Tag: Scripture

A Life-Changing Little Line

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I want to show you a simple phrase, a little phrase, but one that is paradigm-shifting for all who believe it. The word of God says some major things that are packed into little lines. But, I promise you, if you will believe this, it will change you.

Psalm 18:30

This God—his way is perfect;
the word of the Lord proves true;
he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

Speaking of our God, the psalmist says, “This God—his way is perfect.” For many, in a daily bible reading, or perhaps even right here, there will be a temptation to assume that we have thought this through as far as we need to. How about taking a moment today to stop and consider that little phrase a little more seriously.

Our God’s ways are perfect. What does that mean? All that God is and all that god does is perfect. His actions, his motives, his plans are perfect. There is no thing that the Lord has ever done or will ever do that is not absolutely perfect.

How does that compare with you? Can you say that your way is perfect? Can you declare your intellect or your wisdom to be flawless? You cannot say such things if you are both honest and sane.

So, stop and think. Your way is not perfect. God’s way is perfect. This means that we cannot wisely question the ways of the Lord. We cannot sit in judgment over what God says is right. We are fools if we think that we know that which is good better than does the Lord.

And how do we find out what God desires or what God says is right? We look to the Bible, about which the psalmist says, “the word of the Lord proves true.” God’s way is perfect. God’s word is true. Thus the Scripture is the true word of the perfect God.

Our world is so messed up. We battle against all that God says is good and right. Many people, even people I love, would look at the word of God and weigh it in their minds to determine whether or not they are willing to give God’s ways their stamp of approval. We look at Scriptures about households, about family, about gender, about sexuality, and we say whether or not we approve of the Lord’s ways. We look at Scriptures that tell us of God’s sovereign power, of his way of salvation, of his righteous judgment, and we decide whether or not we like how God works.

Dear friends, hear this truth again. God’s way is perfect. His word is true. It is not my place or your place to judge whether or not we think God’s ways meet our standards. We are flawed. God is holy. Our right response to the word is to surrender to the God whose way is perfect, to trust in his word that is true, and to take refuge in the Lord for life.

The Danger of False Prophets

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During the days of Ezekiel, as Jerusalem was about to fall to the Babylonians, God expressed great anger against false prophets. Men and women were still in Israel, still speaking as though from God, and still misleading people. The nation was being misled by people who used their authoritative-sounding speech to make money.

Ezekiel 13:1-7

1 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel, who are prophesying, and say to those who prophesy from their own hearts: ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’ 3 Thus says the Lord God, Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! 4 Your prophets have been like jackals among ruins, O Israel. 5 You have not gone up into the breaches, or built up a wall for the house of Israel, that it might stand in battle in the day of the Lord. 6 They have seen false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘Declares the Lord,’ when the Lord has not sent them, and yet they expect him to fulfill their word. 7 Have you not seen a false vision and uttered a lying divination, whenever you have said, ‘Declares the Lord,’ although I have not spoken?”

In the Pentateuch, God made it clear that a person who was a false prophet in Israel was to be put to death. Here, we see that, though such was the law, many people still found the idea of declaring a false statement to be from the Lord too tempting. And God will bring judgment on such people.

And here we are, it is around 2600 years later. Is there something to learn? Yes. God hates false prophets still. God will still not tolerate it when a person claims to speak for him but does not. God still knows it is utterly wrong to comfort the guilty or to condemn the innocent in the name of the Lord. And God will move to protect his word.

Think about that as you consider what you listen to as teaching from the Lord. Think about that as you consider what you hear people say who claim to have knowledge of what God wants. Think about that, and be very careful with how you allow your ears to take in something with God’s name attached.

The true prophet in the Old Testament only communicated to the people what God had really said. In most cases, that was less a prediction of the future and more a proclamation of what God’s written word had already promised.

Now, in our world, we live in a very new era. The Holy Spirit now personally indwells believers. And the Holy Spirit has inspired a completed canon of Scripture. What then will a prophet have to do? The answer should be that a man or woman who wants to tell you what God has said should be telling you what is clearly written and taught in the Scripture. God has indeed spoken. We have his word written down. And we need to be called to obey that word, to be convicted by that word, and to be encouraged by that word.

The Holy Spirit does not live in us to give us mystical visions of the future. The Holy Spirit will work with the written word of God to help us be illumined, allowing us to understand and apply the word of God to our lives and circumstances. And a person who wants to tell you or me what God says needs to be rightly handling the word of God aided by the Spirit of God.

