8 posts tagged “god”

Today, driving back from running all kinds of errands, I was listening to a teaching from the men's advance training put on at Mars Hill Church entitled "Fathers Raising Sons and Daughters." (To download right-click here)  Paul Petry was teaching, and he was sharing a story about his son, who had undergone major surgery and had to have a lot of Novocaine for the pain.  He was at a pain level of 10, but they could not give him any more Novocaine because an extra dose would have been lethal.  So Paul started praying for him.  And his son began to quote scripture, saying, "For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to hurt you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)  While listening to this, something in me just broke, and I started bawling like a newly crowned beauty queen.  I was broke for many reasons.  In the last few days, and weeks and months, God has been showing me in my past where he has been taking me.  I was meditating on this last night, after I had read Psalm 69, which says, "But as for me, my prayer is to You, O LORD, at an acceptable time;  O God, in the greatness of Your lovingkindness, Answer me with Your saving truth."  For almost three years, almost since I began actually following Jesus, I prayed for God to bring me a woman of God, with whom I could share this journey.   There were many possibilities.  At one time, I thought I had found someone, and the Spirit of God told me (not audibly, but through my heart) to stop pursuing that woman.  I couldn't understand why.  Fast forward to the beginning of college.  I prepared to go to a school known for its violent atheism, and so I prepared for another four years of singleness.  And yet I kept praying.  But at the same time, I was learning about what it meant to be a godly man, and what I ought to be preparing for in looking forward to being a godly husband and a godly father.  God was preparing me.  In his lovingkindness (hesed in the Hebrew, which means all the positive attributes of God), God was preparing my heart.  And then I met an amazing woman of God.

But that isn't the full reason that I was devastated by this story.  I was allowed a glance forward, into the future that God has been preparing for me.  I saw myself as a father.  It devastated me.  Because I realized what an honor and responsibility it will be.  I am preparing to be a father.  I want so bad to be the dad whose son quotes scripture, because I have been faithful to God and to my (future) wife to my sons and daughters.  I will only be able to do it with God's help.  Maybe I will be able to cry out and receive an answer with HIS "saving truth."

Today, on one of my many visits to my favorite bookstore downtown, I came across a book titled How Good Do We Have to Be?.  It caught my eye, mostly because I am a theology nerd and it was on sale.  But upon further inspection, all I could do was slap my head.  I fully realize I am in semi-rant mood.  But I'm sorry.  I can't sit idly by on this one.

The book's title gave away most of its purpose.  It was focused on morality, and the question itself implies that we ought to settle for something lower.  It is born out of a true frustration: religion that simply makes everyone feel guilty and bad.  But if you are doing bad things, then you ought to feel guilty.  If you don't, you are a sadist.

I thumbed through the book and looked at the chapter titles, which just made me frustrated.  The first chapter was titled, "God Loves You Anyway."  Which is true.  But also dangerous.  The theology that God will love you no matter what always seems to leave out the fact that love sometimes requires punishment.  This doctrine has more people sitting in front of their TV's praising God with Joel Osteen and thinking that they are very strong Christians, not remembering that Christ calls us to STOP SINNING.  Forgiveness is the first step.  We are saved TO good works.  Not because of, but to.  The thought that "God loves you anyway" breeds a complacence that is one of the central reasons that the Church in America is declining.  There are as many Christians in China, where it is illegal, as in the United States.  We are complacent, because we think that just because God loves us, we are free to do whatever we want.  I have said this before on this blog: God's love is fierce.  He loves us and calls us to change.  It is not the senile love of a grandmother who always bakes you cookies, even after you gave your brother a bloody nose.  This is a fierce God. 

I continued on in the book.  The next chapter was titled "I Thought I Had to Be Perfect."  Which is another great lie.  Whenever we try really hard to be good, we get depressed.  Because WE can't do it.  WE are bad.  But God is Good, all the time.  And so its not that we have to be perfect, but that we have to let God be perfect through us.  Whenever we try to be merely moral, it is like we are "dirty rags" in front of God (Isaiah 64:6).   The Hebrew literally means rags used for menstration.  We are THAT dirty, when we try to be moral.  Because we spurn the goodness of God.  We tell God we can do it on our own, when God knows that we can never do anything on our own.  So let us not think that we have to be perfect by our own doing.  But that we must be perfect because of God.  For from him and through him and to him are all things.

