This Sermon Wouldn't Preach

Not these days, anyways. It's too… extremist. It's a sermon on wisdom. Here's the central passage from Job:

Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding. (Job 28:28)

Trying to figure out what it means to fear God? I'll let this supporting passage give you a subtle hint:

But when they had grazed, they became full,
they were filled, and their heart was lifted up;
therefore they forgot me.
So I am to them like a lion;
like a leopard I will lurk beside the way.
I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs;
I will tear open their breast,
and there I will devour them like a lion,
as a wild beast would rip them open. (Hosea 12:6-8).

Don't let your comfort help you forget God this Christmas (or ever!). Let it remind you of His goodness!

Assurance

This topic has been on my mind a significant amount lately. Yesterday I read through a website article that seeks to give those who have "invited Jesus into their lives" the assurance that they really are saved. Other articles on the website seem so much more solid that it really confuses me how they could drop the ball on a subject like this. I also watched a sermon from a church that, from my miniscule amount of knowledge, had seemed solid. The preacher did a 10 minute altar call at the end of his sermon, and then they baptized the new "converts" right there on the spot! Want to guess what the test was for regeneration? "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?" A "yes" gets you dunked and what fool would slip and say "no" at that point? I was dumbfounded that this church could call itself Baptist.

In answering someone's question of whether or not they should have assurance of their salvation, I don't think it is wise to come back with trite answers like "well if you weren't saved you wouldn't be worrying about it, so yes!" In fact, I don't know that it is wise to say yes ever, because that isn't our job. Only the Holy Spirit can grant assurance through the promises found in Scripture. The website was always completely affirming and sought to dispel all doubts about whether a person is saved or not without applying any Biblical tests. I came across one such test today in my reading through John: "By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:8). How do we prove to be a disciple of Christ? By bearing much fruit.

Instead of telling someone, "Look at all these promises. If you asked Jesus to save you, then of course you are saved," we need to be saying, "Here's how you become a Christian, and here are the things the Bible says should be true of you once you have become a Christian. Examine yourself. I can't do it for you!" More than likely, the loss of assurance stems from the fact that they either lack a desire for God or they are entertaining some sin in their life. Let's encourage people to bear fruits in keeping with repentance! We cannot just assume people are in the faith because they call Jesus "Lord." We already know what Jesus' response to many of those people will be (Matt. 7:21-23).

Revelation 2:1-17

The next section of reading I had in Revelation was of the first 3 letters to the seven churches. These are the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamum. I picked up on a few themes that resonated with me and they are as follows:

The Lord loves pure doctrine. He praises Ephesus for theirs and rebukes Pergamum for their lack. This is because right doctrine leads to right conduct (orthodoxy begets orthopraxy). The Ephesians spotted false teaching and evil practices a mile away. They hated the deeds of the Nicolatians, followers of Nicolas who essentially taught that Christians have a license to sin. Christ hates their deeds too. The church in Pergamum, however, struggled with false teachings and even had some who followed the teaching of the Nicolatians.

The Lord does not love mechanical orthodoxy. This was the fault of the church in Ephesus. Despite their endurance, their intolerance for moral misconduct, and their watchful eye for erring teaching, the Ephesians had abandoned their love of Christ. This was such a serious error that the Lord threatened to remove the church! I often have to check myself and see if my devotion to discernment has exiled my love of Jesus. It is quite an easy thing to do for the church who is determined about being truly committed to the Bible.

Endurance is an essential part of the Christian life. At the end of each letter so far, Jesus expresses some wonderful truth about the fate of "the one who conquers" (vv. 7, 11, 17). They will "eat of the tree of life" (v. 7), they "will not be hurt by the second death" (v. 11), and they will get some "hidden manna" and a stone with a secret name on it that only they know. I think the first two things are pretty straightforward. Eating of the tree of life is representative of everlasting life, and escaping the second death is escaping God's wrath toward evil. I can't figure out what the hidden manna refers to, but I believe that the image of the white stone is reflective of a heightened level of intimacy with Christ. That sounds good to me! In addition, each church is praised for it's endurance and encouraged to continue. So endure! Whatever trial you might be facing, whether it be temptation or ridicule or the death of a close one, endure. It's most certainly worth it, and Christ smiles on you for it! He understands your hardship and is with you in it. Let that strengthen you.

The proper response to sin is repentance. In both cases when Jesus has something against the church (Ephesus and Pergamum), He commands them to repent. It's that simple, but don't get me wrong, simple does not mean easy. Realize where you've gone wrong. Apologize for it. Hate it. Move on. This is not some complicated process of needing to figure out what sort of repressed feelings are at work and how we need to get in touch with our inner self by meditating on the… NO! You're struggling with a sin? Repent. Love what God loves and hate what God hates. Have nothing to do with that sin anymore. Don't give it any pathways into your life. Don't put yourself in a position to be tempted by it. I can't count the number of times when I asked myself why I struggled so much with a particular sin. Then the question came up of what I was doing to actively combat it and… I had no answer. As John Piper says, "Make war!!"