IF you have a person tell you that they know God is telling them something, be very careful. Is what God is telling them what he wrote down? Is what the person claims consistent with the word of God? If it is in violation of the word, it is clearly false. If it is in keeping with the word, then you know that extrabiblical revelation was not needed for you to have that word.

When we see God speak strongly against false prophets, we should be drawn strongly to the word of god. Pray a lot. Love the word. Be constant in Scripture. Listen to faithful, biblical teaching. But be very wary of a person who tells you that God is telling them something not in the word.

Walking in the Truth

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When the apostle John was old, he wrote two lovely, short letters to churches and friends. And in them, we learn something about what makes an old apostle happy. While that might not strike you as the most important thing to think about in 2018, stop and really give it a second. If the apostles are the men chosen by God and sent out by Christ to communicate the word of God and lay the foundation of the church, what makes such men smile matters. And John, the last remaining apostle, has told us what makes him smile.

3 John 4 – I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

There it is. What makes an old apostle happy? It makes him happy when he hears that his children, those who have been taught by him and shepherded by him, are walking in the truth.

I would suggest, dear Christians, that this is what the Lord wants of us too. He wants us to walk in the truth. These are easy words, but they require us to take them seriously.

Truth is an easy word. But to accept it here is to accept the fact that there is such a thing as truth. Truth is true, for real, no violations or gradations. There is such a thing as truth in which we are to walk.

Christian, this is the word of God. You and I are to believe that truth begins with Jesus, the Son of God, the word of God. We must believe that God’s truth is revealed as holy Scripture. And we must believe the claims and teachings of Scripture.

But we are not only to believe the truth—that is actually the easy part. We are to walk in the truth. That means that we, as followers of God, not only believe the word of God, but we do what it says. When the word says not to commit sexual immorality, we are to obey. When it says husbands love your wives in such a way that you would lay your life down for her just as Christ did the church, you obey. When the word tells us to worship the Lord together and not to give up that practice, we obey. When the word tells us that the God who made us is to be our number one priority, that we are to have no other gods before him, that we are not to make up things to worship in his stead, we must obey this. When the word says not to kill the innocent, we obey. When the word says to care for the needy, we obey. When the word says to pray for our political leaders, we obey. When the word tells us to avoid gossip, slander, greed, drunkenness, sexual deviancy, violence, abusive speech, and so much more, we obey.

And to walk in the truth is to obey the command to make the Lord our God our first love. We are to believe in the holiness of God and let that overflow in worship. WE are to find delight in the character of God and his mind-blowing mercies on us. We are to find our joy in the glory of the Lord and let that thrill our souls for eternity. We are to live in a loving relationship with the Lord now, with his Spirit living within us, even as we long for an even better day when we live in the eternally sinless state to come. We walk with our eyes fixed on heaven and our hearts set on the Lord. And we strive with every step to reflect the glory of our God in the here and now.

You see, walking in the truth is beautiful. It is to believe the word so as to have it shape your life in every step. Such faithful living makes an old apostle happy. And I think we can see that, since the Lord inspired John to tell us this, it pleases the Lord too.

Thanks But No Thanks

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As the city of Jerusalem was threatened by the invading Babylonian Empire, there was much political intrigue taking place. Some men wanted Jeremiah the prophet dead for speaking the Lord’s judgment on Jerusalem. They thought he was unnecessarily disheartening the men.

After one failed attempt to kill Jeremiah, a servant of the king rescued the prophet. And Jeremiah and King Zedekiah had a chance to have a conversation. Jeremiah told the king that the city would be taken. And Jeremiah told the king that, if he wanted to be spared by the Lord, he needed to surrender himself to the king of Babylon.

Jeremiah 38:17-20 – 17 Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “Thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel: If you will surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon, then your life shall be spared, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and you and your house shall live. 18 But if you do not surrender to the officials of the king of Babylon, then this city shall be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and you shall not escape from their hand.” 19 King Zedekiah said to Jeremiah, “I am afraid of the Judeans who have deserted to the Chaldeans, lest I be handed over to them and they deal cruelly with me.” 20 Jeremiah said, “You shall not be given to them. Obey now the voice of the Lord in what I say to you, and it shall be well with you, and your life shall be spared.

Consider that King Zedekiah received the most favorable answer he could have possibly received given the circumstances. There is a simple action that Zedekiah could take, and action commanded directly by the Lord, that would spare his life and keep his city from the torch. This is, in so many ways, a no-brainer.

