1 Peter 1 Gospel moment

I was looking through 1 Peter 1 for opportunities to preach the gospel and came up with a few. I'll post them once a day for the next few days.

1 Peter 1:1-2 -- Peter points out the Trinitarian function of our salvation. The Father chooses, The Spirit sanctifies, and The Christ spent His blood on our behalf. As a result of this we have grace and peace in the fullest measure. Now who is this grace and peace between? Is it between the believers and the ‘world’? No because Peter is going to refer soon to his readers (and our) impending trials. This grace and peace are between us and God as a result of our salvation through Jesus. This is the good news!! The bad news is that God has a just right to destroy us for our sin, and yet because of His great, unending, amazing mercy, He created a perfect way to both judge our sin on His son and also bring Him the greatest glory imaginable by redeeming His sinful creation. This is the news we should shout from the roof tops and share with everyone we meet. This peace and grace is available, if we but obey Christ and repent and believe that He is capable to save.

Functional Universalism

Do We Really Believe What We're Saying? from The Church at Brook Hills on Vimeo.

This video is convicting to me. Very convicting. Do I spend all of my energy to partner with the Spirit to save the lost? Do I actually care about them? and prove it by my actions & words?

I have so much to grow in to and learn. I must pursue courage. And honor my Lord.

How do we comfort ourselves after we sin, when we know better?

A friend asked me: How do we comfort ourselves after we sin, when we know better? Especially in the context of 2 Peter 2:20-22

It is good to feel remorse for our sin, b/c it does pain the Father and our sin is what caused Him to sacrifice His Son on our behalf (Isaiah 53). However we should not dwell on it after we have sought forgiveness b/c He removes our iniquity as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103). If we dwell in our sin afterwards it is temptation by the Evil one to try and make us forget who we have been changed into. It's like Satan is trying to pull us back to the corpse and dead body that we have left behind.

It's times like this that helps me to remember: 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." This couldn't be any clearer. If we confess our sins, He will forgive us and cleanse us. Don't forget these words. Memorize them. That's what I've had to do.

It also helps me to read through Psalm 51. This is the Psalm David wrote confessing his sin and seeking God's forgiveness after he had committed adultery and murder. Remember David did these terrible things long after he was king and had served the Lord for many years. He also went on after this to continue to serve the Lord and remain in fellowship with Him. Over the years, different parts of the psalm have grown on me. Lately the vs 13 & 14: "¹³Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you. ¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness" have gathered more of my attention. Not that my sin should be a positive excuse, but that by seeing my sin it forces me to come running back to my Lord, seeking His favor and then propelling me to tell others of how great He is to forgive even me, the lowliest of repeated sinners. And thus I can see God putting to good use even my sin. Not that He wants me to sin, but that He can even use my ungodliness to His purpose.

If you want to look for examples of patience with sin, Psalm 103, mentioned above, is a great one. But also just look at the whole context of the Old Testament. God could have, and probably should have, left the Israelites for forgetting Him throughout their entire history. And yet He always remains consistent. He always maintains a remnant of followers. He always returns to them to bring them to Him.

Does that hit what you were asking about?

Read/Listen to Romans!!

You should read Romans all the way through. It will answer a lot of your questions. I would also recommend a sermon series to go along with it. Sermon series are perfect for commuting. You're in the car/train any way might as well redeem the time.

A few good ones would be:

-- Phil Smuland from my church in College: http://www.cov-pres.org/teaching/Romans.php This was really the sermon series that awakened my love for the word and the Lord. Downside is it's like 96 sermons.

-- Tommy Nelson from a church called Denton Bible in Texas. I really like Tommy's teaching style: http://dbcmedia.org/sermons/romans-complete-mp3-series/ This one is only 49 messages

-- R.C. Sproul is pretty big/famous theologian: http://www.ligonier.org/learn/sermons/?scripture=5 I like R.C. A lot too. This is about 60 sermons give or take.

Seriously. Listen to sermons, read Romans. Know who God is. You won't be disappointed.

Can Christians be Warriors?

A friend asked me: Is it ok for Christians to use weapons? And what do these passages mean?

[Luke 22:36] Then said He unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

[Mat 26:51] And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear.

[Mat 26:52] Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the swordshall perish with the sword.

Good questions.

