daily java

Daily Java:

Caiaphas, who was high priest at that time, said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.” He did not say this on his own; as high priest at that time he was led to prophesy that Jesus would die for the entire nation. And not only for that nation, but to bring together and unite all the children of God scattered around the world. (John 11:49-52)

Sometimes stupid people say good things. Here Caiaphas said something that was true and didn’t really realize it.

Caiaphas was the high priest of the Jews during the time when Jesus was walking around preaching. He hated Jesus because he knew that if Jesus was allowed to continue to preach and teach, people would like him and accept him as Messiah, the chosen of God. And if they did, he would lose his job as leader.

He decided that Jesus had to die so that they could shut him up. The funny thing about what he said was that even though he meant to shut Jesus up, he was really speaking the truth. It was better than one man die than all of the rest of humanity.

Jesus came to die. God sent him to die. And the reason was simple. We are sinners and since we have done things that are wrong, we deserve to be punished. And the ultimate punishment for doing wrong is death. But God did not want us to die. He made us to hang around with him, to walk with him, talk with him.

But there sits the death problem. How is he going to reconcile the problem that we have done too much wrong to be good any more. Somewhere down the line, we quit being an innocent child and became a sinful adult and deserve punishment.

So Jesus came to be a stand in for us. He never did anything wrong but died anyway. And he broke the bond of death by coming back to life. What all that means is that he gave us the ability to not have to die. He died for us. He took the punishment for us.

We are sorry people, that is the truth. All of us. Everybody has sinned, even those great looking people in ties and suits and dresses at church that look down on everybody else. But Jesus took the punishment so we don’t have to. And he did it because he loves us and does not want us to suffer.

So what do we do? We accept him as our Savior and let him pay the price for us. We do not have to die, because he died.

It really is that simple. We can stand before God without anything wrong in our lives because we let him take it from us. There is no way we can be good enough, but he can make us good enough no matter how bad we have been.

No matter what your life has been like, no matter what you are in here for, he can make you free and clean.

And you too can stand before God as his child. It is that simple.

daily java

Daily Java:

One day some parents brought their little children to Jesus so he could touch and bless them. But when the disciples saw this, they scolded the parents for bothering him. Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children. I tell you the truth, anyone who doesn’t receive the Kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:15-17)

The parents brought their children to Jesus. They wanted him to bless them, or just to touch them, to heal them, to kiss them. There was something about him that kids liked. His lack of artificiality, his strength, his goodness – something. And he welcomed them. but the apostles saw them as hindrances, beneath his dignity to have little babies throw up on his robe. They tried to stop them from “bothering” Jesus. He had a fat lot more important things to do than sit around holding wet babies and dirty children.

But Jesus welcomed them. and, as usual, he turned them into an object lesson. Look at these kids, he said. They are what I want you to be like. “You grown men,” he said, “I want you to like these little kids.” And it probably baffled the apostles. You would think he wanted us to grow up, not regress into children. What Jesus wanted, however, was the attitude of a child.

There is an attitude in a little child that Jesus wanted in his disciples. It was an attitude of dependence and humility.

Little children know they are little children. They are under no illusions as to their independence. They know they need their parents. They know that they are not capable of doing a lot of things and need the help. They are aware of their need.

When we get to thinking that we are so great and can do anything, that is when we get in trouble.

In 2 Corinthians 3:4-5, the apostle Paul said: We are confident of all this because of our great trust in God through Christ. It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God. About the time we think we have it all together, we lose it all. About the time we think we have the strength to do whatever we want to do in life, we lose that strength. When we finally think we have the key, we lose it.

The point is that if we try to live our lives ourselves, without the grace of God, we will lose our lives. We will lose completely. We only win if God is with us.

The child knows that. He won’t eat dinner unless you cook it. He won’t get to school or have a snack or clean sheets or a warm and comfortable home unless you give it to him. He is dependent on you. He does what he can and he has responsibilities. But ultimately, he is dependent on you, the parent.

It is a hard thing for an adult to grasp, that dependence. It is difficult to be dependent on someone else – even God – when you have been taught to be independent all your life. But that is what the grace of God is. It is the strength God gives those who are able to accept their own failure and his strength.

We tried it ourselves and look where it landed us. Now we give ourselves to God and we are once again strong.

Galatians 3: Out of Legalism and into Faith

This is the lesson I wrote for tonight in Sunday evening class. Should be an interesting one. Use it if you need or would like to.

If you want the whole series tell me and I will send it to you.

Faith in Love: The Book of Galatians

Galatians 3: Out of Legalism and into Faith

It is a tendency for people to make up rules. People see holes in what is there and they feel compelled to fill them. Some of that is a fear of doing something wrong or in not doing everything needed. Some of it is the desire to help others. Some is the desire to rule others.

The apostle Paul called this an evil spell. He said that people who tried to take away your freedom were taking away the message of the cross. The Spirit didn’t come from obedience to law. And that law would do nothing to help them in their Christian life. There is no way to become perfect in doing things yourself. The perfection can only come through the grace of Christ.