Morning Cloud

Sometimes I roll out of bed to go to my morning classes, look up at the sky as I walk out the door toward my bike, and see that it is completely overcast. An hour later I walk out of the classroom and it is completely sunny out, with hardly a trace of cloud anywhere! Sometimes it's frustrating because I can't figure out what the day is going to give me. Once I start mentally preparing for overcast and possibly rain, but then it ends up being wonderfully sunny and warm out; this forces me to change my mindset toward the day. The weather is fickle, you could say. The morning cloud does not give a true picture of what the day will really be like. This is exactly the charge that the LORD brings against Ephraim and Judah in Hosea 6. They are fickle, and their sacrifices do not reflect their heart:

"Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away" (4b).

God desires a love that is settled on Him, not one that is constantly looking for the next best thing to come around. You could say He is looking for marriage, not recreational dating. He desires a commitment and that from the heart, not just in word and outer appearance: "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice" (6a). We're striving here for a love that lasts.

Sometimes I wonder if I have that kind of love. There have been times in the past where I was simply not enticed by the prospect of reading God's Word, or when I deliberately defy his clear commands. How it hurts to even think of such a time! I think there is a comfort in knowing that I am not and can never be worthy enough to keep God from destroying me. That might sound strange, but it simply entails that it must be God Himself who is empowering me to have a continued faithfulness - a fact clearly attested to by the rest of Scripture. That is a freeing concept! I can obey my master with a full heart; my failings and defiance are washed away and never held against me because of the blood of Christ.

Job and Revelation

Today's reading presented quite a lot to write about. There's Job who loves the word of God and wants to appear before Him to argue his case, that he is righteous, yet admits near the end of the chapter that God does whatever He wants and this fact terrifies him. Then we have Hosea, whom God commands to marry a prostitute. So far Hosea has had three children by this woman and God gets to choose all their names, including a daughter named No Mercy and a son named Not My People. Flipping to John 14 we have the first part of a discourse by Jesus on the Father. And finally, there's the first eight verses of Revelation, which are quite rich in discussion about Jesus, the Father, a few words about the Holy Spirit, and what the reason for writing down apocalyptic literature is. So for this entry I suppose I have a question and some thoughts.

The question: In reading Job, the language indicates that Job was actually afraid of God. And by actually afraid I mean as opposed to this "reverent awe" I often hear about. Job uses the word terrified twice and dread once to explain his response to God's presence in Job 23:15-16. So, should we be afraid of God? Job seems to be, can we assume that this kind of fear is what is prescribed for our lives? People in the scriptures do crazy things when God shows up, and even when it's just an appearance of angels, they seem to have to remind them to not be afraid, because that is the natural response. Does this kind of fear have any place in a Christian's relationship to God?

The thoughts: I like Revelation. There are some things that are difficult to understand about it, but the things that I do understand are quite glorious. For one, this book promises a blessing to "the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy" and also to "those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near" (1:3). That's a cool thing, but first I want to clear something up. Some people have said "Hey, look! You're blessed if you just read it! This is the only book like that!" I have to confess that when I finally read the verse that they based such a thought on more closely (i.e. just now!), I concluded that that interpretation was a bit of a stretch. Although for many years I totally bought the former interpretation, it did seem a little bit too superstitious.

The word they often don't mention or don't emphasize enough is "aloud." The person who proclaims this message will be blessed, basically. That makes a bit more sense, because in that way they are being an active servant of God. That's something you can be blessed for! Secondly, "those who hear it, and who keep what is written" are blessed. That also makes more sense, because it's a blessing resulting from hearing and then obeying God's commands, not just passively taking in information. I think John when he was giving this blessing was probably referring to the setting in which Scripture was read aloud publicly. I'm going to guess this was a more common practice in the first century church than it is today, because Paul tells Timothy to "devote [himself] to the public reading of scripture" (1 Tim 4:13). Given that at least the first part of revelation is a compilation of seven letters to seven different churches, John was probably imparting a blessing upon the person who had the privilege of reading the letter publicly before the church.

So, since most of us have probably not been entrusted with the job of reading Revelation publicly, we get to be the hearers and doers instead! That's how we get our blessing. Don't fool yourself into thinking that if you just read through Revelation and your life doesn't change that you've nevertheless been magically blessed. I'm not convinced it works that way. In fact, it might be just the opposite.