The Gospel For Good People

Let me be frank at the outset. These thoughts are much better expressed in the sermon with the same title by Jim Shaddix http://9283b62adf4cad736e46-46e4f035c5679c79ce7534d08f6f25e9.r5.cf2.rackcdn.com/audio/2284.mp3

With that being said, I still feel compelled to write this down at least for my own blessing, if not for others as well. The set up is to consider David's life prior to 2 Sam 11. By any definition he was a "good" person. We would be hard pressed to find a very big chink in his armor. And yet somehow his affair with Bathsheba occurs as does the cover up and the resulting murder of Uriah.

We could easily spend a lot of useful time considering the how and the why of David's sin, because my guess is the drivers are not much different for us today. However, I'm moved by two verses that book end the account of David being confronted in his sin. The first is at the end of 2 Sam 11:27 "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." This is a piercing reminder that no matter who we are, no matter how good we are, our sin displeases God. I know we don't like to hear this or think about it, but even as Christians our sin displeases God.

But thankfully, that is only one bookend of David's account. The other end is in 2 Sam 12:13 "And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die." Much could be said about the consequences of our sin and rightly so. But what has captivated me is the gospel truth contained in the first 13 verses of 2 Sam 12. Consider the following:

• David did all he could to cover up his sin, yet God confronts him. No sin is hidden.
• David knew God was holy and requires justice 
• David did not seek any type of restoration, yet God pursued him and brought him to the point of repentance.
• David did not outsin the grace that God had lavished on him.
• Even "good" people need the gospel

I'm not sure where anybody reading this may be at. But I am continually amazed by the extent of the gospel and how much more I need to own it today than I did when I first believed. On top of that, there is the reality that God's love in Christ so wide and high and long and deep that it will cover even our deep, dark sins. I think we will be astounded, as David probably was, when we finally are confronted with the reality of our sin and that all of that offense has been taken from us and given to Jesus.  Amazing grace indeed.

Soli Deo Gloria

We Return, But Not Upward

They do not cry to me from the heart,
   but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
   they rebel against me.
Although I trained and strengthened their arms,
   yet they devise evil against me.
They return, but not upward;
   they are like a treacherous bow;
their princes shall fall by the sword
   because of the insolence of their tongue.
This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. - Hos 7:14-16

As I reflectively read Hos 7 the other day, I was struck by how similar my heart is to the people Hosea was writing to over 2 millennia ago. How often do I "cry on my bed" but not from a love for God or compelled by the love of Christ, but simply because something's not working the way I want it to? How often do I "return, but not upward", not so much repenting from my sin but rather being sad at getting caught in my sin?

Now, I realize this is a warning / rebuke delivered back in the OT days to a specific people in a particular circumstance. Yet, I can't help but see the universality of fallen men and women in the heart attitude this rebuke calls out. When God afflicts us, how do we respond? Maybe more to the heart of the matter, do we love God or his stuff? I'm guessing the good old Sunday School type answer is that certainly we love God more, but do our prayers and our passions actually display this?

The good news, of course, is that God is the God of 2nd, 3rd, and 99th chances. And, if we take seriously his promises, perhaps our first task could be to ask him to reveal to us how often we "do not cry to him from the heart" and ask him to move us toward the point where our the joys and the aches of our hearts are more in alignment with his.

To God Alone Be The Glory.

Amazing Grace?

We probably all know the first line of this hymn:

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me"

I want to say that I agree with John Newton's assessment. Grace is amazing and its very, very sweet.

And yet I think that familar words and hymns and creeds can become rote and routine. I think we can read or sing or say the words but lose their meaning and power. So, today I'm seriously asking myself: "Is God's grace really amazing?" and "If it is amazing, why?"

Amazing? Really?

One could probably open the Bible to any page and see statements of God's grace, mercy and steadfast love. Lam 2:22-24 come to mind (see blog post for 1/4). However seeing the reality of these things and assigning an adjective like amazing to them are two different things. And people being who they are can easily dismiss something that may in fact be amazing (see Jn 12:27-29)

But, if you slowly and carefully read passages like Isa 1 or Rom 1:18-3:20, you begin to get the sense that there are dimensions to this grace and mercy that we have received that go beyond the simple fact that I'm a helpless sinner (which in fact we all are). So, I thought I'd list some of the realities that make God's grace amazing.

• We are totally helpless in the spiritual sense
• We are broken / fractured at such a foundational level that we cannot truly discern God's work
• We see ourselves as the center of the universe
• We consciously and subconsciously wish God would both leave us alone and provide everything we need (spiritually bi-polar?)
• Others exist to make us happy and we would gladly kill them (physically or at least verbally / emotionally) when they fail in this task
• Our view of heaven is where we finally achieve all that has been missing in our lives

The fact that Jesus steps into this quagmire should simply astound us. The more I know about God (a small thimble compared to all the oceans' water) and the more I know about the human heart (maybe two thimbles), the more I identify with God's judgement in Noah's day and in Lot's day (Gen 6-8; 19). These events both demonstrate the justice (good and right) of God. But, even here, where God is giving human rebels, spiritual traitors the punishment they deserve, we witness grace. Why save Noah? Why save Lot? Why save you? Why save me?

More than amazing?