And so I continue to the last chapter title, "Choosing happiness over righteousness."  The premise was that when we make righteousness our primary goal, we are always unhappy, because we realize that we are unrighteous.  Which is true.  But that hardly means that we ought to then decide to become hedonists.  The truth is that if we choose ANYTHING over God, it becomes a demon.  This is why the humble plumber is more holy than the pious poet, and the contrite electrician more holy than the proud priest.  We must choose God.  If we choose righteousness before God, we are not really choosing righteousness.  We are mistaking the essence for the being.  If we choose happiness before God, we will receive quite the opposite: eternal suffering.  That is why God continued to say I AM GOD.  Because nothing else can take his place.  And if anything does, it becomes less of itself.

Essentially, the book's tragic error was that it focused on the self.  Everything is confusing when we are focused on self.  Let us not think of what we can do, but what God can do.  For he alone is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the supreme in every way.  Let us love God first, and then through that learn how to love others.

I seem to remember promising to break down God's wrath and propitiation (Jesus' atonement for God's wrath) at some point, so I wanted to get that out of the way now that I have some time.  Here goes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First of all, the attribute to describe God the most is holy.  In Leviticus alone, it is used 123 times, usually in the refrain, "be holy, as I am holy." (i.e. Leveticus 11:44)  This means that God is sacred, and cannot be in the presence of sin.  He is holy.

But the problem is that we sin.  This requires a response from God.  It is not just that we sin, but that we reject God altogether (Romans 1:21), refusing to give him the worship that he deserves.  Truly, anytime we sin, we sin against God. (Psalm 51:4)  Being holy and righteous, God hates sin, as Psalm 5:5 says, "The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong."  Sin as an affront to God's holiness is justly condemned, for God is also a just God (Deuteronomy 32:4).  God's just response to this affront of God's character and God's creation is wrath.

While not dealt with much in most mainstream churches, it is dealt with quite prominently in the Bible.  Actually, God's wrath is mentioned over 600 times using 20 different words in the Old Testament, while it appears prominently, but less frequently, in the new testament.  Most often in the Old Testament, anger and wrath are used jointly, such as in Deuteronomy 9:19, 29:28, and Psalm 2:5.  Some people see God as a God of wrath only in the Old Testament, but God does not change.  God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and he has wrath today as well.  Prominent examples in the Old Testament are 2 Chronicles 28:13b, which says, "Do you intend to add to our sin and guilt? For our guilt is already great, and his fierce anger rests on Israel."  Also, the prophetic book of Nahum opens up with a description of God, saying, "The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies." (Nahum 1:2)  Too often we read these passages and make a mental list of all the people who are God's enemies.  But if we sin, against God especially, we are God's enemies.  I just realized I have been throwing around this term wrath without really defining it, so allow me to provide the defenition that John Piper gave in his sermon on Romans 1:18-32.  "The wrath of God is the settled anger toward sin expressed in repayment of suitable vengance on guilty sinners."

At first glance, this doctrine of God's wrath seems in conflict with His love.  But if we reject God's personal wrath towards us, we also must reject his personal love towards us.  A loving God's response to the destruction of his creation is wrath, for he not only loves the destroyer, but the destroyed, and therefore is wrathful at its defilement.  Too often, we picture God as one of senile benevolence; but God's love is a fierce love, and He is wrathful when His creation, which He loves, is being destroyed.

Furthermore, God's anger and wrath are expressed in the New Testament as well.  For if Jesus was not wrathful, and Jesus was God incarnate, then truly God cannot be wrathful.  But in Mark 3:5, it says that Jesus was truly angry.  Additionally, Jesus is described as wrathful in Revelation 6:16, when a chorus of voices cried out, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!"  Also, God's wrath is described in Ephesians 5:6, Colossians 3:6, and throughout much of the earlier part of Romans.  Additionally, Romans 3:5-6 reports that God's wrath is deserved.  It is described in Matthew 25:41-46 as an unquenchable fire, and as eternal in Mark 9:43.

If this is where we stand, under God's wrath and just condemnation, how shall we be saved?  Where is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ?  Indeed, if I simply had told you that Jesus died for you, without showing you why that was so significant, you would not have listened.  It would not have been good news, simply ok or apathetic news.  But we are under God's wrath, and at this point, Jesus steps in and takes God's wrath on himself, in our place.  This doctrine, known as penal substitutionary atonement, is the good news..  Many people want to reject this doctrine because of certain philosophical presuppositions that they carry with them.  But you reject this, and it is no longer fully the gospel.  This is the most beautiful part of the gospel.

