Fresh Start

Isaiah 52:12 NIV

But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

How Does the New Year Look?

Now that Christmas has passed and all the rush of it has settled, there is a certain amount of reminiscing that happens.  Perhaps these stories of Christmas will warm your heart!  One woman told of her business friend’s daughter who refused the gift of a “new, gold Mercedes convertible because, she told her parents, ‘You knew I wanted a black one. ‘’’ Another writer had this horror story to tell.  “My boss told me they had to go to the Apple store after closing to return the iPhone 8 her nephew’s parents bought for the child after he cried all Christmas Day because he wanted the iPhone X.”  Listen to this great story.  “My childhood best friend threw a three hour crying fit when her high school boyfriend propose to her on Christmas.  The reason?  The ring he proposed with wasn’t the one she wanted.”   One more to help you appreciate your own Christmas Day.  “An acquaintance yelled at his aunt after she gave him a $50 Amazon gift card, demanded cash and then when his aunt refused (rightfully)—threw the card at her and left the family party.  He’s 40.”  How would you like to have those family members on your gift list?

Not everyone finds Christmas time to be a happy part of the year and in fact many aren’t all that thrilled about facing a new year either.  Haunting memories and traumatic experiences beat down the future for them.  Recent setbacks and crushing mistakes may give the new year a certain ring of doom to it; a foreboding pinned to it.  Perhaps this coming year is not exciting for you, it carries with it the same humdrum and disappointments previous years offered.  Not everyone looks forward to January 1 with anticipation and enthusiasm.  Some of us, and perhaps you do too, have a bit of dread as you await the coming year.  It is not crazy to feel that way.  You certainly aren’t alone if that is where you find yourself.

Many of us made big mistakes last year.  David from the Bible certainly is famous for several.  One that is rarely talked about is the time he decided to use his soldiers to count how many men he had who could serve in his army.  The commander of his forces was incredulous!  But Joab replied to the king, "May the Lord your God multiply the troops a hundred times over and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?" (2 Samuel 24:3 NIV) David would not back down and so for the next nine months Joab and his associates tramped all over Israel counting the men.  Altogether there were 1.3 million potential soldiers in the kingdom.  Something about his order to take the census though did not set well with David.  David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, O Lord, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing." (2 Samuel 24:10 NIV)

Somehow David realized that his demand to count the fighting men of Israel was a grievous offense to God and he was right.  Before David got up the next morning, the word of the Lord had come to Gad the prophet, David's seer:  "Go and tell David, 'This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.'" (2 Samuel 24:11-12 NIV) The choices were not good.  So, Gad went to David and said to him, "Shall there come upon you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me." (2 Samuel 24:13 NIV) If it was me, I would have asked if there was a fourth option, but of course there wasn’t, and it would have been ridiculous of me to pose the question.  We cannot say for certain what about the census was so wrong; God after all ordered a number of them (pardon the pun) when the Israelites were making their way to the Promised Land.  It seems though that David was making the kingdom about himself and the ability it had to fend for itself rather than relying upon God and His power to save them.  Whatever the case, this was a huge mistake of David’s, publicly humiliating, and certainly he regretted it the rest of his life.

We must say that Job had a pretty rough year.  So did Ruth, losing her husband and Silas being beaten within an inch of his life.  Many of us still carry the scars of mistakes we have made, mistreatment we have suffered and losses that have nearly broken us.  Imagine if Thomas ended the year doubting the resurrection of Jesus, Peter suffering through his denial of Jesus, Mary her fears that Jesus had gone insane, and Euodia and Synteche and their humiliating quarrel that created turmoil in the Philippian church.  Your year might not have been very good, and it is certain that nearly every important person in the Bible had a pretty bad year too.

God makes a promise to us through the prophet Isaiah.  But you will not leave in haste or go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard. (Isaiah 52: 12 NIV) You have trailing you memories of mistakes you have made and hurts you have suffered and perhaps for you they are like a lion hunting your down into this coming year.  They plague your plans and bring a certain amount of dread to the coming year.  God though is your rear guard.  He is the Savior of your past.  There are some things that you have done that were wrong and really wrong; words that never should have come out of your mouth.  Actions you took that were harmful to you or someone else.   Decisions you made that are costing you dearly.  Not only that, you have been hurt by others and the wounds are still tender, troubles have hit you that seem impossible to overcome.  Yet God is your rear guard.  He is the protector of your past and He will carry you out of it into a new day.

When the Israelites stood at the edge of the Promised Land, they had to decide if they were going to leave behind their past wanderings or enter into a new adventure.  It was a fresh day, that early morning as they marched up to the Jordan River.  It was a fresh start.  It was not just what was before them that could keep them back; it was what was behind them too.  You are at the edge of a new year and God is ready to lead you across December and into January.  What lies ahead you cannot say.  You do know what is behind you and it is up to you if you are going to let Christ your Savior take care of it, take it out of Satan’s hands and give it a new life as a step in the right direction.  Plenty let the past keep them from what God has ahead for them.  Surely you aren’t that sort.  You believe the promise God has for you as is recorded in the old King James Translation of the Bible, Behold, I make all things new. (Revelation 21:5 KJV) Whatever is behind, God is making it right so that you can move forward with His creativity and insight and direction and power and forge together, the two of you, a bright and “glorious morn”.  Today is the day you cross the river and start fresh with Christ as your Savior leading the way.

