you are tempted to fly off the handle. When you lose your grip on your anger, you act like one who believes there is no God. However, when you look at your circumstances through a lens that tells you that God is in control, your emotions will remain under control.
Let me say that this is not easy. I need this advice for myself as much as anyone does. Though I’m not one whose anger flashes easily, I am one whose emotions—self pity, doubt, discouragement—can grab my heart far too quickly. Only if I remember God is in control will I have a proper grip on myself.
Needing Mercy (Nehemiah 9:32-37)
Nehemiah 9:32-37 (ESV)
32 “Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. 33 Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. 34 Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. 35 Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. 36 Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. 37 And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.
Nehemiah chapter 9 is dominated by a beautiful prayer of remembrance and repentance on behalf of the people of God. The exiles who have returned from Babylon are still not fully resettled in the promised land. In a very real sense, the people considered themselves not to yet be rightly reconciled to God.
The people had been driven away from the land that God had promised them. They were taken away from the place where they could worship God as he had commanded. They suffered greatly. Even when God brought them back to the land, they still suffered under the rule of the Persian Empire.
Verse 33 tells us the central message of this entire chapter. The people declare, “Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.” This is the proper attitude of anyone who has sinned against God. No matter how difficult our lives are, we have never been cheated by God. God has always been faithful. God has always held back his punishment. We have earned his wrath, just like Israel did, but God has always treated us with kindness, just like he treated Israel.
It is also true that there comes a point in anyone’s dealing with God that the time of mercy is dangerously close to running out. Israel was given hundreds of years to turn from sin and to avoid God’s wrath, but they never changed. You and I are given one lifetime to have our sins forgiven by God. If we want to avoid his judgment, we have to turn from our sin, and receive his forgiveness.
The prayer of this section is a simple one. The people ask God to take pity on them for what they have suffered. They are willing to turn from their sins and follow God. They know, however, that they cannot be rescued from their sins if God does not choose to have mercy on them. And so they cry for help.
You and I also need God’s pity, his mercy, his grace. IF we will be willing to turn from our sin and seek his grace, God will forgive us. Jesus Christ is a wonderful and merciful Savior. All who come to him will find grace. Whether you are a Christian who needs encouragement or a non-Christian who needs to be forgiven by God, Christ Jesus is the merciful God to whom you should cry for salvation.
Conference Call Comedy
My brother tells me this is too realistic.
What Did You Expect – A Review
One of the things I love about reading Paul Tripp is his giftedness for applying Scripture to daily life. In What Did You Expect, Tripp uses this ability to great benefit as he looks at six important commitments that Christian couples need in order to have healthy and God-honoring marriages.
Positives
In many marriage books, the authors somehow manage to ignore the darker parts of our nature. Writers often assume that people are always good and that marital problems are caused merely by miscommunication or by a lack of basic knowledge. Tripp is not so gullible. Taking an honest look at the consequences of two sinners coming together, Tripp makes it plain that we can never stop seeking God’s help and working to see that our marriages survive. We are rebels at heart, and Tripp handles that concept well.
Tripp also never lets go of the spiritual dimension of our marriages. This book is not a mere how-to, self-help, or communication manual. Tripp takes very seriously that our marriages have two dimensions, a vertical and a horizontal. While we might strive to have our horizontal relationship right, if we fail to make our marriages primarily about God, the vertical dimension, we will never see truly glorious married life.
Tripp also avoids two major pitfalls that I see in many marriage books. He does not spend page after page giving husbands date night ideas or telling them that, were they merely as romantic as the men in romantic comedies, their marriages would be picture perfect. Nor does Tripp assume that a how-to manual regarding physical gratification is what Christian married couples need. In both areas, I applaud Tripp for seeing into the real issues.
Negative
I love how Tripp’s years of biblical counseling experience provide him a wealth of illustrations to draw from as he walks us through our need to continually strive for excellence in our marriages. However, I will say that , at times, the rapid-fire stacking of illustration after illustration can make some of the chapters feel a bit long. I realize this is a personal preference and that others might love this feature, but I would have preferred a little less case study in the work.
Recommendation
What Did You Expect is an excellent book for couples to read together. Tripp is honest and fair in his assessment of the work that is before any married couple. This book does not fall into the traps that make so many marriage books sappy or unrealistic. This book is simply a helpful study of vitally important issues.
Audio
I was given a free audio copy of this work to review from ChristianAudio.com As always, the production quality is excellent.
Platt’s Radical – A Review
David Platt is a name that is growing in popularity in the Southern Baptist Convention and all over the evangelical world. Platt’s reputation is growing, not because of a massive church growth strategy or gimmicky program, but because he is being recognized as a pastor who preaches the word passionately, honestly, and boldly, and who calls people to a dramatic kind of obedience to the commands of God. Thus, the book Radical: Taking Back your Faith from the American Dream is a perfect expression of Platt’s ministry.
Simply put, Radical is a challenge to live with genuine, deep, “radical” obedience to the word of God. Our culture often tends to blind us to the eternal life that is beyond all our nice cars, pleasant homes, and fancy toys. Plat has called on his local church (through sermons and changes) and now us (through this book) to radically obey the Lord Jesus, giving up our worldly ambitions to honor Christ and take the gospel to the nations.
The call to radical obedience is one that American Christians of all denominations need to hear. Platt surrounds this bold call with powerful illustrations that remind us of the glorious strength of God to satisfy our souls even as we give up our very lives for his glory.
I recommend this book very strongly. It will make an excellent resource for group reading that might powerfully change your local church. If you will allow it to, this reading will certainly change your outlook on your possessions and your time.
