Jesus

He Knows

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 4 Comments

Read Exodus 3

When the Israelites cried in their affliction and suffering in Egypt, God knew their condition of helplessness and rescued them. Why? Because they were a great bunch? Because they loved God? Because they deserved to be emancipated? Nothing of the kind. They were a godless, complaining lot of humanity.

The reason God intervened was because they were his people and he was committed to them. His reputation and his name was on the line. He had promised Abraham a land and God always keeps his promises. So while they were yet sinners, he prepared a deliverer, Moses, through whom he would extract his people from Egypt. Moses was a picture of Christ, a man who was raised up to lead the people out of bondage into the freedom of God’s kingdom.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were blind and spiritually dead. While we were ignorant of our greatest need. While we knew nothing about God. While we were rebels, Christ fixed our sin problem.

Has this happened to you? Has God rescued you from your darkness and sin?

Freedom!

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 1 Comment

Holiness = Progress in obedience happens only when our hearts realize that God’s love for us does not depend on our progress in obedience.

Approval = You are already qualified. You don’t have to make the grade on your own or seek more approval from anyone. In Christ, you’re in! You’re accepted, affirmed, & validated. This also includes an inheritance that can never diminish, or disappear or be stripped away. You will be inheriting the new heavens and the new earth!

Power-Recognition-Fame = You are one of the saints in light. You’ve been united to Christ. You will always have his name, his presence, his character, and his reputation overshadowing and filling all that you are in your inmost being. Because Jesus was Someone (God of the Universe, God of Creation, God of Salvation and you are in him!), you’re free to be no one.

Security = You have been liberated out of darkness’s grip and transported into the kingdom of Jesus. You now are, and forever will be, safe and sound in Jesus-all because of what he long ago accomplished for you by his perfect obedience to God’s law for you and by his death on the cross for you.

– Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian

Look To Jesus and Nobody Else

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by Octavius Winslow, 1856 (edited for
today’s reader by Larry E. Wilson, 2010)

Bible Verse

“Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth” (John 17:17).

Devotional

“How may I know that sin is being mortified in me?” is the anxious inquiry of many. We reply: by a weakening of its power.

When Christ subdues your iniquities, he does not eradicate them, but rather he weakens the strength of their root. The principle of sin remains, but it is impaired.

See it in the case of Peter. Before he fell, his easily besetting sin was self-confidence: “Even though they all fall away, I will not” (Mark 4:29). Behold him after his recovery, taking the low place at the feet of Jesus—and at the feet of the disciples too—meekly saying, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (John 21:17). No more self-praise, no more self-confidence—his sin was mortified by the Spirit and he became as a different man.

In this way, often the very outbreak of your sins may become the occasion of their deeper discovery and their more thorough subjection.

As well, do not overlook the power of the truth, by the instrumentality of which the Spirit mortifies sin in us: “Sanctify them in the truth.” The truth as it is in Jesus, revealed more clearly to the mind, and impressed more deeply on the heart, transforms the soul into its own divine and holy nature. Therefore, your spiritual and experiential acquaintance with the truth—especially with him who is essential Truth—will be the measure of the Spirit’s mortification of sin in your heart.

Is the Lord Jesus becoming increasingly precious to your soul? Are you growing in poverty of spirit? Are you growing in a deeper sense of your vileness, weakness, and unworthiness? Is your pride more abased? Is your self more crucified? Is God’s glory more simply sought? Does your heart more quickly shrink from sin? Is your conscience more sensitive to the touch of guilt? And do confession and cleansing become a more frequent habit? Are you growing in more love to all the saints—even to those who, though they do not adopt your entire creed, yet love and serve your Lord and Master? If so, then you may be assured that the Spirit is mortifying sin in you.

But oh, look away from everything to Jesus. Do not look within for sanctification; look up for it from Christ. He is as much your “sanctification” as he is your “righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30). Your evidences, your comfort, your hope, do not spring from your fruitfulness, your mortification, or anything within you; they come solely and entirely from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Looking unto Jesus by faith is like removing the covering and opening the windows of a conservatory, to admit more freely the sun, beneath whose light and warmth the flowers and fruits expand and mature. Draw back the veil that conceals the Sun of Righteousness and let him shine in upon your soul. Then the mortification of all sin will follow, and the fruits of all holiness will abound.

A Re-Write of Your Story

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Are you resting in God’s approval or are you still seeking your own? If you’re still seeking your own, chances are you don’t handle criticism very well. (I don’t either.) In the end, criticism is losing the approval of others. But if you are in Christ you can rest in God’s approval and then you can handle criticism. (I’m improving, sort of.)

The entire story of the Old Testament is a story of broken lives. Adam was the original broken life that resulted in a world enslaved to sin. But when Jesus entered into the human family, he re-wrote the script. He came for a radical rescue, to undo the curse of sin, untwist the distortions, and re-write the whole human story.

Is your name in his script?

Success At Last!

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Jesus shows you the goodness of God by sending him to succeed where you failed. You are in his triumphant procession. No longer do you have to work for God’s approval. If you are in Christ, God approves of you.

