The Check of God

Matthew 5:23-24 NIV

"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

Who Makes Your Decisions?

The other day I was driving on the freeway and a car was behind me in the left hand lane.  Suddenly he sped up and cut in front of me but then slowed down so that I had to put on my brakes.  I was a bit perturbed because he could have just as easily slid behind me if he had to get in my lane.  When I found myself driving five miles an hour slower because of the guy who had pulled in front of me, I began to stew over it until it became an obsessing thought.  Why did that guy have to be in front?  Was it an “alpha dog” thing?  I felt like my manhood had been stolen from me by this one simple act of this guy getting ahead of me on the freeway.  Of course my thinking about this was irrational and of course I was being immature but in a flash, I shifted lanes, punched the gas and broke into the lead, jumping in front of the guy who had cut in front of me.  Did I feel happy about what I did?  For a moment…for a moment I was quite puffed up and filled with pride…and then I just felt stupid and embarrassed and was compelled to ask God to forgive me!

Each of us has a disposition that is rooted in Sin.  Sin impacts our personality in a wide range of ways and for some of us it means we are prone to selfishness, for others greed, of using people for selfish ends or being easily insulted or angered.  Sin can lead to us being cold and indifferent to the suffering we see, make lust our dominant thought process, strip us of our compassion and honesty.  Sin wrecks our true sense of self; many despise themselves because of how Sin has affected them, others feel inadequate and generally depressed. Sin isolates us from God and from each other and makes our disposition self-absorbed and cuts us off from the spiritual realm.  By far, the most damaging effect of Sin upon our disposition is it makes us unconcerned about sin’s impact and makes us true rebels against God’s Kingdom.

There is an under-appreciated work the Holy Spirit does in us and that is He makes us aware of where we have gone wrong…how we have veered off-course.  Jesus hinted at this in the Sermon on the Mount.  "Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23-24 NIV)  The Holy Spirit checks us…causes us to pause and think about some way that we have been wrong.  In this case it is with regard to disappointing and angering those close to us.  We see in the New Testament numerous examples of how the Spirit of God changes the disposition of His people by checking their behavior.

The Apostle Paul early in his life had the dangerous linking of a violent temper, self-righteousness and the authority to wield them as he wished.  Many have bad tempers and quite a few are self-righteous but the combination of the law and social constraints keep them both in check usually.  Paul was not encumbered by either and so he was free to unleash his self-righteous fury at will.  Paul’s wrath was directed at Christians and like Stalin and Hitler and Saddam Hussein after him, he was able to let his anger determine his actions; he was given authority to beat, imprison and kill anyone he wished.  After Paul was born again and God began working throughout his personality, his temper and self-righteousness continued to plague him.  In Acts 15:37-39 we see their lingering power over Paul.  Paul was mad at a colleague who deserted him and Barnabas on their previous mission trip and he refused to forgive his actions.  Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work.  They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. (NIV)

Not much later, that temper flashed again and many would say justifiably so when Paul was being questioned by the members of the Sanhedrin when the Roman commander asked the Jewish leaders to prove the rightfulness of their charges against him. In the midst of the proceedings, the Jewish High priest, who was not known to Paul, became angry with something Paul said and ordered Paul be punched in the mouth.  Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, "My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day."  At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. (Acts 23:1-2 NIV)  Instantly, Paul responded.  Then Paul said to him, "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!"  (Acts 23:3 NIV)  When Paul was told that he had just insulted the Jewish High Priest, Paul backed off from his angry indignation.   Paul replied, "Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: 'Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.'" (Acts 23:5 NIV) 

Now a critic of Paul might argue that the Apostle would have acted upon his anger if he had the power to do so.  What checked his temper was the force behind the Sanhedrin.  Yet, Paul was not thinking of attacking the High Priest physically, his temper only took him as far as the insult, a similar one to what Jesus used when confronting the Pharisees.  When Paul realized that he was angry with the High Priest, the Holy Spirit through the scripture checked him and he immediately backed off his temper. There is a moment when a window opens and God’s light can either come into us and fill us with His presence or we let the window close and nothing of God touches us. It is when the check of God reaches our mind and we choose to heed it or ignore it that we stand on the edge of receiving a deeper work of the Holy Spirit in us or lose that instant of intimacy with God.

