Good

Luke 18:19 NIV

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good — except God alone.”

What Is Really Good?

Can I be blamed for thinking that California is one of the best places on Earth to live?  Of course there is much that is wrong with the state but nearly all of its problems can be pinned on the values and actions of those who live there.  There is something to be said though of a region that has both Yosemite and Muir Woods, the beaches of San Diego and the San Francisco Bay.  California certainly isn’t perfect but there are some aspects of it that approach perfection.  I was driving with a friend through Mississippi and he introduced me to the woods there, pointing out how lovely the forests were.  It was about like when I went with a classmate to visit his family living in Southwest Missouri and he commented on the beauty of the Ozark Mountains.  Now I am not one to denigrate another person’s “pride and joy”  but I had difficulty complimenting the skinny pine trees of Mississippi after hiking through redwood groves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  And I must say that there are mountains and then there are MOUNTAINS.  Who am I to tell someone what to like and not like.  Perhaps New York pizza really is better than Chicago style and Japanese cars are better than Russian ones.  Yet am I correct in telling you that you would be happier living in the San Francisco Bay Area than you would be  staying in Amsterdam or Beijing, or Branson, Missouri?  We have a right to our opinions…and every one of us has them!

Goodness has the feeling of being just another aspect of opinion.  If you say you’re good, does that mean you are?  Serial killers and pedophiles and vandals who tag sidewalks may say they are good and really believe they are but is it true?  Probably even Stalin’s mom saw something good in him and Hitler was respected and honored by quite a few people.  It is funny though how easy it is for us to see the good in ourselves and not see it in others.  We use a sort of sliding scale when we evaluate people…whether it is ourselves or others.  Part of the reason we can see good in “bad” people is that there still is in each of us the hint of the good God put in us when he made us.  It may not be developed goodness or disciplined goodness we see, it might only be strand of what was left in us when the Lord put us together but it is there and we fool ourselves into thinking that is who we are rather than the hint of the good of God Himself. 

The account of James and John thinking they were good because they wanted fire to come down from heaven and burn up a poor Samaritan village because the people had the audacity to not want to pay to feed and house Jesus and His disciples is too true to human nature ever to have been fabricated.  As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.  And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"   But Jesus turned and rebuked them,  and they went to another village. (Luke 9:51-55 NIV)  I am sure, and probably you are too, that James and John thought they meant well, thought their hearts were in the right place but clearly Jesus saw things differently.  It was not good that fueled their anger at the Samaritans although if you had asked them before Jesus rebuked them, they probably would have seen themselves as good people.  You and I can’t judge them.  We might just as well have said exactly what James and John did if we were there.  This though is the problem with the strand of good we all have and make much of.  All too many of us think we are so good that we don’t need God…don’t need Him to significantly change us, don’t need Him to remake us.

I can’t imagine Jesus was very happy with one of the discussions the disciples had when He was gone.  If it were not for the fact that it was so very telling of the human condition, we might get a good laugh at it.  Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.  Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:24-26 NIV)  Now if we just think a bit about this whole argument, there is a critical observation we must make.  At no point do the disciples consider what part God must play in their lives for them to be good!  It is all about them and their abilities, their morality, their skills, their religion.  God is not even needed.  Did they have to be saved?  Was there any hint in them that salvation was required?  It is fascinating, this strange reluctance to see ourselves, to really look at who we are without God.  We have that strand of good in us to keep us content but the truth of who we are eventually hits us.  We need a Savior.

Consider the sad case of Joseph and his brothers.  Joseph’s brothers were fed up with Joseph.  They had enough of Joseph being the favorite of their father, enough of his proud strutting about with his fancy coat and enough of the dreams he claimed to have had that according to Joseph foretold that they all, even their mothers and father would bow before Joseph one day as if he were some sort of king.  The boys decided to fix Joseph and with their dad not around, sold him into slavery.  So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe — the richly ornamented robe he was wearing — and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.  As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.  Judah said to his brothers, "What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?  Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood." His brothers agreed.  So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:23-28 NIV)

Evil like that is tough to comprehend.  How could anyone do such a thing and yet it was done.  Each one of those brothers thought he was a better person than Joseph.  Each believed Joseph was arrogant, selfish and self-righteous.  You don’t sell your brother into slavery if you haven’t decided he is pretty bad.  Here is the irony of this.  Each brother felt like he was good, a decent soul because that strand of good was in him, and yet…At least two of them became murderers, one slept with his father’s common-law wife and one sought out prostitutes after his wife died.  We don’t know about the rest…they were at least bad enough to sell their own brother into slavery.  Here is what we see in all of us.  Each brother thought he was the good one…at least better than his brother was and each brother thought his brother was worse than he was, more evil and needing to be fixed.

