Glory in the LORD

I have been reading through Gene Edwards Tale of Three Kings, and it is among my favourite Christian books.  Relevant, instructive, and profound, I find particularly useful the portrayal of David.  He was a man after God's own heart, chosen by God to be king of His people.  The fact David was anointed did not make life easy on David, and in him we see a shadow of Jesus Christ.  He was the chosen Messiah - the Anointed One - yet He faced rejection and willingly laid down His life on the cross for sinners.

After numerous attempts on his life, David fled.  1 Samuel 22:1-2 reads, "David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down there to him. ² And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he became captain over them. And there were about four hundred men with him."  David left all alone, yet people came to him in the cave.  His family sought David and came to him, but also everyone who was distressed, in debt, and discontented.  To David came the dregs of society, those weary of a miserable existence, people who had nothing to contribute but needs, debts, and hungry mouths to feed.  They seemed a liability, but David became their captain.  He gave them no promises of wealth or success, but he was a man after God's own heart in whom the Holy Spirit dwelt.  From this description it is hard to imagine, but out of this rabble were forged mighty men of renown, brave-hearted warriors, loyal servants, men who were willing to sacrifice all, and faithfully followed David everywhere He went.  They were willing to risk their lives for the chance to please and bless David.  With this humble group, the beginnings of David's kingdom was established.

In His wisdom, God has seen fit to fill His Church - the Body of Christ - with such men and women.  Not many mighty, wise, or noble are called.  The Church is comprised of people who are distressed about the state of their souls, people who owe a debt of sin no man could ever pay, and have become discontented with all the lies, deceitfulness of riches, and the cares of this world.  David didn't cherry-pick his men based upon what they could offer him, and Jesus receives all who humbly approach Him in faith.  What can a man offer God?  We can only offer ourselves, wretched though we are:  full of fears, faults, burdened under guilt and an everlasting weight of sin.  We come to Jesus in weakness and desperation, having exhausted all hope in ourselves for salvation.  The Bible never mentions the debts of David's men again, and when we are born again through repentance and faith in Christ our sin God remembers no more.

David's mighty men would never have been mighty without him, and the only way we can become all God created us to be is through faith in Jesus Christ.  All my life I have desired to be the "real deal" when it comes to following Jesus, but I have learned Jesus Christ is the only "Real Deal."  I'm nothing of myself.  I am a liability and am unworthy.  I'm just a man who has discovered in Christ peace that passes understanding, my debt of sin has been paid, and I am learning to be content in any and every situation.  1 Corinthians 1:26-31 concludes, "For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.²⁷ But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; ²⁸ and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, ²⁹ that no flesh should glory in His presence. ³⁰ But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and sanctification and redemption-- ³¹ that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the LORD."

God Says What He Means

^'Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor's landmark.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen!'

Deuteronomy 27:17

After delivering the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt, God delivered His Law to His people.  God was faithful to provide and guide His people through years in the wilderness, and brought them into a land flowing with milk and honey according to His promise.  By lot each tribe and family (save the tribe of Levi) were given land as an inheritance.  The boundaries of the land were ordained and established by God.  It was against the Law to re-locate boundary markers, for they had been laid down by God Himself.  To move a landmark constituted theft and was rebellion against God which brought a curse.

The principle of God establishing boundaries extends beyond the borders of land.  Even as God made a division between water and land when He formed the earth, God has clearly set apart right from wrong.  He held forth an absolute righteous standard in His Law, and God does not change.  Seismic cultural shifts, persistent waves of unbelief, satanic sabotage under the cover of darkness, and the folly of men have shifted around many of the markers God established from the beginning.  This subjective shift has not only taken place in the public sphere, but also concerning doctrines in the church.  The departure from a literal view of scriptural truth has been a catalyst for great error.  As generations flood by, some markers have been lost and others have been moved so far from the original place God hammered them down they might as well not exist.

This reality is nothing new.  The first thing Satan is recorded as doing in Genesis was questioning, contradicting, and lying about God's words.  It is through deceiving God's people where Satan has enjoyed consistent success.  The church's gravest adversary operates best from within.  Paul exhorted and warned Timothy concerning what was occurring in the early church in 2 Timothy 4:1-4:  "I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: ² Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. ³ For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; ⁴ and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables."  Fables like macro evolution are heralded as fact by many Christians, and the existence of Adam and Eve as actual people has been turned to a fable.  Some believe the entire book of the Revelation is allegorical!  It's time for people of the Book to be people who believe what the Book says and live like it.

