Fear God

I heard a good message in Sunday school about what it means to fear God. It was from a new video by Francis Chan: Fear God.

He started out by talking about how Christians have a hard time defining the fear of God. A common term used is respect. He disagreed and I do too. If Scripture had meant respect then that is what it would have said.

I think one reason we have a problem is that we want to present God as all love. Fear just doesn’t fit with that. We tell people that God loves them. Maybe what we need to tell people is they better be terrified of God also.

As I thought about it, I think fearing God means to take Him seriously. He is love but he is also a judge. If someone rejects the Gospel they will spend eternity in hell. So too, if a Christian messes around with pet sins, they will face certain consequences.

As a parent I want my kids to know I love them but I also want them to take me seriously. I want them to fear the consequences of disobedience and I hope that what they learn in their relationship with me will be transferred to their relationship with God. I want them to know that if they sin there will be consequences.

Another reason we may have a problem with understanding the fear of God is if we have a deficient understanding of God. Where do we get our standards? How do we know what God is like? How should we live? For many people, the answers come from the world. They are discipled by TV, movies and their friends.

The Bible is the source of the right answers. It’s not enough to have one on the shelf or to hear it talked about in church. If we want to know the fear of God and how He wants us to live then we must become disciplined students. We must have enough washing of our minds with the Word to counteract the steady diet we all receive every day from the things our eyes see, our ears hear and out hearts feel.

Philip

Longing for Jesus

Thoughts from my reading in Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp. Devotional is indented.

Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation. Psalm 51:14

It is dramatic anticipation at its finest. It is the best of foreshadowing. Every line drips with the drama of the necessity of what's to come. It's one of those moments when it's very clear that the present makes no sense without the future. If you know your Bible at all, you can't read Psalm 51 without feeling it. If this psalm has no future, then its cries are the vain screams of the tormented heart of a desperate man and little more. David's entire hope in the present is tied to an event in the future. No future, no hope. Welcome to the story of redemption.

You see, David's sin, Nathan's confrontation, and the resultant conviction and confession are a mini-chapter in the grand, origin-to-destiny story of redemption. David's prayer for forgiveness cries for more than a God who's willing to forgive. David's plea reaches out for an actual means of forgiveness.

As this meditation goes on to point out, there was a system of sacrifices that “covered” sin but something was missing. The blood of bulls and goats wasn’t enough. There was covering but not cleansing.

David didn't fully understand it, but the cries he prayed and penned in Psalm 51 were a cry for the final Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the drama of this psalm. In acknowledging the power and pervasiveness of his sin, David isn't reaching out only for full and complete forgiveness, but for deliverance as well, the kind of deliverance that can only be found in the spilt blood of the promised Messiah, who would someday hang willingly on the hill of Calvary. Psalm 51 is a hymn of longing. Psalm 51 longs for Jesus.

Living on this side of the cross, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like before. It’s easy to take things for granted. I know what the Bible says about what Jesus did on the cross. I know that I can come boldly before the throne of grace but before the cross, sacrifice was brought with fear. I have the indwelling Spirit of God living in me that bears witness that I am a child of God.

As David prayed for mercy, unfailing love, and great compassion powerful enough to wash away transgression and create purity of heart, he wasn't praying for a thing; no he was praying for a Person. Jesus is the mercy for which David prays. Jesus is the unfailing love that is his hope. Jesus is the compassion for which he cries.

Every time you acknowledge your sin, you long for Jesus too. But you're not longing for the final sacrifice, because it's been made. No, you and I long for the final deliverance. We long for that moment when we'll be taken to the place where sin will be no more.

I do understand that longing; I have it. I long for a place of righteousness, where sin will be no more and where I will be all that God wants me to be.

A question from the meditation:

Is there any evidence in your life of hopelessness, discouragement, cynicism, or despair? Take time to confess your struggle to believe and bask once again in the reliable promises of your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, these things can be a part of my life. I see what I am inside and I see the effects of sin all around me. In losing sight of the victory to come, I can become tempted to give up.

Philip


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Happy Birthday to me

I was adopted. If it was today rather than 55 years ago, there is a good chance I would never have been born. I don’t know the circumstances of my conception or what was going on with my birth mother when she decided to give me up for adoption. I am glad she gave me life and that she gave Ida and Al Faustin the opportunity to make me a part of their family.

Abortion is the “easy” way out these days. I’m glad that it wasn’t available 55 years ago like it is today and I’m glad society didn’t sanction it back then.

