Mercy.

Daily I am burdened for those of whom Paul speaks when he says, "You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." (Gal. 5:4) These are the ones who attend church weekly, because they have been told that it is right to do so. These are the ones who believe that it is okay to act promiscuously or in other ways contrary to Scripture provided that they ask for forgiveness later. It is these who believe that Jesus exists to forgive our sins so that we can partake of any desire which our hearts may long after without fear of guilt. I wonder to myself, "How long will the Church stand for this?" We have taken the religion which bears Christ's name and turned it into a works based gathering. And what's worse is that we encourage it regularly. The solution for people who are "bad" is not going to church. There are plenty of "bad people" in church already, because we are all "bad" (Romans 1). The solution for "bad people" is to be emptied of their sinfulness and filled with goodness. It isn't just that we are freed from the punishment of our sins. We are actually filled with goodness. When the Spirit dwells in us and as we live by that Spirit, our actions are good. Of course, we know this from our days in Sunday School: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Gal. 5:22-23) The question is, "Are we feeding the Spirit within us?" Are we paying attention to the Spirit of God in our lives? If we are not exhibiting these fruits, then the answer would have to be "no". I have ashamedly have times in my life when the answer is no. Yet this fruit is the evidence in our lives that the Spirit dwells in us. No one is perfect, but these things should be dominant in our lives if we are feeding this Spirit within us through Scripture reading, prayer and community with faithful believers (Church). Furthermore, what are we doing about those who are clearly confused about salvation and faith as those mentioned above by Paul? I believe that we MUST become people faithful to praying for those lost. I am not talking about prayers such as "Dear God, please save so and so and so and so and so and so." I'm talking about on our knees, begging for God's grace and mercy to be made known to those who have become tangled in religious Christianity versus Spiritual Christianity prayer. It is not enough to live inside our little bubbles anymore. We've got to beg for God to change those around us who are lost in religion. It must start with our hearts though. If we are not acknowledging our own deeply rooted sinful natures and desires, we cannot intercede on behalf of the sinfulness of others. We must be broken for our own sinfulness before we can truly be broken for the sinfulness of others. When we realize our sinfulness and the infinite mercy which has been shown to us in light of our sinfulness, we can then truly show mercy to our fellow Christ-followers. Let us remember the depth of our sinfulness, the depth of His forgiveness and pray that He would pour mercy on the spiritually blind. May I be humble and remember that without Him I too am spiritually blind.

Holiness, Reverence and Redemption

I have been loving some Leviticus lately. That probably seems like a pretty odd statement, but in my Old Testament class I have learned to read the Bible Christologically and it has completely changed my outlook on the Bible and God. I feel like I can read the Bible, Old and New Testament and actually learn from either one. (Christologically refers to the idea that the whole Bible is centered on Christ, that even the Old Testament is preparing the people of God for the coming of Christ and that Christ is God's ultimate revelation. All of the Scriptures are satisfied and made whole in Christ.) So anyway, I've been reading Leviticus and I am amazed by the holiness that God desires from us. For sixteen chapters God has been laying a standard of holiness that He desires from each and every Israelite. If they don't meet the standard there is a waiting period and often sacrifices that are required of them before they can enter the Temple. I think this is incredible, especially considering we are now "the Temple of God". This means that God holds us to a really high standard of holiness. Holiness is not just something that a preacher is held to and it isn't an act either. It is living in reverence before God, keeping our souls pure and undefiled. It is that striving to be perfectly pure. This is why the Bible spends all of Leviticus teaching us about what makes us unclean. It even tells us that we are made unclean by touching others who are unclean in certain situations. The interesting thing is that in Leviticus, before Christ, there was already redemption set into place. They could wait a period of days and then make a sacrifice which would make them ceremonially clean again. This points directly to Christ in our situation. It is a bit of foreshadowing, if you will. We are to keep ourselves from being undefiled, but if we do mess up, there is redemption in Christ. We should always first strive for perfection, though. Anyway, just wanted to share my thoughts. Have a great weekend.