Want to guess what happened? The king, of course, does not listen. His fears and his understanding of the situation would not allow him to obey the command of God. He was too scared of the unknown. So he tried to escape on his own, and he suffered greatly for it.

Is there a lesson here for us? Of course there is. God’s word is true. God gives us counsel that goes against our this-worldly wisdom. And when God tells us what is right, we need to obey, even when we are afraid to do so. There is nothing to be gained by surviving a few more years in a besieged city only to fall in disobedience to the Lord. And there is nothing to gain by compromising the word of God for things that will eternally pass away.

The king heard the word of God, heard the promise of God, heard that he could be safe. His response was basically, “Thanks but no thanks.” Let’s not respond that way to our Lord.

Some Songs We Need

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In the final section of Psalm 119, I notice a verse that has not previously gotten my attention, but which has it now.

Psalm 119:172

My tongue will sing of your word,
for all your commandments are right.

David writes that he is going to sing of God’s word. Of course, that is precisely what is happening in Psalm 119. It also is what we see done in Psalm 19. Those texts beautifully proclaim the value and perfection of the word of God.

The thing that got my attention is that, as someone who has led worship for years, I do not know of many new songs that really sing of the word of God. We sing of salvation. We sing of the joys of heaven to come (though not as much as we used to). We sing of Jesus. We sing songs calling the church to action. But, off the top of your head, what is a modern song about the word of God?

Without making this a challenge for people’s musical memories, and without discussing the value of a dated song like “Thy Word,” and without having someone demand a Psalms only song set, I would like to say that we need more songs, new songs, that sing of the word of God. God’s word is perfect. God’s word is our lifeline of revelation so that we know and can obey the Lord. Without God’s word, we are hopelessly floundering in life.

Now, note the devotional value in the verse too. David will sing of God’s word. Something about the word of God is so great to David to make it worthy of a song. Think of how many things around you are not song worthy. Then consider how great is the value of the word that God would inspire a man, in a song, to remind us that the word of God is worth singing about. O may we treat the word as a song-worthy treasure.

And, secondly, notice that David says all of God’s commandments are right. Do you believe that? Be careful. There are commandments in the word that tend to embarrass us. There are commandments that we hide from. Are you really ready to say that all God’s commandments are right?

I will say that all God’s commandments are right. How dare I? How can I say that? God is always right. I believe the word of God to be his revelation of himself to us. And thus, all his commandments are right. He shows us what is right by him showing us himself and his will. He defines right. God is not measured by a right that is outside of him. Right is measured by whether or not it fits the ways and word of God.

Two Prayers We need

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It’s easy to be that person who speaks out slamming all of the things we have in our culture. It is easy to write the post about how messed up we are because of smart phones, selfies, and social media. It is easy to take shots at the 30-year-old gamer and his friend, the social justice political Tweeter-, both of whom are still living in their parents’ basements. Goodness, yesterday I saw a tweet from a man linking to his article about how he needed to step away from social media—he tweeted it instead of just doing it.

So, I don’t want to take the easy road of declaring that everything modern stinks. That has all been done. But reading God’s word, I am reminded of a couple of prayers we need to have on our lips if we are going to try to live in this odd culture that has become ours in the 21st century.

Psalm 119:36-37

36 Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to selfish gain!
37 Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and give me life in your ways.

These two verses are a great check on us today. They are not hard to understand, but they need to be central to us. David wants God to direct his heart, not toward selfish gain, but toward God’s testimonies. David wants God to focus him, not on getting ahead, but first on the word of God. Because David knows that a focus on the word of the Lord, the testimonies of who God is and what he has done, that will change his personality, values, and worldview.

David also prays that God keep him from focusing his eyes on worthless things. There are so many to choose from, and David did not even have the Internet. Yet David knew that focusing on worthless things would be a way to have his heart turned away from the Lord. David knew that life is found in the ways and commands of the Lord, not in the foolish time-wasters of his day.

If David needed these prayers, how much more do we? On the negative side, let us pray that God would keep us from seeking selfish gain and looking at worthless things. I’m not here aimed at legalism. I will not define for you what is and is not worthless. You, if you will talk to the Lord and study his word, will have the Spirit of God help you to know what is worthless. You, if you will be honest, will know when you are frittering away your time and focusing yourself on yourself and not on the things of God. Pray for God’s protection here.

And do not think that the positive sides of these commands are not important. They are where we find life instead of just turning from wrong. Ask God to incline your heart toward his testimonies and give you life in his ways. That, dear friends, is a heart focused on and leaning toward the words, the proclamations, the commands of holy Scripture. That is asking God to make you a strongly biblical person, a person who loves and obeys his word. You need this to battles selfishness and foolishness in this generation.