Christ Your Savior

John 1:29 NIV

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

What Should You Do About The Sin in You?

When I was a kid, my friend and I were playing baseball in the back of our elementary school.  Suddenly a large gang of kids surrounded us and as I tried to get away, one of them pulled me off my bike, separating my shoulder and several started punching and kicking me while I was on the ground.  Others beat up my friend and just as quickly as they came, they vanished.  We did not know any of the kids nor did we have any idea why they attacked us.  My shoulder was permanently damaged and both of us were left with lasting memories of what happened to us.  Did it scar us psychologically?  I do not know.  Is the terror we felt that day still etched in our minds and does it impact us today?  I cannot say.  I do know that it was an example of how Sin is present in our world and how we are affected by its universal reach.

I recently watched a movie whose central character was beaten up by his cruel and perverse father when he was young, both his eyes being swollen shut by his dad’s furious fists.  As a result he left home when only a young teen.  How did his father’s sin affect him?  The boy became a thief to stay alive, was sent to prison for killing a man, later cheated on his wife and became an alcoholic who was unable or unwilling to show either of his sons the love they desperately craved of him.  What would you say about this man?  Would you speculate that the sins of the father impacted the later behavior of the son?  Are the sins of our parents passed along to the following generations?  What we now call alcoholism, child abuse, unfaithfulness, broken families and domestic violence is cast in the Bible as Sin, the destructive force that wrecks humanity and the universe.  What impact does one person’s sin have on the lives of others?  More importantly, what should be done to stop the damage sin causes?

Just to see what the Scriptures might have to say about this topic, I did a quick search in the Bible of the phrase, “for their sins”.  It is found seven times in the Old Testament and twice in the New Testament.  The way it is approached in the two parts of the Bible is significantly different.  Here are the verses where “for their sins is found.  In the Old Testament we have the following.  They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. (Leviticus 26:43b NIV) He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them. (Psalm 94:23 NIV) I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. (Isaiah 13:11 NIV) See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. (Isaiah 26:21 NIV) So the Lord does not accept them;he will now remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins." (Jeremiah 14:10 NIV) The punishment for their sins rested on their bones, though the terror of these warriors had stalked through the land of the living. (Ezekiel 32:27 NIV) God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins. (Hosea 9:9 NIV)

Do you see the common thread between the verses?  “Their sins” are to be punished!  In each case, the sinners will pay for their sins.  Never is it considered any other way in the Old Testament.  We of course have seen the effect of sin upon individuals, families and society.  We certainly do pay for sins.  There is a degradation of personality, a corruption and degeneration of relationships and damage to our circumstances when sinners sin.  It is the coin of the realm; you pay for your sins one way or another.  Sin wrecks you and damages the lives of others impacted by the sinning.  Of course there is more importantly the eternal component to sin, you pay for it fully when you meet God face to face.  Sin brings its own punishment and God makes sure it hits us squarely.

In the New Testament, there is a dramatic shift in how “for their sins” is addressed.  Only twice is this phrase used in the New Testament, both times in the book of Hebrews.  Unlike the other high priests, he (Jesus) does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. (Hebrews 7:27 NIV)  The sinners do not pay for their sinning, Christ offers Himself for the sins of the sinners.  What makes sin, sin is that there is a Law which determines what is right and wrong, a standard that is universal and unbending.  This is the Law that God has established as Lord and Creator of the universe.  It is firmly in place and we are bound by His decision of what is right and wrong.

In the Old Testament we are tied to the Law by its punishment.  We don’t keep the Law, we violate it and so its relationship to us is judge and executioner.  We cannot live up to the Law and eventually the Law destroys us.  With Christ having been crucified, the Law becomes completely different for us. The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming — not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.  If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. (Hebrews 10:1-2 NIV)

Here is a revelation that must be considered carefully.  The Law is a shadow, it is not the actuality of things once Christ was crucified.  The reality before the Cross was that all people were condemned by the Law.  Now it is different.  Christ is Savior and that means He takes away the sin of the world.  The Law which always pointed out our corruption and condemned our soul is not what determines the course of our lives any longer.  It is Christ crucified who now decides now our fate and how we can live.

