Tag Jesus

A Just Reward

Todd R Leave a comment

Over time, I’ve known Christians who at times, while sure of their faith and salvation, wonder what’s the point of serving God in this world?  Salvation comes through faith, not works, right?  What else is there to gain by Christian service, they ask?  Therefore, it becomes harder to serve.

Others might be diligently serving God, yet don’t see any results from their work.  In their eyes, it may not look like the ones they serve are benefitting.  It may not look like anyone is noticing their service and cares about it.  Maybe their motivation is getting harder to come by.

In situations like these, it helps to be reminded of the justice of God… Justice?  What does that have to do with it?  Let me explain.  Too often we think of God’s justice only in the sense that He cannot help but punish every evil act.  However, the epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that there is another side to God’s justice:

“For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.” – Hebrews 6:10

This verse tells us that it would be an injustice for God to not reward us for the good that we do.  Through the sacrifice of Christ, God no longer judges us for our sins, but nothing has happened to separate us from the other side of God’s justice!  While not punishing evil would be unjust, so would not rewarding good.

The verse also tells us that God doesn’t “overlook” anything that we do in love, “in serving the saints.”  While we may not see the fruit God is growing through us, or feel we are contributing, or receive recognition for our actions, God knows about it and is not unjust.  While He removes our sin from us “as far as the east is from the west,” (Psalm 103:12) He remembers every act of love we do, as small as sharing a cup of water with a thirsty child (Matthew 10:42).

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

The Bible isn’t clear about how each person will be rewarded differently in heaven, but it is clear that for everyone heaven will be amazing and wonderful beyond anything we could imagine, and also clear that not everyone will get the same level of reward.  See, for example, the parable of the talents in Matthew 25.

So, what’s the point of serving God in this world if it doesn’t affect our salvation, and if we aren’t seeing any current results?  Why bother?  The point is first, that it’s the right thing to do, but second, that God is just and will reward us in eternity.

As Jesus said in Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Our service on this earth for God is like an investment in the treasures of heaven, and these investments made in love are safer than any investments you can make in this world because the reward is based on God’s character, and God is just.

“For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.”

God Loves His Unfaithful People

Todd R Leave a comment

The story of the prophet Hosea can be a controversial subject.  In only the second verse of the book, we learn that: “When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, ‘Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom’” (Hosea 1:2a).

A common interpretation of the “wife of whoredom” is “prostitute,” but it doesn’t necessarily mean that.  However, it certainly means a wife who is not faithful to her husband.  An adulteress, as Hosea’s wife Gomer is described in Hosea 3:1.  Gomer has 3 children in the story, and the last 2 may have been illegitimate.

Is it scandalous, is it even believable, that God would command His own prophet Hosea to marry this way?  The God who demands that we be holy.  Could He ask one of His spokespeople to “become one flesh” with a woman like this?  What kind of lesson can we take from this?

It only really makes sense when you realize why God did it.  The full verse of Hosea 1:2 says, “When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, ‘Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.’”

Photo by Worshae on Unsplash

Because of the word “for,” there’s a connection between the unfaithful wife and the people of the land: God’s people Israel.  It’s as if God commanded this marriage because Israel was unfaithful.  God had something to say about that.  While Hosea’s marriage was real, it was also a symbol meant to give a message: that, like Hosea marrying Gomer, God is willing to love unfaithful people.  After all, there is no other kind of person.  We all fit the description, yet He is willing to love us so much that the church is called the bride of Christ, like Gomer was the bride of Hosea.

While some think God’s command to Hosea is too scandalous to have really happened, it is no more scandalous than God choosing sinners to be His bride in Christ, which He did.  From the beginning of time God knew that His people would be unfaithful to Him, yet He designed and implemented a plan to bring those same people back into a right, intimate relationship with Him.  This plan meant taking on human flesh, being abused, and dying horribly for His people, but then being raised from the dead and taken back up into heaven.  This was the cost of restoring sinners to fellowship with their Maker who loves them.  And He thought it was worth it.

So, what is the lesson of God’s command to Hosea?  That there is no limit to who or how God can love.  Nobody deserves God’s love because all are unfaithful, but in spite of that, God loves His unfaithful people.  Why?  Because in His love He chooses to.

Praise God that He does!

Amen.

“The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” – Revelation 22:17

O Ye of Little Faith

Todd R Leave a comment

Does it sometimes feel like our faith is useless?  Like it’s not big enough to be effective?  To enable us to trust God?  Also, do we often feel like we should be perfect, but we’re not?  Like sin continues to conquer some areas of our lives, regardless of our best efforts?  In Mark 4, Jesus tells two parables that can reassure us that we shouldn’t lose heart when we feel this way.