Where Is Your Delight?

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Think about your life, Christian, and ask the question, “Where is my delight?” In What do you find the deepest joy, the greatest fulfillment? Where is your heart full? What can you not live without?

We have become, in so many cases, a people who have replaced what should be our delight with something far less. Hear that, and think it through. This is not a preacher beating you up and just calling you bad. No, this is a fellow believer calling you to not lose the thing that can, if you will go there, fill your heart with delight. You want this. You want joy. You want delight. But it does not come from where many think.

Psalm 119:20, 24

20 My soul is consumed with longing
for your rules at all times.
24 Your testimonies are my delight;
they are my counselors.

David writes of his delight, his deep longing, in a way that does not fit many of us today. David delights in God’s rules and his testimonies. What is that? David delights in the word of God. If we wish to please the Lord, we too will delight in God’s word as David did.

What I want us to note, however, is not merely that David delighted in Scripture, but in what kind of things overjoy his soul. David delights in the rules of God. David delights in the law of God. Do you? Think about this with honesty. Many today delight in promises of blessing and sweet words of comfort. Good, and well we should. But do we also delight when God tells us his rules, his standards, his ways.

The modern tendency is to be embarrassed by the rules of God. We think we are being grace-oriented or gospel-centered, but really, we hide from the laws and commands of God because such is not popular in our world. When God has a law about marriage, gender, or sexuality, we do not let the world know we delight in God’s law. Instead, many either attempt to explain it away, or accept it with a blush the way that many of us wink and shrug at a friend when an uncle does something odd an unexplainable. Yeah, he’s part of the family, but you know, we’re not all really like that.

But, dear Christian friends, we are to delight in the law of God. We are to rejoice in his ways and his standards. We are to be overwhelmed by the fact that God would tell us who he is and what pleases him. We are to be thrilled to get under his lordship and submit to his word.

Perhaps you and I need to pray and ask God to make us delight in his word. We need to ask him to help us love, not only the promise of heaven or the sweetness of grace. We need to love his standards of purity, his structure for the church, his call for morality. We need to find our hearts thrilled when we see what God is like as we watch his salvation and his justice demonstrated in the word. Let us learn to love God by loving, delighting in, rejoicing in his law, his testimony, his rules, his word.

True or False

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Sometimes we have to look at a claim in Scripture and make a very clear, very personal decision. We have to answer a very simple question. Is what God inspired here true or false? Hopefully, that decision is already made by your commitment to the word of God, but in the reality in which we live, there will be times that truths hit us in the face and force us to again deal with the implications of a passage from the start.

Think about it. There are things in Scripture that, if you accept them as true, must inform all the rest of your theology. There are things in Scripture that, if you accept them as true, they will impact the way you see the entire universe. True or false is a big question.

Psalm 115:3

Our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases.

This claim is massive, absolutely massive. Is it true or false? If it is true, what does it say? If it is not true, well, then all of Scripture is out of whack.

The psalmist is comparing the real God to the idols of the nations. Our God is real, statues are false gods. The God of the Bible is real. Other gods of other religions are not. This is the claim.

But then, here in verse 3, the psalmist makes another claim, a worldview changing, theology altering claim. God does whatever he pleases.

Is that true? Does God do all that God pleases? If he does, then God is sovereign, and sovereign over all things. God is not just sovereign over some things while leaving other things to chance. If God does all that he pleases, then God is not, at any point, sitting in heaven disappointed that humanity will not do the thing he wanted them to do in their free will. If God does all that he pleases, then God is pleased, in the end, with the outcome of all human history. If God does all he pleases, no human being overrides the command of God to God’s sorrow. If God does all he pleases, eternally we will see that God was truly the Lord over all.

Ask yourself how your worldview must change if it is true that God does all that he pleases. What changes if you realize that you do not thwart God’s will, and neither does anyone else? What changes when you realize that there is no plan of God’s that will go unaccomplished? What changes when you see that there truly is no molecule in the universe outside of God’s control and no thing in the universe over which God cannot declare ownership?

This is a big truth. It raises big questions. And we who love thinking we are in control will struggle. But let yourself ask the true or false question? God does all that he pleases—true or false? If it is true, then you and I have to work from a point of view that places God highest and demonstrates that we are his subjects, not his rulers or judges.