If Christ were not crucified, then all we could do would be what sin in us determines.  We can only go so far in love and joy and contentment because sin limits it all.  Sin is like a filthy filter that reduces the amount of good that can flow into your life and that can come out of your life and the Law always made it clear you were broken and without hope of being any more than a corrupted and lifeless soul.  But what Jesus did for us was take the sin out of us so that there is now no limit on the goodness and joy we can possess and our effect on others can be just as good as what Jesus brought to each life He encountered.  Heaven is the great society of living souls filled with the vast unlimited supply of love and peace and joy that is found only in God Himself.  You must never think that our Lord died to make you a better form of yourself; one who makes something of his or her life.  No!  He died to put His own life in you and make you into a perfect child of God without fault or blemish.  This cannot be emphasized enough.  The crucified life of Jesus Christ is the new law of your life, Him living through you and putting within you all the joy and holiness and peace and contentment He, Himself possesses.

The Law is no longer your curse and the mirror that reflects back all the bad in you.  It has become the way your life operates with Christ a part of you, taking away from you the damage caused by sin and giving you a standard that corrects your actions and way of thinking.  You do what the Lord tells you to do because that is how you are now made.  It is not due to some external law that has to be kept or some standard that you must approach that drives you but that the Love of Christ Himself has been poured into your heart and through His love, you choose to do what the Lord tells you to do.  …God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:5 NIV) You live according to the Law Christ has placed within you and you no longer make sacrifices to do what God tells you to do because you have nothing to sacrifice, it always is just a matter of whether you love God or not and if you do, then whatever He says to do, either through the Scripture or by His prompting of you, you do that very thing.

When you choose to disregard the Law built within you, the Law of Christ living as part of you, you will grow more and more miserable, discontented and disoriented.  Once you do what God tells you to do, His joy gets worked into you a bit more and His peace gets established.  You never again, with your faith in Christ to save you worry about what God will do with you.  That is settled.  He will make you sin free and joined with Him forever.  To enjoy that life with Him, you obey Christ at every turn.  Life is quite simple for you now.  Just do what the Lord tells you to do and everything you care about will fall into place according to God’s plan for you and you can count on this every moment of every day.  God loves you and His love for you is how He decides to treat you.  That is a great comfort regardless of the circumstances you face.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV)

Choice

Proverbs 8:10 NIV

Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold,

Is The Choice Yours?

When I was twelve or so, I was hanging out at my friend’s house when he suddenly went inside and brought me something to see.   I was not psychologically prepared for what I was about to encounter; no one had gone over with me such a time as this and I reacted reflexively rather than thoughtfully.  He had a pornographic magazine in his hand that he had pulled out of his father’s closet.  I had never seen pornography before; never encountered it, never in my life had to decide if I was going to look at pornography.  I didn’t know what the long term ramifications would be if I leafed through it with my friend.  It was of course a moral choice for me long before I understood the concept of moral choices.  I believed in God, was already a born again Christian, had been baptized and taught the Ten Commandments and the basic stories of the Bible.  Pornography was new to me though.  I liked girls, noticed them, was attracted to them and already had picked out several I wanted to like me.  Pornography though was several steps beyond my previous moral choices and I was the one who had to decide if I would look or not.

Life is filled with choices.  All living creatures have choice…plants and single cell organisms and bugs make mechanical choices.  They set their roots down here or there, move into this section of the water or not, leave the ant hill or stay and build the tunnels.  These choices though are mechanical; there is no thought given to them.  Squirrels and crows also make choices but their choices are instinctual, perhaps they think about what they choose but it is not highly organized thought, not strategic.  Dolphins and chimpanzees are able to make choices and think more about what they decide than crows certainly.  They show signs of loyalty and care in their choices sometimes but how much of what they decide is based on values of right and wrong we cannot say.  Can any animal choose to rebel against God or reject His will for it; it doesn’t seem so.  The Bible though tells us who certainly can choose for or against God; who has the ability to say “yes” or “no” to Him.

Our discussion today is not centered on all choices but one kind of choice—the moral choice. Let us make clear what a moral choice is.  A moral choice is the decision to agree or disagree with God in what you do.  Because God determines what is right or wrong and we don’t; it does not matter what our opinion is about something; the moral choice is built on how we respond to God and what He says to do or not do.  Some moral choices are easy to comprehend…do I commit adultery or not, do I steal from my brother or not, do I beat up the guy who took my parking space or not.  Other moral decisions take work to get at them.  We have to study the Bible carefully to get at them.  Do I have an abortion or not?  Do I party with my friends at a bar or not?  What sorts of movies should I watch? 

We all make moral choices, perhaps daily or even hourly but why is that so?  It is because God has made us free to make moral choices.  Consider the moral choice God gave the Israelites as they began their new life in the Promised Land.  "But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV) Not only do natural beings make moral choices because of God’s freedom granted to them, so also do supernatural beings such as Satan.  Satan has freedom to obey God or not as seen in the ancient book of Genesis.  Satan enticed Eve to disobey God and after Adam and Eve did make the moral choice to eat the forbidden fruit, God punished Satan for that moral choice of disobeying Him.  Of course Adam and Eve also were punished and for the first time in human history, sin became a part of the existence of mankind.  What was Satan’s first moral choice?  We do not know but we are told about the one involving mankind.  Satan was given freedom by God to support Him with regard to Adam and Eve’s moral development or rebel against Him and of course He rebelled.