There is a passage in Isaiah that does not receive the attention it deserves.  It has a profound message describing what God is going to do with us.  He will save us, that is true…or we should say He does save us.  The prophecy was made eight hundred years before Jesus brought us our salvation though and it says something quite important about what that salvation will do for us.  A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5 NIV)  You and I are that desert.  You are the one God will Himself make right so that you are a fit place for Him to live.  The good you think is good will be made perfect.  No strand of self-righteousness will be left to it for God Himself in Christ will make it truly good.  The evil in you will be leveled, and torn out and the glory of the LORD will be revealed in you.  Everyone will see it…that you are perfect, lovely in every way.  God will walk in you and make His home in you and nothing, not the worst of your sins, not the ugliest of evil that could ever be found in you will be there anymore.  There will be no corrupted goodness, no pretend morality or broken love or fractured peace.  Only goodness, real goodness that perfect God can make of you.  He has spoken.  And once again God will say of you.  “You are very good.”

Authority—Before the Fall

Genesis 1:27 NIV

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

What Is Your Place In This World?

If you were asked the question, “What is your place in this world”, how would you respond?  Most of us would probably consider our careers.  Have I done well?  Am I successful?  Is my job a good fit for me?  Am I leaving my mark?  Has my life mattered?  Many would think also of their families and how they have impacted those close to them.  Am I respected?  Do others love me?  Does it matter to anyone if I have lived or not?   I have worked with plenty of people who hated their jobs.  They concentrate more on their cell phones than they do on their work.  I was recently in a class room and I looked about and saw all the other children’s workers checking their phones rather than interacting with the kids.  How many of us wonder if what we do counts for anything and have quit trying to do our best because it does not seem to matter if we work hard or not.

Life was much different before Sin entered the universe.  One area of great change was the way the first people fit into the world they were given.  Authority shifted dramatically in the post sin world.  Let us look at how it was at first and we could gain valuable insight into the way it once more may be.  When the Lord declared His mission statement for the people He created, it was to be in effect ruler over the earth.  Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26 NIV)  The Hebrew word for “image” here means something made to look like something else.  “Likeness” translates another Hebrew word that means, “of a similar appearance, something that something else.

God made people like He did so that they would be a good fit for taking charge over the earth.  It is like hiring someone who has all the qualities needed to be a successful sales rep.  Only God did the work of creating the ideal ruler of His new world.  Some have contended that the Lord made the earth so that people would have a great place to live.  It actually is more accurate to say that God made people in a perfect way to take authority over the world He created.  The first command we have recorded in Scripture is the Lord’s order to Adam and Eve to populate the earth and rule over the creatures of the world.  God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."  (Genesis 1:28 NIV)

The Hebrew term translated “subdue” is similar in idea to the command to rule.  It means to take charge, be the one that makes the rules.  Consider carefully what a unique situation this was, one completely foreign to any of us.  It was a sinless world ruled by a sinless people.  The creatures had nothing to fear of their sovereign kings and queens.  Adam and Eve had no reason to hurt any of them.  The two were vegetarians and did not need nor want to kill the animals for food.  They also were naked and were not looking for clothing either.  Not even the sheep had to concern themselves with being “fleeced”.  There would be no fishing and hunters would not be hiding up in tree stands.  Adam and Eve were to be the perfect caretakers of a world they ruled.

A lovely picture of just how profound the relationship was between Adam and the creatures of the earth is the brief comment made in Genesis 2 about how the Lord made it clear that His first human was taking charge.  God gave Adam the opportunity to pick out names for each of the terrestrial creatures.  Few have noted the beauty of the moment.  Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.  So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. (Genesis 2:19-20 NIV)  Consider the serenity as individually the birds and creatures of the land peacefully paraded past Adam and the Lord, giving Adam time to carefully consider what to name each one.  Like a father or a mother who thoughtfully comes up with a name for a newborn, Adam was a loving parent to the creatures of the world.  With great affection in his heart for each one, Adam picked out what seemed to be the perfect name for the gentle and trusting beasts God brought him.