Compromise and the Church’s Top Priority

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What is the priority of the church? Is it worship? Is it evangelism? Is it discipleship? Just what is the church here for?

If we ask that question of many believers, we will get a variety of answers. Some will tell us that the priority of the church must be evangelism, as, after all, evangelism is one of the very few things that the church can do here on earth that will not be possible in heaven. Others will prioritize worship, citing the Scriptural priority of the glory of God.

In truth, I’m not interested in what we say is the priority of the church right now. Instead, I am interested in what our actions display as the priority of the church. What do the things we do, the tactics we adopt, the choices we make indicate about what we really believe to be our priority? What are we willing to compromise on the one hand to accomplish what we think is most important on the other? That tells us much about what we value.

2 Corinthians 4:1-2 – 1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. 2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

Paul shows us by what he would not do something of great value as to what is important for the church. In all that he did, in all the preaching and evangelizing, Paul would not cross a particular line. Paul would not tamper with or compromise the word of God. No cunning, no sly tactics, no underhanded ruse was an acceptable avenue. Paul wanted to glorify God by upholding the word of God and speaking the truth of God.

Paul would not compromise on the word of God, even to appeal to a broader audience. He would not say that the gospel should be unhitched from the offensive Old Testament. Paul would not say that we shift from the word of God to appeal to modern times. No, drawing a crowd and appealing to people apart from Scripture was not at all the priority that God inspired Paul to set for the early church.

And in our culture, any priority that causes us to hide, to tamper with, to reinterpret, or to do away with Scripture is not a godly priority. Honoring God by loving him in accord with his word is our priority. When that word causes people not to want the church, we must not tinker with the word or compromise the truth to try to avoid the hardships. No, God makes it clear that his glory and his word are above all priorities in the church.

Thankfully, his word calls us to love one another, to share the gospel, to sing God’s praise, and to do many other things that honor the Lord. We are not in an either-this-or-that position. We can love God, keep his word, and care for each other. We must do so. But the point is that we do not in any way shrink away from the word of God for any other thing. To do so is to adopt a priority that was not Paul’s and is not God’s.

Psalm 138:2

I bow down toward your holy temple
and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness,
for you have exalted above all things
your name and your word.

Blessed more than Mary

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When we think of people in the history of Christianity, there are some folks who stand out. Peter and Paul, Daniel and Isaiah, Abraham and Moses, Ruth and Esther. We know that these people experienced God in some great ways and served him well.

Of course, Mary, the mother of Jesus, has to be included in that list of significant Christian historical figures. She was humble. She willingly served the Lord when it cost her greatly. She was favored by God in a special way, an experience that no other person will ever receive. And we should honor her just as we honor any saints of the past who faithfully served the Lord.

But should we reverence Mary in a way that is above other human beings? Should we consider Mary something just this side of deity? Should we think of her more highly than any other character in Scripture who faithfully served the Lord? Should we treat her differently than we treat faithful saints of today?

What would you say if I told you that the Bible speaks of someone, not Jesus, who is more blessed than Mary? Who would you guess it would be? Would you think of Paul or Peter? Would it be a spiritual giant?

Look at this exchange between Jesus and a woman as he taught.

Luke 11:27-28 – 27 As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” 28 But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

As Jesus spoke with great wisdom and spiritual authority, a woman in the crowd clearly intended to declare his mother a blessed woman. one would think that, if Mary holds a special and sacred office, Jesus would say, “Yes, she surely is.” Had this woman said, Blessed be God,” I can only imagine that Jesus would have responded with, “Amen.”

But here, Jesus offered an alternative. If this lady in the crowd wants to declare somebody truly blessed of God, Jesus wants to give an alternative. There is another person who is blessed that Jesus feels is more important to mention. Who? Jesus said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Who is more blessed than Mary? Jesus says that all who hear and obey the word of God, who hear and keep it, are blessed. Jesus is not putting Mary down in any way. But Jesus is saying that, if we want to think of the blessed, we should not single her out. Instead, we should understand that the one who is truly blessed of God is the one who hears and obeys Scripture.

That means, dear friends, that you and I can be the blessed people in this account. We have been given the word of God. We have the commands of God in clear and understandable language. For the most part, we know exactly what the Lord wants of us. He wants us to turn from sin and trust in Jesus. He wants us to live to the glory of God. He wants us to put away unrighteousness and shine like a city on a hill. He wants us to be about the task of making disciples. He wants us to love one another in the church. And he says that people who do things like that are blessed more than any individual who played any other role in Christian history.