The Bible often points back to the critical moment when the people of God had to decide if they were going to trust God with their lives and enter the Promised Land or close the door to Him and silence God’s voice in them.  They decided to go it on their own without God.  Of course they never would have said they were closing themselves off to God.  The Hebrews were much too religious for that.  As far as they were concerned, they were wisely not putting themselves or their families at risk.  They were still open to the Lord working with them.  He could talk to them later if He wished…that was acceptable to them.  But God doesn’t work that way something serious and terrible happened when they refused to let the check of God have its way with them.  So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did.  That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.'  So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" (Hebrews 3:7-11 NIV)

The check of God is the door that opens the way for us to enter our Lord’s rest.  “Rest” in Scripture is not some sort of spiritual or even physical “lying around”.  It is reaching the sweet spot with Christ where we are secure in Him and despite all the chaos around us, we are at peace because we have obeyed the check of God.  Let’s examine a very practical example of this.  In Acts 16 we are told that Paul and his fellow missionaries did not go into the province of Asia because the Holy Spirit checked them.  It is not that they didn’t really want to go and preach in Asia, but the Holy Spirit somehow made it clear to them not to go into the Roman province of Asia.  Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.  (Acts 16:6 NIV)  Later, Paul did go into Asia when the Holy Spirit was no longer checking him.  He (Paul) sent two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, to Macedonia, while he stayed in the province of Asia a little longer. (Acts 19:22 NIV)  In both situations God’s peace was with Paul and his companions because they were aligned with God.

Let’s now look at the Holy Spirit check from a different angle. The Spirit can also check us to do something.  "And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.  I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.  (Acts 20:22-23 NIV)  So Paul was directed somehow, and we do not know how, but somehow by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem.  In this check of the Holy Spirit, he also was cautioned about what he would encounter there.  Later, a prophet from Judea traveled up to meet Paul in Caesarea and confirmed what the Spirit had already told Paul.  After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.  Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, "The Holy Spirit says, 'In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.'"  (Acts 21:10-11 NIV)  When the people of the church heard this warning they literally wept and begged Paul not to go to Jerusalem; they loved him so much.  But Paul was as calm and peaceful as a daisy in the springtime sun.  That is how it is when we let the check of the Holy Spirit have its way with us.  No matter what He might tell us, we are settled and unperturbed when in faith we obediently let the check of the Holy Spirit have its way in us.

It cannot be said how the check of God will come to you.  It may be through a dream, or a conversation, a moment of reflection while driving in the car or most likely a quiet moment while reading the Bible but the Holy Spirit will make known to you something that aligns perfectly with Scripture and it is going to be totally up to you how you respond to the check and then what happens next is in God’s hand.  You will have His rest like Israel could have had if you let the check of the Holy Spirit have its way with you…or you could be brought into turmoil by turning away.  No one is more peaceful and content than the Christian who is letting the Holy Spirit have His way in his or her life but the converse is also true.  No one is more miserable than the Christian fighting the prompt of God and turning aside when the Holy Spirit has made something clear.  Our Lord’s promise to you could not be any clearer.  You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. (Isaiah 26:3 NIV)  It is in your hands whether you have our Lord’s perfect peace at any moment.  With steely resolve, decide you will do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do and God’s peace will carry you through every twist and turn of your day.

Salvation Doing

Matthew 19:16-17 NIV

 Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?"  "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments."

How Is Your Salvation Coming Along?

The other day I took our dog Salsa out to run around and sniff things.  I usually don’t make her go on a leash.  I like for her to have freedom to use her mind and to act upon the external stimuli she discovers.  Dogs need the opportunity to think in new settings and explore.  No one else in the family can let her go off leash in the neighborhood because I am the only one who has absolute control over her.  When I call to her, no matter how far away she has wandered, if she can hear me, she will come running.  Sometimes I can tell she doesn’t want to come and her mind is trying to decide if she will keep up her sniffing where she is or return to me.  Rarely does she hesitate for long.  As I stood outside and watched Salsa wander about, suddenly her head jerked up to attention, her nostrils flared and in a split second she shot off into the street.  We live on the corner of two busy neighborhood streets that have significant blind spots.  Cars shoot through the intersection with almost no warning and there are no stop signs to slow them.  Suddenly Salsa was in the middle of the intersection going full bore after a squirrel.  I yelled for Salsa to stop but her mind was settled and she ignored my shout.  My screams to come back had no impact on her.  Salsa chased the squirrel madly through the street and to the foot of a tree where the squirrel escaped her fury.  It was only after she was foiled that the dog returned to me, obedient once again.  I learned something about Salsa that day.  She will obey me up to the point that some desire more powerful than her wish to please me comes to her.  Salsa is still obedient; it is though, to something other than me.

