A Better Ref

I'm amazed by all of the commentary surround the NFL referee issue. Not that the comments and concerns are inappropriate nor worth discussing, but that it reveals a deep need in the human heart that the rules, whether in football or life, be followed and administer fairly. The collective "outrage", while maybe a little over the top, springs from and reveals that even the least theological among us still carry the image of God within us.

Wouldn't it be great if there were a better ref? One who never blew a call? One who made sure each player played within the boundaries of the game? Even better, wouldn't it be great if there was a ref who could, by his very presence, make each player want to play within the rules and execute each play to the best of their ability.

Of course life is different than football, and we can do "all the right things" and still face failure, temptation, illness and even death. To face these things, and so many other things, we need more than a ref. We need a friend. We need a father. We need a protector. We need an advocate. We need a deliverer. We need an adviser.

And when we "commit a penalty" and the ref "throws the flag" we need someone to stand in our place. Because, in life, its not just a 10 yard penalty. It will cost us the game. It will cost us the season. It will cost us our lives.

The good news is that the Better Ref has come. Jesus is that ref. He has lived. He has died. He is risen. And He is the ref over the whole world. And while we may not see his calls as being right and good, in reality they are. And He is so much more than just a ref. He offers us new life. He delivers us from both the affects of our penalties, but also from the power that causes us to want to commit them. He can change us from the inside so that we want to and are able to play the game within the rules that have been established from the beginning. And, best of all. He's already won the Super Bowl.

I just want to pray, if you've read this far, that you will allow Jesus to be for you everything He promises to be. He has made this promise, which can be yours if you entrust your life to Him.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. -- Mat 11:28

To God Alone be the Glory

Refocus

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. -- 2Co 12:10

In reading 2 Cor 12 this morning I was struck by two things. The first was Paul's undeniable deference to Christ and his mission. The second was that Paul's ultimate aim was not for right theology or right ecclesiology, but for right hearts. Verses 10 and 14 bring these two thoughts to the forefront.

In verse 10, Paul states that for the sake of Christ he will be content with hardships. It isn't some Spirit driven masochism that Paul is describing. It isn't some sort of spiritualized denial of reality. Instead, Paul is boldly claiming that weaknesses, hardships, calamities, persecutions and insults actually serve a bigger, better purpose. They serve the purpose of Jesus.

Is that purpose in our own lives? Perhaps. There is the ever present battle with pride. There is the continual learning that this world is not our home. There is the never ending fight against sin, in all is multifaceted effects on our hearts and minds and bodies.

But, perhaps there is also a bigger, broader purpose to the hardships, insults, weaknesses, persecutions and calamities that Jesus allows (dare I say ordains) into our lives. Perhaps these things come along to take our focus off of the god of ourselves and place our gaze back on the God who made us, who redeemed us, who called us, who is sustaining us, and who will one day deliver us unblemished before His glorious throne. Perhaps it is to use us as a signpost for others who are traveling this narrow road of faith. Remember Jn 9:3? Perhaps it is to give us a chance to say with Christ, not in despair or defeat, but with sorrowful joy, Father, not my will but yours be done.

Now, add to this Paul's thought in verse 14. He says to the Corinthian church, I came not for what is yours but for you. In that one statement is the essence of the Church. In the end, it is not about what I can contribute to the church or what you add to the body. It is about you and its about me; it is about the condition of our hearts. The church is a family and as the Spirit has knitted this family together, God's desire is for his children to be rightly related to Him and to each other.

Are there gifts? Absolutely. And they should be used for the glory of God. Is correct theology important? Without a doubt. Correct ecclesiology? Amen. But whatever ology you bring up, as important as they all are, they all serve the bigger, broader purpose of God calling a people to himself.

So, where does this leave us? For me, I am left in need of refocusing. Refocusing on the purpose of Bible study and prayer. Refocusing on the purpose of worship and sermons. Refocusing on the purpose of giving and of serving.

In the end, it means refocusing on Jesus and His blood-bought bride.

To God Alone be the Glory

Plausible Arguments

I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. Col 2:4

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. Col 2:8

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 2Ti 4:3-4

I have no idea why I would be surprised by someone claiming to be a biblical scholar publishing an article that at the same time states the Bible is the inspired word of God and that it is all culturally conditioned. Why would I be shocked when it is stated that the Bible has many different literary types and that our understanding must begin by understanding the literary style we are reading which is followed by mis-categorizing the literary genre of the one book the author chooses to discuss? Why am I bothered by an article that seems so nonsensical and politically, 2012 issue driven that it almost made me laugh, except for my tears?

Perhaps its because the article (read it here to do your own review) is in my local newspaper. Perhaps its because the article is written in a style and tone that actually supposes to support the Bible. Perhaps because as I read it I kept thinking of all of the Biblical writers and Jesus himself who warned about people who would want to change what had been written. Perhaps, most of all, it was because his arguments were so plausible.

My point here is not to refute anything the article presented. To me, that seems to take the discussion in the wrong direction. Is there merit in discussing methods of interpretation? Absolutely. But the Biblical writers almost always direct our gaze away from the counterfeit and back to the genuine. One of the main themes of the book of Colossians is the one preparing the church for the onslaught of false teachers. Paul's refreshing technique is to draw the Colossians (and us) back to Christ and the gospel. I think that is where every interpretive question should begin and ultimately must end.

My other point is that we all need to be wary of what we read and watch and listen to. It may easy to filter out the extreme positions (e.g. the Bible is fiction, so why worry about interpretation?) but there are so many shades of grey that may become for us a path toward wandering off into myths. I pray that we can read the newspaper in light of the Bible, not the Bible in light of the newspaper.