He even goes so far as to say that this dependence on works would destroy all their progress. We, as Christians, go back to Abraham as our father. It was he who believed in God and God counted him righteous. And Abraham couldn’t be justified by law because there was no law then. He was before law. When he was alive, each person came to God themselves, individually. And his children do the same. They put their faith in God.

Paul calls the desire to do works a curse. After a long list of all the things they were supposed to do in Moses’ farewell sermon, Moses says in Deuteronomy 27:26: Cursed is anyone who does not affirm and obey the terms of these instructions.’ And all the people will reply, ‘Amen.’ The keeping of the law, God said, Moses said, Paul said, the Bible says, is a curse. Jesus came to free us from that curse.

Paul uses a common illustration. An agreement cannot be revoked unless there is some kind of provision. The promise God gave to Abraham was absolute and was not to be canceled 430 years later when the law of Moses was given. Law was never made a part of that promise. Those who followed Paul around trying to change his message missed the point. The law of Moses was never meant to be permanent. The promise to Abraham was. There was no mediator or go-between to Abraham. There was to the Israelites (Moses) and there is to us (Jesus). But the promise to Abraham of his children receiving that promise of God’s presence through faith was absolute.

When Jesus came, he brought that promise again. We come to him through faith, not works. The old law was never intended to last. It was a schoolmaster that led us to Jesus. Jesus is the final point, so the law is no longer needed.

He ends up by saying that we are God’s children and are made so through our faith, not our works. When we have come to Jesus and allowed ourselves to be immersed in his grace, we have been saved. And when we are baptized into him, we receive that new clothing, the clothing of commitment. In this new situation there are no racial barriers, no socioeconomic barriers, no sexual barriers. We are his. And as such we are Abraham’s children and have his promise.

Questions:

1. Is the desire to do extra stuff for God bad? Is there nothing we need to do?

2. Does God like it when we do good stuff and encourage others to do the same?

3. Where does doing good stuff and encouraging others start being a demand on us to toe certain lines? What about what different denominations think? Are their requirements bad?

4. Why does the Holy Spirit come to us? Is it to strengthen or to cause us to do better things?

5. When our hearts are changed, we act differently. Is that works?

6. Do you think God is pleased when we do good things? Does it really matter?

7. What is the God’s law today? (cf Matthew 22:36-30; James 2:8)

8. How exactly are we children of Abraham, a guy who lived 4000 years ago.

Are segregated churches wrong? Should all churches be integrated?

daily java

Daily Java:

Suppose you sin by violating one of the LORD’s commands. Even if you are unaware of what you have done, you are guilty and will be punished for your sin. For a guilt offering, you must bring to the priest your own ram with no defects, or you may buy one of equal value. Through this process the priest will purify you from your unintentional sin, making you right with the LORD, and you will be forgiven. This is a guilt offering, for you have been guilty of an offense against the LORD. (Leviticus 5:17-19)

When I was younger, we always had the invitation song (what other churches called an altar call). And invariably someone would come with the plaintive comment, “If I have done anything to offend someone, I am sorry.”

It always smacked to me of an all-purpose, one size fits all  request for forgiveness and I always saw it as worthless. And it is. But it is also the mindset of many people in the church. What if there was some sin I did and forgot to ask forgiveness?

The Israelites, although they lived with a loving God, also lived with the knowledge that nothing they could do could remove what they had done wrong. There was no place for forgiveness in the Old Law, there was only appeasing God and removing your guilt from in front of him.

And the laws were many and varied and covered every aspect of life. Not only  that, but they were also somewhat equal. A law was a law, and if you broke any law, you broke the Law.

But what happened if you inadvertently sinned? What if you did something wrong that you did not know was wrong. What if you shook hands with a person who had improperly handled a dead body? Or if you did something beyond what you were supposed to do on the Sabbath? Or – the list goes on.

What do you do then? You have sinned and didn’t know it. There is a sin recorded to your name and you had no knowledge of it, but would in some way suffer the consequences. What do you do?

You bring a sin offering for unintentional sins and give it to the priest. He would offer the sacrifice and you would be forgiven. But when you did it again, even if by accident and not to your knowing, you would be guilty again. And have to do it again.

When Jesus came, he brought unconditional forgiveness. That means that, as long as you try to do what is right, he will forgive you.

Yes, you make a hundred mistakes during the day or week or month, depending on how good you are. But no matter ho good you are, you will do something wrong. When you do, God forgives you.

There is no need under the law of love that is in the grace of Jesus Christ to have to worry about something you might have done and ask forgiveness for that thing particularly. That is a penance-based religion, not a grace-based one.

When Jesus came, he came to set us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8) and to give us freedom through the Spirit of life. That means that, yes, we do things that are wrong. But no, we do not have to ask forgiveness for each and every one or go to hell.

Grace keeps us free. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

If we are in him, we are cleaned. Praise God for his grace.

daily java

Daily Java:

Don’t envy violent people
      or copy their ways.
Such wicked people are detestable to the LORD,
      but he offers his friendship to the godly.  (Proverbs 3:31-32)

It is Oscar night for picking the winning movies of the year. The red carpet is out and all of the magazines are salivating at the edge to take pictures of the movie stars and their husbands or wives or current live-ins or whatever.

