Tag Christianity

Pictures of Holiness and Grace

Todd R 1 Comment

A picture can be, as they say, worth a thousand words.  To make an impression, sometimes God uses pictures or images, and one example is how He lets us know just how holy He is.

When calling Isaiah to be a prophet, God gave him an image in Isaiah 6:1 “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.”  In this vision of a throne room, why bother to mention that “the train of his robe filled the temple”?  Because in this image of God’s presence, there is no room for anything that isn’t holy.  If anyone tries to walk into the temple, they will tread on the Lord’s robe with their dirty feet, and any lord would be immensely offended at that.  James Boice commented on the verse, that: “This suggests that there is room for no one else at the highest pinnacle of the universe.  It is not just that Jehovah reigns, therefore, but also that no one else reigns beside Him or in opposition to Him”[1]

Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

A similar picture of holiness comes from Revelation 15:8, which says: “and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.”  Until God’s judgment was complete – both on the unrepentant and on the cross for His people – there would continue to be no room in the sanctuary for anyone but the Lord.

A third picture, which was not just a vision, but built in actual, physical form, is the “Holy of Holies.”  During most of the Old Testament period, priests implemented an elaborate sacrificial system to illustrate God’s requirements for meeting with sinners: an innocent creature had to die.  These animals symbolized the later sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  But the “Holy of Holies” was the ultimate statement of how serious approaching God is.

This innermost room of the temple was only entered once per year (on the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur), and only by the high priest, who only can enter after hours of preparation.  Once there, the high priest would sprinkle the blood of a sacrificed bull on and in front of God’s “mercy seat”, the cover of the ark of the covenant and a sign of His presence.  Later Jewish tradition (not found in the Bible) indicates that others would stand outside the room holding a rope that was tied to the high priest, who also had bells tied around his waist.  If those outside heard the bells jingling, followed by silence, they would assume the high priest did not atone properly for the sins of the people, died in God’s presence, and needed to be dragged out by the rope.  God’s holy presence was to be taken seriously.

So Isaiah, presented with God’s holiness, cried out “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”  Isaiah’s “Woe” comes down to current times in the expression “Oy!”  Isaiah knew instinctually that being in God’s temple was a bad idea.  However, God provides redemption for His people, which He pictured for Isaiah like this: “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.  And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”[2]

Isaiah was not saved by a burning coal, but by what it represented: the future sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  In God’s steadfast love for His people, He offered Jesus once for all, and the only sacrifice necessary and sufficient for us to know God.  Therefore, there is no longer a barrier to His holy presence for God’s people, so the writer of Hebrews says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”[3]

Yes, God is holy and must be honored as holy, but when we feel insufficient or feel like yelling “oy!” when things go wrong, we can come “with confidence” to Jesus in His temple and ask Him to reassure us of His provision for our sin.  That we may know, like Isaiah, that “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Amen

[1] From “May 9.” James Montgomery Boice and Marion Clark. Come to the Waters: Daily Bible Devotions for Spiritual Refreshment.  (2017).
[2] Isaiah 6:6-7
[3] Hebrews 4:16

Three Blessings to Count Today

Todd R Leave a comment
Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash

Some say that grace stands for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense, but what are these riches?  David says at the end of Psalm 144 that:

“Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall!
            Blessed are the people whose God is the LORD!”

The desire of the Lord is to bless His people, in part in this world, and fully in the next.  The verse above follows verses 12-14, which list three specific blessings: family, prosperity, and safety:

“May our sons in their youth
            be like plants full grown,
our daughters like corner pillars
            cut for the structure of a palace;
may our granaries be full,
            providing all kinds of produce;
may our sheep bring forth thousands
            and ten thousands in our fields;
may our cattle be heavy with young,
            suffering no mishap or failure in bearing;
may there be no cry of distress in our streets!”

These things aren’t guaranteed to us in this world just because we know God, but we may ask Him for them, and know that when we do receive them, they come from Him.  He has paid for our riches and our blessings in full on the cross, so that in Paradise we will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), be eternally His family (Ephesians 1:5), and our pain and tears will be wiped away forever (Revelation 21:4).

Today, count these blessings, praise God for them, and pray that His people will hope in His provision forever!

Love Bigger Than Mountains

Todd R Leave a comment

Would you be impressed if I moved a mountain by faith?  The apostle Paul might not be.  1 Corinthians 13 begins with these 3 verses:

Photo by Massimiliano Morosinotto on Unsplash

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

In these verses Paul uses wild exaggeration to make a point about the importance of love above all else.  Can anyone move mountains with faith?  It’s never been literally done, but even if someone did, and the reason for doing it was wrong, it would mean nothing.  Has anyone literally given away everything they have?

Also note the repetition of the word “all,” which appears 4 times.  Nobody but God has all understanding, knowledge, and faith, and in Jesus He gave up all He had for us.  Paul is saying that even if we were Godlike in these things, which we aren’t, without love even it wouldn’t matter.

No matter how “impressive” our actions are, if done for the wrong reason, they are useless.

Even if we move mountains, love is what really matters.

