Tag: Travis Peterson

Deuteronomy 7:9 – Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.
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It makes great sense for this verse to be the first verse on the list of memory verses in a program. This passage does a wonderful job of reminding us of who our God is and what he is like. In fact, knowing who God is and what he is like is exactly the command for Israel in this verse.

What are we supposed to know as we read this text? We are supposed to know that the LORD (not simply a title there, but an actual name) is God. There is only one God. That God is the LORD, Yahweh, the God of the Bible. There are not other gods out there.

Second, we are supposed to know that God is faithful. God is trustworthy. When he promises something, he does it. He does not change his mind. He does not mess with us, pretending to be one thing and then change on us when we’re not looking. He is faithful to what is right, to who he is, and to his promises.

Third, God keeps covenant and steadfast love. He is faithful to his covenant. He is not one to renege on his promises. And he keeps steadfast love, covenant-keeping love. He loves those who are his with an unbreakable love.

Fourth, notice to whom it is that God is faithful. He is faithful to those who love him and keep his commandments. Those two things go hand-in-hand. To love God is to keep his commandments (see John 14:15, 21, & 23). If you love God, you will strive to do what he commands, and you will grieve when you fail. And God is loving and faithful to those who love him and keep his commands.

Finally, this loving faithfulness of God lasts a very long time. God is faithful to a thousand generations of those who love him. This is not to say that, if you obey, God will bless your family line for a thousand generations. Instead, it is to say that no generation will come that God is not faithful toward if they love him and keep his commands. No matter how far removed we are from this verse being written (I’d guess around 2,400 years or so), we still have the joy of knowing that, if we love God and keep his commands, he will be faithful, loving, and covenant keeping toward us.

This verse leads us to worship our God, because he is the only true God who exists. It calls us to praise God for his faithfulness and his covenant-keeping love. It challenges us to love our God and keep his commands. And it encourages us to remember that God is faithful for thousands of generations. Let us learn to love this great and faithful God.

Ezekiel 33:6 – But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, so that the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at the watchman’s hand.
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Some verses of the Bible are fun ones to read. Others are piercing and a touch frightening. This morning, as I read through Ezekiel 33, I find one of those verses that should shake any of us to our very bones.

Look at the logic. You and I are called, like Ezekiel, to be watchmen. We can see destruction coming upon people we know, people who do not have God’s forgiveness in Christ. If we warn them of the danger, their response is entirely up to them. Warning them honestly is what frees us from obligation regarding their future. But, if we do not warn them about the danger to come, their response is still up to them. However, we too bear the guilt of seeing the coming wrath of God and not calling the lost to repentance. This is perfectly logical, and it should be perfectly terrifying to us.

God has made it plain to his children what is our responsibility. We can not, by our own power or charisma, persuade any person to come to know Jesus Christ. That work is the work of God’s Holy Spirit alone. We must, however, take an active roll in communicating the good news of Jesus Christ to all the peoples of the world. If we fail to tell them about God’s offer of grace in Jesus, God’s wrath toward our sin, and God’s command of repentance, we are guilty of not warning the people as God commands us to.

I do not fully understand what it will mean that God will require their blood of us. IF we are in Christ, all the guilt for all of our sin is covered by the blood of Jesus. However, I know that I do not want to be in any way held responsible for another’s damnation. Again, the one damned is ultimately responsible for his or her rejection of Jesus Christ. At the same time, I must share. Let us never be guilty of holding back the truth from a world destined for the wrath of Almighty God.

Lamentations 3:21-23

21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
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This passage is one of the most amazing passages I have ever read in the scripture. It is not so amazing for what it says, but it is amazing for where and when it says what it says. If you looked at my last entry, you saw that the book of Lamentations are songs of great sorrow and mourning that Jeremiah wrote as he thought of the destruction of Jerusalem. In that event, the Babylonian armies came into Jerusalem and utterly decimated the people of God. The scene was as horrible as any scene that I have ever heard described. And because of the horror of the scene, I am amazed at what Jeremiah wrote in verses 21-23 (you really should go back and read them again).

(Really, look up and read them again.)