If God were not morally free to choose right and wrong, then the universe would be run by a mechanical engine bound by limitations such as a computer has.  God however is free and therefore His decisions are real decisions He makes.  So why did He choose to make Satan morally free?  Why make people morally free?  What is the good in that if evil has a way into the universe through that freedom?  Now we must examine this question honestly and with care.

Consider our Lord’s options.  He could live forever within the Trinity with never another being in existence.  Clearly His love moved Him away from that option.  He could create other beings who were not morally free, who were mechanical in regard to morality.  They could only do what God said to do but then they would never have fellowship with Him in the same way those who are morally free can.  There are certain parts of a relationship that are not possible if you are not morally free.  You cannot have faith if you are not morally free.  You cannot hope without moral freedom.  And you cannot love if you are not morally free.  To hope, you must be able to choose not to hope.  It is the same with faith.  To have faith, you must be free not to have faith.  Most importantly, to love, you have to be able to not love.

Let’s examine this matter of love.  Love can be mimicked mechanically.  A creature licks your hand because that is what that sort of creature does.  Another creature can wag its tail when it sees you because that is the mechanical response.  We can trick ourselves into believing it is love because it looks like love and we feel love toward that creature but we know it isn’t love it has toward us.  Perhaps we even like that sort of thing more than the risk of real love but we have chosen something much less than love.  We have gone for a mechanical licking creature rather someone who chooses to love us.  Imagine a woman with a man only because he is rich and provides her family a house.  She may kiss him and hug him and write him love letters but she does it so that he will continue to provide for her.  We would never call that sort of relationship love because it is mechanical…it is forced, either by greed or need.  Love is a freely chosen response to another and must be so for it to be love.

God makes us morally free because that is the only way He can enter into a love relationship with us.  And here is the risk.  If we are free to love, then we are free to hate.  We are free to manipulate and free to ignore, disrespect and mistreat.  We are like the prodigal son, free to reject the one who loves us and again like him, free to come back to him in humility and a new sense of appreciation of what we have in that one we love.  If we are morally free, then we can do anything we wish to holiness, love and goodness.  We can hate, destroy, use, ruin, cheat, lie or kill ourselves.  We can do these things because we are morally free.  Here is the rub though.  Many are angry that God would create a universe where evil is possible.  They wonder what sort of cruelty would lead to a creation where corruption can take a seat alongside goodness, love and kindness!

Consider this.  Because God is love, he is free to love at a level that goes beyond our ability to fathom.  He took all our evil, all the sin we have produced through our moral freedom and absorbed it into Himself.   To understand God in this, we must listen carefully to the first part of John 3: 16.  For God so loved the world…  Not only did God love us so much that He gave us moral freedom, He loved us enough to take all the evil our moral freedom has produced and accepted the punishment Himself for it.  He took in Himself the damage our unholy choices have caused and died with them so that we would not have to live with the consequences of our moral choices.  God’s choice was to let us be free to make moral choices of good and evil. Even supernatural beings like Satan he gave moral freedom to choose good or evil.   Because we all have chosen evil and unholy living, God also chose, out of His moral freedom to take upon Himself the consequences of our sin…to die for them.

Some are angry with God for letting us choose evil.  They are mad that others can sin freely, can hurt people and wreck their lives.  That is the cost of being free to make moral choices.  Imagine though someone being mad at her mom for giving her a ride to school or being mad at his son for making him breakfast or being upset with his wife for being loyal to him and declaring her love for him.  How terrible would that person be?  Our God is so full of love for us that He gives us the freedom to act hatefully and bitterly and despise the freedom He has given us and then take all that hatred and bitterness into Himself and suffer the pain it has caused.   More than that, He chooses when we let Him, to join with us and make us completely new.  He gives us His life joined with our life and we gain His will to be holy and His strength to love completely.  What is the grace of God?  It is God’s choice to suffer the consequences of our moral choices, to give us the freedom to make those choices and then give Himself to us to be a part of us without, eventually, any of the damage our moral choices have caused us.

There is an old story of a little dog that loved a lion so much that after barking at the lion to stop heading into a hunter’s trap, he went after the lion that ignored his warning and jumped in front of the arrow that was intended for the lion.  As the dog lay dying, the lion roared at the little dog, complaining that the dog didn’t stop his headlong dash into the hunter’s trap.  He cursed the dog and complained about his wickedness for letting the hunter shoot his arrow.  The little dog smiled and simply whispered with his last breath, “I love you lion.”  How would that lion greet the little dog if three days later, the dog came back to life?  Would he hate him for his sacrifice?  Would he walk away from the dog’s warm embrace?  Would he realize what a great treasure that dog’s love is?  Would he forever be loyal to such a friend as that?  For God so loved the world…

Fear of God

Proverbs 9:10 NIV

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Do You Know Someone Afraid of God?