Russ

Becoming an aroma

¹⁴But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. ¹⁵For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. ¹⁶To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task? II Corinthians 2:14-16

This passage came to my mind the other day as I was reading Leviticus. If you open to Leviticus and begin reading, the first few chapters begin to speak of the different types of sacrifices that can be made to God for different reasons. These sacrifices include: the burnt offering, the grain offering, the fellowship offering, the sin offering and the guilt offering. As I begin to think about these different offerings, I was confused as to why there were so many different offerings and what their different purposes were. I opened up my John MacArthur Bible commentary to find an explanation of the sacrifices. The burnt offering existed to atone for sin in general, but also to signify complete dedication and consecration to God. The grain offering was given in order to show one's thankfulness to God. The fellowship offering (also called the peace offering) existed for the expression of gratitude for unexpected blessings or deliverance, blessings or deliverance that came from a vow made between the people and their God or simply to say thank you to God without any specific blessing or deliverance. Then finally there were the sin offerings and the guilt offerings which were offered in different cases of sin.

The interesting thing in the text is that following the Burnt, Grain and Fellowship offerings, the Scripture uses this phrase: "an aroma pleasing to the Lord". After the sin and guilt offerings it simply states that these would make atonement for sins.

I started thinking about how these Burnt, Grain and Fellowship offerings were offerings made out of the desire of the people simply to sacrifice what they had to the God that they loved. These sacrifices showed true commitment to God, because they didn't cover sins (The Burnt offering did, but not in the way that sin and guilt offerings did, for the purpose of sin and guilt offerings were to make atonement in situations where you had specifically messed up. The Burnt offering covered sin in general, but also showed dedication and consecration to God.) They were simply sacrifices to Jehovah in order to say "Thank you" or "I am dedicated to You alone" or "Let me be consecrated unto You".

Now, the tie-in is that if we want to be an aroma pleasing to the Lord, then we must lay our lives on the altar in dedication and consecration and thankfulness to Him. It is clear that Christ has stepped in as a substitute who will atone for our sins if we simply trust in Him. The sin and guilt sacrifices cannot be made by us any longer. They have already been made by Christ. Therefore, the only sacrifices we can still make are those of thanksgiving and those of dedication and consecration. Of course, burnt offerings, grain offerings and fellowship offerings by way of animal and grain sacrifices were part of the Old Covenant (fortunately for us). Within the New Covenant, we show our love and gratitude by laying down our lives (figuratively, lol) on the altar to be burnt up by our God, "for our God is a consuming fire." Hebrews 12:29

We must lay our lives down on the altar so that God may consume us and use us for His glory. When we live our lives as a sacrifice of thankfulness and when we consecrate our lives unto God, His glory is made known through our actions and the way we love Him and others. This is how our lives become true offerings unto Him, an aroma that is pleasing to the Lord.

The Time For Maturity is NOW

Voddie Baucham said something this weekend that convicted me to my very core. He said that the Church is the only place in the world where mediocrity is accepted. If you aren't mediocre in the Church people start telling you that you are supposed to be a preacher or a minister. The reason for this is that they realize when someone is more than mediocre and if the only way that mediocrity can remain as their standard is if they can point to that person and say, "Yeah, he isn't mediocre, but it's okay, because he's a minister." He went on to point out that if a brick layer of thirty years experience came to build your house and admitted to you that he didn't really know what he was doing, but that he was going to do the best that he could and hopefully your house wouldn't fall apart, he would be fired. We would expect a brick layer with that much experience to be an expert. In the Church there are Christians who have been there forever, but they couldn't even tell you who Habakkuk is. I must confess that I have been a Christian for about 12 years and I couldn't tell you who Habakkuk is either. I have decided that for myself this is no longer acceptable. In the real world, when someone has been doing their job for 10 years they are described as a master of that trade. I have been following Jesus for 12 years and I am far from a master in any area of the Christian life. This is unacceptable and maturity is necessary. The time is now.

Aloha

So, I just wanted to drop in and let everybody know that I'm still alive. I just haven't been able to post lately. Since I started taking seminary classes, my life has not been my own, lol. I'm taking Christian Ethics and Old Testament I right now and they are awesome. But they are time consuming to say the least. I just got done with a very busy month and I've been hoping to get posting again. So maybe I'll have the chance now. Anyway, just wanted to climb out from under my books and say aloha. More to come soon. Shalom.