When interpreting scripture you always want to understand the context in which it was written. Since the books of the Bible were written to a specific intended audience we need to understand that audience a little and try and hear as they would have heard. As an illustration, if I was trying to understand what a particular function did in a larget code block, I can't do that unless I understand the functions called before it and after it from the main().

So first thing is that Luke in general is written to gentiles (non-jews). In particular this part of the book is when Jesus is in the Upper Room, where He is celebrating the passover with His disciples right before He is captured by the Jewish religious ruling council. It's His last night, and He has a lot of rapid-fire issues He wants to bring up with them to prepare them for life without Him in the flesh. Among those issues is the state that they will find themselves while carrying out their lives in service to Him.

Reading back just a bit we see in Luke 22:35-38 that Jesus is comparing their preparedness when He sent them out on a little missions trip earlier in their service to Him, to how they will need to be prepared after He is ' numbered with the transgressors' i.e. punished and killed.

So catching up to 22:36 there are probably a couple of ways to look at this. In general Jesus was never against defending oneself, though He was willing to take condemnation if it meant expansion of His mission. Therefore this passage could mean that Jesus was warning His disciples that soon they would need to prepare for hardship by guarding their money and their light-weight possessions (enough to fit in a backpack, not extravagant living) and get a sword for defense. A verse later the disciples say they have 2. If Jesus thought swords were a problem, He would have prohibited the sword long before they got to the upper room, since they likely carried them all the way from home in Galilee. Jesus says they are enough. It could be that even though 2 swords for 13 men is no where near enough, it is enough given that they have Jesus.

On the other hand it could be that Jesus was suggesting that they metaphorically have the sword of the spirit (Eph. 6:10-17) and later when they say they have 2 physical swords His word: "Enough" could be a rebuke.

Of the two ways to look at it, I'd probably lean towards the first one. Seems like He's giving them a lot of 'going away' advice so why not warn them to defend themselves. In the ultimate sense, God will protect and bring us to heaven if we believe that His Son died on the cross for the sins that we committed against Him. So we don't really need to worry about being killed in the line of duty to Him.

Matt. 26:51,52 == Again we need to look at the context of the book and the original audience, so we know how to understand what the author wrote. Matt 26:47-56. Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. So everything that Matthew writes should be interpreted in that context. He often doesn't explain Jewish mindset or customs, b/c he assumes that the reader gets them by default. This understanding applies here b/c the Jews were expecting the Messiah to come back in strength and overthrow the oppressors. God had been silent between the last Prophet Malachi and Jesus for about 400 years or so. The Hebrews that welcomed Him into Jerusalem on 'Palm Sunday', 4 days earlier, waved palms b/c those were symbols of kingship in Hebrew culture. So with all that expectation of overthrow of the current power over them (the Romans), the Jews had a really tough time understanding that Jesus was not leading a political rebellion. Even His own followers didn't really get it until after He was dead.

We can see this understanding carried out b/c Peter uses his sword to cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest. Jesus immediately rebukes Peter and heals the servant's ear. Jesus makes the point that (a) He must suffer at the hands of the high priest so that He can die and pay the penalty of our sins. (b) Jesus makes the point that He didn't come to take a political kingdom, but to inaugurate a spiritual one.

This is the explanation of Mat. 26:52. Jesus is saying that if you try to take the world by force to convert them to my kingship then you're going about it the wrong way. If Jesus wanted to do things by force He could call down legions of angels. But He didn't. The father was calling Him to suffer.

So what's our responsibility in all this? Do we have the right to defend ourselves? Yes. Do we have the requirement to do so? No. If it will advance the kingdom to be humble before someone's attack, then it is worth it to suffer for Jesus. All of this applies to our personal lives and behavior.

The state on the other hand is not a person. What applies to the person and His life does not apply to the state. Even though the state is an amalgamation of lots of individuals. It cannot behave like the individual in all areas because it doesn't make sense. The state has to act in the best interests of it's people which may not always favor the individual.

-- Luke 3:12-14 Jesus approves of soldering. Just not abuse of their power as individuals.

-- Romans 13:1-4 Paul discusses how we are to submit to the governing authorities b/c they've been appointed by God and have the right of the sword to carry out God's judgement on both internal matters and external matters.

-- 1 Peter 2:13-14 Peter tells us to submit to authorities again who have the right to punish evil-doers. Again they have that right to punish internal to their country and externally against other countries.

I could go on with other examples of warriors whom God approves of:

-- David. He was a warrior King who defended his people and attacked those who sought to oppress Him. He even expanded the nation of Israel to new, wider boarders.