Before I knew anything about the “fear of the Lord” I found out about the fear of my dad.  When he spanked me, I knew I had been spanked.  I have a friend who had a fear of his mom.  When he disobeyed her, his mom had him stretch out his arms and hold them there until they began to burn like fire.  Several years ago I was passing out invitations to our church in the neighborhood and as I was walking away from one house, a man in his twenties stepped out, looked at my flyer and told me that if he ever found me stepping up on his porch again, he would kill me.  There are plenty of reasons why we become afraid.  Some of us are afraid we won’t be able to pay our bills.  Others are afraid of getting sick.  Many are afraid of getting fired or going into certain neighborhoods.  I am afraid of skiing.  Perhaps you are afraid of going to the dentist.  Certainly all of us have been afraid and sometimes for good reason, other times without cause.

Many are afraid of God.  They are afraid of making Him mad because they have done something wrong or they might have done something wrong.  There are world religions built around the concern that God is angry about something and needs to be appeased.  For those like the Hindus, this is even worse because there are so many gods to worry about.  The Bible talks several times about the “fear of the Lord” or the “fear of God” and it is important that we understand what it means by that.  Is it good for people to be afraid of God?  Should we be fearful of Him?  How do we act toward God if we are afraid of Him?  Aren’t we to have God as our friend?  How can we be friends if we are afraid of Him?  What is the psychological effect of the fear of the Lord upon us and how does it look behaviorally?

The Apostle Paul in his masterpiece letter to the Christians in Rome quoted from Psalm 36, contending that regardless of background universally among all people, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Romans 3:18 NIV)  Before that, he states, "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. (Romans 3:10-11 NIV)  These two verses appear to be in parallel, describing the same character trait.  Fear of God seems to be equivalent to being righteous, possessing “understanding” and seeking God.  The Psalm that the Apostle Paul quotes, which was written about eight hundred years before by David, the second king of Israel, gives this description of what it looks like if you don’t fear God.  There is no fear of God before his eyes.  For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.  The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful; he has ceased to be wise and to do good.  Even on his bed he plots evil; he commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong. (Psalm 36:1b-4 NIV)

There are four clear characteristics here of the one who does not fear God.   This person is too proud to realize that there is real sin in him and even if he knew he was sinful, he wouldn’t care or give it much thought.  The things this person says are half-truths and intentionally or unintentionally deceitful.  He no longer grasps what is wise and intelligent because he doesn’t avail himself to true wisdom that comes from God; consequently his thinking is too shallow to grasp what is good and right and so he lives in rebellion against God.  This rebellion is planned and thought through by him so that he does what he does knowing full well it is wrong.  There is in the one without fear of God a casual approach to evil deeds, his moral compass is broken and he does what he decides is right for him without regard for what is actually “right”.  This passage has a clear summary of how the one who does not fear God lives but it is not so easy to see from David’s Psalm what it looks like when you do fear God.

Surprisingly, rather than listing all the characteristics of the one who fears God, David creates a picture of what God is like.  Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.  Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep.  O Lord, you preserve both man and beast.  How priceless is your unfailing love!  (Psalm 36:5-6 NIV)  Now this is interesting because you would expect that if someone was interested in finding out how it looks to fear God and not just what characterizes the one not fearing God, you would think this passage would tell you.  It certainly provides a clear examination of the personal qualities of non-God fearing people.  Yet rather that stating the opposite side of the coin, what a God-fearing person looks like, it talks about God Himself.  However, when you think about it, this description of God does say something quite clearly about fearing God even if it is a bit unexpected and unusual in its presentation.  The one who fears God has a very decided view of Him.  He sees God as loving, faithful, righteous and just.  This is not a dry theological comment.  It drips with affection and happiness.  No one could have this sort of feeling toward another and be called non-committal about the relationship.  A person who fears the Lord is in awe of the goodness and rightness and love of God and does not cower in dread of God but is excited about being with Him.  Verse 7 of Psalm 36 provides a clear sense of what someone who fears God thinks of Him.  How priceless is your unfailing love!  Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings.  (Psalm 36:7 NIV)

This is of course a far cry from what we normally think of what fearing God entails.  Most studies on the fear of God focus on the Hebrew definition of fear…that it speaks either of cowering, abject quivering in ones boots over the might and power and sternness of God or that it is watered down a bit from that…describing respect.  So either our relationship with the Lord is to be like one we would have with an absolute despot who can on a whim have us struck dead or give us great honor and power or it is like that of a student with a law professor who is really smart and cool but kind of like us…just better and more successful.  However, that is not how fear of God seems when we read Psalm 36.  The person who fears God does not pay attention to His power or to His competency but rather to His love and goodness, His rightness and fairness. We must remember that fear means one thing when we are talking about sinful beings who are self-centered and egotistical and full of sin but something all-together different when talking about God.

