Archive for the ‘Scripture’ Category
We had quite a storm late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. Those of you who have experience Texas thunderstorms have an idea of what it was like. I have never heard thunder so loud. I am convinced that I saw lightning twice hit near our home. Flashes of eye-piercing brightness illuminated the roaring night. It was both beautiful and awe-inspiring; unless you’re a dog or a two-year old.
Our dog’s name is Baxter. He is a pure-bred Golden Retriever. Weighing in at close to 90 pounds, he’s no small dog. He’s quite loyal, gentle with our children and protective of family. All that to say, he’s a great dog. Except in storms. He is scared to death of thunderstorms. He shivers, he tries to get on the bed, he follows you around the house. In other words, he’s a big sissy when it comes to storms.
Baxter would whine and walk around in circles, occasionally trying to get onto the bed unless I reached down and firmly let him know that I was there. That calmed him down a bit and reminded him that he was safe. It doesn’t make trying to sleep through storms any easier or very comfortable because after a bit, my arm starts to fall asleep from being held out over the side of the dog to constantly remind him of my presence. As soon as I move or try to readjust my arm, the dog is up again trying to jump onto the bed in a near panic.
Carson, my two-year old son has essentially the same reaction to loud storms though its understandable for a two-year old little boy. He ended up in our bed some time during the storm and his method of coping was to scoot right up beside me so that at least his feet were touching me at all times. If I shifted or rolled over, he scooted closer, needing the reassurance of my presence. So I had the dog trying to get onto the bed on one side and my son scooting me ever closer to the edge of the bed on the other. It wasn’t the most comfortable night’s sleep.
Though it wasn’t a restful night, it was refreshing. It reminded me that “the name of the Lord is a strong tower” to which I can run to and be safe (Proverbs 18:10). It reminded me that when I am afraid, I should put my trust in God (Psalm 56:3). That storm helped me understand how James can say “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8). When the thunder shook the windows and my son or even the dog would press against me in fear, I didn’t recoil, I didn’t remove myself, I pressed closer, knowing that they were afraid, they were dependent, they were relying on my for security and a sense of safety, imperfect though it was.
As the storm raged, I marveled at how God often uses the turmoil in our lives to bring about peace. We all know Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God” but we don’t always remember the context. Psalm 46:1-3 sets the stage:
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling
God is not telling the Psalmist to engage in a “Christianized” transcendental meditation, trying to block out everything else, He is telling the Psalmist to rest in God, even as the earth itself seems to be giving way around Him. Notice that the comfort the Psalmist receives in perhaps the best-known of all the psalms happens “in the valley of the shadow of death” (Psalm 23). Apparently, the still waters and green pastures were in the valley itself.
God often uses life’s storms to bring our theology to life. Do we trust Him? He will give us opportunity to demonstrate it. Do we find comfort, strength and security in Him? He will soon bring circumstances our way that reveal whether or not we do. Sometimes we just need to be reminded that God is near (Psalm 75:1) and He is our refuge (Ruth 2:12). Unless we understand this, we will never consider our trials with joy (James 1:2).
To see similar sentiments expressed better, watch this from Rob Bell:
For some time now I’ve had an ongoing but irregular series in which I simply present the statements of Jesus asking the question “What if He really meant it?” So often we approach Jesus’ words as though they were mere slogans, as if He didn’t really mean what He said, maybe He just said it for shock value? But what if He did mean it? What difference would it make in your life?
Today’s consideration comes from Matthew 6:25-34:
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
What if He really meant it? Does your life exude rest in God?
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Apr
17
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By Eddie Exposito
I was raised in a moral home, high on religiosity and regulation, but low on gospel. In that traditionally Catholic meadow my musical foundations were developed around a monolithic console stereo with a turntable and an eight-track tape player that belted out everything from Carole King and Stevie Wonder to Janis Joplin and Elvis. I can remember sitting on the shag carpet in my add-on den in the suburbs of New Orleans with my back leaning up against the vibrating speakers imagining myself playing in the band and becoming enamored with what I would later find out is called “the groove”.
Years later I would learn to play percussion taking up the drum kit as my mainstay and forming a local band called Fresh Young Minds which became highly popular in the early 90’s around the New Orleans music scene. God converted me during that time translating me from a bitter atheist into a green believer and I no longer pursued music as a profession; however, my love of music has never died. After battling rabid non-beat Gothardites and a stint with radical fundamentalism whereby I almost literally burned about seventy-eight CDs that were not “Christian” enough, I landed in a confused marshland not sure of what to listen to or whether I could even listen to anything at all without feeling guilty or overwhelmed by hyper-analysis.