In Romans, Paul writes, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith"  (Romans 3:23-25, NASB)  The word "propitiation" literally means a satisfaction of God's wrath, a clearing of his response, as Jesus bore God's wrath in our place.

Jesus' propiatory sacrifice atoned for our sins, allowing the possibility for us to be at one with God.  But that is not the end of this process.  You must believe in Jesus Christ, and follow him and obey him.  Jesus proclaimed in John 3:36 that, "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."  In order to participate in the riches of God's grace, you must believe in Jesus.  The death, burial, and ressurection of Jesus.  No other religion or ideology.  Jesus.  You might tell me I am narrow-minded.  But I am just as narrow-minded as Jesus was, no more, no less.

Do not be fooled.  Do not think that this is a free ticket out.  That everyone is cleared just because Jesus died.  Some might say that this is errant, but "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient." (Ephesians 5:6)  Also, "for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger." (Romans 2:8)

Truly God is holy.  Truly God is just.  And truly God is merciful.  He has extended to us a way out, in Jesus and his death on the cross.  But we must not stop there.  It requires action on our part, a turning towards Jesus and away from sin.  A.W. Tozer notes that "the hope that God will not carry out his wrath because he is merciful is a deadly opiate to many people" (Paraphrase of Knowledge of the Holy).  Do not be lulled in thinking that God's wrath will not be carried out because his love trumps all.  Instead, let us fall to our knees, and proclaim:

O God, truly, you are holy, and just, and mighty, and merciful and loving.  And we thank you for your good news, and for giving us a second chance.  Truly salvation is of the Lord, and we thank you.  O Praise Him, who sacrificed himself for us, so that we might be reconciled to God.  Amen.  So be it.  Amen.

This last week, I was reading through the lectionary, and Ezekiel 37 came up.  Thankfully, I was in a medtitative mood, because I have read this passage before, and I would have read right past it otherwise.
The passage begins, saying, "The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.  He asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?""

I stopped after reading this question and thought to myself, "what would I have answered?"  Personally, I sat there and thought, "no way.  God, duh, its a valley of dry bones."  And then I realized that my school is a valley of dry bones.  My school is something like in the top five for schools where god is likely to be ignored.  Then my answer was so much more important.  God was asking me, "Theodoulos, can these bones live?"  He has led me through the valley through this past year, and he has shown me the breadth of the destruction.  What was my answer?

So I looked at Ezekiel's answer: "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."  No just LORD, but Sovereign.  All-powerful.  Ruling.  Somehow, God is sovereign on my campus.   I must proclaim, "God, its up to you."  For then, he charged Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones.  And so this is the message I must bring to my campus:

'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'

And in the end, there is a "vast army."  I believe that there are a vast army of elect at my campus.  But I must prophesy to my campus.  And love them.

I was trying to nap...but I started thinking about this blog, and so I was compelled to write it.  I don't think I can sleep unless I get this down.

About a month and half ago, there was a hypnotist that visited my college.  It got me thinking about all kinds of things, such as how to interact and address the very reality of a hypnotist, and the spiritual realm in which they sometimes dwell.  As a general rule, I am not a fan of hypnotists, because it is quite shady.  Although this might not be true of all hypnotists, at least some are very clearly connected to demonic activity.  The testimony of trustworthy people has taught me that.  Now I could just rail on hypnotists and how evil they are, but I want to address the relationship between Satan and God, and the power that both wield.

During the promotional gambit at lunch in the dining hall, the hypnotist got up on a chair and showed everyone how he could make two forks act like they were strongly magnetic, one hanging from the other.  He did this to establish his repitoire, and his power and abilities.  But he wasn't showing anything crazy or completely out of the ordinary...these were cheap tricks.

Similarly, Satan tries to flex his muscles in certain places over certain parts of history.  He yells to humanity, "See, I wield power, for I can raise the ocean to flood you and use the winds to destroy you."  But God shrugs, simply retorting, "I created it all."  Compared with the awesomeness and beauty and majesty of the Lord's creation, everything is a cheap trick.  If we stand and say, "look God, I created a building and a family and all this other stuff," we will be shamed, for God's work is infinitely greater. Instead of trying to rival God's creation or thinking that we are on level footing, a belief that will ultimately make us shamed, it is truly said that we stand highest when we bow lowest.

Let us throw ourselves at the feet of the Almighty.  For Jesus is the Word through which all things are made.  And let us fall in worship, exhalting Him, worshipping him for the beauty of his creation.