“Great is your faithfulness!” This is amazing. God’s mercy never ends. He never turns his back on his people. You know, “Great is Thy Faithfulness” is a great hymn to sing during a Thanksgiving service, but who would ever think to sing it as they looked upon the people of God being slaughtered by an invading foreign army? The only person who could sing such a thing during such a time would be a person who had a truly God-centered worldview. And, while it may seem totally strange to want, we must want to have God’s view in such matters.

God is truly faithful. His destruction of Jerusalem—using the Babylonians as his tool of course—was perfectly in keeping with his promises. God promised Israel that, if they rebelled against him and his law continually, he would send in armies to wipe them out. They rebelled, and God’s faithfulness was great. While this may not seem song-worthy to you, to Jeremiah, it caused him to break forth in song. Why? Jeremiah knew that God also promised that a descendant of David’s would ultimately reign forever. Jeremiah knew that God would still have mercy on those who love him. Jeremiah knew that God’s wrath is holy, and so is God’s loving kindness. Jeremiah knew that God is truly faithful, trustworthy, and always—absolutely always—right in everything he does.

Is your worldview such that you can follow God faithfully even when you see tragedy around you? Can your heart handle to see God’s justice? Can you call God faithful, even when the world around you looks like it is falling apart? I hope you can, because God is faithful. God is always right. God’s ways are always perfect. God’s faithfulness really is great.

Psalm 143:2 – Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
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We live in a culture that truly does not understand the verse above. Far more of us would demand that God not judge us because we do not deserve to be judged. Far fewer of us would say that we do not want to be judged by God because we deserve his wrath. But the psalmist who wrote this verse gets it, and if we will learn from him, we will see something of God’s grace.

The psalmist understands that no one—not you, not me, not my sweet old grandmother—has lived a righteous life before God. Every last one of us is guilty of sin in one way or another. Perhaps we have done things that go directly against the commands of God. Perhaps we have failed to do all that we should have done in order to honor God. Either way, we are all guilty of sin before an infinitely holy God. What this means for us is that we are guilty, and we deserve to face the wrath and the judgment of God. Not one of us can ever say to God that we do not deserve his fury.

But God has been so gracious to us. He has withheld his wrath. How do I know that? Well, I’m writing this and you are reading it. If God did not withhold his wrath for our sin, neither of us would have lived to an age where we could have read or written this piece. No, if we got what we deserved from God, all of us would have been cast into hell the moment we committed our very first sin. Yet, God has been gracious. He has withheld his judgment on us. And, he has gone even farther than that. God actually offers to you and to me and to every person in the world the opportunity to be forgiven of our sin before him. How? Jesus Christ, God in flesh, came to this earth and sacrificed his own life as the payment for our sin. IF you or anyone else will put your trust in Jesus completely for the forgiveness of the wrong you have done, God promises both to change your life and to forgive your sin.

Now, if you have not yet come to know Jesus, if you are not sure of whether or not God has forgiven your sin, I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment here, and I’ll happily talk with you about what needs to come next for you to be forgiven by God. But if you have already experienced the forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ, take a look again at the verse above. You and I deserved God’s wrath. You and I have received God’s grace. This is call for celebration! This is how the bad news of our condemnation becomes the good news of grace.

Jeremiah 44:16-18 – “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you. But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”
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In Friday’s post (see below), we saw from the word of God that the scripture is more sure than anything that we think we have seen or experienced. Even though it is very natural for us to trust our own experiences far more than anything we have read in a book, in the case of the Holy Bible, the book is what is for sure and our experiences are what are questionable.

The verses above from Jeremiah 44 are an excellent example of people using circumstantial evidence to make decisions about what to do. The rebellious people of Judah had fled to Egypt before the final arrival of Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. Taking Jeremiah with them, they settled in Egypt and continued in pagan practices including worshiping a false goddess they called the “queen of heaven.” God, through Jeremiah, warned the people to turn away from their idolatry and their worship of other gods. But, as we read above, the people refused to listen to the Lord.

Notice, if you will, the reasoning behind the people’s refusal to return to the Lord. When they were practicing their false religion, they were experiencing prosperity. When they stopped their practice of idolatry, they experienced very difficult circumstances. Thus, the people concluded that they ought to return to worshipping the “queen of heaven” instead of worshipping the Lord. They let what they had personally experienced lead them to draw false conclusions about what was true. Assuming that their former prosperity was the blessing of the “queen of heaven,” they failed to recognize the mercy and later chastisement of the Lord. That failure led the people to an incredibly destructive decision, the decision to continue in idolatry.