Fast-forward to the present: I have a wife and four daughters, over a decade in the faith, pastor a local church, and have found a new love for music. I had gotten burned out on the CCM rotations after they seemed to me to be generating more cheese than gold. At some point I also did not believe that I could stomach yet another love song to Jesus that sounded like a sensual ballad from the star struck to lovelorn. And so I began to uncover my old discs and listened to forbidden rock fruits and nibbled on jazz-ensembled nectar and asked myself exactly why it was that I almost burned all of this creativity?
For the first time I saw these songs as gifts rather than enemies. Sure, some were rotten but I quickly found out that even the rotten fruits were good in that they taught me how to think through the volatile topic of music biblically and became examples that I could use in teaching the proper use vs. the improper use of creative talent. I began for the first time to see that I didn’t have to throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater as it were and could instead take each song on its own merit to see if it had any redeemable qualities. Suddenly my musical acumen was not about castigating an entire musical genre but in taking the opportunity and time to listen, analyze, and learn. Later, I would see the tremendous benefit in applying this approach to my children and their schooling.
I found a great sale on refurbished mp3 players and bought three of them; one for me and one for each of my oldest daughters who are ten and twelve. I loaded our players with a variety of songs and tunes including two albums by Anathallo, some Thelonious Monk, the White Stripes, and a few Verdi arias. Their assignment was to listen to the songs and be ready to discuss them with me. They were armed with notepads and pencils as we sat down in our den listening to a few tunes from the selection on our Bose acoustic wave machine. We discussed dissonance and syncopation and crescendos and dynamics and tone and timbre and harmony and bass and counterpoint and rhythm; every aspect of appreciation. I gave them print outs of the song lyrics and we combed over them biblically to see if their subject and message melded or conflicted with Scripture and we talked more about chord structures and arrangements and whether they even liked the songs at all.
What I discovered is that instead of making a long list of musical do’s and don’ts and tabooed types, we should see music as a tool: a tool to teach our children how to discern for themselves what is worthy of discovery and what is worthy of the trash heap. Far more productive conversations have come from this type of discussion and discourse than from me simply banning certain bands from our home.
Give your children the tools they need to figure things out for themselves and you’ve stimulating their minds to think biblically with a critical eye while equipping them for life. Simply ban, dodge, and restrict their choices and you’ll only end up stirring the flesh.
Eddie Exposito and his wife Michelle have four daughters (Elizabeth-Kay, Carlyn, Jeanne-Marie, and Ruby). They have been married for fifteen years living just outside of Slidell, LA where he serves as the pastor of Sovereign Grace Fellowship. He is also director of Sovereign Grace Homeland Missions (SGHM.org) which ministers to the greater New Orleans area, a rebuilding and evangelism outreach established as a result of hurricane Katrina, where the work to rebuild homes and lives continues to this very day.
There are some things in life I just don’t understand. I don’t understand weak coffee. I don’t understand the appeal of Dancing With the Stars or even American Idol. I don’t understand Christians who claim that abortion is a “gray” area or even support abortion. I also don’t understand Christians who support Barack Obama. I don’t understand Southern Baptist legalism. And I don’t understand people who say that the Bible does not teach that God chooses people.
The truth is that the idea of God’s sovereign choice is everywhere in Scripture for those with eyes to see. Israel is repeatedly referenced as God’s “chosen people.” For example, in Deuteronomy 7:6, Moses addresses the people saying: ‘The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” This is idea is repeated throughout Scripture, including Deuteronomy 14:2 and Psalm 135:4 which says that “the LORD has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel as his own possession.” Psalm 105:6 refers to Abraham’s descendants of Abraham as “the chosen ones” as does Psalm 106:5. Psalm 65:4 says:
Blessed is the one you choose and bring near,
to dwell in your courts!
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house,
the holiness of your temple!
Some try to wiggle around such clear statements by arguing that this is merely an Old Testament concept, it does not apply to the New Testament Church. Yet Jesus quite clearly told the Disciples in John 15:16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Furthering this, Jesus says in Matthew 11:27:
All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
Clearly the implication here is that the Son does not choose to reveal the Father to everyone. Luke 10:22 cites the same teaching while Jesus, in John 6:44 says that no one can come to Him unless the Father draws Him, and then repeats this same idea in John 6:65. John 1:12-13 says that believers are born “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
This of course has not included references to “God’s elect” which is another way of saying “God’s chosen people.” For example, Matthew 24 repeatedly refers to “the elect.” Romans 8:33 asks who will bring a charge against God’s elect while Romans 9:11 speaks of God’s purposes in election. In 2 Timothy 2:10 and Titus 1:1, Paul speaks of ministering on behalf of the elect. 1 Peter 1:1 addresses the “elect exiles” while 2 Peter 1:10 urges believers to make our calling and election sure and 2 John 1:1 addresses “the elect lady and her children.”