The flash bulbs pop, pictures are taken, the stars are in their expensive clothes with their expensive hairdos, fresh from their plastic surgery and personal trainers. And they are an assemblage of beautiful people.

When we watch them on the screen, we see people that are almost super-human in their beauty and fitness. There is little or no way we can compare to them ourselves when it comes to physical beauty. In fact, there is little or no way anybody can. They look absolutely perfect.

It is just plain hard not to envy them. They are physically beautiful. When they take their clothing off – and they do at every opportunity – they are almost physically perfect. They are wealthy and adored by millions. Their every action is followed by those same millions and chronicled in magazines and newspapers all over the world.

But while they are not necessarily violent themselves, their way of life is violent to the Kingdom of God. Everything they do and everything they stand for is against what and who God is.

It is rare to find a celebrity who is a Christian. In general, their lives are lives of debauchery and godlessness. Their actions are those of people who are without any vestige of holiness. There is no beauty in their lives or in their souls. Their lives are lives of violence against all that is holy.

Their movies show this. They glorify all of the things that God descries. They glorify gratuitous sex, immorality, aberrant lifestyles. They are advertisements for everything God is against.

They are beautiful physically. And all they have is physical beauty and they will do anything they can to keep it. They know that when it is gone, all they have is gone. Their beauty is skin deep. When their skin gets old, all of their beauty is gone.

On the other hand, there are people who are not as beautiful on the outside, but are absolutely gorgeous on the inside. They do not look like movie stars but radiate the grace and glory of God.

I was irritated at one time trying to take pictures of some of the teenaged girls for the bulletin or something. I couldn’t figure out why the pictures came out badly. This one had a weird mouth, that one didn’t photograph well. The pictures just didn’t seem to capture them as I saw them as their youth pastor.

Then it dawned on me. the camera will not capture the inner person. It only captures the outer. Movie stars, celebrities – all have nothing but outer. They photograph great but when they talk, there is nothing but ugliness.

Their lives are beautiful on camera, but in person their lives are cesspools. Listen to the talk about things important to them and you can see this. Nothing that is important to me – God, love, family, honor, morality, goodness – is important to them.

I firmly believe that is why people like Marilyn Monroe committed suicide. They could not bear the thought of getting older and losing their looks. They had nothing else, nothing inside.

Looks are good. Nothing wrong with being beautiful. But I will take the lesser beauty with the inner radiance over the greater beauty with the inner emptiness any day of the week.

Yes, these women are beautiful, and it is hard not to fantasize about having such a beautiful body close to you. But sooner or later, you have to get out of bed and go on with life.

And when the inner person is empty, there is no life.

Real beauty is not skin deep. It goes to the soul when it is real.

daily java

Daily Java:

This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault. (Colossians 1:21-22)

The story of Little Orphan Annie used to be one that people really liked. Annie was a little girl in an orphanage who was adopted by a rich man. Because of this, she got to go on adventures and had a great life. She went from being a poor orphan abused in an orphanage to being the child of a rich man.

The story struck such a chord. It is the dream of all children who do not have a home, finding someone who will love them and take them home with them.

Everybody, no matter who they are, want to belong to a family. We all have that need.

God looked at us. We were without a home, without a family, lost and adrift in the world. And the funny thing is, every person goes through that. Every person finds him- or herself coming to a place where they realize that they are alone.

When God made humanity, he made us to be with him, to walk with him, to talk with him. He never intended that we be alone in the first place. He meant for us to have a face to face relationship with him.

But humanity sinned and continues to do so. Since we sin we cannot be with God. He is holy and we are not. Our systems are diametrically opposed. Yet we want to. It is our makeup to be with him.

So what to do? How do you solve this dilemma? We want to be with God, God wants us to be with him, but it is impossible. We are sinful and he has no sin.

What was done was that Jesus came. He was God yet human. He was human, yet sinless. And he could touch God and us at the same time. In doing this, he brings us to God and makes us part of his family, the family of God.

We were sinful. Now in him we are sinless because God looks at us through Jesus. We were once far away, now we boldly approach the throne of grace where we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most (Hebrews 4:16). Where once we stood outside, now we are in his presence and stand before him.

He loves us. He has always loved us. But our human condition is such that we can choose. And when people choose, they almost always choose the wrong thing. When that happens, we find ourselves outside of God where neither we not he wants us to be.

But we do not have to stay there. We can choose otherwise. And we can choose to be his children, part of his family, basking in his love, immersed in his grace.

But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57)

i am feeling like a failure lately

For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.  (Romans 3:23-24)

I am feeling like a failure lately. I wasn’t here very long. I just got to a  point that if I had to suffer one more fool gladly, I would shoot them.

So the failure weighs heavily on me. I am that kind of person, anyway, the kind that over-analyzes everything he does so that he squeezes all of the juice out of any good work he might do.

It is not that I want to do that, it is that I just do. The way I am made, I guess.