An example from the Old Testament might help us see this more clearly.  In Genesis, our earliest documented history of the world there is in chapter 22 a most intriguing perspective on the fear of God.  It is the famous account of Abraham hearing God tell him to bring his son Isaac up on a mountain to offer him as a sacrifice there.  Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." (Genesis 22:1-2 NIV)  Immediately Abraham made preparations and the very next morning he brought his son along with the wood and fire up Mount Moriah where he then at the top lashed his son to an altar and prepared to strike his son dead with a dagger.  Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.  But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"  "Here I am," he replied.  "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." (Genesis 22:10-12 NIV)

Let us consider this carefully.  God said that Abraham feared God and how He proved this was by Abraham’s behavior, he did not withhold his son.  By “withhold”, The Bible meant that Abraham was about to kill Isaac out of loyalty to God.  When we say “fear”, we generally mean that we are afraid of some outcome…there is something we don’t want to happen because if it did, it would be terrible.  The thought of it is dreadful to us.  Now what was it that was dreadful to Abraham?  Could there have been anything more horrid that having his son dead…or perhaps being the one who killed that son?  At one hundred-ten years of age or so, Abraham knew he would die eventually.  He could not have been afraid of his own dying.  Would he have been afraid of becoming poor?  Probably not at one-hundred ten years of age…not anymore anyway…Was he afraid of his wife leaving him for another man or of her dying of old age?  What would have made Abraham afraid of God?  Most likely, and it cannot be much of a stretch to say this, his greatest fear when it came to God was that the Lord might take his son from him!  If he had a fear of God, that would have topped his list and yet by his own volition, he was about to kill his son because he had fear of God.  That sounds crazy but of course it wasn’t.  Fear of God had nothing to do with being afraid of the worst thing that He could do to him because the worst thing that God could have done to Abraham was take his son and Abraham was doing that himself.  Fear of God was just what Abraham revealed; it was following God regardless of the cost.  More than that, it was absolute trust that God would do what was right and good no matter how things appeared.

Hebrews 11: 9 tells us that Abraham believed God could and would raise Isaac from the dead even if he did kill his son on the mountain.  Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. (NIV)  Of course God did not raise Isaac from the dead because He told Abraham to not kill his son.  But before that Abraham confidently raised his knife to kill Isaac because he had faith God would not let Isaac stay dead.  And here we see what it means to “fear God’ because this is what it was for Abraham.  To “fear God” means to trust Him explicitly with your life and with the lives of all those you love and to trust God so much that you will do whatever He tells you to do.  “Fear God” is unbending belief that God is good and can be trusted with everything and everyone you hold dear.  The test for you is when He tells you to hand to Him what matters most to you and let the Lord do with it as He pleases.  So few Christians ever get to this place of absolute trust in God and because they don’t, their lives are shallow and fearful and demanding and short-tempered and even greedy.  They may have their salvation but no real relationship with God that changes the quality of their lives.  You cannot and will not move forward with Christ unless all you treasure is His and you can walk away from any of it if He tells you to do so and still be devoted to God.  Your test will come, perhaps today, maybe tomorrow and you will have to decide if you really do love and trust God.  If you do and you show you do, nothing will be more certain to you in the crisis or the painful time than God’s love and care for you and you will be peacefully calm and secure in it.

Conscience Reboot

Acts 24:16 NIV

So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.

Do You Have a Clear Conscience?

I don’t ever remember a time when I was taken to school by my parents.  It must have happened but my only memories of getting to school were walking or riding my bike. My mom at some point stopped walking with me to elementary school…I know this because I can’t think of a single time that she actually accompanied me.  Those trips to school have long ago all blended together into a single blur except for one particular morning that is perhaps forever etched in my mind.  As I always did each day on my treks to school, I came to a since closed mom and pop grocery store on E. 14^th Street that was a constant curiosity to me.  My mom as far as I knew never shopped in it and so I never had an occasion to see what was inside.  Each day I went to school and then returned home I went past the little store and wondered what it would be like to look around.  One morning, I was a bit early for school so I finally decided to see what deep magic the store held within.  I walked up and down each aisle like I belonged, as if I intended to buy milk or bread or green beans.  I did not have a penny in my pocket; I was only on a fact finding mission.  Eventually I came upon the candy aisle and now I had found nirvana.  I looked at each candy bar, at every ball of gum, at each wrapped piece of hard candy and thought long and hard about what it would be like to have one of those candies.  In the most split of split seconds, I had a most delicious idea.  Why don’t I just take one?  No one was looking.  I was perhaps nine years old…too young to realize how stupid that idea was since I was the son of a police officer and too old to blame my action on ignorance of right and wrong.  I glanced about, stuck my hand down, grabbed a single Jolly Rancher, shoved it in my pocket and hurriedly walked out the door and down the street.  I kept waiting for the clerk to come running after me, for the police to chase me down and frisk me, for my dad to pull up in his car and confront me…but nothing happened.  I had gotten away with stealing the little piece of candy.  I wasn’t arrested.  I did not get a spanking.  I was not pulled out of class and sent to the principal’s office.  No one ever discovered my crime…as far as I knew.  But, my conscience knew what had happened and it would not let me off the hook.  It attacked me with a vengeance and despite the success of my great crime, I never unwrapped the little candy because I felt too guilty to eat it.