There are many other verses teaches the same thing but neither time nor space allows a comprehensive survey in a blog format. We might disagree as to what it means that God chooses, we might disagree on what grounds God chooses and even how He chooses, but it seems to me that the least we can do is be honest with the Scriptures and say that the concept is there in one form or another.
One of the things that often startles me is just how different our modern conceptions of “church” are from what Jesus and His first followers apparently experienced. Radical individualism has swept across our cultural mindset and we are quick to erect barriers, even with those with whom we should be most open and transparent. It is far too common to find people who view church either as a purely individual experience, or as a social club. And it is far too rare to find true, biblical fellowship. Jesus forces us to examine our own relationships:
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother (Matthew 12:46-50).
Who is your family? Those who do the will of the Father?
There seems to very little talk in most contemporary “Christian” circles about what we are saved from in salvation. There is a sometimes vague notion of sin and even fuzzier notion of judgment, but nothing too concrete and nothing too specific about who is the Judge. Salvation has been reduced to little more than a personal experience without any real context. But what if Jesus meant what he said in Matthew 10:28:
do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
If Jesus meant what He said, then salvation is by God from God.
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Mar
31
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C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity:
Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.
I’m sure that many in our day and state of mind will think that Lews is either misguided, exaggerated or both. We’re taught to have pride from the womb: pride of our family heritage, pride of our school, pride of our state, pride of our country, pride the brand of truck we drive (at least here in TX), pride of the sports team we watch. We value the “self-made” person. We’re even proud of the church we attend.
One of the most dangerous things about pride is that it is one of the few sins that blinds us to its presence. We know when we drink too much. We know when we speed in our cars. We know when we lust. But we rarely (at least initially) know when we are infected with pride. At least part of the reason for this is, as Lewis points out: “Pride is essentially competitive.” In other words, pride demonstrates itself by having more of something than someone else, doing something better than someone else. If everyone had the same thing, there would be no basis for pride. If everyone were equally talented, there would be no basis for pride. Pride is often focused on others, therefore we sometimes don’t realize its presence.
But there are other reasons why pride can be difficult to spot (and therefore so deadly). Pride can often appear religious. Pride can, in fact, help us overcome other sins, therefore appearing good. As Lewis argues:
Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect to make him behave decently; many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride.
Lewis laments: “It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life.” But this is quite often exactly what happens. Many pews are filled with people whose hearts are filled with pride and whose lives are filled with lists of rules and regulations and whose eyes glance in judgment. Legalism is one of the most deadly weapons in the arsenal of pride. Beware of any church that tells you you cannot be a member over something Scripture allows. Such churches, though thinking themselves the most holy have actually denied the Gospel by adding to it.
This is interesting, isn’t it that the ones who often come across as the most holy are in fact the worst off. These are often the ones who don’t fathom the depth of their own sin because, as Lewis points out, out of pride, they have been able to conquer many “weaker” sins that enslave so many, all the while being eaten from the inside out by the cancer of pride. As Lewis warns:
Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty, object.
The only antidote is God. We must see God who who He truly is and only then will we see ourselves for who we truly are. Pride is the complete distortion of this, elevating self and lowering God (and others). Unless we understand that God is immeasurably greater than any of our aspirations we do not truly know Him. Unless we see Him “high and lifted up” with the refrain of “I am undone,” we do not know Him. It must bring a chill to our souls that there will be some who come to Christ at the Day of Judgment only to hear those eternally stinging words “Depart from Me for I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23).
We continually warn against the dangers out there. But I wonder how well we guard against the dangers in here?
Our Care Groups this year are in the midst of an in-depth study of the life and ministry of Jesus using a modified harmony of the Gospels approach. It is a chronological study of the Jesus’ life and has been both challenging and refreshing, especially realizing how often Jesus does not match our conceptions. Last week, Kristi and I were in one of the groups discussing Jesus’ calming of the storm found in Matthew 8:23-27:
And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?
The question was asked about how we know when we’re expressing faith and trust in Christ. The answer we were discussing was that where we turn in times of trouble reveals a lot about where our faith is placed. While this is true, it set me to thinking because the disciples did go to Jesus and He still rebuked them. Why? What did they do wrong? What should they have done differently, should they have just kept on sailing through the storm but do so calmly?
At that point, several Scriptures poked their way through my wonderings. The first part of Psalm 46:10 was the first to peek through: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 127:2 was next: “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” You can tell where my mind was going. What should the disciples have done in the midst of the storm? After all, they did go to Jesus for help. They should have crawled up right beside Him and gone to sleep in the midst of the storm. That would have been the surest demonstration of their faith in Him. If we are called to follow in His footsteps, it seems then that they should have done what He did.