Genesis 2:15 is often listed as the mandate for work found in Scripture but it is much more than that.  It is the holy calling of the people of the world to care for God’s creation and cherish it as a gift of immeasurable worth.  In a land unscarred by Sin, it must have been a place of exquisite beauty.  More than work to Adam and Eve, caring for the world before them was a joyful daily existence, much like the park ranger assigned to Yosemite when it first opened or the curator of the Louvre who is appointed to keeping pristine the magnificent works of art found there.  The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15 NIV)  What “working it” entailed in a perfect world cannot be said for certain but we must believe it was a joyous responsibility.  The Hebrew term translated “work it” is built on the root of the word for servant.  Adam and Eve were to be servant kings of the land where they lived, caring for it and adding value to it.  “Take care of it” is the translation of the Hebrew verb “shamar” which means to keep, preserve, watch and protect.

The perfect analogy for the work of Adam and Eve in the land God gave them is the description of the Good Shepherd in Psalm 23.  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.  He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4 NIV)  As protector and guardian of the sheep, the shepherd, at least the good one, is always looking for ways to make life better for the sheep.  The shepherd lightens the load for the sheep, does everything possible to enable the sheep to prosper and have good lives.  The good shepherd does not see the sheep as dumb beasts but as jewels in her crown.  Work in a perfect world such as the one the Lord gave Adam and Eve was a joy and a cherished responsibility.

Jesus gave the calling of work its highest affirmation when He spoke of Himself as a mere shepherd.  The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep.  The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice.  But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice."   Jesus used this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them…"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.  "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father — and I lay down my life for the sheep.  (John 10:2-6, 11-14 NIV)

Work is not a chore for such a person as this.  It is an act of love and selflessness.  Some people work to earn a paycheck and make names for themselves.  Others, like Adam as he went about the tasks God gave him, made his world a better place. Jesus did the same.  If you live as a future resident of God’s perfect world, you have a choice each day.  Will you build up others and improve their lot in life or will you take advantage of others and use them to get your way?  Wherever you go, and whatever you do, you have the opportunity to make the world a better place because you were a part of it.

Download of Righteousness

The Gospel is the very best God has to offer us.  It is the fulfillment of all His thinking and rises monumentally above every invention of mankind and is beyond the complexity of the most impressive of His own creations.  The Gospel is the culmination of love; love taken to the furthest dimension.  God's thought entered physicality when He placed in Jesus Christ the totality of the sins of the world and gave man the right to execute Him.  Pay careful attention to 2 Corinthians 5:21.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (NIV)  For our sake, Jesus Christ became sin.  He was all the sin of all the world when He was crucified.  For what reason?  It was so that all the righteousness of God might be our righteousness.  Actually, it is more that all the righteousness of God might be us.  This is odd to consider.  We always think of our righteousness as doing the trick when it comes to God or at least hoping it does.  We make our choices and do what is good...most of the time...sometimes...at times.  Yet God has made a trade with us in Christ.  He took our sin and gives us His righteousness.    There is nothing like this in all of religion...only real God could come up with such a plan.  It is grace to the nth degree.  The Christian life is not a matter of trying to get things right.  It is developing the habit of letting the rightness of God come out of us.  Every skill set you see in the Sermon on the Mount is possible because we are the rightness of God in flesh.  This body, which has been so many times an instrument of rebellion against God is noble for this very reason.  The rightness of God is part of it and like a sponge that is squeezed; His rightness comes out of this body when we let the Holy Spirit bring the mind of Christ into full focus as we think.  Thinking in God is simple.  We just have to train our wild pony of a mind to do it by making the Scriptures our framework for how we process everything we encounter.

As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame."       Romans 10:11 NIV

The Struggle of Why

Romans 9:20 NIV

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Do You Have a “Why” Question For God?

Growing up, like you, I had many “why” questions for my parents…most of which I knew better not to ask.  Why do we have to have a Volkswagen bus instead of a normal car?  Why do you serve peas for supper?  Why do I have to wash the dishes?  Why can’t we watch my favorite TV shows?  Why would you think mashing the roast beef with the potatoes and carrots and peas and onions and other quasi food items, mixing them together and calling it “hash” would be a good idea?  Why can’t I watch the second feature at the drive-in too?  How come my allowance is so small?  Why don’t we take more votes when family decisions are made?  What made you think that a baby blue polyester leisure suit should be my Christmas present?  Could I get my hair cut by someone who earns his living at it?  Can we listen to something other than country western music?  Why does Dad need to know about my grades?  Can we go to Disney Land for our vacation rather than camping this year?  What “Why” questions would you ask of your parents if you could?

Perhaps you ask them why they treated you like you did, or why was your brother or sister the “favorite child”.  Maybe you would ask about a relative who was kind of strange or whether they were happily married or glad about their career choices or what they really thought of God.  We might have lots of questions we would ask of our parents if we thought it appropriate or if it was possible.  Are there “why” questions you have for God?  What do you “wonder why” about God’s dealings with you?  Do you have lots of “why” questions for Him or just a few?  What is your most important “why” question for the Lord?