The first parable is about how the kingdom of God grows from small, scattered seeds to a full and bountiful harvest.  This short parable has a lot to say, and makes (among others) these two points, just in verse 28: “The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”  Jesus says that from the seed, “the earth produces by itself.”  The phrase “by itself” in the original Greek is automatos, where we get the English word automatic.  Like we don’t know how literal seeds grow, we also don’t know how the seed of the kingdom of God grows, but Jesus tells us that it grows automatically, meaning not by our own effort.  In the life of a believer, faith and obedience to the kingdom of God will grow because God causes it to grow.  When we feel our faith has failed, God can and will use that failure to grow our faith more than we could imagine.

The second point is made by the phrase “first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”  In Jesus’ day, many Jews expected the Messiah to come and immediately implement His kingdom, overthrowing Rome and restoring Israel to its glory days under King David, but better.  However, the phrase “first the blade…” points out that the kingdom of God comes slowly and in stages.  It first comes to individual believers, then spreads to others, then “when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come”(verse 29).

Jesus was referring to the kingdom as a whole, but I believe it also refers to the life and growth of each believer’s faith.  First, our faith is only enough to restore our relationship to God and He grants us salvation by His mercy and grace.  Over time, our faith grows into a “blade,” then an “ear” in the different areas of our lives.  In some ways we may be faithful, but in others we may continue to struggle, even for very long periods of time.  But someday, when “the harvest has come,” He will bring us home and perfect our faith forever in every area of our lives.  When the time comes, the kingdom will come suddenly and completely, but until then it grows slowly, both in aggregate and in each individual.

The second parable is the parable of the mustard seed, one of the smallest seeds.  “When sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants.”  Again, Jesus is speaking most directly about the entire kingdom of God, but the truth is also lived out in the life of each of us.  Sometimes our faith seems as small as a mustard seed, but that faith is destined to be perfect and complete.  As pointed out in the first parable, it’s not our own effort that causes our faith to grow, but the power of God that causes it to grow “automatically.”  Everyone’s faith seems small at first and also may seem small at different times and in different ways, but like the mustard seed, it’s not the size of our faith in the beginning or now that really matters, it’s what that seed is destined to grow up to be that’s important.  We might not even notice our faith at some times because it seems so small, but the size of our faith is not what matters, it’s the power of the One we have faith in.

So, does your faith seem useless and small today?  Does it seem like you can’t trust God enough to follow Him in every area of your life, or to overcome some habitual sin (or sins)?  Remember that faith as small as the smallest seed, the mustard seed, will grow so that it overcomes all of our failures.  God will cause it to grow, in ways that seem “automatic” to us.  If He has given us any faith at all, He will see the growth of that faith through to the end.  As Paul wrote in Phillipians 1:6, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”

Amen.

A Constant Need for Righteousness

Todd R Leave a comment

Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount begins with a series of Beatitudes, a series of statements that begin with “Blessed are…”  These may be seen as a random collection of sayings, but I think they are in an intentional sequence.  Not a sequence where we need to master the first Beatitude before learning the second, but like gears in a machine that all need to work together for the machine to function, and weakness in one place affects the entire machine.  Jesus was explaining specific parts of becoming more like Him.

The first three Beatitudes tell us that we are blessed if we are “poor in spirit” because we know to depend on God to know right and wrong, that we are blessed for being “those who mourn” because we feel the pain caused by sin in the world (both our own sin, and sin collectively), and know God will comfort us, and that we are blessed for being “meek”[1] when we submit willingly to God’s direction, knowing it is better than following our own spirit and better than adding to the negative impact of sin on this world.

Then we get to the fourth Beatitude in Matthew 5:6 – “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”  How does this follow from the first three?  The idea of “hunger and thirst” provides the answer.

No matter how much we eat or drink, hunger and thirst return after time.  Therefore, no amount is ever enough, and true righteousness is like that.  After one, or even several, instances of meekness, or submission to Christ’s righteousness, we can’t stop and then go about our own way.  It isn’t enough to satisfy God’s righteousness standard.  We need to have an ongoing appetite for it that is never fully satisfied.  It needs to be part of our very nature to desire ongoing spiritual nourishment from following Christ.  If we “taste and see that the LORD is good”[2] we should want more!

We naturally know that if we do not eat, our bodies decay – but first we feel hunger and thirst – driving us to eat and drink.  But it is less obvious that if we do not come to God regularly for sustenance, our souls decay.  If we do not indulge our appetite for righteousness, we revert to thinking our spirit is strong, that sin has no negative consequences, and that God’s authority can be disregarded.  We will not find the kingdom of God, be comforted, or inherit the earth, as the first three Beatitudes promise.  However, every time we come to God we are reminded of the splendor of His kingdom, the comfort of His salvation, and the inheritance we have in Paradise, which surpasses anything this world has to offer.  Walking with the Spirit is like food and water to our soul, bringing us “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”[3]

The sons of Korah wrote at the beginning of Psalm 42:

“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
            so pants my soul for you, O God.”