When the Apostle John approached the Throne of the Most High God in Revelation 4, he describes the most utmost glory of God with the most insufficient of words.  He grasps for words, but there are none.  In Revelation 4:3, John writes "And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne."  What glory!  And then he continues, writing that, "Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal."
Before the throne of God, before the Glory of the most worthy and majestic God, we see ourselves.  This is what happened to Job in Job 42.  He had been beating the drums of his own righteousness and good deeds the whole book.  And then God shows up.  And in Job 42, he says, "Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."  After a classroom discussion where we tried to unpack this verse, I came back to my room and opened Matthew Henry's Commentary.  This is what he says on this verse: "Even good people, that have no gross enormities to repent of, must be greatly afflicted in soul for the workings and breakings out of pride, passion, peevishness, and discontent, and all  their hasty unadvised speeches.  The more we see of the glory and majesty of God, the more we see of the vileness and odiousness of sin and of ourselves because of sin, the more we shall abase and abhor ourselves for it."  This is what Job understood.  Finding himself in the presence of the most glorious and glorified God, he threw himself to his face, and repented in dust and ashes.
Why "in dust and ashes"?  If we look back to the second chapter of Job, we see that, "he sat among the ashes," after being covered in boils and losing his entire family.  Ashes, especially in the Old Testament, are a archetype for mourning.  And so Job came in mourning.  Also, the phrase "dust and ashes" was a proverbial phrase used to invoke a sense of lowliness and fragility of human nature.  The humanity, and the insufficiency of human flesh.  This is what Job came carrying.  Dragging it to God.  Because he knew that God wants "to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes."  (Isaiah 61:3)
So let us come to God, repenting, knowing our condition.  And he will see us.  And take our ashes and mourning away.  And give us a crown of beauty.  And we will stand in front of the throne of the Most High.  And we will look in the crystal lake.  And see ourselves.  And then look to God, knowing that he is infinitely more amazing and wonderful and glorious than anything else.  Especially our sins.  And so we can look away from our own depravity, and towards Him who is most worthy.  Amen.  So help us.  Amen.

This last week, I took a chance.  I won't go into details, because for this meditation it is not important.  The point is that right before I took a chance, I was meditating on Job, because my Bible and Lit class had read the first 14 chapters of that tough book.  I noticed that the characters kept referring to God as Almighty, in the Hebrew, El-Shaddai.  It was very interesting.  Actually, God is referred to as El-Shaddai thirty-one times in the Book of Job.  The book where God is seen as the most out of control, Job cries out to the Almighty.  That is amazing.  I used to be scared of the sovereignty of God.  But Job had it right.  It is a comfort.  Because God is in control.  Somehow, in this crazy world, God's hand presses forward with his purpose.  He rules as Sovereign, King of kings and Lord of lords.  It is amazing.
The use of El-Shaddai is not just in Job.  Naomi, when returning to Israel after her life fell apart in Moab, says, "El-Shaddai has made my life bitter."  (Ruth 1:20)  Naomi knows that God is all powerful.  That he is mighty to save.
And so let us dwell in the house of the Lord, and let us walk in the vineyard of El-Shaddai.  (Isaiah 5:7)

Let us fall at His feet.  Because he will cover us under his wing, and we will be called children of the Most High.  Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord.  Amen.  So help us.  Amen.

I received a comment tonight with a few questions that are very necessary to the Christian faith, and so being a theodoulos (slave of god), I gladly will answer them.  Thank you poptart for asking them, nothing makes me more happy than answering questions I know have been asked.

- "Why would Christ, who is now God, as many people say, pray to himself?"
To understand any answer to this question, we must first understand the nature of God.  God lives in community: he exists eternally in three persons as one Godhead- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is very hard to grasp, no matter how long you have been a student and disciple of the faith.  The best tactile example I can give you is that of marriage- indeed, in Genesis, it says, "he created them in the image of God."  When male and female are united in marriage, this is the closest equivalent to the Trinity we have.  They exist "as one flesh."  They are two distinct people, but united.  Now take this to the next level.  Three personalities, three spirits, the Trinity, who are closer than a man and woman can ever be.  Indeed, they are so close, that they constitute one person. (Most of the description I used was gleaned from A.W. Tozer's Knowledge of the Holy or C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity)
And so Christ is only on part of the Godhead.  Christ is the Son.  In the beginning, before Genesis 1:1, there existed God, in three persons, each glorifying the others.  And so Christ praying to the Father (which is what he almost always refers to him as, either that or Lord), is nothing out of the ordinary - it is what He has been doing for all eternity.  Because prayer is first and foremost a glorification of the object of that prayer.
So Christ, who was always God the Son, prayed not to himself, but to the Father.  I hope that is satisfying.  If it isn't, push me harder, and I will search for better answers from more learned people (maybe who actually have a degree from a seminary).