Obedience is fickle not just when it comes to dogs but to people also.  There are powerful forces that impact the direction obedience takes.  Of course, people are much more sophisticated than dogs and our rules of obedience more complicated but there is a pattern we find when it comes to obedience that may be important to explore.  Why is it that a man who loves his wife will leave her for someone else even though he knows the damage it will cause and how many people he respects will be upset with him for leaving her?  How come a patient will decide not to take the medication given her despite the authority of the doctor and her knowledge medicin?  Why do children disobey their parents even if they might face dire consequences for their actions and how do you explain speeding on the freeway when tickets are so expensive and the hassle of traffic school so aversive?  What is it about disobedience that makes it such a universal habit of people?  Why do we chase squirrels into busy intersections?  Today we weill deal with part of the answer to this question.

Perhaps you, like me, find it interesting Jesus’ response to the young man who asked Him how to gain eternal life.  "Why do you ask me about what is good?" Jesus replied. "There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments." (Matthew 19:17 NIV)  The Lord connects surprisingly life with obedience to the commandments of God.  This is particularly disconcerting given what we think we know about eternal life based on the promises found in the Bible; that it is a free gift of God that comes to us through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 NIV) (John 3:16  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 2:8-10 NIV) But here in Jesus’ reply it seems that obedience to the commandments of God is required for eternal life which is the opposite of what we have all been taught!  The confusion is understandable but not necessary.  Let us look a bit more closely at this terse response of the Lord to the young man wanting to know about eternal life.

It is helpful if we consider the tenses of the verbs in this passage.  Literally the Greek text reads, “If you want into life to enter, keep the commandments!”  “If you want” is in the present tense which indicates continuous action.  In other words He is telling us, “If you continually want eternal life” or “If you always want to have eternal life” or “If eternal life is forever on your mind”, then He says, “to enter, keep the commandments.”   The second and third parts of this are tricky and it takes careful thinking to see this clearly.  “To enter” is in the aorist tense which describes a moment in time rather than continuous action.  The same is true of the command of Jesus, “Keep the commandments!”  This also is in the aorist tense and indicates a moment in time.  Now that we have gotten the technical part of the Greek language out of the way, let us examine the gist of Jesus’ words.

Eternal life is continuous and we have it as a result of the gift of God dying to take away our sin and being raised to life that we through His life might have the same eternal life as God.  Now the point Christ makes is this.  Eternal life is worked into us by God as a gift.  It is worked out of us by us in our doing.  Through Christ we always have eternal life but it is experienced in moments in time as we live out in practical and real ways the life God gives us.  How do we live out the eternal life we have in Christ?  Jesus said we do it by keeping the commandments.    The Apostle Paul put it this way.  “As you have always obeyed…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you…” (Philippians 2: 12-13 NIV) In other words, God gives you salvation.  You work out that salvation in your everyday life by doing what God tells you to do.  The reason you can obey Him and work out the salvation you possess is because it is God who is working in you in all you do as you obey Him.  Let us use an everyday example to illustrate this.

Suppose you want to make your favorite dinner and in doing so there are specific ingredients and spices and types of dishes you like the most.  You prefer it all cooked in a certain way but for some reason you have forgotten all this and now are dependent on someone else to guide you through it.  Of course it would be wise to carefully take into consideration everything that guide has to tell you for it is in your best interests to follow to the letter what you are told.  In our case, we have lost our memory or our sense of everything that makes eternal life, life.  We don’t know what it is because Sin has warped our grasp of it.  The Lord however does know what that life is and how it is put together and so He has given us commands that make that life come together in a practical way.  That is what the commands of God are, the way of Life…the way of the Eternal Life.

Without spending any time reflecting right now on what those commands that make eternal life real life are, we can take a moment to consider a case study on the application of obeying the commands of God and seeing life come out of it.  The fiancé of Mary, the mother of Jesus was described by Matthew, one of Jesus’ Disciples as a “righteous man”!  (Matthew 1: 19)  What does that mean?  It means he obeyed the commands of God.  Now what did Joseph know of God, eternal life and all God wanted to make of him?  Not very much probably!  But he was about to discover a great deal about God’s life with him.  He may not have been the first man ever to find out before he got married that his fiancé was pregnant with someone else’s child but he certainly was given the most unusual explanation for it.  Mary of course “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:18 NIV)  This would have seemed like utter nonsense to Joseph but he was a “righteous man” and so he decided in his best sense of what the scriptures taught of how to live and conduct one’s business that he would quietly divorce Mary rather than make all sorts of public accusations and bring her up to local authorities for stoning.  He could have done this of course and certainly none of his friends would have faulted him for it but he knew about love and mercy and he knew about the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself.