But – and here is the thing: there is always a bug in the Bible – but God knew that from the beginning. He didn’t call me and then slap his forehead in exasperation when I got tired after almost four decades of  ministry.

He knew how I am made. In fact, he made me that way. So it comes to no surprise.

Now I am not condoning sin. But on the other hand, God knows how I am. And he knows that I am discouraged and burned out.

I am not sure what he will do with me. I know that He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name. (Psalm 23:3). His word says that he will Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me (Psalm 51:10).

But all those things are somewhat academic when you feel like I feel. I want him to do them, yet I am afraid that he will not.

That is not a lack of faith. It is just human nature.

But I know this. It is not me that makes me good. It is him. He declares that we are righteous. He says that I am good. He doesn’t wait for me to become good, he just pronounces me good anyway. After all, there is no way I can become good by myself. Faith comes from him and even the desire to be with him comes from him.

So I wait. The failure lies heavily upon me, the burned out feeling, the feeling that I have been abandoned by the church, the feeling that I am alone, the sense that I have disappointed so many, including my wife, the desire I have to go ahead and disappear into drugs and alcohol that have plagued me all my life.

I just have to remember that it is he who saves, not me. It is his grace, not my ability that saves me.

And I praise him.

daily java

Daily Java:

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)

The death of Jesus looked like the end. The apostles were discouraged, the followers were ready to quit, the devil thought he had won a mighty victory. As the song goes, the demons of hell began to cheer, but little did they know that their end was drawing near.

When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, he saddled all of humanity with the knowledge of sin. All sin, Romans 3:23 says, and all fall short of the glory of God. And because we sin, we have no access to that Tree of Life that Adam and Eve were able to eat daily. When they ate the fruit of that tree, they were able to live forever.

But when God took them away from that Tree of Life, they began to die.

It took them a long time to die at first. They were still too close to the handwork of God in the creation. They lived for almost a thousand years. When God made something, he made it well. But even though they were very long-loved, they still began to die.

What a shock it must have been when someone caught the first illness, the first cold. When fatigue set in for the first time, or there was hunger, or even a cut. What a shock to see their blood flowing out.

They knew they were mortal now. And when the first person died, they knew that one day they too would die.

And everybody would one day die, because of sin. Including Jesus.

But Jesus didn’t sin (1 Peter 2:22). He did nothing wrong, yet he was mortal and as such would die.

Here was an anomaly. He didn’t sin, so he didn’t participate in what all humanity has in common: sin. Yet he was human, so he had to participate in another thing humanity all has in common: death.

But there is the power. When he died, the devil knew that he had him in his territory now. Death is the realm of satan and he has power there.

Or so he thought.

Because of his sinless life, Jesus was not bound by the fact of sin in his life and the tie all humanity has to Adam. Even though he was human, he didn’t have that tie of sin.

There was no reason for death to hold him. And God brought him back. He was under the power of God. He was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:4).

Because of that defeat of death (the one he talked about in Matthew 16:18: all the powers of hell will not conquer it), he gives us the power to overcome through him.

His strength is great enough to compensate for our weakness. We do not have to stay dead any more than he did. He had to die because he was human, so do we. But because he was also God, he didn’t have to stay dead. Neither do we through his grace.

It is only through grace we can come to God. Law gives power to sin, but grace ignores sin. By the death of Jesus, we gain life. And in that life, we gain grace.

daily java

Daily Java:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 6:23)

America is the land of the self-made millionaire, the land of doing things yourself. Or, at least, it used to be.

People always admired those who made their own way, the rags to riches story, coming from nowhere and working their way to the top.

And that is admirable. Nobody really likes to be given anything in life. Not really. We appreciate most the things we earn.

I remember layaway. You rarely see it anymore, but it was good. You paid on something for a while and when you got it out of layaway, it was paid for, all yours. With credit, you pay for it plus interest. A lot of our problem as a culture is that we get so much on credit that we never own anything.

But then comes grace. Grace is totally different from life. In life, we want to work for things and not be given them.

In grace we are given these things. We cannot work for them.

In fact, if we work our way towards anything in grace, we work our way towards death. God gives us grace.

And that is hard to realize. In John 6:28, those who were trying to understand asked Jesus, What must we do to do the works God requires? What they wanted want is a list of things to do, a checklist of requirements. If you finished them, God would be happy and give you life. But Jesus replied in verse 29, The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.

The work is belief. Now at one time in the past, I thought that meant that faith was a work, so therefore even your believing was engaging in a work. I wanted works that I could do to justify myself.

But you cannot do anything to justify yourself. All you can do is surrender to God. Even your faith is given to you. John 6:44 says No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.

The work is belief like the law is love. They are things that are somewhat mutually exclusive. You cannot work by believing any more than you can have love mandated. But yet, that is what God said.

So what does that mean? Does it mean that there is nothing we can do in God’s service? All we can do is sit around and wait for God to bring us to him?

No. but what it means is that the works we do are because we love him, not in order to make him love us. He already loves us and has already chosen us. All we do is accept his choice.

Then, as Ephesians 2:8-10 says, we do what we do because he loves us.  