Not everyone is like me.  Many don’t feel guilty about all sorts of matters that are considered wrong.  They feel no qualms about stealing or lying or the use of swear words.  They don’t sweat it if they watch pornography or run through a red light or take too long of a shower.  They are unmoved by no trespassing signs, they are perfectly fine with cheating on their biology tests, don’t worry a bit about driving on a suspended license and will drink and drive without giving it a thought.  What are we supposed to do about such people who don’t seem to ever have a guilty conscience; who aren’t bothered by their bad behavior?  Are they hopelessly lost?  Should we try to make them see the error of their ways?

There is a mature, well thought through examination of the conscience in the Bible and it provides rich insight into the psychology of the conscience.  For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong.  They are free from the burdens common to man; they are not plagued by human ills.  Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence.  From their callous hearts comes iniquity; the evil conceits of their minds know no limits. (Psalm 73:3-7 NIV)  “Hearts” in this verse is speaking of the conscience.  Who hasn’t had at least a little bit of jealousy that some people seem to feel no guilt over what they do.  They live wild lives with impunity and no one can get through to them that what they are doing is wrong.  It seems impossible to convince such people to change; their consciences are nearly immutable.

Consider the strange case of Jonah who had a profound hatred for Assyrians.  He refused to go to their capital city and warn them of God’s coming judgment because he did not want them to get out from under the destruction the Lord had planned for them.  Even after God had Jonah swallowed by a great fish and in its belly he stewed for three days, he still was unbending in his loathing of the Assyrians.  He did go and preach in the Assyrian city but nothing inside him changed even after the people repented   He was furious that God did not destroy Nineveh; his conscience felt no guilt over his hatred of the Assyrians whom the Lord clearly loved.  Not even three days in the gut of a great fish could rework Jonah’s conscience.

Likewise it is odd that the great Solomon who experienced several miraculous encounters with God did not seem to feel the least bit guilty about taxing the people excessively or dabbling in paganism.  His conscience was unmoved by the scriptures he read or the poverty he saw all around him.  Even while living in the golden age of the church when the pastors were Apostles like Peter, James and John, Ananias and Sapphira seemed to feel not the least twinge of guilt when they lied about the extent of their charity.  The great Paul seemed to feel no guilt over all the atrocities he committed against the Church even while facing the resurrected Jesus Christ in the middle of the road.  The conscience in many ways is as unbending as a steel bar and no amount of supernatural signs and wonders can force it to change its opinion of good and bad.   All of us have tried to talk someone into believing some action or attitude was morally wrong to no avail.  Just think of the times pro-life demonstrators have tried their best to convince abortion advocates of the horrors of abortion without success or how many have tried to get alcoholic family members to feel guilty for their actions.  We can wreck a conscience by our actions but rarely can we build up a conscience by our rhetoric.

We are thoroughly ineffective at trying to convince others of the wrongness of their wrongs.  We can try interventions, guilt-tripping and emotional pleas and rarely, if ever will we get far with another person’s conscience.  There is only one way for a conscience to be significantly altered.  It must be transformed by the presence of the Spirit of God.  Isaiah provides the perfect example of a converted conscience.  When He came up into the presence of God, he realized just how filthy and disgusting his speech had been before.   "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. (Isaiah 6:5 NIV)  Before this encounter with the Lord, Isaiah thought nothing of what sort of things he said…at least his conscience was unfazed by his words.  The moment he met the real God, he came undone with guilt for his conscience had been converted.  He knew that the sorts of things he had said before were ugly and wrong.  This did not come to him as an intellectual unearthing, it was a Spiritual revelation that not only uncovered the sin he did not before think was sinful but also brought deep remorse for what he realized he had been doing.

The Apostle Paul is a clear example of how the conscience is altered.  As mentioned before, Paul did not seem to feel guilty about his past persecution of Christians when he first met Jesus in a blazing manifestation of His glory.  It was much later that his conscience convicted him of the wrong he had done and he saw himself clearly as a sinner and really a sinner.  This is how he put it after the Spirit of God had changed Paul’s conscience.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24-25 NIV)  This is not false guilt…not like someone weeping over the death of a mosquito he killed; this was the guilt of having done rotten things that before he had never thought were wrong.  This is the guilt of an alcoholic who suddenly realizes what horrible consequences his drinking has brought his family but more importantly, how it has wrecked his life with God.  This is the guilt of a stockbroker who had merrily cheated his clients out of their savings but now saw clearly the evil of his actions.  This is the guilt of young mother who finally realizes how terrible it has been for her to abandon the church.  No one can make her see how truly bad her own sin is; only God can reveal it.  The Bible puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 10: 4.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (NIV)  God alone can break through into a conscience that is unable to see its own sin and change the way the conscience interprets badness.  Divine power can accomplish what we are powerless to undertake.