Our “why” questions seem to grow in magnitude and number when the toughness of life bears down upon us.  There are a number of ways we attach causation to the difficulties and painful parts of their existence.  One is bad luck.  There is we guess some force in the universe that operates and sometimes the coin turns up heads and other times tails and when it is good luck we try to keep doing what we are doing and when it is bad luck, we scramble for ways to “change our luck”.  We wear different kinds of clothes, take a different route to work, give a homeless person an extra dollar.  We can just assume that everything that happens is random and without any sort of organization.  Jackson Pollock famously painted using random drips and drops and splatters to create his art and it represented this idea, that there is neither rhyme nor reason to life; it is just a bunch of splatters shot about by mindless nature.  There is another way to look at the tough parts of life and that is to blame it all on Satan.  Satan is the one who takes our lives apart and ruins them to satisfy his cruel fancies.  A fourth view of these rough times is to guess that God is mad at us and punishing us.  Sometimes we see God as cruel for He deals with us more harshly than we deserve.  Like Job, we know we haven’t been perfect but why does He come down on us as hard as He does?

Now we must see what the Bible says about those rough times we have faced.  Hebrews 12: 5-6 gives us deep insight into what goes on behind the scenes when painful experiences come our way.  And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (NIV) Now what is almost irritating in this is that we are told that the very experiences that tear us apart and make us miserable and even angry should encourage us.  How can we be encouraged by the loss of our job, by the long and painful illness, by the troubles we have with our children and by the discouraging things people say to us?  It is impossible unless we have Christ dwelling within us and we understand what God is doing for us.

We must realize that there is a real possibility that we may not even be aware of how much work God has to do with us.  When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, he had no idea just how badly he had acted.  It is strange to consider that David, the author of so many of the Psalms in the Bible could have thought it was ok to have sex with another man’s wife and then order the general of his army to position that man on the battle lines at such a place that he would be killed.  One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"  Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her…In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.  In it he wrote, "Put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die." (2 Samuel 11: 2-4, 14-15 NIV) It seems David had grown comfortable with what he had done…so comfortable that he had no qualms about marrying the woman after her husband died.  When Uriah's wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him.  After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing David had done displeased the Lord. (2 Samuel 11:26-27 NIV)

This is critical to realize when it comes to the psychology of sin.  We can sin and sin egregiously and not even rattle our conscience.  There is a masking agent attached to many sins that can render the conscience impotent.  We have seen this often in our personal experiences; Christians and non-Christians alike not aware that what they have done was wrong.  We may think that they are just trying to cover up their sin by pretending they don’t see anything bad in their behavior but we would be wrong in many cases.  Like David, the sin itself has put the conscience to sleep in the matter.  The mechanism for this is beyond our discussion today but it is too ubiquitous a phenomenon to ignore.  In David’s case, he went nine months without being affected by the damage he had caused.  It was only after the prophet Nathan confronted him that David grasped the immensity of his evil acts.  “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites...Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the Lord." (2 Samuel 12:9, 13 NIV)

Because sin damages our personality so severely and the habit of sin is so difficult to stop once it gains momentum, God chooses to intervene with those He loves.  He “disciplines” them, Hebrews 12 insists.  The word translated “discipline” means to train up, nurture, instruct, correct.  It is often used in conjunction with children; it is in many ways a family term.  In Christ, we are a part of His family and we are His children.  Because of the severity of David’s sin and the great damage it was causing among God’s people, the Lord disciplined the king ruthlessly.  He took David and Bathsheba’s son and promised David that other children of his would rise up against him in rebelllion.  That was a dreadful blow; a horrendous shot.  David prayed with weeping when the baby Bathsheba bore became deathly ill so we know it was terrible for David but God did not give in to David.  He took the child and later two of his adult children tried to wrench the kingdom from him.  The discipline of God was severe.

It takes faith to believe that a father or mother punishes you out of love.  You can’t just accept the discipline at face value as good…at least not when you are a child.  As adults or young adults, we too need faith to believe the harsh moments in our lives are part of God’s work with us done in love.  The one to one correspondence is almost never as neat and easily recognized as we saw with David.  You have adultery and murder in you.  I will take that out of you with this discipline.  Much of the time we cannot even figure out what we might have done wrong when God disciplines us.  God’s promise though is that the hard times never come because God hates us or because they just happen, always God is in charge of what we face and it is never because He despises us.  There is a second term the Lord uses in Hebrews 12: 6.  …the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son." (NIV)    The word translated “punishes” means to “scourge”.  It is discipline capitalized.  No one can describe this as easy or comfortable.  Remember, Jesus was “scourged”.  We realize that there are many parts of us that God must work on with severity and we may cry when we face what he gives us.  God’s goal though is not for here; it’s that later we will be rid of every ounce of sin and settled in holiness…perfect children of a perfect God.