For me, this is where the love and grace and mercy of God become incredibly amazing. When you consider the fact that He paid our unpayable debt and he gave to us the right standing we did not and could not obtain on our own and you add to that the reality that he did this while we were his enemies, rebels and traitors, then you have astoundingly, amazing grace.

Years ago, I heard a speaker say that the stunning thing about John 3:16 is not so much that God loved the whole world in a numeric sense (i.e. isn't it amazing that God can love so many people). Instead, John 3:16 is stunning because the world, especially in John's writing, is such a bad place (i.e. isn't it amazing God can love anyone as sinful as me, much less millions of us). God's love is expansive, covering the globe, covering the centuries, covering all cultures and languages and genders. But this love and mercy and grace become a multifaceted diamond when you really consider how unlovely and unworthy and treacherous and self absorbed we are.

Consider anything you enjoy or appreciate. Something you "love" in the broad, 21st century way of speaking. Why do you love or appreciate that thing? In the end, isn't there something that you find lovely or enjoyable about it? Whether its a spouse, a close friend, or pizza, the things we love are the things that appeal to us, that make us feel good, that are lovely to us.

Now consider the depth of Rom 5:8, "God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us". Brother, sister, friend, God loves the unlovely. God loves what would make him vomit, would make him turn away in disgust, would make him weep. We don't really know that kind of love, but we can see it in the cross.

In the end, the grace of Christ is incredibly amazing. It is amazing in what it accomplishes. It is amazing in what is secures. It is amazing in what it overcomes. It is amazing in what it endures.

And, it is amazing in that it is given at all.

To God Alone be the Glory.

Have mercy on me, O God.

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
O God of my salvation,
    and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
build up the walls of Jerusalem;
    then will you delight in right sacrifices,
  in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Psalm 51

To God Alone be the Glory

Worse Than Broken

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." - Eph 2:1-3

I ran across an excellent post on the Gospel Coalition blog yesterday. Its challenge to me coincides with my working through the book Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges.  In essence through both the book and the blog, God is strongly reminding me that sin is serious and dealing with it is a here and now expectation of all believers.

Here's an excerpt from the blog:

"For believers, the word [broken] doesn’t go deep enough to move us forward in sanctification. God describes our sin many ways—almost all of which are far worse than “broken.” We’re rebellious, idolatrous, lost, enslaved, disobedient, adulterous, and—in case the point wasn’t pressed far enough—dead. If we see our sin as mere brokenness, our repentance and abhorrence at sin won’t push us in the opposite direction hard enough. And our appreciation of the cross as the only cure will be replaced with self-effort and legalism."

Read the whole thing here.

To God Alone be the Glory

What's the Problem?

The following is an excerpt from the book What is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert:

The Bible tells us that it is not just Adam and Eve who are guilty of sin. We all are. Paul says in Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory God." And just a few paragraphs earlier he says, "None is righteous, no, not one" (3:10).

The gospel of Jesus Christ is full of stumbling stones, and this is one of the largest. To human hearts the stubbornly think of themselves as basically good and self-sufficient, this idea that human beings are fundamentally sinful and rebellious is not merely scandalous. It is revolting.

That's why it is so absolutely crucial that we understand both the nature and the depth of our sin. If we approach the gospel thinking that sin is something else or something less than what it really is, we will badly misunderstand the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Bible teaches that humanity's fundamental problem--the thing from which we need to be saved--is not meaninglessness or disintegration in our lives, or even a debilitating sense of guilt. Those are merely symptoms of a deeper and much more profound problem: our sin. What we must understand is that the predicament we're in is a predicament of our own making. We have disobeyed God's word. We have ignored his commands. We have sinned against him.

The Bible also teaches that sin is a breaking of our relationship with God, but that broken relationship consists in rejection of his kingly majesty. It's not just adultery (though it is that); it is rebellion. Not just betrayal, but also treason. If we reduce sin to a mere breaking of relationship, rather than understanding it as the traitorous rebellion of a beloved subject against his good and righteous King, we will never understand why the death of God's Son was required to address it.

Another misunderstanding about sin is Jesus died to save us from negative thoughts about ourselves. This is reprehensibly unbiblical. In fact, the Bible teaches that a big part of our problem is that we think too highly of ourselves, not too lowly. Stop and think about it for a minute. How did the Serpent tempt Adam and Eve? He told them they were thinking too negatively about themselves. He told them to they needed to think more positively, to extend their grasp, to reach toward their full potential, to be like God! In a word, he told them to think bigger. Now how'd that work out for them?

Individual sins don't shock us much. We know they are there, we see them in ourselves and others every day, and we've gotten pretty used to them. What is shocking to us is when God shows us that sin runs to the very depths of our hearts, the deep-running deposits of filth and corruption that we never knew existed in us and that we ourselves could never expunge. That's how the Bible talks about sin--it is in us and of us, not just on us.

Every part of our human existence is corrupted by sin and is under its power. Our understanding, our personality, our feelings, our emotions, and even our will are all enslaved to sin. So Paul says in Romans 8:7, "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed it cannot." What a shocking and frightening statement! So thorough is sin's rule over us--our minds, understanding and will--that we God's glory and goodness, and we inevitably turn away from it in disgust.

This is the Bible's sobering verdict on us. There is not one of us who is righteous, not one. And because of that, one day every mouth will be silenced every wagging tongue stopped, and the whole earth will be held accountable to God.

But, there is hope...