Monthly Archives: September 2010

Pastor Bell and I start a series through the Gospel of Luke soon, so I will share some thoughts in this blog, as I make my way through this Gospel account.

(Luke 1:1-4 ESV)-[1:1] Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, [2] just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, [3] it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, [4] that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Luke 1:1-4 – A few words regarding the inspiration of Scripture. To say the Bible is inspired by God means that it has God as its ultimate Author and that God caused everything He wanted in the Books to be written. It does not mean that the individual writers were mindless recording devices.

Read carefully what Luke says in verces 1-4 regarding how he came to know for certain the things about Jesus, even though he was not with Jesus to see them for himself. He says in verse 3 “it seemed good to me”. Note that he does not say “God spoke to me”,or “God led me to write”, “God told me what to put to paper” … .

The Book of Luke is a work of the Holy Spirit to us regarding the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. But He did not zap Luke with an understanding of events. He did not dictate what Luke should write. Luke does not say that he received visions, although some of the authors of Bible Books did. He refers to no dreams, although there are plenty of them in the Bible as well. Luke heard no voices that came to him from heaven. Other authors did. What Luke did have was a good work ethic and an inquisitive mind. And the mind that God had given him, he used to write a true account of the Son of God. And God saw to it that nothing was written that was not accurate, that was not supposed to be there, and that was the mere opinion of a mere man.

Luke compared the various accounts of the life of Christ and some of them would have been a certain amount of nonsense. But Luke’s account was not. He studied hard, worked well, and came up with the document we call the Gospel according to Luke. And behind all of Luke’s research and investigative journalism was God ensuring, by His divine providence, that what Luke wrote was precisely what He wanted.

Getting a message from God does not mean that we will hear voices or have dreams or write without the solid use of our minds. It means that God will use all these very ordinary things to produce a very extraordinary volume that will, until the Lord returns, be used by God to lead countless thousands to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

What a God.

Psalm 64

1Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;

preserve my life from dread of the enemy.

2Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,

from the throng of evildoers,

3who whet their tongues like swords,

who aim bitter words like arrows,

4shooting from ambush at the blameless,

shooting at him suddenly and without fear.

5They hold fast to their evil purpose;

they talk of laying snares secretly,

thinking, “Who can see them?”

6They search out injustice,

saying, “We have accomplished a diligent search.”

For the inward mind and heart of a man are deep!

7 But God shoots his arrow at them;

they are wounded suddenly.

8They are brought to ruin, with their own tongues turned against them;

all who see them will wag their heads.

9Then all mankind fears;

they tell what God has brought about

and ponder what he has done.

10Let the righteous one rejoice in the LORD

and take refuge in him!

Let all the upright in heart exult!

I do not have many real enemies. There are those who have plotted to hurt me and some have even tried to get me out of the ministry. But they are not my greatest threat. My enemy is the enemy of the soul, he who goes about as a roaring lion seeking to devour me; he who dresses up as an angel of light seeking to deceive me.

It is him who I must pray to God about (See verse 1)

And then there is the matter of being one’s own worst enemy. Christians walk into places where they will be tempted. They let themselves get over tired so that their defences are down. They keep things to themselves thereby denying themselves one of the best remedies against sin – the company of other believers, accountability partners.

Consider this in light of verse 7 – If believers are their own worst enemies then it is they who God shoots His arrow at. It is good to be so shot, for it keeps us from falling further and brings us to our senses. He does of course, shoot these arrows at the evil one as well.

The greatest and most powerful arrow is the Gospel itself. The devil will have us fall and then accuse us and say that we are useless servants of Christ. And Jesus, at the right hand of the Father, pleads the merits of His death and resurrection and we are forgiven and the evil one is sent away, once again, without us in his clutches. What a work the Gospel is! What a glory the cross!! What an eternal song we will all sing when our victory is consummated and our enemies are forever banished and we shall serve our Saviour without the sin and doubt and fear and enemies.

Romans 3:5-8 – [5] But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) [6] By no means! For then how could God judge the world? [7] But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? [8] And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

If God’s grace triumphs over our sin then wouldn’t it make the grace of God appear more glorious if we sinned with abandon? This is the question that the Apostle Paul supposes someone will ask. Or perhaps someone has asked it.