Russ

Spurring One Another On Towards Godliness

I was talking to some friends last night about the subject of "weeding people out" and this is something I felt very strongly about for some time. I thought it was always the right thing to do. I thought that those who didn't feel like growing in Christ should be run off. This has changed for me though. I think that Church discipline and the weeding out of some has its place, but I don't think that it is an exact science. The saying goes that you are only as strong as your weakest link. That doesn't mean that whenever a link is weak you get rid of it though, because then your chain doesn't reach the distance that you need it to in order to get the job done. In regards to the Church you can't replace "the link" with another "link" because every person is unique and has a special gift that should be used to glorify the Father. So maybe the weak link just needs to be strengthened. In real life, we could strengthen a link in a chain by soldering extra material onto the link. In Spiritual terms, maybe we haven't poured into our weak links? Maybe we haven't made them feel like we care or opened up enough with them that they would see Christ in us and regain the desire to grow in Him. Now, I believe that the truth should be preached and that Church discipline should be used very wisely, but I don't think that we should just try to run everyone off who isn't as "mature" as we might think we are. I mean, how are we to set a standard anyway? I'm pretty sure that if you sat me down next to Ravi Zacharias and said "Does Russ meet that standard?", I would be gone. Ravi Zacharias is a theological genius and a true man of God. I am young. I don't know even half as much as I like to think I do and I would say that this is true of 99% of people. I have a long way to go. Can we say that every person that isn't perfectly holy should go? No, because we would all be out. The Church is for strengthening the weak. We are to build one another up. There are some that don't have much desire to grow or maybe they are stagnant, but some of these would grow if encouraged and truly loved. These need to be built up in the Lord and if we can build them up and spur them on towards Godliness, we should. I think the danger is, however, that we only see things our way and think that just because people aren't growing in the way that we think that should or aren't responding to the way we are doing things, that there is something wrong with them. We should be diverse in our approaches to reach these. We should interact with them. We should encourage people and love them, just because Jesus wants us to love them. Is there a place for Church discipline? Absolutely. Should we preach the truth at the risk of some leaving because they don't like what they hear? Absolutely. Should we try to weed out everyone that isn't exactly where we want them? In my opinion, no. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is a middle ground where believers, both weak and strong, can hang out just for the purpose of having fun and loving one another. This is how bonds are formed that lead to spiritual growth in both the weak and the strong. I understand the the truth is put in place to naturally weed out those who need to be weeded out as well as build up those who are in the Lord and Church discipline is in place to remove those who claim to be believers yet live like the lost, but what about new or weak believers? Who will invest in those if we run them all off? What do you think? Should we just run them off or consider that maybe their growth isn't only based on their lack of zeal for the Lord, but also on our lack of desire to try different things to move them towards a zealous walk in the Lord? Thoughts please.

Additional thought: In Corinthians Paul refers to the Corinthians as those called to be holy and as Saints. The Church in Corinth was out of control, but Paul saw it as his purpose to build these Saints who were stuck in sin into followers of Jesus. I believe that this illustrates my thought process more clearly. In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul says this to his family in Christ, Dear brothers and sisters, "When I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in the Christian life. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. " I think the important lesson is that he wasn't saying "You aren't ready so I'm going to weed you out of the body." He saw it as his mission to press them on to Godliness even though they were caught up in sinfulness. Jesus came for the sick, not for the healthy. Okay. Please post your thoughts.

That Guy

Andy Gullahorn

He scoped out the market.

All the women and the kids

with so many distractions

nobody noticed him.

Nobody noticed him.

He had a jacket a size too big

a skullcap on his head

and a couple of homemade bombs.

He duct taped them to his chest.

He taped them to his chest.

God loves that guy.

God loves that guy.

He followed his heart

to a co-worker's bed.

He could've salvaged his marriage

with kids, but he chose to leave instead.

He chose to leave.

He thought it was love,

but it was just a mirage.

So he sits in his idling car

parked in a closed garage.

Inside a closed garage.

God loves that guy.

God loves that guy.

Me on the other hand

I can write somebody off

like a last check for a student loan.

I can love when it's convenient,

but it's not always convenient.

It's not always the easy road.

I want to look past the outside

to the well meaning heart

to the good they forgot that they had.

Teach me to love.

Teach me to love.

Teach me to love like that.

He messed up again.

Wanted to disappear,

but he can't cause he's easy to find.

I see him in the mirror.

I see him in the mirror.

God loves that guy.

God loves that guy.

Teach me to love.

Teach me to love.

Teach me to love like that.

Just a reminder of how much I have to learn about loving others and how much God loves me.  It's a great song.  You should check it out.  Have a good'en.