Yearning like this for righteousness does not come naturally to any of us, but God promises if we follow our spiritual appetite, we learn that:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

[1] Matthew 5:3-5
[2] Psalm 34:8
[3] From Galatians 5:22-23

Don’t Let the Stink Stop You – Blessed are the Meek #5

Todd R Leave a comment

Here’s a review of the series on meekness so far.  The first two posts contrasted two characters from the movie The Matrix, Agent Smith and Neo, to Jesus.  Agent Smith was the “Malevolent Incarnation,” who used and enforced rules to keep people in their place.  Smith can’t stand the stink of humanity and just wants to be free of it.  Neo, the hero of the Matrix series, is the “Ambivalent Incarnation” who wants to free mankind from rules, but otherwise wants to let them be as they are.  However, under Neo’s no-rules philosophy of “everyone should do what they want,” there is no foundation from which to object to anything someone else does, including brutal oppression.  Any objection is also an objection to the same philosophy Neo claims to hold, and “no city or house divided against itself will stand.”[1]

Jesus, contrasted to these, is the “Benevolent Incarnation.”  Jesus is more aware of the problems that make Agent Smith repulsed by us and that make him want to control us, but He also does not leave us alone with no way to overcome our problems.  He rules us for our good, and because we cannot meet His perfect standard, He lived it in our place, then died to cover the cost of our failure.  He wants to fix our stink, not because He hates us as Agent Smith does, but because He loves us in spite of our stink.  He refuses to allow us to stink forever, as Neo would.  He is benevolent, not malevolent or ambivalent.

Meekness is the third step in the Beatitudes, an intentionally sequential series of statements that describe what’s involved in following God, like gears in a machine: “First, being poor in spirit means that we have emptied ourselves of all illusions that our plans are better than God’s.  Second, mourning the state of ourselves and our world means we are emotionally engaged.  That we care.  In the third Beatitude, being meek is where we begin to engage our will, submitting it to God as our benevolent Lord.”

He wants us to also be benevolent incarnations, however we often don’t want to engage the third gear of meekness, where “the rubber meets the road” so to speak.  But if we don’t embrace it “the first two Beatitudes alone can leave us in a place where we’re a mess and the world is a terrible place and there’s nothing we can do about any of it.  It can be a place of depression and despair.”

Martha almost found herself stuck in this place when Jesus returned to Bethany after the death of Lazarus, her brother.  Jesus found the family mourning, then: “Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”  (John 11:39).  Jesus intended to raise Lazarus from the dead, but for Martha the stink was all she could think of.  Patently, Jesus encouraged her, the stone covering the entrance to the tomb was moved, and Lazarus walked out of the grave alive!

Don’t Let the Stink Stop You
Does the stench of sin keep us from being meek?  Do we, like Agent Smith, just want people to behave so we can go about our way?  Or does our obedience come first?  Jesus wants us to live as He lived, but we only can if we accept His righteousness and become invested in it at all levels of our being.  If we are truly poor in spirit and mourn our sin, what’s stopping us?

God won’t tell us to move the stone from Lazarus’ grave – that was Martha’s task. It also was not Jesus’ task.  We don’t do what Jesus would do, but what He would have us do.  He could have moved the stone Himself, but He wanted Martha to participate in His work, but to do that she had to be willing to be uncomfortable.

We all are often in Martha’s place, struggling with what Jesus wants us to do.  He asks us to do things that don’t make sense to us, that don’t make sense to the world, and sometimes it stinks (sometimes literally).  Jesus wants to bring His people to life, as He did with Lazarus, but there may be a stone He wants you to move, and it will only move if you have faith in Him stronger than the stink involved.

Meekness is the Cross
Meekness means carrying the cross the Father assigns to us.  For Jesus it was taking on all the sin of the world, not just by His death on a literal cross, but also by proactively taking on the consequences of it for the benefit of others.  We stink but He did not leave us alone.  For us, carrying the cross involves taking on some of the stink of the world, stepping into the suffering of others and offering the life that only Jesus can give.  What an amazing contrast this is to what’s so common today: pointing out sin everywhere and demanding those “other sinners” pay the price, or demanding that government solve the problem somehow, or withdrawing from problems that seem too big to do anything about.

Is there a stinky situation you’re aware of, but avoiding?  Being meek toward Jesus means we’re on board with His plan of salvation and willing to do our part, whatever that is.  Sometimes all that’s needed to bring someone life is moving a stone and enduring the odor.  While the smell was enough for Martha to hesitate, to Jesus it was part of the cost of living and dying for us.  He was willing to bear it, and if we meekly move the stone, Jesus will do the rest.

[1] Matthew 12:25