I celebrate my birth mother today as I do every year. I don’t know who she is and she probably doesn’t know who I am. Thanks Mom for giving me life!

Thanks also to my adopted parents who were everything a child could ever want or need. God placed me in their hands and I am ever thankful for that. I look forward to seeing them both again in heaven.

Thanks to my heavenly Father for giving me a new birth and making my life worth living.

Philip

The Terrible Trinity

Thoughts from my reading in Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp. Devotional is indented.

Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! Psalm 51:1 – 2

The Bible doesn't pull any punches as it describes the scary reality of sin. You have the powerful words of Genesis 6:5: "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time". Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time! Could there be a more forceful way of characterizing the pervasive influence of sin on everything we do?

Isn’t that the battle we face? Evil is always staring us in the face. The world is always trying to squeeze us into its mould. If we let down our guard, sin will get the upper hand.

Psalm 51 is also one of the definitional passages when it comes to sin. David employs three words for sin that really define the nature of what our struggle with it is all about. The first definitional word he uses is the word transgression. To transgress means to acknowledge the boundaries and to step willingly over them. I transgress when I knowingly park in a no-parking zone. I know I'm not supposed to park there, but for the sake of personal convenience, I do so anyway. Often our sin is just like this. We know that God has forbidden what we're about to do, but for personal success, comfort, or pleasure we step over God's prohibition and do exactly what we want to do.

When I was a young Christian I heard a teaching that pointed out that I am to obey the laws of the land. This includes things like speeding. It changed the way I drove. Another good benefit is that it probably kept me from getting a lot of traffic tickets. That’s what came to mind as I read this description of transgression. There are a lot of things I want to do because they benefit me in some way but they are wrong to do.

But not all of our sin is conscious, high-handed rebellion. So David uses a second word, iniquity. Iniquity is best described as moral uncleanness. This word points to the comprehensive nature of the effect of sin on us. Sin is a moral infection that stains every thing we desire, think, speak, and do. Sadly, no infant since the fall of the world into sin has been born morally clean. We all entered this world dirty and there's nothing we can do to clean ourselves up. Iniquity is like inadvertently putting a pair of bright red socks into the wash with a load of whites. There'll be nothing that escapes the red stain and remains completely white. In the same way, sin is pervasive. It really does alter everything we do in some way.

Bad to the bone fits with this description of iniquty. This is the stuff we don’t even think about; it’s what we are. It’s why selfishness and self-centeredness are so a part of my life. I view everything through this lens.

But there's a third word that David uses that gets at another aspect of sin's damage. It's the word sin. Sin is best defined as falling short of a standard. In our moments of best intention and best effort we still fall short. We're simply unable to reach the level of the standards that God has set for us. Sin has simply removed our ability to keep God's law. So, we fall short of his standard again and again and again. In your thoughts you fall short. In your desires you fall short. In your marriage or family you fall short. In your communication you fall short. At your job you fall short. With your friends you fall short. We simply are not able to meet God's requirements.

Isn’t this frustrating? I know what I should do and want to do it but I don’t. I don’t want to speak evil with my mouth but the words just slip out.

This "terrible trinity" of words for sin really does capture with power and clarity the nature of the war that rages inside each one of us. Sometimes I do not do exactly what God requires, but I don't care because I want what I want, and so I step over his wise boundaries. Sometimes I look back on what I've done, having thought that I'd done pretty well, only to see ways in which my words and behavior were once more stained with sin. And over and over again I'm confronted with my weakness and inability. I fall short of God's standard even in moments of good intention.

How can this terrible trinity do anything other than drive us to seek the grace that can only be found in the divine Trinity? In our sin we need a Father who's not satisfied with leaving us in this sad state of affairs but will exercise his sovereign power to set a plan in place that will rescue us from us. In our sin we need a Son who is willing to take our punishment so that we can be forgiven. And in our sin, we need a Spirit who will dwell within us, empowering us to do what we would not otherwise be able to do.

A question from the meditation:

How do the three biblical words for sin - transgression, iniquity, and sin - help you to understand the daily battle in your heart between right and wrong?

One way it helps it to show the different battles I face. There are the desires I must fight against. There is my nature that needs to be transformed. There is failure even when I want to act differently.

Thankfully, I am not in this battle alone. I don’t have the strength or ability in myself but with God’s strength and grace I can do different that I have before.

Philip


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