Our goal is comfort.  We love to be able to relax and enjoy the ride.  God’s goal is holiness.  He loves to develop perfect people.  These two goals can be at loggerheads; butting up against each other like two mountain goats.  As He disciplines you, our Lord is proving your holiness; showing you and all those watching you what sort of person you are in Christ.  He is making you strong that your strength can be transferred to those not as strong as you, making you forgiving so that your forgiveness can be transferred to those not as forgiving as you, making you kind toward those who mistreat you so that your kindness can be transferred to those not as kind as you.  My father went through special training that he might protect those who would need his strength and help.  You are being trained by God that you might of great good for those He brings into your life.  If you are not trained to be patient, someone who needs your patience won’t have it when she needs it.  If you are not disciplined to be at peace with the storm, those who face the storm may not have enough peace to get past it.  The one who grieves finds great comfort in a friend who has grieved herself.  You are not your own.  You were made by God to be a perfect friend to each one you meet.  The storm you face is for them…not just for you.

Portal

The minute we decide we are incapable of keeping one of God's commands, we are cooked.   We have released ourselves to Satan to do with us however he wishes.   There only two options at every point of decision which has been outlined in Scripture; we are tools of Satan or friends of God.  The broad categories of acting in life are:  love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.  We weave in and out of these points of reference throughout the day.  Is this thought or action “loving God”?  Is what I am pondering or doing loving my neighbor as myself?  The more we live in Christ, the growing level of habit these two ways of being will become.  But at first, and perhaps at first for a very long time, we will have to process thoroughly what we do and think to see if we are fitting into the life of loving God and loving our neighbor.  Who has the mind or will for such a monumental project?  You do if you are in Christ.  When you are born again, the Lord joins Himself to you and the mind of Christ works within your mind so that together you can do whatever God has planned for you.  That of course does not mean we will!  We can shut down our Lord's mind by believing it does not matter what we do with ourselves.   We are then "the captain".  There is a terrible price to pay for that sort of determination.  All the wreckage of Satan's evil in the Garden becomes ours also to inflict upon the world.  It is no small thing to not love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind or to not love your neighbor as yourself.  Satan would love for you to think it is...that it really does not matter what you do right now.  The devil's lie through and through is that these moments of life are insignificant.  If they were, then God would just excuse Himself from the world time to time but He doesn't because at every instant He is bringing salvation into it.   Conversely, Satan is bringing damnation everywhere he can whenever he finds a moment available to him.   You are the portal through which either God or Satan enter a world full of desperate lives.   What you decide about loving God with all your heart soul and mind and loving your neighbor as yourself determines who it is that has sway in your specific place of influence.

Give attention to the entrance of the temple and all the exits of the sanctuary.   Ezekiel 44: 5b NIV

Living by the Moment

The danger for the Christian is not that he or she might fall into terrible sin.  It is that the comfort of one’s own goodness and intelligence is enough to get along.  Great sin creates a rush of horror and it wrecks the personal confidence one has.  It is then that the Shepherd is known intimately to be good.  Experientially the blood of Christ must work its way through and through until the love of God is certain.  Before then it seems a fantasy, this mercy of God, this dependence upon Christ for everything.  We have life worked out, we are pretty good, our job may not be perfect but it pays the bills, our loves aren’t always agreeable but they keep us warm and responsible.  Yet this is a sham; fool’s gold.  We are dead in our sins and hopeless without Christ.  It is not damaged goods but utter wreckage we have and that great need we faced when we were lost in our sin has not diminished a whit since we came to Christ and were born again.  We need Him just as much now as that spot of time we faced ourselves fully and saw the hatred and filth and hopelessness and cried out to God for a Savior.  God has not called us to succeed.  He has brought us into complete immersion in the life of Christ that we might fully live in Him.  Are we to pray by the day or the week?  It is moment by moment that we need our Lord and it is in those moments that we succeed at the point of His call.  Why do we become satisfied with the ebb and flow of Holy Spirit living when we can be living on the mighty Mississippi of filling?  Certainly we can act as if it doesn’t matter whether or not we are in union with Christ at any given moment of the day but it is sheer arrogance to think we have enough of God to function well.  What does it take to make us see our need?  A fierce burst of anger, a jealous rage, a wicked spell of depression, a broken heart, the flaring fear of loss, a dirty little mind that feeds off lust, a swelling loneliness that public places exacerbate; what makes us pause long enough seek out our Savior?  There is a gate that is wide as Kansas and it takes us into the far away country where everything is plastic and full of selfies.  But there also is a narrow way where we are never alone and we can live with the Glorious Christ who loves and nourishes our souls and who massages our troubled minds with tender hands.  Can you pause just long enough to gaze into the mind of your Savior?  Do you need to take time with Jesus?