-- Joshua. He led the people into the promised land and conquered many of the inhabitants of the land of Canaan.

-- Gideon. Led the people in the time of the Judges. With the Lord's help they vanquished the enemies of God.

And more and more. In all of the examples though, they are leaders of the state and are approved by God to make war, and more than that they are helped/protected by God to ensure that they win.

Pastor Bell vs. MSNBC

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If the video doesn't work here's the link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3096434/vp/42098348#42098348

I don't know if Mr. Bashir is a Christian or not. He seems to be interviewing as a normal journalist would, seeking the truth and logically applying statements to understand their conclusions.

I appreciated this interview b/c it focused on logic and formal debate. There was no emotionalism that I could detect on the part of Mr. Bashir. And since we don't know if he is a Christian or not, it makes it easier to accept that he probably doesn't have a horse in the fight of whether Pastor Bell is orthodox or not.

Pastor Bell's chief argument against Mr. Bashir appears to me to be reducible to: "It's ok to believe whatever you want about Heaven and Hell as long as you can find someone in the history of Christianity who has believed it too." This seems terribly irresponsible for a pastor to tell his followers that truth and falsehood don't matter when it comes to understanding who God is. Isn't that the whole point of the second commandment? By not being clear, he is in effect suggesting to his parishioners that it's ok to worship a false god.

I also wanted to address a tweet I read about this interview earlier in the week:
"Not sure why everyone is claiming victory based on @realrobbell 's interview with Martin Bashir. Truth isn't based on who can argue better."
Sure a particular position (truth) can be correct, regardless of whether someone can argue well on its behalf. If my 4 year old can't put together a cogent argument to defend the pythagorean theorem, that doesn't make the theorem false. But if a particular truth is valid, there should be a logical defense of that truth. In our math example, a college math teacher (aka an expert in the field of math) could easily make the argument.

In this case we're not talking about a 4 year old being out of their depth, but we're talking to an expert in the field, a pastor talking about doctrine. In fact it's not just any doctrine, but it's a doctrine that the pastor in question seems to have studied well enough to write a book about it. If he can't argue his point cogently against a journalist who likely hasn't been to seminary and hasn't been studying the topic for the last x months, then how can we say that the 'truth' being defended by the pastor is valid? He of all people should be able to make logical arguments to defend it.

So no, truth isn't based on who can argue better. But if a qualified agent can't argue for a position they have established, then the veracity of that position is certainly questionable. Especially if their opponent argues better for their contrary position.

Where does that leave me? It challenges me to 1 Peter 3:15: "¹⁵but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect," I need to: (1) Honor Christ as Holy (2) be prepared by studying and thinking about what the Bible says about who Christ is so that I can honor Him as Holy (3) Join with the Spirit, and be able to cogently dialogue with others about the truths in the Bible, in order to lead them to the truth the Bible proclaims. (4) be gentle and respectful.

Anyone want to guess which of those 4 steps are the hardest for me?

1 John 1:1-4

Ever since my friend pointed out that Jesus makes His power known through His humility, I have been so challenged to follow His example. Especially at work where I don't always get along with people above me. So instead of dwelling on that, I'm going to turn to scripture and focus on Jesus and who He is, and how He revealed Himself.

1 John 1:1-4:

"¹ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. ² The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. ³ We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴ We write this to make our joy complete."

John always puts Jesus in the preeminent position. He says that Jesus was from the beginning. John then says that "we" not just John, but some group of people, heard, saw, and touched Jesus. Sounds like pretty strong evidence to His existence to me. John says he and his compatriots saw Jesus and proclaim eternal life as a result of that experience. Eternal life seems to be a person in this context. The person of Jesus. John says he and his compatriots proclaim what they have learned. They don't just chit-chat about it, they don't merely talk about it. They proclaim it, they teach it. And they do it so that others may join them in fellowship with the Lord. Not so that John and his friends can rule over others, but that their Joy may be complete. Complete! Finished joy because they tell others about Jesus.

That is what I should focus on, not being annoyed at people lessoning my contributions at work.

Jesus, make my Joy complete by giving me the courage and opportunity to tell others what you have done for me. Saved me, a wretched sinner from the hell I so justly earned. Even today you died for the sin of anger and 'murder in my heart' that I committed. You save not just what I've done, but what I will do.

You are eternal life.