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

This is the illogic of the gospel spoken of in 1 Corinthians 1. God just made it different than we would if we were him. In him, we are made to do good things. We do not do good things to be made. If we could do stuff to earn his grace, it would no longer be grace. It would be wages.

And as the word says, the wages of sin is death. Earn yourself anywhere, it is to hell. Accept the gift of heaven and you are in him.

grace over law

These are the regulations concerning contamination by mildew in woolen or linen clothing, woven or knitted material, or any leather article, for pronouncing them clean or unclean.  (Leviticus 13:59)

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  (2 Corinthians 3:17)

I was reading in my daily Bible reading this morning in Leviticus. Several chapters in Leviticus were God’s commandments to Moses. The commandments were excruciatingly detailed. They covered every possible part of life, including several that were just in case you had forgot something.

This section had dealt with uncleanness and isolation from the camp. It had to do with sores on your body and if they were a certain color or the hair on the was a certain color. Then it ends with restrictions of mildewed stuff, whether clothing or possessions.

The amount of laws was enormous, so many in fact, that I wonder how in the world they were able to keep them all. This was a pre-literate society in which most could probably not read. After all, there had never been any reason to do so, since the laws of God were not yet given.

So that meant that Moses probably had to find different people (probably Levites) and, by the Spirit of God, tell them what God had said and then go to them when you needed clarification on a subject. They were walking Torahs.

But there was no way you could keep them all without messing up somewhere. They were just too all-encompassing. It was as if God said, okay, you want a law, here’s a law. And there was no way to keep his detailed law.

Then Jesus came and nailed the handwriting of ordinances to the cross (Ephesians 2:15). He took all of that away and gave us a new and better way – the way of grace.

When the Lord sent his Son and then his Spirit, he sent freedom: freedom from restrictions and freedom from laws.

He knew we couldn’t keep all those. But he also wanted us to know that. We were stuck and he took us out and gave a better way.

His law is love (Matthew 22:36-40). His works are faith (John 6:29). He does not sit over now and tell us all of the things to do or not to do. He leaves that up to us and our relationship with him.

Ephesians 2:8-10 says For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

We do not do what we do to be saved. We do what we do because we are saved. That is the whole difference between the old and the new covenants.

Thank God I live now.

daily java

Daily Java: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the  gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9).

One of the hardest things to understand  in the Christian faith is the knowledge of grace. God gives us grace.

Grace is a gift, not a wage. He gives it to us. It does not depend on you to be holy, God makes you holy. We do what we do because we love him, not to make him love us. That is the beauty of God’s system: he makes failures perfect.

Of course, what we want to do is tie grace somehow to something we have to do. it is hard to understand that grace is free. It is a gift.

We live under the law of grace, someone says. (actually I said that the other day without meaning to) But there is no law of grace. Grace is a system, a gift, a bestowal.

Love is a law. That is true. James calls it the perfect law (James 1:25) and the royal law (James 2:8: If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right.). but grace is a gift.

Grace is a thing. You cannot serve a thing. Whereas love is an action. You can serve an action. Love, God says. We can love. But we cannot grace. We can only accept grace.

And the idea of grace is so amazing, so beautiful. The idea of grace says that it does not matter how much we have failed, how much we have sinned, no badly we have done – God makes us perfect. We cannot do it, but he can. And, to those who believe in him, he does.

Grace says that we cannot do what God wants of us, but he decides we are fine anyway. Grace says we have failed but God looks at us as perfect. Grace says that we are sinful pieces of junk, but God looks at us as sinless works of his art.

Grace and law are mutually exclusive. Law demands, grace gives. Law says, do this or die. Graces says do this because.

Under grace, the works we do are because we love God, not in order to make God love us. He loves us already. And when we believe in him and accept him, he gives us perfection. He makes us perfect. He gives us grace.

No way we can get it ourselves. It can only come from God. That is the whole point. You had your life under your control and you screwed it up. God takes it and makes it perfect.

He gives us grace.

i am damaged goods

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

I am damaged goods.

There have been a lot of things that have happened in my almost four decades as a pastor that have been truly bad. And the worst part of it is that they were done in the name of God by people who have claimed to be living by the Holy Spirit.

It has affected me in a lot of ways. And there has been a lot of anger come up because of it.

Add to that the fact that my family suffered because of it and it has sometimes been almost overwhelming.

All ministers are like that to an extent. It is one reason so many PK’s are angry about being such. They have seen the ugly side of Christians in the abuse heaped on their father in the pursuit of his ministry and because of his love for God.

Jesus knew this. After all, it was he who hung on a cross even though he had done nothing to deserve it. Those who crucified him thought that they were doing church in a normal way. Like modern folks, if they didn’t like what the preacher was saying or how he was doing his job, they would fire him. The fact that it would hurt his family and his children and him personally made no difference.

Oh, they might look sad at the meeting and say some stuff about how sorry they were to be having to do this, but they lied.

And they lied to Jesus. They told him that he was not from God because they could not believe God would say what Jesus said. They wanted a Messiah that was strong and forceful and one that would give them what they wanted, not what God wanted. After all, what they wanted took precedence over what God wanted. Did they not give to the church? They were important members.