You've likely seen land surveyors at work near roads or job sites with their precise equipment, carefully, meticulously measuring and marking property boundaries.  Their job is essential in building and development, establishing the legal boundaries of fences, motorways, and buildings.  Imagine a skilled land surveyor mapped out a set of drawings on a flat dirt lot intended to be a carpark.  His careful measurements were taken and the elevation marked with stakes.  Let's say during the night rain joyriding hoons tore through the lot, plowed through the mud, and scattered all the stakes.  The surveyor returned the next day shocked to find the site a mess. Do you think he would be able to replace the perfectly accurate arrangement of stakes to the correct height by memory alone?  No way!  It would be ludicrous to think placing stakes at random spots would result in a carpark which matched the design perfectly.  He would need to refer back to the drawings and use his specialised equipment to find the precise location for each marked stake.

The point of the story is to illustrate the importance of the absolute truth the church has been given by God in the Bible.  Even as a land surveyor requires precise instruments to perform his job, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to discern spiritual truth and apply it faithfully to our lives.  This shifting of the boundaries has occurred again and again based upon man's wisdom - not God's.  Many men intentionally shifted markers to suit their sins or accommodate an unbelieving culture.  The departure from belief in the naked Word has been shifted to mesh with scholarly interpretations, worldly speculation, and spiritualisation of texts to shift further from God's established landmarks.  God said through the prophet in Isaiah 57:20-21:  "But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. ²¹ "There is no peace," says my God, "for the wicked."  Satan has used many tactics to muddy the waters of God's pristine truth, and under the guise of higher learning has undermined the faith of many.  It is only through faith in God and His Word we can know with certainty truth from error.

The exhortation given by C.H. Spurgeon to his students I take to heart and share today:  "The Bible is not a compilation of clever allegories or instructive poetical traditions; it teaches literal facts and reveals tremendous realities:  let your full persuasion of this truth be manifest to all who attend your ministry.  It will be an ill day for the church if the pulpit should even appear to endorse the skeptical hypothesis that Holy Scripture is but the record of a refined mythology, in which globules of truth are dissolved in seas of poetic and imaginary detail." (Lectures to My Students, pg. 102)  God says what He means and means what He says, regardless of what so called experts say.  How wrong were the scribes and experts of the Law in the day of Jesus!  If my views and the clear teachings of the Bible are at odds, it is I who need to change.  Otherwise I run the risk of bringing myself under a curse for moving the boundaries God has set and lead others to do the same.  I thank God for the Bible, for it will endure unchanged forever.  Only Jesus Christ can open our understanding to comprehend the scriptures, and blessed is the man who rightly divides the Word of Truth!

Remember and Proclaim

I recently enjoyed an interactive Bible study where the life of Joseph was paralleled with Jesus.  Their lives are not mirror images, yet there are striking, compelling similarities which provide deep wells of understanding and wisdom to drink from.  Joseph was loved by his father, betrayed and sold by his brothers, and later became a saviour to the people of Egypt and all who came during the famine.  Jesus too was loved by His heavenly Father, betrayed by His own disciple for silver, rejected by the Jewish nation He came to save, and died on the cross as a sacrifice for sin so all who repent can be saved.  Joseph was saviour for a season, but Jesus is the Saviour for eternity.

We talked about twenty similarities between the lives of Joseph and Jesus, and the brother leading the study said there were no less than 60!  As the study was concluding, it came to mind Joseph was mentioned in the Hall of Faith.  I turned there, wondering if there was a correlation to be found in the New Testament as well.  Hebrews 11:22 reads, "By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones."  Joseph and Jesus were both men of faith.  When Joseph was dying, he commanded his bones be carried out of Egypt and buried in his father's tomb.  It struck me Jesus also had made a command concerning remembering His body!  The bones of Jesus did not remain in a tomb, for after three days He was raised alive and incorruptible.  So what is the connection?

During the Last Supper, Luke 22:19-20 says of Jesus Christ:  "And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." ²⁰ Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you."  Jesus commanded we remember His sacrifice through what is commonly called "The LORD's Supper" or "Communion."  When believers gather together in Christ's name, we are to make time to remember the price Jesus paid.  We eat the bread to remember how the body of Jesus has been broken for us, and drink of the cup because His blood has been shed for us.  Receiving the elements of Communion into our bodies is a picture of how we, by faith, have received Jesus Christ as Saviour and His salvation through the Gospel.  Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:26, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes."  Our obedience to remember Christ's sacrifice is also a proclamation of His return.

The Bible is filled with rich pictures, shadows, and types which are so deep all eternity will not be immense enough to exhaust them.  One instructive example is seen when Jesus fed 5,000 men plus women and children with five loaves of bread and two fish.  Matthew 14:19-20 reads, "Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. ²⁰ So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained."  When Jesus broke the bread, it pointed to what He would accomplish in His death and resurrection.  Jesus is the Bread of Life (John 6:35, 48), who was blessed by the Father, broken in death, and the Gospel in the New Covenant in His blood has been committed to His followers to distribute among all who hunger for salvation.  All who partake of the Bread of Life by faith will be satisfied with salvation.