I listened to the audio version of this book from ChristianAudio.com as part of their reviewers program. The recording is excellent with Platt interpreting his own work.
Platt on God’s Plan to Reach the Nations
David Platt, Radical: Taking Back your Faith from the American Dream (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2010), 156, speaks of God’s plan to get the gospel to the nations in Romans 10:14-15:
So there you have it—the simple divine plan for taking the gospel to all peoples of the world.
God sends his servants.
His servants preach.
People hear.
Hearers believe.
Believers call.
Everyone who calls is saved.
Now look back at this progression and ask one question: Is there any place where this plan can break down? Think about it. Obviously everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.No breakdown there. Everyone who believes will call.Many who hear (not all, but many) will believe. People will hear the gospel when we preach it to them. And God is most definitely still in the business of sending his servants. That means there is only one potential breakdown in this progression—when servants of God do not preach the gospel to all peoples. We are the plan of God, and there is no plan B.
Of course, God has the power to write the gospel in letters across the clouds so that all people can learn about Jesus and believe in him. But in his infinite wisdom, he has not chosen this route. Instead he has chosen to use us as ambassadors who carry the gospel to people who have never heard the name of Jesus.
Wrong Questions about Suffering (Luke 13:1-5)
Luke 13:1-5 (ESV)
1 There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
When we see suffering, we often have questions that we want to ask God. “How could you allow this to happen?” “Why are these specific people suffering?” “did these people do something to cause what has happened to them?” The problem is, we are asking the wrong questions.
One day, Jesus was asked about a group of people who suffered a terrible death at the hands of an evil ruler. The people who asked wanted to know why those men suffered worse than others seem to. Jesus told his inquisitors that they were asking the wrong question and thinking in the wrong way. They wanted to know why God allowed certain people to suffer tragedy. In reality, what Jesus wanted them to do was to understand that all people deserve the wrath of God. Anything less than his wrath that we receive is his mercy.
How do I know that this is Jesus’ point? He tells the people, if they do not repent, they will perish themselves. Jesus wants them to understand that they deserve to have hardship befall them—they deserve God’s wrath. God has the right to allow us to perish. Because of his great love and mercy, he has provided a way for us to live and be forgiven (cf. John 3:16).
What is the way for us to survive and avoid the wrath of God? The word Jesus uses is repentance. If we will willingly turn away from our evil thinking and evil acting and instead place our full trust in God, we will be forgiven. More specifically, again from John 3:16, we must turn from ourselves and place our full trust in Jesus Christ to avoid perishing.
We like to think that nobody deserves to perish, and so something radical and strange has happened when God allows someone to perish. We have forgotten that all have sinned before God and earned death for that sin (cf. Romans 3:23; 6:23). Thus, our entire attitude should have a paradigm shift. When we see how much we deserve to be judged by a holy God, we will be grateful to him for any mercy he has shown us. When we see hardships, we will be reminded of the grace that God has given so many and of our need to repent and turn to God for mercy.
Mr. Nice Guy
The folks at “Way of the Master” have a video up on Youtube that might help in sharing the gospel with someone who believes that they are basically a good person.
Post Super Summer Post Roundup
How Can God Forgive Me? (2 Chronicles 33:10-13)
2 Chronicles 33:10-13
10 The Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention. 11 Therefore the Lord brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon. 12 And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. 13 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.
My wife’s real name is not Mitzi—that’s a nickname—her actual name is Manassah. Her dad named her after one of Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh. The Bible says, “Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For he said, ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’” (Gen 41:51). I, however, like to tease my wife that she was named after King Manasseh, the most wicked king that Judah ever knew (she thinks this less funny than I do).
Manasseh was a bad king. If you read his story in 2 Chronicles 33:1-9, you will see that this guy was just plain nasty. He worshipped idols. He sacrificed his own children to false gods. He set up idols in the temple itself, a great abomination before God. He was the kind of wicked guy that you just pray will get what’s coming to him.
Then we read what I cited above. Manasseh did not listen to God. And we say, “No kidding.” So then God sent an army to drag him off and punish him. And we say, “Yeah baby!” Then the Scripture tells us that Manasseh repented, God heard his cry, and restored him. And we say, in the words of the late Gary Coleman, “What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
How could this be? How could God forgive a guy like Manasseh? How could God let this guy off? How could God not utterly destroy Judah’s most wicked king ever?
My answer to that question is this: God could forgive Manasseh in just the same way that he can forgive a sinner like me or like you. God has always revealed himself to us in his word as the Lord who is slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness (c. Exo 34:6). God has shown that he is always forgiving toward those who will turn from their sin and place their trust in him. Without question, God does not forgive everybody. Without question, God has specific requirements for men and women to find forgiveness. But God is very much willing to forgive anyone who will come to him on his terms.
Do you remember John 3:16? God is willing to forgive anyone who will put their trust in Jesus. That means God will forgive the socially good guy who has sinned before God in his pride and it means the socially evil guy who has committed atrocities. God will forgive anybody who will turn away from their sin and place their hope and trust in the completed work of the Lord Jesus.
We must acknowledge that we are sinful before God and without hope on our own. We must believe that Jesus paid the price for our sins in his death and resurrection. Then we put all our hope in Jesus and what he has done, ask God to forgive us, and our lives change so that we follow and worship the Lord.
(If this text intrigues you, It will be the topic of the Sunday morning message at Olney Southern Baptist Church this week—10:00 AM, 205 E Mack Ave, Olney.)
Pastor Travis Peterson 