But Jesus did what God wanted anyway and in the doing was killed.

The remarkable thing about Jesus was that as he was dying, after they had nailed nails into his hands and put a crown of thorns on his head, after they had beaten him half to death and spit on him, after they had humiliated him by his public shaming – after all this, he said Father, forgive them. They do not understand what they are doing.

He knew they thought they were doing things like they should be done, like they had always been done. He knew they didn’t understand.

They had always done that. They were like a church that has gone through minister after minister, trying to find one that would tell them what they wanted to hear. They went through prophet after prophet looking for the perfect one. The ones that told them what they wanted, they rewarded. The others they killed.

Jesus knew this and he mourned. And he said that those who know this and mourned would be comforted. He knew that there is something better than what happens here on this earth.

Those who have hurt his men and women of God will know sooner or later that they have done wrong. I do mourn for all the Preachers’ Kids that suffer for it, for all the pastors’ wives who find themselves homeless, for all the ministers who have been thrown out “in the name of God,” for all the weak members who leave the church because of the hypocrisy.

And I remember that it happened to Jesus and he forgave. I can do no less.

I am damaged goods. We all are, because we have all been damaged by sin and the effects of it.

Just like Jesus. He was the perfect man of God and still got thrown away by his church. He, like me, was damaged.

I would like to forgive like him and be like him. I am damaged goods, but I am also his child.

poor reflections

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Poor reflections. That is really all we are. No matter how great the mirror, no matter how fine the silvered backing or how good the glass, we are still all poor reflections.

I was in a rather expensive hotel a few years ago which had an enormous mirror at the end of the foyer section in front of the ballrooms. It could be seen for a long ways down the hall from the check-in area clear to the other side of the ballroom foyer.

While I was in the ballroom foyer, I enjoyed it. It was a beautiful frame and was quite large.

But when I was down the hall and saw my reflection in it, I realized that it was not a good mirror at all. Until you got right up to it, the reflection was distorted. You had to be right in front of it to get even a half-way good reflection. It was a bad quality glass.

It didn’t matter that the thing probably cost over a thousand dollars. It wasn’t a good mirror. I have had better reflections out of a five dollar mirror from WalMart.

It doesn’t matter how powerful we are or how high we are in the church structure. It doesn’t matter how much we give or anything else that those in the world consider great.

The mirror reflects according to the quality of glass. If the glass is good, no matter how cheap or expensive the mirror is, the reflection will be good. If the glass is bad, again, no matter the cost, it will be bad.

If we are good, we will reflect good. If not, no matter how often we go to church or teach or preach or give, we will not reflect good.

But even if we are the best glass around, we still are poor reflections. We are, after all, bad translations of his grace. All sin and fall short of the glory. If we say we have no sin, we lie.

So if we can reflect his grace in our lives through imperfect glass, we are doing good. His grace can overcome the glass quality and his love will show through.

How’s your glass?

daily java

Daily Java: All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith." (Galatians 3:10-11)

Law never saved anybody. The only thing law can do is point out what is wrong.

When trolling for speeders on the highway, the police no option for releasing you from their tickets if you have been speeding. All they do is punish. All the law can do is punish. That is not because the law is bad. We need law. It is just because that is the way all law is built.

That’s because there is no mercy built into law, only the pointing out of what is wrong. Law tells us that this is wrong, or that is wrong, or this other is wrong. The only way to be redeemed under any kind of law is to never do anything wrong in the first place. Under law, you cannot be good by doing stuff, if you have broken a law. It is impossible.

Yet we have all done wrong things. Someone says, Well, I’m a good person. I’m a lot better than the guy next to me. But so what? A policeman gives a ticket to the guy going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit just like he does to the guy going 30 miles an hour over the speed limit. Both are lawbreakers. The fine may vary by the speed but both get a ticket.

We all stand before God as lawbreakers. If you have ever told a lie, any lie, no matter how small or well-meaning, you are a lawbreaker. John 8 says that the devil is the father of all lies. Revelation 20 says that those who go into the lake with fire and brimstone will be accompanied by all liars.

If you have ever lied you are a lawbreaker and your chance of being saved by being a good person is nil, zip, zero, nada – none.

If you have ever stolen anything, the same is true, even if it is a grape in the grocery store. If you have ever broken a law – even a minute one like speeding or lying on your income taxes even a little bit, adding some stuff to your resume,  anything – you are guilty. 1 John 3:4 even goes so far as to say, Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. Law is law, no matter how small the infraction. We all have done bad things. Some big, some small, but all have sinned.

So there’s a problem. If we cannot be good, what do we do? The apostle Paul, writing here, says the righteous will live by faith

Faith saves us. We can’t do enough to be good. But we can accept goodness when God gives it to us.

God makes us perfect and gives us grace. He never meant for us to try to keep some system of rules. He knew we couldn’t. After all, he gave Adam and Eve one thing not to do and they couldn’t do it fast enough, even though it meant losing everything they had.

God knows we are weak and he knows there is no way we could keep rules long enough to live our lives. And he wanted us to be with him. So he sent Jesus to be good for us. We are good through Jesus and in that way get to be with God.