The application for us?  Let us heed the command Jesus gave to remember His sacrifice and proclaim His return by receiving Communion together with fellow believers.  Having received the Gospel from the hand of our LORD and Saviour by faith, let us be faithful to lovingly distribute the words of life and share the Gospel with all who will humble themselves to receive.  Praise God for His wondrous works, and such grace and gifts given to men!

Abort Hypocrisy

News.com.au reported early this morning Australians Chan and Sukumaran were among eight men executed for drug crimes in Indonesia.  Their families, fellow Australians, and the Australian government grimly hoped for an eleventh-hour reprieve, but it was not to be.  Whilst the Indonesian government spared the lone accused woman from the firing squad, the remaining eight men were executed.  Quoting Prime Minister Tony Abbott from the article, “Whatever people think of the death penalty... the fact is that these two families have suffered an appalling tragedy.  And I’m sure that ever Australians thoughts and prayers will be with those families.”  I agree, and certainly have been praying.  In a land where no crime is punished by death, seeing two young men executed for any drug-related offense committed ten years ago is nigh impossible for many Australians to process.

I grew up in the State of California, a place which has maintained the legal right to impose the death penalty for extreme crimes - though seldom used.  Even in that liberal State, capital punishment seems to have always been a source of controversy.  I remember well the news reports of candlelight vigils, hearing arguments for and against the death penalty, graphic testimony from witnesses, and the last words of the condemned.  It all came flooding back to me as the impending executions of Chan and Sukumaran drew nigh.  Around the clock on television, radio, and websites, multiple reports were broadcasted daily.  Concerned people at church wanted to discuss what was happening.  Facebook pages and comments by Australians even revealed anger, rage, and frustration.  Callers voiced their opinions on radio programs.  Though eight lives were brought to a premature end, the conversations will continue.

The death penalty for crime remains controversial, but it points to the ultimate fact:  everyone dies.  Whether our lives end suddenly in a car accident, in old age, or by a firing squad, our lives on earth are temporary.  The Bible explains the reason for this is due to sin.  God created man without sin, yet man willfully rebelled against God's command.  Adam was frankly warned by God beforehand if he ate from the tree in the midst of the garden, he would surely die.  And that is exactly what happened.  Adam ate from the tree, and his body began to die.  Adam's sin had far-reaching consequences which passed sin and death to all.  We have all sinned, and thus we will surely die.  God has said, "The soul that sins will surely die." (Eze. 18:20)  As sure as the law of gravity on earth causes a ball to fall to the ground when released from the hand, so a single sin brings death every time.

As I was praying about this yesterday, a thought pressed into my mind.  I have heard a lot of talk about the injustice of the death penalty of late, but I have not once in all my years in Australia heard a single person speak negatively about the abortion of unborn children.  Like in my home state California, abortion is legal in every state and territory in Australia.  If we count Indonesia as guilty for killing criminals, how guilty are we before God for slaughtering the innocent!  If our government seeks to take action against Indonesia by withdrawing our foreign ambassador for executing our citizens, what should a righteous, just God do concerning us for our crimes against His little ones?  According to Victoria's Betterhealth website, "Abortion is one of the safest and most commonly performed surgical procedures in Australia."  The most commonly performed surgical procedure?  Surgery - meant to saves lives - is now being used primarily to end them?  After reading this I just cried and cried.  Safe for potential mothers maybe, but clearly the most devastating procedure for the child involved!  Stories of the "Bali Nine" and the two condemned Australians have been aired with regularity in prime time, but did you know only South Australia, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory even provide statistics concerning Medicare funded abortions?  The most populous states are silent.  How can such a double-standard exist?  It is outrageous to plead for clemency for criminals in another country when daily, legally, and quietly destroy Australian babies God knits together in the wombs of mothers who should love them.

I will be a voice for those who cannot speak for themselves.  I cry out for those tiny beating hearts, "Mercy!  For God's sake, have mercy!"  I pray you can hear the love in my voice.  I don't want to be harsh, and my intent is not to hurt any who have already walked the lonely path of abortion.  We are all mortal, and the only hope for all of us who await the death of the body is Jesus Christ.  Every man is born condemned by his own sin.  God's the only One who can redeem execution for good, for God did so with His own precious Son.  God's the only One who can atone, forgive, and cleanse us from all sin and guilt.  God is able and willing to forgive repentant murderers.  I am glad of this because God sees hatred as murder, and I am guilty.  God knows how we suffer.  Jesus is a Saviour of souls.  He knows what we fear.  He knows the depth of our anger and bitterness.  He knows.  He still loves us and allowed Jesus to suffer and die so we could live.  Only God can turn our mourning to gladness, and in this I rejoice.