To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.  Revelation 21:6 NIV

Are You Really You?

Why do the ramifications of being born again startle us?  When a child is born into a family, it is a complete revelation to the home, a revolutionary break with the old structure and forms.  Each child, even when added to large families destroys absolutely the old family and restructures it into a new dynamic that permanently ruptures all of the relationships built before.  Abortion is the ultimate fear of the new beginning.  So to think that when one becomes a Christian we are to be the same old person with a religious overcoat thrown on top of us is ludicrous.  We mustn’t let the stored memories and genetic layering fool us into believing that we are the same when Christ comes to us and makes us new.  We are new and it is not temporary.  We play mental games with ourselves thinking the old behavior patterns that made up our days before will be able to continue into our newness.  The bitterest and saddest and most disappointed people in the world are those Christians who try to keep up the charade of living and doing as they did when there was no Holy Spirit a part of them.  The adultery and corrupt business practices and snobbish indifference to grudges bottled within are not just contemptible within the Christian community, they are a sign that the believer has failed to acknowledge just how new he or she is.  Perfect peace and sustained joy are given over to us when we live freely in Christ and not when we remain bound in the chains of our old way of being.  Dogs return to their vomit but Christians grow increasingly disgusted with the old patterns of sin.  We are born again that we might become perfect and holy…it does not go another way than that.  The sooner we accept our lovely fate, the speedier will come our peaceful happiness.  Dogs gnaw on bones, bears hunt for berries, otters dart about in the water, eagles build nests in the cliffs and each species holds true to itself as the years pass.  A Christian who thinks like a prostitute, dreams like a miser, whines like a selfish prig and is petulant like an unrestrained child is good for nothing.  All the sweetness and courage and steadfastness and contentment put in him by God is wasted by the believer who will not walk in the Spirit and live by the Scriptures.  You are made good by Christ that you might live good; to do otherwise is like dropping diamonds down the drain. 

He put a new song in my mouth…     Psalm 40:3 NIV

Tyranny of Doing

When Moses went up Mt. Sinai to the top to meet with God and receive the rest of the law, he firmly ordered Aaron and the other older leaders to wait on the mountain for him to return.  For some reason, they didn't; they went back to the camp to do whatever they thought was more necessary.  One has to wonder if the entire business of the golden calf would have been avoided if Aaron had simply stayed at his post rather than find something "better" to do down below.  There is a time to go down to the camp but also a time to wait for the clear directive of God.   Few things chaff us as severely as the wait God institutes.  We develop a fine constellation of ideas during the wait and are hell-bent on trying them out before the Lord has given us His "go".  We constantly are confusing the going and waiting; all the time wrecking this and that because we are not patient enough to get to know God's voice and faithful enough to heed His call.  We are like little children who must try everything when the great Counselor is patiently waiting for us to turn into Him for Divine Direction.  Not every jar contains arsenic but some do and our Lord is good enough to tell us in advance how to stay away from it.   Not every opportunity is good; some will take us far from the perfect peace God has prepared for us and those we love.  You certainly can do something but it may be the worst of your possible options and reward you with a lifetime of regret.  Perhaps we could wait upon the Lord just this one time; take time to let Him work Himself into us so that we can get it right when He finally gives us something to do.  Has anything been quite so disastrous as the obeisance we give to the adage of striking while the iron is hot?  Can we not pause even for an instant to be with God in whatever matter is before us?  Do we always have to do?