As he says in another passage, Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

daily java

Daily Java: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 1:1-4)

It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you cannot seem to do the right thing. God knew this from the beginning. So again, from the beginning, he set Jesus up to help us.

When we are in him, there is no condemnation. Sure we sin, and we do stupid things daily, and at time minutely, but in Jesus and in his grace, there is no condemnation.

That means that when God looks at us, he doesn’t see the stupidity we have done, he sees Jesus. When he looks at us, he doesn’t see sin, he sees grace.

He looks at us through the filter of the blood of Jesus and that filter takes away all our sin. He just sees us.

We do the same thing when we look at our kids. What kind of parent, when he looks at his children, starts remembering all of the things the child has done wrong. I love my son, but I remember when he was 6, he broke my watch, or I remember last week, he tracked mud, or I remember the lies he told me, or… No real parent, or at least, no parent who loves their children, does that.

He or she sees the son, or the daughter. After all, you love that person. It is your son. It is  your daughter. You went through a lot for them. Why would you dwell on all their problems and shortcomings. The rest of the world does that on a daily basis. They come to you for love and acceptance.

It’s the same with God. We come to him for love and acceptance. The idea of an angry God looking at us in condemnation is nowhere in the Bible. At least nor for his children.

His anger is for the unrighteous, for the ungodly, for those who live in blatant and uncaring sin, not for his children.

There is nothing you can do to make yourself loveable. You cannot get all your ducks in a row and come to God fine. You cannot do anything to make yourself fine. It is the grace of God given freely to all those who accept it that makes us righteous. We are made righteous when we accept him and his grace.

All who come to him and accept his love are made perfect and he loves them.

He loves them. He loves us. He loves me. With all my faults, with all my problems, with all of my stupidities, he loves me.

And there is no condemnation when I am in his grace.

there is no condemnation

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

One of the hardest things to understand as a Christian is the idea of grace. And it is so simple that it is hard to grasp. After all, some of the simplest things are the hardest to really understand.

Grace is divine strength and acceptance. We are not saved by what we do, we are saved by who we are.

I love my children. When they were young, they were not perfect, yet I still loved them. Even though they disobeyed me repeatedly at times, I still considered them to be my children and let them keep my name and live in my house. They were, after all, my children.

If we have given our hearts to God, accepted Jesus as our savior, we are saved. He makes us perfect.

And there is no condemnation. If we feel condemned the Bible tells us not to worry about it. Whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything (1 John 3:20-21). It doesn’t matter whether or not we feel worthy or saved or anything else. He loves us and we are his children.

We do stupid things. We look at stuff on the computer we shouldn’t, we drink too much, we have all kinds of problems – but we are his children. We are not saved nor lost by what we do. we are saved or lost by who we are.

After all, Romans 3 says all sin and fall short of the glory of God. In other words everybody has failed and no one is worthy of salvation. God gives it to us.

But we do things that are wrong. He still saves us.

We do what we do in this system because he loves us, not in order to make him love us. We already gave our hearts to him and he made us perfect.

But we can’t be perfect. We are too stupid.

True, except that God makes us perfect.

There are illogical things by the bucketfuls in the kingdom of God. But that is how God made it. If we could figure it out, it wouldn’t be of God.

We are sinful beings yet we are perfect. We are lost yet we are saved. We can’t do anything right but God saves us anyway.

That is grace. And that is us in the kingdom.

daily java

Daily Java: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer. (Romans 6:1-2).

I was a youth pastor several years ago and decided to have a circle on the floor in the old auditorium. I tossed an afro comb (which I used at the time) to one of the boys and said tell us what God has done for you and then toss it to someone else.

He went into this long drawn out thing about how much he had sinned and God had forgiven him and how grateful he was.

He tossed the comb to another boy who went into the same thing. He tossed it to a third who did the same thing.

The third boy tossed it to a girl who sat for a moment looking somewhat embarrassed. She finally said, well, I haven’t really done that much wrong.

I reached over and took the comb back and stopped the confession fest.

The girl was embarrassed because she didn’t have a whole litany of things wrong that God had forgiven her for. She felt she just didn’t have that much grace in her life.

The boys, on the other hand (and I think they were lying for the most part) felt that they had been greater recipients of the grace of God because they had been stupid and made bad choices.

I was talking to a guy several years ago, also, who told me that people could not witness to people they didn’t understand. In other words, it took a crook to witness to another crook, or on in that same vein. After all, if you had not done the time, you could not understand the crime and therefore couldn’t counsel the criminal.

Baloney.

Jesus never did anything wrong, yet he is our leader in all we do. It doesn’t take a murderer to counsel a murderer nor a thief for a thief. Quite frankly, I would rather go to someone who had lived their life well to get answers than to someone who had royally screwed up. The person who had gone through the problems of life without falling down had far more answers than the one who was weak and had to turn around.

That isn’t to say that the second person can’t do good, but why would you go to a person who had so messed up to get answers?