This is not the only time that Paul will suppose someone asking if the Gospel means that our sin is a good thing. In 6:1 he will ask if we can sin to make grace abound. The answer is that the grace of God actually changes people into people of righteousness. We have been saved from sin. How can live in it any longer?

In chapter 9, while speaking about God’s right to love Jacob and hate Esau,His right to show mercy or withhold it, he asks that if this is true, then how can God hold anyone guilty? The answer there is that God can do whatever He likes.

Here, in Romans 3, Paul simply says that the thought that God could do something unrighteous is preposterous. He presupposes the absolute righteousness of God and says that to ask the question is to demonstrate how deserving of judgement such a thought is. It is to charge God with sin and that is unthinkable. God is the judge of all the earth and Paul reasons here that if He were not absolute in His righteousness He would be unable to judge at all.

The argumentation is beautiful. Paul is not afraid to presuppose certain truths about God. And the one thing that he will not abide is the thought that we can sit in judgement upon God. God is God and we are not. Whatever questions we have regarding the Gospel cannot impinge upon His righteousness. We are not more righteous than He is and to charge Him with wrong is to maintain that we know better then He does.

That is indeed very helpful. We must, in our conversations with others about the Gospel never allow the righteousness, the goodness, the sovereignty of God to be questioned. Question it, some will. But we will not go there. We reply that such thinking puts us above God and that is not possible. We must never assume that we have all the answers. When a text makes God look bad we assume a few things: 1- we are not understanding the text properly, 2 – we may be imposing our values upon the Almighty, 3 – we need to investigate things more deeply. It is not wrong to assume that God is God. We start with this.

God is God and what the Bible tells us about Him is true. It is a great comfort to the believing heart.

Back to school. The newspapers are full of it. It’s the top news story on the radio stations. Police warn drivers about stopping for buses, speeding in school zones and there is debate about all day kindergarten. The first day back at school is news.

It’s a good time to remind ourselves, especially those of us who are parents , that God has given us the job of passing the truth of the Gospel on to the next generation. The Scriptures that tell us this are numerous.

One of the most amazing is Genesis 18

[17] The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, [18] seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? [19] For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him. (Genesis 18:17-19 ESV)

The stunning thing about this is that God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation and all the nations of the world through him would be blessed. The fulfilment of that great promise is ultimately accomplished through the work of Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ, promised to Abraham, will be fulfilled through believers faithfully passing it on to their children.

This incredible thought is reaffirmed in Psalm 78.

[78:1] Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;

incline your ears to the words of my mouth!

[2] I will open my mouth in a parable;

I will utter dark sayings from of old,

[3] things that we have heard and known,

that our fathers have told us.

[4] We will not hide them from their children,

but tell to the coming generation

the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,

and the wonders that he has done.

[5] He established a testimony in Jacob

and appointed a law in Israel,

which he commanded our fathers

to teach to their children,

[6] that the next generation might know them,

the children yet unborn,

and arise and tell them to their children,

[7] so that they should set their hope in God

and not forget the works of God,

but keep his commandments;

The fathers (note it well) have been commanded to pass on the truths of the great works of God to the succeeding generations.

There is never a back-to-school event in the Christian home or the Christian church. There is never a time that all believers should not be striving, with all their might, to learn the Scriptures, grow in grace, be stronger spiritually and know God more intimately. And we are not growing if we do not seek to pass on to the next generation the things that God is showing us in the Scriptures.

If you are a parent, your first field of evangelism and Christian indoctrination is your own children. If you are not a parent you need to be passing on to the next generation in your church, the things of God. In word and deed we need to be showing younger people that the Scriptures are real and that it is better to know it and live it out than not to. We need to say to the young -

“follow me as I follow Christ” (I Corinthians 11:1).

And hear this word form God to us as spoken through Paul to the Thessalonians

[11] For you know how, like a father with his children, [12] we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 ESV)

Pray this in. God is calling us to live and speak the faith to the generations coming after us.