There is a second way our conscience is awakened to real sin within and it is a terrible discovery.  Let the Apostle Paul explain.  Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith.  Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.  (1Timothy 1:18-20 NIV)  There are times when even a Christian has abandoned his conscience and it becomes wasted on him.  What does God do in those situations?  Honestly it is terrifying but it is the epitome of “tough love”.  The Lord turns over the person to Satan.  We know what happened when God let Job be in the hands of Satan.  It can feel like “hell” but it isn’t.  God lets the person who has turned off her conscience and given up on it be in the grip of Satan.  It happened to Nebuchadnezzar when he went crazy for a year.  It happened to David after he committed adultery with Bathsheba.  It happened to Jonah when he was cast into the raging sea and it happened to Peter after he denied Christ in Caiaphas’s courtyard (see Luke 22: 31).

The church is given authority to do this and it must happen for the good of those who are ruining their consciences by going against them.  The Bible says that it is strong medicine for the sick spirit that is reeling from sin.  When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:4-5 NIV)  In this instance it was a man who was sleeping with his father’s wife.  It could be someone cheating on her husband, another who is an angry man who won’t control his temper, it might be a person who is cheating God out of the tithe or someone destroying her family by her drug addiction.  But we have to be careful here.  This is an extreme measure and only to be done if someone has completely shut out the conscience.  When that happens and there is no remorse for sin, you just quit praying for the person and stop trying to change his behavior.  You let Satan have his way with the person and in the end, God will have freed him or her of the taste for sin.  All rebellion against God will be gone and a craving for the Lord’s presence will surface and dominate the personality.

It is most dreadful when God turns us over to Satan…the most horrible of turns.  That is why we must keep our conscience clear and let the Holy Spirit of God direct our actions.  You see misery and unmitigated corruption in the personality turned over to Satan, a complete blindness to the destruction that person faces and yet, when like Nebuchadnezzar, he turns back to God, when he gets free of Satan’s grip by praying and seeking the mercy of Christ, it is like a fresh and exciting new dawn, filled with promise and hope and the joy of God.  When we walk in the light and trust Jesus Christ to direct us in each and every way whether it is something we see to do or stop doing in Scripture or when the quiet prod of the Holy Spirit through our conscience guides us, we have the peace of God surrounding us and protecting us and keeping us safe.  

Fog

Nothing disturbs our sensibilities quite like the prayer that goes dark.  We once had a firm idea how we ought to pray and what we should expect as an outcome but then it all becomes whacked and we lose our mind over the epic disaster we face since we prayed.  We lose the game, we lose the house, we lose the daughter, we lose the marriage, we lose  the will to pray anymore.  Our expectation is that everything should work in a straight line.  Beginning and end all within the carefully orchestrated wishes we hold and yet it isn't.  We find ourselves staring at a great tangled ball of yarn that has no end to grab.  Our problem is that we have so many accounts in the Bible that wind up somewhere and we expect that too.  Job's health gets restored.  Jonah is spewed out of the fish.  Moses makes it out of Egypt.  Joseph is released from jail.  Peter winds up on the doorstep carefree.  But we forget about James martyred, Jonah stewing over the Assyrian revival, Moses pulled away from Israel just as the Exodus ends, John left upon Patmos and Noah stupidly drunk.  The brief moments when God works with us along a straight line  leave us discombobulated.  We assume that is how it always is to be.  It is our right to see things clearly, to be settled and on our way somewhere.  That is not the human experience though and it especially isn't so for Believers.  God leaves us in a fog for great stretches and does so decidedly.  We can't see our way out of our disappointment, our troubles, our frustration and we think something is wrong with us or wrong with God.  Faith is only established within the fog when you can't make heads or tails of your circumstance or God.  The Lord does not show Himself to you nor give you His "big plan" either.  Blindly you must go about your business believing in the Lord who built His life in you by giving up His life finitely in the public square.  There for all to see the love of Christ was established and decided in the heart of the Father who loved you first before you had a shred of interest in Him.    The only way you can live by faith is when faith is forced out of you; not book faith or classroom faith but actual faith played out in real life.  It is then, when the fog thickens and you are left alone to sort out all the things you hoped would come to pass that haven't that you begin to believe God as you should, as you can.  You have Christ in you, living through you and in that is great hope and promise.  For Jesus has already blazed the way for you.  He dangled from the tree with the world looking out at Him and no sign of the Father at any turn of His head.  All He could see were weeping women, crushed and hopeless men, crass and wanton soldiers,  perverse religious zealots and an agony that was unbearably cruel.  Yet there, in the fog,  Jesus Christ stayed fixed upon the Father and His determined faith is also abiding within you.  Rather than give in to the despair of the fog, fix your eyes upon Jesus who knows how hopeless life can be and has given you His faith to keep you going.

"The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud;    1 Kings 8:12 NIV

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.