I have known a couple of marriage and family counselors who were good at what they did, but who had been married several times and their kids wouldn’t even talk to them. Sure, they had a great abstract knowledge of what they talked about and they were, indeed, disinterested parties.

But their messing up did not qualify them as experts.

Some have the idea that the more you sin, the greater within the grace of God you are. And that is not true.

To sin relying on his grace is a dangerous path to take.

Yes, he will forgive anything (except the refusal to accept him in your life, of course).

But his forgiveness, even though at times his grace had to pile on you like a bunch of rugs, it doesn’t make you more holy.

Live in him in such a way that you remain pure and holy.

daily java

Daily Java: “Who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,”- 2 Timothy 1:9

When I set the table, I always put out napkins. It is a fact that people will be messy when they eat. You know they will and so do they. The napkins are not encouragement to be messy, nor are they necessarily an act of prescience on my part. It is just that I know that messiness is built into the process of eating. So I put out napkins.

When God made people, he knew that if he made them the way he did, they would screw up. It is in our natures to be messy with our lives. Any tme you have free choice, you are going to have messes.

That is because rarely do people use free choice worth a flip.

It is kind of like my directional sense. It is sorry. I can’t tell which way is north or south. My father could always tell, my sister and brother can, my wife can. If he could talk, I imagine Mordecai, my wife’s antique cat, could tell. But not me.

And because of that, when given the choice, I almost always turn the wrong direction.

From the beginning of time, God knew we would turn the wrong direction when given the choice.

Ephesians 1 says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

Before the creation of the world God knew we would mess up. So, in advance, before people or trees or anything else was made, he set up grace.

When he set the great cosmic table, before the meal was even cooked, much less served and eaten, he put out napkins. So when we got stuff on us from eating the great meal of life, we could clean it off.

The napkins are, of course, grace. And the meal is life. Some of us would need a case of napkins per meal, but his grace is all-encompassing, or as 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, sufficient to show his power.

Thank you, Lord, for your grace in my life.

daily java

Daily Java: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. - 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

There is a lot to being comforted by someone. You feel bad, you hurt in some way, and you want to offer comfort. God offers us comfort in that way. We know that he cares for us and, if nothing else, ultimately will take care of us.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do here in this world, and there may be no release from what is wrong. Your comfort comes from the fact that you know God loves you and wants the best for you.

You also know that sometimes bad stuff happens anyway, and it doesn’t matter a fig whether you want it or not.

My wife is ill with multiple sclerosis and there is nothing we can do about it. We have prayed for healing and it has not come. Yet we know God cares for us and will use us anyway.

That was the point in 2 Corinthians 12 when the apostle Paul talked about pain and suffering in a Christian’s life. To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

He knew that God loved him anyway, even when he would not give him what he wanted.

As my wife progresses in her pain and suffering, she become sweeter and more gracious. I do not know why, but she does. When she prays for healing, she hears God say the same thing he said to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you.

She doesn’t like it, nor do I, but it is a fact that she is going to continue to suffer. Unless God smiles on her and decides to release her from her suffering, she will continue and get worse.

I hate it. But I love God. The pain and suffering did not come from God, but from evil in the world. And the only way God could get rid of it would be to get rid of evil, and then we would be like robots. Then we would not praise, but merely fulfill programming.

I like the choice myself. But with the choice comes the downside: the results of the choice, not only in your own life, but in the world in general.

I suppose that is why it is so hard to help a friend who is suffering who is not a Christian, who doesn’t have that internal peace in times of trouble. There is no focal point for them. All they see is the pain.

Thank you, Lord, for the grace in our lives that gives us the ability to see you through all the problems.

snowing outside

It is snowing outside right now as I am writing this. We have had a lot of snow in the past month.

In Nebraska, where we have been for the past few weeks and are planning to move, the snow is piled up to unbelievable heights. All along the streets it is probably two feet tall at least. In the mall parking lot, the snow is 10 feet high. It is strange to see snow that high.

And in the northeast they are having record snowfalls, up to three feet deep. That is a pile of snow.

As a Texas coastal guy, snow has always really fascinated me. In the army in 1970, it snowed in northeast Georgia where I was stationed at the time. Several of the guys were from snow country and they immediately began grousing about the snow.

I, on the other hand, as Mel likes to say, had not seen much snow in my life. I was, after all, from the Galveston area. I was excited and a couple of my friends were excited too. We began to play in the snow and throw snowballs and stuff. Before long, our infectious enthusiasm caught the snow country guys and they began to mess around a little in the snow, too.

It wasn’t long before we all were playing in the snow, the whole lot of us – northern, southern, in between. We were all having a grand old time.

And one thing I noticed. When the snow fell, it hid all of the ground in a beautiful way. Areas that weren’t so pretty, areas that were – all got covered and all looked the same. It didn’t matter whether it fell on trash or flowers, it all looked white and pretty.

Psalm 51:7 says, Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. The grace of God covers us like that snow. No matter what our lives were before we came to him, no matter the scars or ugliness, his grace covers us and makes us beautiful

In Isaiah, God says, Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. (Isaiah 1:18)

God’s grace is such that it can cover any sin and you will be as pretty as a snow covered field in February.