To God Alone be the Glory

Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!

Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift! - 2 Cor 9:15

A verse like this serves to remind us, especially me, that the mercy and grace that we have received from God in Jesus goes way beyond what we can grasp. Somehow we think we can come into God's presence in a spirit of praise and actually express to Him the depth of what we've been given. But, in the words of Job, these are but the outskirts of His ways (Job 26:14).

May the Holy Spirit revive in us a holy awe at the magnitude of our salvation in Christ. There is the depth of the sin Jesus' paid for. There is the entrenchedness of our selfishness and pride that He is graciously removing. There is the security Jesus has guaranteed to us both by his resurrection but also by the send of the Holy Spirit. There is this new community that Jesus is gathering to himself to the glory of God.

And, as magnificent as these things are, they are only the gifts and blessing we can perceive. How many times has the Holy Spirit redirected our lives to keep us in the love of Christ? How many ways has God answered our prayers and we have not been aware of it. How many holy coincidences has Jesus orchestrated so that we can sit here today a say, I am a follower of Christ?

You see, everything we have, the mundane to the magnificent, is a gracious gift of God. And because of this, the gospel and the cross should drive us to continually proclaim:

Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!

To God Alone be the Glory

Hit between the eyes.

Have you ever been hit between the eyes by God?

Do you know what I mean? You're just cruising along in life, reading or working or driving or talking when the thought hits you "I am off track" or "I've drifted way to far" or "My life and doctrine isn't what it was nor is it what it should be"? Visually, I think of this as walking in the woods, so intent on the trail that you're on that when you finally look up you realize you don't know where you are.

Such a moment came to me yesterday as I read a blog post by Paul David Tripp entitled Beware Your Delusions of Spiritual Grandeur. Based on previous posts by Tripp and the title, I thought of people to whom I should forward it to and others to whom I wouldn't forward, but who would really needed to read it.

Then I read it. And God hit me right between the eyes. Statements like the following brought me up short:

an attitude of arrival still shaped my ministry. 

when you think you've arrived, when you quit being convicted of and broken by your own weakness, failure, and sin, you will begin to make bad personal and ministry choices.

So I sit here today considering the ways my attitude of arrival has infected how I approach people and ministry. And, quite frankly, this attitude not only affects pastors and leaders, it affects us in the "rank and file" as well. Prayerfully consider this:

The reality and confession of personal spiritual weakness is not a grave danger to your ministry. God has chosen to build his church through the instrumentality of bent and broken tools. It is your delusions of strength that will get you in trouble and cause you to form a ministry that is less than Christ-centered and gospel-driven.  

Remember, the tender ministry of grace grows in the soil of constant awareness of your need for grace.

Read the full post here.

To God Alone be the Glory

All of Life

About 15 years ago I heard a sermon by Stuart Briscoe on the 6th commandment, which he entitled Valuing All of Life. His main thrust was on the tragedy and horror of abortion, but he had other, very relevant sub points as well. In general, those sub points could be summed up like this. All of life is precious, whether it is in the womb, in the crisis pregnancy center, in the food shelter, or on skid row.

This weekend in the area where I live, two people were killed as they were closing their shop for the day. I don't know them, but somebody does. There is now a wife without a husband and kids without a dad. There is a mom whose lost a son and siblings without their brother. There are possible grandchildren who will never know grandpa. And there is a possible wife and children that are never to be.

As I considered this, it reminded me of Briscoe's thesis: All of life is precious.

Perhaps what strikes me about this the most is the intentionality of it. Lives are lost in accidents and natural disasters with the same or similar consequences. Yet in those instances, the loss of life was beyond human control. But this weekend, lives were taken deliberately. Clearly, at that point, those lives were not precious and had little value to the one who took them.

I'm sharing all of this ask a very direct question: what value to we place on the lives God has created? Not just the lives that are precious to us, our spouses and kids and relatives and friends. What about the ordinary people we meet? What about the people we don't particularly like? What about the people we would rather not think about? What about the life in the womb, the crisis pregnancy center, the food shelter or on skid row?

One of the hard things about reading the gospels is that Jesus ministered to all of life. He had no racial barriers. He had no gender barriers. He had no religious barriers. He had no social barriers. He had no age barriers. How are we doing in imitating Him?

Personally, my grade is pretty poor.

The great thing about grace, is that if we are surrender our lives to Christ and trust Him alone for our salvation, we are forgiven. Falling short on His call to follow Him, as regrettable as it is, does not separate us from Him any longer. But, it doesn't absolve us either. The call is still there. The call to give a cold cup of water to the least of God's children is still in effect.

Daunted? I am. The need far exceeds the supply. Yet, the other great thing about the gospel is that I am not in this alone. And neither are you. First and foremost, we have the Holy Spirit to encourage and empower and exhort us. But also have each other. We are, after all, the body of Christ. Let us serve Him together.

And, by our service to Jesus, let us show that there is value in All of Life.

To God Alone be the Glory

O the deep, deep love of Jesus

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!
Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me, is the current of Thy love
Leading onward, leading homeward to Thy glorious rest above!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, spread His praise from shore to shore!
How He loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore!
How He watches o’er His loved ones, died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth, watcheth o’er them from the throne!

O the deep, deep love of Jesus, love of every love the best!
’Tis an ocean full of blessing, ’tis a haven giving rest!
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, ’tis a heaven of heavens to me;
And it lifts me up to glory, for it lifts me up to Thee!

To God Alone be the Glory