He (Moses) said to the elders, "Wait here…"   Exodus 24:14 NIV

Discrimination

We have lost the service of the word discrimination because of the evil Satan has spawned from it.  The Christian is to discriminate and do so constantly.  The task of recognizing the difference between good and best is a flip of the coin for most.  But the Holy Spirit is our guardian against indiscriminate wandering and short-sighted living.  We can make the right decision every time if we would just pause long enough to let the Holy Spirit direct our way.  The impatience of our age has wrecked far too many of us.  The Lord has promised to guide our steps even in something so seemingly insignificant as what to prepare for dinner or the length of time we should give a conversation.   Determine today to heed the guidance the Lord wants to give you and let Him make the most of each of your opportunities and crucial split-second reactions to what seems in your unknowing trivial and inconsequential.  For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end. Psalm 48:14 NIV 

A Willful Temple

There is a place at which we must decide who we really are and make a clean break from all the other possibilities.  If you are the Temple of God, then that must be decided in definitive actions.  The river must be crossed, the rope released, the battle entered.  As long as you see yourself as less than the Temple of God, you will live like it and no amount of posturing will obviate the damage caused.  The simplest and most uncultured of Christians who has determined with his will that He is the Temple of God will do more good and have longer lasting benefit to mankind than the greatest personalities of our age.  You may not be known here and now but the Temple of God is known in the corridors of heaven and your impact will reverberate throughout eternity if this is decided by you.  Settle the matter.  You are the Temple of God.  The Holy Spirit is in you and therefore there is nothing trivial or little about your place in the workings of God.  Each of your actions is critical and measured within the activity of the Lord who by His death resurrected your life and has recreated you into the liveliest and loveliest of treasures.    You realize don't you, that you are the temple of God...1 Corinthians 3: 16 MSG

Good...

Jesus made a disconcerting comment as he talked with the famous “rich young ruler” of Luke 18.  When the young man approached the Lord, he addressed Jesus as “Good teacher”.  Now this was certainly a respectful form of address but Jesus was not so impressed.  His reply was biting.  "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good — except God alone. (Luke 18:19-20 NIV)  This is most informative if we can get past the seeming rudeness of the retort.  Jesus made it perfectly clear without any wiggle room that there is no one good…just God.  This is not self-deprecation: it is stating the clear fact.  Nothing good exists except what is in God, from God and with God.   The source of any good is God and without Him there is no good.  Good is not a relative term; good compared to not so good.  Good is determined by its source.  From God and it is good, outside of Him and it is not.  You and I are not the source of good and we do not decide if something is good or not.  Good is not an arbitrary assessment we make; good is determined by how anything at any moment relates to God.  Take the Lord out of a thought, out of an idea, out of a behavior and it is no longer good.  Regardless of how an event may turn, how a circumstance may look, it is good if your eyes are fixed upon God and your heart is determined to follow Him.  The command of Hebrews 12: 2 to fix our eyes upon Jesus is not a symbolic gesture, it is an act of the will to look to Christ for everything from how to think about something to how to act.  Take your eyes off the Lord and what can seem good, like Peter walking on water can become a disaster in a moment as he began to sink with his eyes on the waves.

The Movement Past Conscience

At what point do you suddenly realize you have gone too far, looked too long, reacted too harshly, listened to too much, pushed past where you should have stopped?  Is it when you heard something telling you to stop, when you felt a tug to quit, when your mind began to cloud over with guilt?  When is too much too much? We speak of the conscience as the perpetual nerdy friend who doesn’t like to have a good time.  Or else the conscience is the ultimate arbiter of good and evil, the one sure scale on which to measure right from wrong.  We hear this sort of statement often.  “Well, it may not be right for you but it is for me.”  The implication is that personal conscious is the guide for right living.

Every one of us has some sort of conscience; it is along with language the mark of being human.  Shades of right and wrong do not slip into the thinking of the beasts; it is we who sink into that abyss, or would it be better to say who climb those heights.  Because the conscience is natural and organic, it is also arbitrary.  There is not a “uniform” conscience; one that defines us all.  Your conscience will not be the same as your friend’s or even your brother’s. Joseph Stalin had one conscience, your uncle another.  It is impossible to say conclusively that Adolph Hitler did not follow his conscience in what he did nor that Mother Teresa always followed hers.  My “too far” probably is not yours and will not be Mick Jagger’s.

Is there though a real “too far”, just as there is a real mile or a real pound?  How do we measure right and wrong, good and bad in actual time and space?  Does it exist…such a true measure? Jesus was asked by the rich young ruler what good thing he had to do to inherit eternal life.  This was not a simpleton’s question.  It was asked by a true thinker who recognized the human condition.  At some point we cannot just rely on our conscience; we need to look into what is always right and what is always wrong because it does matter.

There is something most casual readers of the New Testament fail to realize and that is how Jesus analyzed his own behavior and approach to situations.  He let the scripture and the guidance of the Father determine each step He took.  At the time of temptation in the wilderness, Jesus used the Bible to arbitrate for Him how He should act.  That was almost an unconscious guide because He used His mind to know it so well.  Clearly Jesus studied the Bible enough to know at each space in life what it might have to say about a matter.