- "If he were God, and knew what was to happen, being a God, why not just wipe the slate clean?"
This is a very important question, because if not properly answered, it could call into question God's justice.  First of all, let me begin with an analogy - a chess match.  If my opponent wants to take back an errant move, and as an easy going person, I let him take it back, that is all well and fine.  But imagine if he could take any move back that he wanted.  Imagine if I allowed him not only to do this, but to move my pieces if they got in his way.  We would no longer have a chess match.  It would be nothing.  If God had miraculously intervened to offset any effects of the Original Sin, and then did it again and again with each new sin, there would be no choice.  There would be a choice for good, and a null choice.  And this would not be a freedom of will.  This would be tyranny.

Also, if God just wiped the slate clean and said, "its ok, no worries," he would not be just.  Bad actions demand punishment.  And these actions must be punished.  This is where Christ and the third question come into play.

- "What's the need with the blood sacrifice?"
First I want to address the necessity of sacrifice in general.  What did Jesus accomplish on the cross?  It is impossible to address every single accomplishment of the cross, and so I will focus the propitiation on the cross.  For a more detailed overview of the Cross, see Mark Driscoll's series of sermons entitled Christ on the Cross.
I am going to focus on penal substitutionary atonement.  Let me lay this out.
First there was God and then creation and paradise.  Then we sinned.  Because of our sin, God's just response is wrath.  In fact, if you piled up the verses about wrath of God and the verses about love of God, you would probably have more about the wrath of God.  His just response to our sin and disobedience is wrath.  It is not unlike the situation if I was married, and I walked in on my wife sleeping with another man.  My first response, and just response, would be wrath.  Anger.  The same thing has happened- we have been whoring ourselves around with everyone but God.  We were meant to be in communion with God.  And so he is wrathful, as he ought to be.  He is disgusted by sin.  Which is why in the Old Testament, there was a copious amount of blood everytime a sin offering had to be performed.  It is disgusting.  It is meant to be that way.  God is trying to demonstrate how much sin disgusts him.
Enter Jesus.  He dies on the cross, as a substitute for our sins.  Just as a lamb was slaughtered as a substitution in ancient Israel, The Lamb was slain as a substitution for men (Calvin says limited atonement, Jacobus Arminius says unlimited atonement.  But we must first choose Jesus).  When on the cross, the wrath of God was wiped away.  This clearing of the wrath of God is known as propitiation, and it is so important.
So why did there have to be blood sacrifice? - because sin is disgusting, and God wants us to know that.  Let us kneel at the foot of the Cross, for surely, the blood of the Lamb will wash away our sins, atoning for our misdeeds, sins of omission and comission.  Let us cling to Jesus.

- "Some say he didn't know what was going to happen, that he was a confused son of man, falliable in such a state, but then... was he really God, or just a servant?"
There are a lot of issues in this question.  First I must say that Jesus was full God and fully man.  If he is anything less, he cannot mediate between God and man, and so we have no hope from him.  But thanks be to God, for he is, and so he can mediate between man and God, as Job yearned for in Job 9.
The argument that Mark Driscoll makes regarding this is that although Jesus was God, he never leaned heavily into his God character, but instead relied on the Holy Spirit.  He was surely not a confused son of man, and proved his sovereignty through his prediction of his betrayal, Peter's denial, among others.  Did he know exactly what was going to happen?  I don't know.  Did he know in the Garden that he was going to be crucified - why else would he be sweating blood?  He was under immense stress (which is how one sweats blood), and so he knew how it was going down.  We cannot call Christ fallible, for this means that he can be wrong, which he never was - he was the Lamb without spot or blemish.  He had no sin.  He was mutable (changing), because he had taken on a human body, but not fallible.  Finally, he was really God, and also a servant.  Because, as I said earlier, his life was a contiual glorification of God the Father, he continually submitted himself to the Father's will, to the point of death on a cross, the most horrible way to die.  He was fully God the Son, serving God the Father fully for his entire life.

If there are any more questions, or any clarifications (after all, it is 2am here), I would be more than happy to answer them.

Let us remember to cling to Christ.  For hope from Him does not dissapoint us.