Now, let’s learn from this event that happened almost 2,600 years ago. As I said Friday, people often trust their own experiences today far more than the Bible. If they have a dream, have a strong feeling, or have a “peace” about something, people often assume these signs to be communicating to them the favor of God. And while I do not want to ignore the possibility of those things being the prompting of God, under no circumstances will those “promptings” ever lead us to a place that is opposed to what is clearly written in the Bible.

Here are some examples:

· A woman has a very hard marriage. Her husband is not loving, not caring, and not even responsible. She prays about her situation, asking God to help her. In her heart, she feels a confidence that God does not want her to be in her marriage. She knows God loves her. She knows God does not want her to be unhappy. So, she asks God if it is Ok in her situation for her to file for divorce. Immediately she feels at peace with the idea. She “knows” that she has heard from God. The problem: she is wrong. Regardless of what she feels, the word of God has not given her freedom to seek to divorce her husband. While there may be reasons that the scripture gives to allow for divorce, being in a frustrating and even unfulfilling relationship is not one of them. Regardless of the woman’s experience, a decision to divorce is a sin against God.

· A young man desperately wants to be loved. He is a Christian, but still struggles with his singleness. One weekend, he meets a beautiful, fun, and sweet young lady who is clearly interested in him. The girl is not a believer in Christ. As they get to know one another, they find that they are both romantically interested in each other. Eventually, the young man even begins to think that she might be “the one.” He prays about it, asking God to let him know if there is anything wrong with him marrying the girl. Nothing in his heart or life circumstances says to him that there is anything wrong with the relationship. So, with complete peace in his heart, he proposes marriage. The problem: the Bible expressly forbids Christians from marrying non-Christians (2 Corinthians 6:14). No matter how he feels in his heart, this young man sins against God by breaking God’s explicit command.

· I find myself in a conversation with a person, and a clear opportunity to share the gospel presents itself. For whatever reason, I decide that the timing is not right, and so I simply continue talking about meaningless things like sports. While my “feelings” lead me to avoid the difficult conversation, God has commanded me to share the gospel with all nations. I sin against God if I do not listen to his word above my feelings.

On and on we could go here showing example after example of how we often fail to obey God’s word while looking for some other means of understanding his will. I’m not trying to pretend that this is always easy. But I do want us to think clearly. God leads us primarily through his written word. Other factors may play a part in how we think, but they must never lead to a decision that is contrary to what is revealed in the scripture.

1 Peter 2:2-3 -Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
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One of the most predictable times around my house for quite a while now has been mornings with my son. Josiah is now almost 9 months old, and he’s quite a joy. While he is constantly learning new things and doing new things, he has one constant: his eating. Whether baby food or apple-juice or milk, this little guy wants to eat when it is time.

Peter is drawing on the hunger, the single-minded and all-encompassing hunger, of babies when he makes his call to us in 1 Peter 2:2-3. He tells us to be like little hungry babies longing for milk. But the milk to which he refers is the milk of spiritual nourishment. Peter wants us to long for solid doctrine, prayer, and the word of God. And he wants us to long for it as much as any screaming baby you have ever heard longs for food.

And notice, if you will, what it is that Peter uses to qualify his statement. He calls us to long for spiritual nourishment if something has happened. We are to long for God if indeed we have tasted that the Lord is good. The first step to making a person long for God is for them to see that experiencing the presence of God is good. If a person does not find God desirable, prayer, Bible study, spiritual disciplines, worship, and the like will not draw them at all.

Today, ask yourself if you have truly tasted that the Lord is good. Do you long for God at a level similar to how you long for the desserts at a Thanksgiving banquet? Do you long for God as much as a steak dinner? Do you hunger for the presence of God in your life? If you do, it is likely that you have already understood that it is good to be in God’s presence and to experience the joy of glorifying his name.