But there was another hedge He had in deciding right and wrong.  He constantly communicated with the Father on what He was doing and thinking and facing. 

This statement of Jesus in John is most informative.  “For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it.”  (John 12:49 NIV)  Somehow, and we are not told how, Jesus heard from the Father even in the details of His behavior what He was to do.  At the point of what specific things to say at any given moment and in what tone of voice to use, Jesus had direction from the Father on good and bad, right and wrong.  This is different from the prodding of conscience; this is a direct line to what is really right and what is really wrong.  If we could get past our individualistic and arbitrary conscience to the actual measure of right and wrong, we would know where to start in living.

How was Jesus so perfectly in tune with the guiding of the Father?  He was, like the first Adam free of sin and so had the same ability the first Adam had.  He could and did walk with the Father as He went about His business.  Like the two disciples who went with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and heard the real accounting of how the crucifixion and resurrection fit into the plan of God, we too can “walk with God” and hear from Him as Jesus heard from the Father.  We have the promise of Jesus that the Holy Spirit, God too just as the Father and Son are God, would by faith in Christ be with us.  And Jesus also has promised to be with us always.  What do we make of this?

We have at our finger tips, or even closer always the right and wrong there to know and understand.  It is not a matter of my right and wrong or your right and wrong; it is right and wrong as it really is.  We are within reach at any moment when Christ is ours by faith the knowing of good and bad.  Not just knowing by a swing and perhaps a miss but a knowing that is certain.

How do we get to this point where we know exactly what to say and how to say it, what to do and how to do it?  The caveat is simple.  You must have decided that is what you want to know.  If you do not really want to know, Jesus will let you walk away from it just as easily as the rich young ruler did.  But if you want to know, you must be determined to know the scriptures.  You must be able to tell the difference between what is a really right or wrong and what is merely a tangle of your conscience.  There are miles of issues we can discuss that have a level of right and wrong to them but if we do not know the scripture…really know the scripture, we cannot be certain we are not just sifting them through our conscience rather than the actual right and actual wrong of a matter.  That is why it is so difficult discussing the big moral issues of our age: abortion, homosexuality, integrity, war, globalization, pornography.  The scripture is either ignored or not known well enough to arbitrate between consciences.

There is a bigger issue though before us and that is how to get at the details of right and wrong as arbitrated directly by God.  It is easy to just lay out three bullet points or six directives but if that were the case, we would have far more Christians acting upon right and wrong.  The hearing from God is much more organic and familial.  You must become familiar with the way God speaks to you directly. It is an experiment in holiness.  As God prods you in a right or a wrong, whether by the remembrance of a scripture or some very personal way He guides you, then you act upon it and even if you feel guilty from your conscience or disappointed because of your lusts, you fight through it and do the thing or don’t do it.  The next time you sense the prod of God, you act upon it then and there.  The more you do this, them more familiar you will be with the actual God behind you way of seeing and thinking.  You will become more comfortable with the real presence of God; more alert to Him too.  Every child has a conscience; only the child of God has the true right and wrong within.  You must though like Jesus give God room in your heart to guide you and holiness will not just be something you consider, it will be yours as a real possession. 

Why Noah, Why Not Noah

What is it that went so wrong so quickly with Creation that God made the call to wipe out everything? There are two ways to look at the Flood account. Why did God destroy the world...animals and people? Why did God save a remnant? It is quite easy to just take the righteousness of Noah argument to explain completely God's decision to save His family but there seems to be something running much deeper in the psyche of Yhwh that makes the Noah family and (the Noah creatures?) saveworthy. If success is measured in all the variables I mentioned below, then we are hardpressed to define Noah in a success assessment. He wasn't at all cool like the Nephilim. But there is something more there that cannot be separated from the saving decision of God to hold on to Noah. Yes he was good and right but he wouldn't always be so and the generations that followed made a mess of what they were given. Most of Noah's descendants were nothing to make one proud. But Noah was grabbed and held by God and that is a fascinating consideration. Why? Some might say "why not" but only because they have not considered the pain God suffered over what came out of His Creation...Here is the key verse in all of this discussion. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Genesis 6: 8 NIV Why? What makes God want us when we have so little to offer Him? That I think is the key question that when answered unlocks the mystery of Job and his sufferings. If we get at the answer to why God kept Noah and his family, we can reconcile the troubles we face with the mercy of the Cross and the love God professes for us. Why Noah?