Perfect salvation for us to see

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised

Glory and strength to Him ascribe

He is ruler over every nation and tribe

Yet who into His glory has gazed?

Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised

Worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness

It is He who reigns as King on high

Without Him not one bird can fly

He will judge the earth with righteousness

Worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness

Yet He who was, who is, and who is to be

Came on to earth to show thus:

The God who cannot be seen by us

He became a man for us to see

He who was, who is, and who is to be

And all those who through His blood believe

Have now seen His glory

And have a new end to their story

Perfect salvation for us to see

All those who through his blood believe

Stuck On Milk

Paul writes theses words in 1 Corinthians,

    But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,
   
(1 Corinthians 3:1-2 ESV)

Christians can be very immature people. We all know this to be true. We've all seen someone who claimed to be in Christ but seemed to be stuck on milk. Likewise we've all seen people who seem to be these spiritual giants. I believe there is a big problem in our churches when it comes to finding the latter. The Christians who really seem to get it aren't as common as we'd like to think.

What jumped out to me in these verses is that it kind of goes against our assumptions. Here's what I mean; we all seem to think that the mark of spiritual maturity is being able to know and understand the Scriptures. We think that spiritually mature people are the ones who know their Bibles backwards and forwards. We think the people who have all the answers must be the ones who are mature. While I think this is part of it, I don't think this is the main thing Paul is getting at.

What does Paul say an infant in Christ is? A new Christian? A person who doesn't know the Bible? Someone who doesn't understand deep theology? No, he says an infant in Christ is a person of the flesh. The mark of a spiritually immature person is that they are living for themselves, or the flesh, instead of living in God through the Spirit.

This is confirmed if we read on: 

    I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not being merely human?
(1 Corinthians 3:2-4 ESV)

The reason they couldn't handle solid food was because they were still in the flesh. If you are a person who is living for yourself instead of for God, you are a spiritually immature, fleshy, Christian. We need to be people who not only know our Bibles and rejoice in God's Word, but also people who put off the old self and put on the new self. We need to be people who walk according to the Spirit not according to the flesh. We need to be people who grow up and stop living as children.

Let us be a people who no longer lives like the world but lives like Christ! Let us reach, "....mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love."   
(Ephesians 4:13b-16 ESV)

Know You're Saved

I believe that those of us in the Church of Christ have reacted a little too extremely to some things. We see the people who claim to have the Holy Spirit acting all crazy so some of us have decided to deny the fact that the Holy Spirit lives in us. We see people getting caught up in emotional hype instead of true worship so we forget what a true passion for God in worship looks like. But the problem I want to address today is our reaction to the "once saved, always saved" doctrine.

I'm not going to argue for or against this doctrine here. There are many scriptures you could use to argue either side. What I want to talk about is the effect this teaching has had on many of us Christians who don't believe this to be true. You see, so many of us believe we can lose our salvation, and I believe we can as well, but because of this belief we act as if we have no confidence at all. I hear the way people talk and pray; they say things like, "I hope I'll get to heaven when I die." Or they say ,"I hope I've been a good and faithful servant." It's a wonder we can even sing Blessed Assurance on Sundays.

1 John is one of my favorite books. It's so rich with great themes like love, walking in light, giving up sin, and assurance. In fact, at the end of his book he writes,

    I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.
(1 John 5:13 ESV)

He says he writes these things for two reasons 1) so that we may believe in Christ and 2) so that we may know that we have eternal life. Did you catch that? He said we can KNOW that we're saved. We don't have to wonder, guess, or speculate, we can just know. Maybe it would be a good idea for more Christians to study this little book...

I want to direct your attention to just one other verse. In this verse he gives us a surefire way to know that we have salvation:

      And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.
(1 John 2:28 ESV)

  It's simple really, just abide with Him. Stay close to Christ. Make your life all about Him and then you have no reason to wonder if your saved. If you love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you can have confidence that you won't be put to shame. If you devote yourself to following and abiding in Christ, than what do you have to fear?

So here's what I'd leave you with. Don't just be a casual fan. Don't be a lukewarm Christian. You can't abide in Christ and be complacent; it just doesn't work. So, if you want to be sure of your salvation, abide in Him. Give yourself fully and completely to Jesus Christ.

Rejoice In Where Your Name Is Written.

    The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
(Luke 10:17-20 ESV)

Jesus had sent out seventy-two of His disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to perform these amazing signs. He sent these people out to be witnesses and to share their faith in who Jesus was. When these people came back, however, they were focused on the wrong things. They came back exclaiming over the fact that demons listened to them instead of over how many souls God had saved.