Adam in the garden failed, Israel in the wilderness failed, but where they couldn’t live up to God’s law, Jesus did. He is the better Adam, and he is the true Israel, who delighted to do God’s will. And that perfect record God has put into your account, so you are now as perfect as Jesus.

 

All Is Free

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Pardon, peace, spiritual life—all of them are gifts, divine gifts, brought down from heaven by the Son of God, presented personally to each needy sinner by God. They are not to be bought, but received; as men receive the sunshine, complete and sure and free. They are not to be earned or deserved by exertions or sufferings, or prayers or tears; but received at once as the purchase of the labors and sufferings of the great Substitute. They are not to be waited for—but taken on the spot without hesitation or distrust, as men take the loving gift of a generous friend.

— Horatius Bonar

Gospel Transformation

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“The gospel transforms us in heart, mind, will, and actions precisely because it is not itself a message about our transformation. Nothing that I am or that I feel, choose, or do qualifies as Good News. On my best days, my experience of transformation is weak, but the gospel is an announcement of a certain state of affairs that exists because of something in God, not something in me; something that God has done, not something that I have done; the love in God’s heart which he has shown in his Son, not the love in my heart that I exhibit in my relationships. Precisely as the Good News of a completed, sufficient, and perfect work of God in Christ accomplished for me and outside of me in history, the gospel is ‘the power of God unto salvation’ not only at the beginning but throughout the Christian life. In fact, our sanctification is simply a lifelong process of letting that Good News sink in and responding appropriately; becoming the people whom God says that we already are in Christ.”

— Michael Horton

Was There Any Jesus in Church?

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If a Jewish rabbi could have preached the sermon you heard this past Sunday, you didn’t hear from God.

A biblical sermon is always about Christ and the gospel. It’s not about world affairs, personal stories, the latest movie, a list of helps, or a feel-good message.

It’s not, “Do this and live.”

“I don’t know about you, but if a person’s understanding of the gospel isn’t scandalous to my natural way of thinking, if it doesn’t call into question everything I think I know, if it doesn’t subvert the wisdom of this age, then when you preach it I can barely muster the energy to yawn.” — Jason Stellman

As Jesus said in Luke 24 to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the entire Old Testament is about him. The entire New Testament is about him. That means the entire bible points to him. He’s the protagonist of the story.

So not everything you hear in church in kosher.

Listen well.

Where’s Your Focus?

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Q: What does the Christian life look like?

A: The Christian life is a race. (See Phillippians 3:12-21) It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Your focus is on the finish line and so you don’t get bogged down with other things. Your whole life is like an arrow flying toward the target, which is Christ. It’s one, single, focused direction. Christ defines your life.

Q: What if I struggle with my past, which keeps me from that pointed direction?

A: Past failures, mistakes, shameful acts, gross sins–all are forgiven in Christ, therefore you faithfully forget. Even if you have been sinned against. Choose to forget. Forget your successes too. You are no longer bound by your past or your present. You are bound to Christ for your future.

Q: What slows me down and keeps me from this?

A: Spiritual coasting–laziness, apathy, indifference, or spiritual ADD–you are distracted by everything, living for your appetites. Both extremes produce a spiritual fatigue and you lose your white-hot intensity.

Q: What awaits me at the finish line?

A: The new heavens and the new earth with Jesus returning to gather you up with his people. It’s a beautiful renewal. You are going to be made whole.

So fix your focus on Jesus because he has fixed his focus on you!

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

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Q: What is a Christian?

A: A Christian is someone who has shredded his religious resume.

In Paul’s experience, in Philippians chapter three, he had a sterling resume: he was born a Jew, studied under the best rabbis, obeyed God’s laws, and was religiously zealous to the point of persecuting Christians.

Today, a religious resume might include: faithful church attendance, a daily devotional time, running a good Christian home, serving the community or the church, being a good neighbor, and loving your family.

Everybody is building a resume. This world exists on resumes. You need one for a job, to get into a prestigious school, to become a professional sports player, to join an exclusive club. It’s a way of presenting your best qualities for the utmost impact in order to be accepted.

Paul, whose pedigree outshone most people of his day, declared his resume worthless in comparison to what he gained in Christ. He said that he had only one thing on his resume: Jesus Christ and his righteousness. Everything else was spiritual bankruptcy, dung.

Stop trying to be a good Christian!

If you’re counting on your best traits, your sterling character, and your amazing accomplishments to make God accept you, you’re trusting in the dung pile. These are the very things that hinder you from embracing the all-sufficient righteousness that is yours in Christ.

Conversely, if you think you’re so depraved and worthless that God could never accept you, you’re also trusting in the dung pile. You’re unworthiness is no match for God’s grace. Christ came to save sinners just like you.

The truth is there is no righteousness outside of Christ, even if you were perfect in yourself (which you are not) or unworthy in yourself (which you are).

As a Christian, your resume is an alien resume. God gives it to you as a free gift. It’s 100% acceptable in God’s sight. You didn’t earn it. Christ did. And you don’t maintain it. Christ does.

Tell somebody!