Who has God called you to influence for Him? To whom can you demonstrate the teachings of the Word of God? There is someone. Pray to know who it is and pray to be able to go at it in a manner that pleases Him. Have a great school year.

Happy Labour Day!

Turn up your volume and reflect on Him who did all the work so that we may rest in Him.

Psalm 50

16But to the wicked God says:

“What right have you to recite my statutes

or take my covenant on your lips?

17 For you hate discipline,

and you cast my words behind you.

18If you see a thief, you are pleased with him,

and you keep company with adulterers.

19″You give your mouth free rein for evil,

and your tongue frames deceit.

20You sit and speak against your brother;

you slander your own mother’s son.

21These things you have done, and I have been silent;

you thought that I was one like yourself.

But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.

God says to the wicked that He has been silent while they sinned. And they took God’s silence as approval. How many Christians are like this? They do something they know to be wrong. They break a vow, return to their besetting sin, live at work in some conformity to evil – and to the best of their ability they cannot detect that God has disciplined them or shown disapproval at all. So they conclude that it must be because, 1) It’s OK for them to behave the way they do, 2) God is pleased with them despite their sin, 3) This is not sin after all and it is what God wants them to do. Despite the clear teachings of the Scriptures this is how people think when they get embroiled in sin. The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked and we do not know the depths of our own depravity.

If you are involved in some sin and are not seeing negative consequences in your life as a result of it do not conclude that God is pleased with you. And do not conclude that there will be no consequences. That only indicates your ignorance of Him and his ways and the distance there is between you and Him right now. God is not pleased with you or your sin. But if you are a believer then He does certainly love you more than you can know. He loves you enough to do whatever it takes to win you back.

What God required of those who were sinning in Psalm 50 was for them to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving. There you go. Sin will make you less than thankful. You will still go to church and serve and look holy and upright, but your heart will not be directed Godward and you will not be thankful. There will be a bitterness about you and a sense of entitlement that is worse than the sin that got you there. Thanklessness will grow into greater things but the worst of them will be forgetting God, even as you perform all your religious activities.

You have sinned and God has not hailed down locusts and other plagues upon you. Your response should not be thinking that this sin does not matter to God. It should be thanks. Because the wages of sin is death. The reason you are not dead is the mercy of God and the reason you will live forever with Him is because Jesus took the death you deserved and endured it for you.

God always deals with sin. He dealt with yours, if you are a believer, on the cross. If you can think about that and not be smitten with gratitude then you may not be a Christian at all. Repent – and be thankful that you can.

Psalm 49

1 Hear this, all peoples!

Give ear, all inhabitants of the world,

2 both low and high,

rich and poor together!

…

7Truly no man can ransom another,

or give to God the price of his life,

8for the ransom of their life is costly

and can never suffice,

9that he should live on forever

and never see the pit.

A Psalm about true and false wealth. This Psalm begins with a call to both the rich and the poor, the high and the low – together. There is a point being made right off the bat. When it comes to things of God there is no difference. The news – especially the Gospel – is for all. Man may make distinctions along the lines of wealth, intelligence, power, etc., but God does not.

There is one Gospel and it is the same for rich and poor. Those who know God need not fear their lot and they certainly need not envy the rich. This life is short and after all is said and done, the crucial factor is not how much money or power or brains one has. The only issue at death is whether one knew God through faith in Jesus Christ.

The Pslamist makes the point that no matter how much money a man has, he can never have enough to ransom the soul of another. What a beautiful portrayal of the work of Christ. The rich cannot buy your soul for you. But God Himself can. What it would take is God Himself becoming human and living in perfect obedience to all the law of God and then dying as a substitute for those who had sinned. This is the ransom price. No millionaire could ever do that. And this is the point of the whole Psalm.

What you most deeply need is what only God can provide. Do not put your faith in riches. They will deceive and disappoint. The rich and the poor go to the same end – death and the grave. But there is One who has defeated death and triumphed over the grave.

Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God has done what no one else could or even have dreamed up. He has paid the ransom price for His people and they therefore will be saved.

I came across this on You Tube in July. It’s worth sharing with you and worth listening to. Enjoy.