But what if you do not really care? What if you are not truly that concerned about the things of God? I think that, in such a situation, it is fair to assume that you have never truly tasted that the Lord is good. Perhaps you do not know him. Perhaps you have simply forgotten the joy of being in his presence and glorifying his name. In either instance, it is crucial for your soul that you again return to the Lord. It is crucial that you experience something of his glory. It is crucial that you taste and see that the Lord is good. And then let that taste drive you to long for the presence of God.

How do you do this? My first suggestion is to worship the Lord. Look at his word, learn about his character, and give him praise for who he is and what he has done. Take time to prepare your heart for worship on a Sunday morning through prayer and Bible study before you get to church. Then, when you arrive, truly offer God the praise due his name. See if that does not heighten your hunger for more of the presence and glory of God.

James 3:5-6 – So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
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In today’s reading, I have my own personal rebuke from the Lord, one to which I will do well to listen. Of course, this chapter opens with the reminder that not many of us should presume to be teachers, because teachers will be subject to a stricter judgment (James 3:1). Then, just in case my heart is not already recognizing my own weaknesses, the word of God calls to mind the way that we might sin with our mouths.

How easy it is to sin with idle words. How easy it is to join in a conversation that is just a touch too silly, too cynical, too cruel, too crude, too abrasive, too winy, too close to gossip, etc. It is so simple to think that we are never the ones guilty. It is so simple to think that, when we talk in evil ways about others, we are seeking the greater glory of the kingdom, but when others enter into the same sort of conversation, we think of them as gossips, trouble-makers, and harmful to the church.

If these thoughts convict you as they convict me, then it is time to join with me in repentance. We must not allow ourselves to be dragged down by our own tongues. We must not allow our own lives and ministries to suffer because we speak with pride. We must not dishonor God by joining in conversations that serve no godly purpose and which do not result in the bettering of the church. This is not to say that no conversation can ever contain an analysis of needs for change. However, if we are not working as instruments of that change, we need to be careful not to be stirrers of strife instead of makers of peace.

Jeremiah 23:22 – But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds.
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In Jeremiah 23, God is pronouncing woe on the evil shepherds of his pasture who are destroying his sheep. In Jeremiah’s time, there were men who were supposed to be spiritual leaders of the people. These men refused to tell the people the truth. Instead, for the sake of gain and popularity, these men told the people whatever they wanted to hear. When men did evil, these leaders would tell the people that God would not be upset. When the people did what was contrary to the word of God, the leaders would tell them that their actions were fine.

God points out in verse 22 that the men who are telling everyone that they can live in whatever way that they choose are not speaking from him. God tells us that anyone who has God’s counsel will declare God’s word to God’s people. Any leader who has God’s counsel will be honest enough with the people of God to tell them when they are failing to obey the word of the Lord. Anyone who has God’s counsel will work, using the word of God, to turn the people of God back from evil and toward God’s ways.

This passage was encouraging to me as a pastor this morning. It reminds me well of what my job is. My job is to present the word and the ways of God to the people of God in order to turn the people of God away from sin and toward righteousness. I may not be good at much else. But, if I am to be a faithful shepherd over this little flock (working under Christ, the chief shepherd), I am going to have to present the word of God to the people of God in order that they might walk in the ways of God.

Perhaps you are reading this but are not in a pastoral position. That’s fine. You can encourage your shepherd to be a good one too. Encourage him when he preaches the word of God faithfully. Encourage him, and let him know that you want nothing more than to hear the word of God as God intended it to be heard. Do not assume that he knows that you appreciate his teaching; tell him. And pray for him that God will empower him and encourage him to keep going. And, if for some reason you are listening to a man who refuses to bring the word of God to the people of God, you need to make it a goal to encourage him toward being the kind of shepherd that God says has his counsel, a shepherd who preaches his holy word.

One more thing: make no mistake, this passage is about the inspired word of God. Later in the passage God makes a comparison between those who actually speak his word and those who are merely proclaiming dreams or feelings that they supposedly have had. Do not look for your pastor to communicate to you things that are not written in the Bible. While I do believe that God will, by his Holy Spirit, direct his servants to certain points of truth in his word, I do not assume that this means that your pastor should regularly be receiving new revelations from God. God has given us his word. The Bible is complete and perfect. We dare not add to it. So, encourage your pastor to preach that word of God and not his own gut feelings about things.