I love what Jesus says to them. He tells them that He saw Satan fall and that He gave them all their power.  He basically says, "look, all this power is great but it's not what matters most. Besides I'm the one who gave you this power and it's really not what you should be excited about. Instead, be excited that you are saved." That is powerful. Jesus tells us here that signs and wonders aren't nearly as amazing as a soul getting saved. What matters most to Jesus is people's salvation. I wonder what matters most to us?

Leap For Joy

I found this passage thought provoking this morning.

    “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
(Luke 6:22-23 ESV)

Now let's chew on this for a bit. People all around us want to be happy. I mean, who doesn't want to find lasting joy, right? Who doesn't want to have the kind of life that makes you rejoice? Everyone in this world wants to be happy. Now we all pursue it in different ways, but everyone wants to be happy.

God even wants you to be happy. It's true; God wants you to find true and lasting joy. Elsewhere in the Bible he calls it inexpressible joy. The God of the universe is interested in your happiness. This is awesome. I mean, the one true God who is in control of everything is concerned with your feelings. This is amazing and should stir up our hearts to worship.

Here's the problem we often run into though; you don't know how to be happy. You and I don't know how to find true joy. What we do is chase a bunch of shallow and often sinful desires to find happiness. We think that if God wants me to be happy, he will make an exception to the rule for me.

"I know Jesus said blessed are you when you're poor but I really think God wants me to be rich."

"I know God hates divorce but I really think God wants me to to leave my husband."

"I know God says that remarriage is adultery but I really think God wants me to marry that woman."

"I know God said to keep the marriage bed pure but I really think He wants me to move in with my boyfriend or girlfriend."    

"I know God wants me to share my faith but He must also want me to be comfortable."

"I know what God's Word says but I really think God wants me to be happy." 

Any of these sound familiar? The list could go on and on. Everyone thinks that if God wants them to be happy, He'll give them whatever they want. Well, as Larry the cucumber would say, "that couldn't be more wronger." Here's the point I want to make: we need to be finding joy in our reward instead of things of this world. What does the text say? You're blessed when people hate you. You're doing good when people exclude you. God is pleased when people revile you. Then you can jump for joy. When you suffer for Christ's sake, you truly have a reason to rejoice because your reward is great in heaven. The reward God has prepared for you far outweighs the things you think you want in this world.

So get out there and do something for Christ that makes people mad. Let them talk bad about you, let them mock you. So what if someone rejects you when you share your faith? You're storing up rewards in Heaven. Find true joy in doing the will of Christ, not in things of this world. The only joy that will last is found in Christ Jesus.

Bear Fruits In Keeping With Repentance

I decided that I would try to write a blog post a day about my daily Bible reading. It isn't going to be anything fancy or complex, it's just going to be something that jumped out at me that day. I might not get to write one everyday, but I hope that I will be able to come close to that goal. 

Luke Chapter 3 is where I found myself this morning, and as I was reading I came across the familiar words about John the Baptist.

    As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,
    “The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
    ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
        make his paths straight.
    Every valley shall be filled,
        and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
    and the crooked shall become straight,
        and the rough places shall become level ways,
    and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
(Luke 3:4-6 ESV)

So John had a purpose. He had a mission. He was sent to do something that wasn't easy. He was sent to prepare the way for our Lord. He was sent to make the paths straight; to level out the way. John was supposed to get hearts ready for Jesus. John was supposed to proclaim Jesus to people so that they would be ready for His coming. 

Now this is a pretty noble calling, right? I mean, the greatest mission must be getting people ready to "see the salvation of God." But let me ask, do we have any other missions? Do we have any greater purpose then to get people to see the salvation only found in Christ? What is our purpose if it's not to see lost souls come to Christ?

Now what we see next is what really interests me. How John does his proclaiming and his preaching seems strange to me. Look at what he says to all the devout Jews listening to him:

     He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
(Luke 3:7-9 ESV)

 When was the last time you called a bunch of people a brood of vipers? For me this is a pretty rare occurrence. I don't usually tell people that they are a bunch of snakes. It doesn't tend to go over well. But what's really interesting about this is that these are the religious people. These are the people who say, "I don't have to worry because I am a child of Abraham." In essence they, are saying that they'll be just fine because they have a good background. Maybe what we would hear nowadays is something like this, "I'll be fine because I go to church on Sunday." Or "I'm going to Heaven because I'm basically a good person and I do some good deeds." But John says that God would have better children from the rocks than these people.

The question that it all boils down to is this: How's your fruit? Are you bearing fruit in keeping with repentance? Are you bearing good fruit for Christ? Is your fruit good, bad, or just not there at all? Is the axe already at the root for you?

Are you bearing much fruit?