This does not mean that those of you who have trouble sleeping are necessarily in sin. Nor does it mean that you should just lie down and take a nap in the midst of whatever struggle you might be enduring. But it does remind us just how radical the call to follow Jesus really is. Was He exaggerating when He said told us not to be anxious (Matthew 6:25-34) or did He really mean it? Especially for those of us who claim to believe in the absolute goodness and absolute sovereignty of God; our lives rarely display this kind of confidence.
If we truly trust the Lord, sometimes we just need to go to sleep (both literally and figuratively). Let’s be honest, chances are that He’s going to accomplish more when we’re asleep than awake anyways!
When most of us see a diamond, we immediately think oh, that’s a diamond, of course it’s valuable! But an appraiser is going to take it and literally look at the stone from every angle and they’ll tell you just how valuable that diamond is and why.
They’re not as popular now, but do you remember those pictures that at first look just a bit rough, like something’s a bit out of place? The closer you look, you realize it’s actually made up of thousands of smaller pictures. I don’t know how they do it, but all of those thousands of tiny pictures are arranged somehow to look like a larger image. The final product is certainly about the larger image, but it is also about more; it is about all of those thousands of other images. Similarly, we often think of certain things in the Bible only in particular ways, forgetting about the many facets that go into the larger truths.
We often think of Jesus’ resurrection only at Easter and even then, we often think in very limited terms. We think that Jesus rose from the dead, therefore Christianity is true or we think that Jesus rose from the dead, therefore there is life after death. The resurrection is certainly about these things but it is more. It is not less but it is more. I wonder how often we think of the Resurrection having very real impact on our lives today? Having to do, not just with who Jesus is but what our response to Him ought to be?Paul forces us to a larger view of the resurrection in Romans 1:1-6:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ
Paul says that by His resurrection, Jesus was declared to be the Son of God but the Greek communicates more than just that He was shown to be the Son of God. The Greek literally communicates that at His resurrection, Jesus was appointed the Son of God. This doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t God prior to His resurrection but that after the resurrection, Jesus was a Son of God in a way that He was not prior to the resurrection. We might think of Acts 10:42, which uses the same word, saying: “And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.”
The key is in properly understanding the term the “Son of God.” We’re prone to think of this as a term simply ascribing deity to Jesus. It is that, but biblically, it has other implications as well. Ancient Near Eastern and biblical text understand one aspect of the title “Son of God” to mean royalty as well. Paul has already primed the pump, so to speak, for this understanding, by reminding his readers that Jesus was a descendant of David. This of course is made clear in 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 2.
In other words, by His resurrection, Jesus was appointed king, not just of Israel, not just of the Jews, not just of the Church but of all creation. Whereas some rulers conquer lands, Jesus has conquered sin and death. His resurrection is about the truth of Christianity, it is about life after death, but it is about more than that. I wonder the last time most of us thought of the resurrection demanding our allegiance to Jesus as the risen King? But that’s exactly what Paul says. Christ’s resurrection means that He is King. The question remains: what is our response?
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Mar
12
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One of the things I’ve been pondering much lately is the connection between the “Kingdom of God” and salvation. I’ve come to believe that we have, perhaps inadvertently, cheapened what salvation truly is. We have lessened it both in scope and impact and turned it into something purely “personal” and internal. We have so stressed the idea of eternal deliverance from hell that salvation has come to have little if any impact on this side of glory. We certainly do not preach salvation in terms of kingdom conflict, but this is one of the primary themes of the New Testament.
I’ve been meditating particularly a bit on the implications of the idea of Kingdom as it relates to believers and our continuing struggle(s) against sin. The Bible certainly describes salvation in terms of being rescued from the kingdom of darkness and delivered into Christ’s Kingdom. Consider Colossians 1:13:
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son
But the Bible goes even further (or should that be farther?) in its depictions of salvation. According to Scripture, not only are we made citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven (Philippians 3:20), we are made heirs, along with Christ (Romans 8:12-17, Galatians 3:29, etc.).
The more I meditate upon this reality, the more serious the issue of sin becomes for me. Think about the implications of what Scripture teaches. Sin among believers is nothing less than treason. It is the heir of one kingdom (the Kingdom of Christ) proclaiming allegiance to another (the domain of darkness), the very kingdom from which they (we) have just been freed. When we choose sin (We are never made to sin. We sin because we choose to), we are no different than the just-freed Israelites saying that it was better in Egypt (Exodus 14:12, Numbers 11:18, etc.), that it was better in slavery.
The more I meditate upon the implications of the Kingdom, the more I am becoming convinced that it strengthens, deepens and intensifies the implications of salvation for our lives. This is interesting (at least to me), seeing that, the move away from this approach, the move towards an emphasis on “escape from eternal damnation” actually seems to cheapen the very doctrines it was meant to intensify. I wonder your thoughts on this.