The Perfect Life

Todd R Leave a comment

Are you living your best life?  In American culture, people say they’re “living their best life” when they’re doing great, doing the things they enjoy, and there’s nothing else they’d rather do.  Sometimes we may do what we’re supposed to do and enjoy it, but I doubt anyone is doing this constantly without exception.  I also doubt it’s as completely fulfilling as we expect it to be or tell others it is.  Also, the “best life” we see others living on social media isn’t a full reflection of how their lives are going.

On the other hand, consider the only person who ever lived a life fully acceptable to God: Jesus.  His “best life” began in a dirty manger and ended on a dirty, bloody cross.  In between, He lived a life fully devoted to doing the work of the Father.  If Jesus’ life was perfect according to God, what does our “best life” really look like?

It doesn’t mean a life lived without happiness and joy, after all joy is a fruit of the Spirit, something that comes from following God.  I don’t get the impression that Jesus was never having a good time.  His first miracle was turning water into wine, and He was accused of being a “glutton and a drunkard.”[1]  He certainly wasn’t a glutton or drunkard, but someone who always acts like a stick-in-the-mud would not have faced these accusations.  Jesus enjoyed being among friends, even if they were “tax collectors and sinners,” and certainly lived a joyful life.  He was often enjoying Himself, although without excess or sin.

Photo by Austin Schmid on Unsplash

The same as with Jesus, our “best life” means living as God intended us to live, and what He wants most from us is to love Him and to love our neighbor.  We may want to live for ourselves and only care about what we can get out of this world.  As the saying goes, “he who dies with the most toys wins,” right?  But living this way has a negative impact on others and we can’t keep what we gain anyway.  I’ve also heard that “you never see a U-Haul being pulled behind a hearse.”  In contrast, living for others is what Christ commands, following the Spirit’s guidance can bring us joy, and the positive impact we have on others has an eternal value greater than we can measure.

However, we know that many in Jesus’ day did not approve of the way He lived (even though it was perfect), and many of those people were the religious and political leaders.  The same will be true for His followers, as He said in Matthew 10:24, “a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.”  In other words, if He suffered for doing good, why would we be an exception?  Truly living our “best life” according to God means that we will face resistance.  Christian love isn’t always a virtue this world admires or wants to see.

As we know, this opposition led to Jesus being turned over to the authorities and sentenced to death upon a cross.  Only His life didn’t end on the cross.  He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, where He prepares a place for us.  A place where we can live our “best life” perfectly and without opposition or persecution.  A place where we can be who God really intended us to be.  There should be nothing we’d rather do.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” – Romans 8:18

[1] Matthew 11:19

The Gospel is About a Who, not a How

Todd R 1 Comment

In chapter 9 of John’s gospel he records a story of Jesus healing a man who was born blind.  In John’s story, Jesus made some mud out of saliva and dirt, then put the mud on the man’s eyes.  Then Jesus tells the man to go wash off the mud in a pool.  When the man does this, his blindness is gone!

Because this man was born blind and had begged in the temple area for years, the miracle was hard to deny as a claim that Jesus was the Messiah, but many of the people put their focus on the wrong question: the how of the miracle.  Four times in the chapter someone asks how the man’s eyes were healed, as if the method of the healing was the important part.  Some of “The neighbors and those who had seen him before” asked “how were your eyes opened?” [1]  Then some Pharisees asked the man how he was healed.  In both cases, the man formerly blind explained what Jesus had done.

Then, because Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath and because practicing medicine on the Sabbath was against traditional Jewish regulations, the Pharisees asked, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”[2]  The Pharisees kept looking for an explanation.  A scientific or natural explanation.  Perhaps this wasn’t the same man who was born blind.  So they found his parents, “and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?’”[3]

The better question is who healed the man born blind, but the Pharisees didn’t want to deal with that question.  They had already made up their minds that Jesus wasn’t from God.  So, they focused on the how, on the method.  People still do this today, as Warren Wiersbe wrote: “We want to understand the mechanics of a miracle instead of simply trusting the Savior, who alone can perform the miracle.”[4]

Modern people want scientific explanations because they think nothing exists outside of scientific understanding and when something doesn’t fit that worldview it is denied or explained away.  We want to fit miracles within our pre-existing understanding of the world.  And when we can’t, we resist any way we can.  In the case of the Pharisees and Jesus, “they cast him out.”[5]  Anything to avoid the real question: who is this person who can do things that don’t fit into our narrow view of the universe?  Comparing John’s gospel to modern events, we see this is nothing new.

However, if Jesus is who He said He was – God the Son – no miracle should be unbelievable because God has absolute control over His own creation.  If Jesus is God, He exists outside of our universe and so obviously can’t be explained by using scientific laws that describe this universe.  But we continue to resist.  When people want to avoid dealing with their God, they still stick to the “how” question to avoid the more important question of “who.”

If you’re struggling to understand the miraculous stories of the Bible, make sure you’re asking the right (“who”) questions.  If you’re talking to an unbeliever having the same struggles, make sure they’re asking the right questions, because: If Jesus is who God is, every how is possible, including the greatest miracle: the salvation of anyone who would believe in Him.  And, Jesus can heal anyone who is blind to this reality.

[1] John 9:8-10
[2] John 9:16
[3] John 9:19
[4] Wiersbe, Warren.  Be Alive (John 1-12) (1986).  P. 143
[5] John 9:34