It was in Joseph’s righteousness that God, opened up to Joseph His plan for Joseph and Joseph’s fiance.  It came in a dream.  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:20-21 NIV)  We mustn’t succumb to the temptation to quickly run right through all that happens here because the account is so familiar to us.  It is a perfect lesson on the value of obedience.  Joseph had a dream…all of us have had dreams and nearly all of the dreams we have we give little if any notice.  They are generally an absurd tangle of material coming out of our unconscious.  In Joseph’s case…at least this time, a dream was a revelation of God to him.  Any of us, with only the information Joseph had in his grasp, would not have faulted Joseph if he had ignored the dream and proceeded with his plan to quietly divorce Mary.  Joseph though was a righteous man and careful to do what God said to do.  He was determined to keep the commands of God and this, He realized, was a command of God.  It was a strange command and one that on the surface appeared to be asking too much of Joseph but it was a command nonetheless and so he did it.  He obeyed.  When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (Matthew 1:24-25 NIV)

Not long after that Joseph had another dream and God opened Himself up to Joseph even more of his plans and told Joseph that he needed to take his young family to Egypt because King Herod was going to try and kill the baby Jesus.  What did Joseph gain in all these “obeyings”?  Jesus defined eternal life in a way we don’t often consider.  Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. John 17:3 NIV Eternal life is continual intimate knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ.  In our case study, Joseph did what God told him to do (i.e. followed a command), and the Lord revealed more of Himself to Joseph.  If eternal life is knowing God more and more as we go along, and if in obeying the Lord’s commands for us, we dive deeper and deeper into eternal life, then the reward for doing what God tells us to do is that we grow closer to Jesus.  Consider this as you take one of God’s commands to obey.  “God is love.”  Thus, the command you are given is given to you because of God’s love and when you obey it, the outcome of obeying will be something due to God’s love for you and in obeying you are filled even more with His love than you were before.  Go to God and ask Him to show you a command He wants you to obey.  He will reveal something to you.  Don’t hesitate, do what He tells you to do.  It may not seem practical, the command.  It may even seem to be mean for God to make the requirement.  But if you do the command, if you obey God in it, you will like Joseph, discover that God’s love for you is greater and more wonderful than you ever knew before.

Today See God

Is it a crazy assumption that God will do now as has been described of Him doing in the past?  Nothing unsettles our sensibilities quite like the long wait for God to act today as we have heard He did before.  Every rational thought argues against willful  anticipation of supernatural entries into our fussy world.  It seems absurd to the common mind that the Lord still operates within the same paradigm as records indicate He once did.  And yet that is precisely what we are expected to believe when we take even the most casual glance at the Scriptures.  The" Fairy Tale" motif swirls about within the interpretive dance steps of  the normal Christian's take on life lived out daily.  In fact what is "Christian" today is generally not what once was Christian when everything said about God in Scripture was believed.  The Church assumed rightly God acted in their today as He had during the today of Moses or Elijah.  They realized the Lord would grip them relentlessly "now" even when they went through the fire, even when they fell into the water.  It did not come easily.  Peter had to first get wet and Silas had to wait in twitching pain for his prison midnight but eventually they came around.  Personal experience made the difference for them just as it does here for us.  The prayer had to be uttered, the cry bellowed, the worship to the God of heaven offered.  It was only then that Elijah saw things just as Moses had, Peter saw things as Elijah had and Paul saw things as Peter had.  The skeptic does not die peacefully but in fits and starts and with loud moans and lusty screams.  The man without God is a hollow shell.  But add the Lord Jesus Christ to him and He lives vivaciously, vividly, like a bright beam of sunlight piercing the night sky.  You, joined with the Lord will see all that Elijah did, all that James did and not feebly either but decidedly, firmly.    We stumble over little unseen miracles because we live with meager faith; we grip the majesty of God with the loosest of holds because we are  more content to hear about God than we are to know Him.  "Taste and see that the Lord is good", implies that you must do something about your hunger and thirst if you are ever to gain the smallest sense of God.  The historical documents have been given us not that we might dream of days gone by but that we might do the very things the saints of the past did.  Stay in the shallows of common faith and you will merely read the tales of God; go out of the harbor where storms threaten to dump you in the sea and the Majesty of the Almighty will find you .  You will no longer make your way through the shadow lands of legendary ghosts;  you will instead enter the actual world where Christ reigns and you join with Him in His Glory.  Stop making so much of the God of ancient times if you don't intend on taking hold of the Christ who today stands before you and whispers, "Come".

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?  Matthew 16: 8 NIV