The day I became a "picture choosing" expert.

One of the pieces of information that churches sometimes ask for from candidates during their pastoral search is the story of how they came to have faith in Jesus. This morning I was working on my story and I thought that I would share a bit of it here.

I don’t remember all of the exact details of my confession of faith in Christ. That is not to say that I don't remember what happened. There are a few details that I don't quite remember. For example when I was about 7 years old I said something to my parents about wanting to accept Jesus into my heart. I don't quite remember exactly what I said or what prompted me to say something. All I know is that what ever I said caused my parents to have the pastor of our church come over to talk to me. I do clearly remember him coming over and talking to me. I remember it because at first I thought I was in trouble. I was playing in my room and all of a sudden our pastor and my mom walked in. My mom said, "Pastor Hargrove wants to talk to you..." What an ominous way to start a conversation with a 7 year old. It was rather intimidating. He sat on the edge of my bed and my mom was standing in my doorway. I do not recall the content of that conversation but what ever I said satisfied both my parents and the pastor that I was making a genuine confession of faith in Jesus.

The next Sunday I went forward during the Invitation portion of the service and made my confession public. I can still vividly remember the scene. We were a part of a church plant which was meeting in a grade school gym. I knew that I was supposed to go forward during the Invitation and this meant that I was not able to go to the normal children's service. I had to sit still through the whole service and it seemed like it would never end. Finally the pastor finished and he invited anyone that wanted to put their faith in Jesus to come forward. I went forward along with a few other people. I stood up a bit straighter as I walked forward without my mom even having to say anything. Then the few of us that came forward went and stood in the back.

When I got to the back my attention was immediately grabbed by a table of pictures from the latest youth group happening. I was so intrigued by the pictures that I didn't notice when the service ended. All of a sudden a whole lot of of people started to come up and talking to me. Which is sort of odd for a 7 year old; most of the time someone was just telling us kids to stop running. So I took the full advantage of my audience and pointed out which of the youth group pictures were my favorites. And to my surprise and delight every one kept coming up to me and telling me that I had made a great decision. Some of them didn't even need to take the time to look at the pictures. They just trusted that I was picking the best ones. It was right then and there that I decided that I was a "picture choosing" expert.

Of course now I realize that I am not a "picture choosing" expert. But I still made the greatest decision of my life that morning. It would take many more years and a lot of growing to even start to grasp the depth of that decision. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I have come to realize that I would still make that same decision.

 

Second Chance Art

My sister-in-law Amy is a great artist. She takes old doors, windows and other furniture items and turns them in to beautiful pieces of art. She describes her art this way:

"Second Chance Art & Accessories® incorporates vintage finds into unique art and accessories for the home. As a result, beautiful old things are saved from the dumpster... and great new items are created.

"Because the majority of our art is created from recycled and vintage items, each piece is truly one of a kind. Designs and themes may be repeated, but most pieces are made from authentic salvaged items. For this reason, our pieces may not be for everyone. However, if you love the character of old vintage things - you may just love Second Chance Art & Accessories® !"

The description of the art or the process of creating it does not fully capture the beauty of the finished product. Even photos do not fully do justice to her works. Her work is something that really needs to be seen in person. The transformation of old things that are ready to be (or already have been) discarded into something that people showcase in their homes and places of business just adds to the beauty. It also hints at a Biblical theme which my brother and Amy are well aware of:

"We take inspiration from the Bible, which explains that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Because of what Jesus did for us, we can choose to become a new creation and have eternal life. 2 Corinthians 5:17: 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!' We believe that ordinary things can be transformed into something great. Like people, our starting materials have their defects and quirks - but can be transformed into something new."

Amy's art will never be confused with a brand new item from a store. There is an obvious vintage quality that is contained in each piece of art. There are times that she even uses the old look to enhance the beauty of a piece. Some items are not sanded down and stained or repainted; they are left with their world-worn appearance. Some items are sanded just enough so that all the previous attempts to cover up an old item show through. These items might have three, four or more layers of old paint that become visible.

The same is true with how God turns us into something new when we place our faith in Jesus Christ. We may be made new but we are not necessarily made perfect–at least not on this side of heaven. We still carry our scars; we may have a world-worn appearance; and we may have previous attempts to cover up our old self still evident. But we have been made into something new; something beautiful. We are not finished products but then we are still in the hands of the artist. One day, when we get to heaven, we will be perfectly shaped by God.

Check out one of these shows to see Amy's art in person.

 

2 Corinthians 5:17 quoted from: THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

What about those that never hear of Jesus?

I came across an article the other day by John Piper that was dealing with the question of how God deals with those that have not heard of Jesus. Pastor John received a letter from a 12-year-old girl on the subject. He states her question this way:

"You asked what happens to people who live far away from the gospel and have never heard about Jesus and die without faith in him."

The question is one that I have dealt with briefly in a previous post where I quote Greg Koukl in showing how we are all guilty of committing moral wrongs–or sin. The point that Mr. Koukl was making is that God is not sending innocent people to hell. We all do things that are wrong and doing those wrong things is what condemns us to hell. Hell is our punishment for our wrong doing. However God has also provided a means of being saved from the punishment. That salvation comes from God through our faith in Jesus Christ.

So that leaves us with this young girl's question. What about those that never have the chance to hear about Jesus? Do they miss out on this chance for salvation simply because of circumstances beyond their control?

Pastor John answers the question this way:

God always punishes people because of what they know and fail to believe. In other words, no one will be condemned for not believing in Jesus who has never heard of Jesus.

Does that mean that people will be saved and go to heaven if they have never heard of Jesus? No, that is not what God tells us in the Bible.

He then references Romans 1:18-23 and makes the following four points:

1. All people "know God," even if they have never heard the Bible. "What can be known about God is plain to them" (verse 19). "Although they knew God..." (verse 21).
   
2. The way they know God is by the way God has made the world and their own consciences (verses 19–20).
3. Even though they know God, no one who knows God anywhere in the world "honors God as God or gives him thanks" (verse 21). Instead, they "suppress the truth" (verse 18). That is, they resist the truth deep in their hearts and "exchange it" for other things that they would rather have (verse 23).
4. Therefore, they are "without excuse" (verse 20). That is, they are guilty and deserved to be punished.

Pastor John goes on to point out that these facts are why it is so important for us as Christians to pray for and support missionaries. The simple answer to the question is that whenever and wherever people die apart from Christ that there is no hope of salvation. This is a difficult topic for for a 12-year-old. It can be an equally difficult topic for me too.

Is this really fair? How do we reconcile this with the claim that God is also a God of mercy and justice?

Romans 8:29-30 gives us a bit of a glimpse at the answer. In these verses Paul states:

"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified."

Even before creating the world God knew all of those that will have faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. God also predestined those that will have faith in Jesus Christ. A part of this predestining means that God makes sure that those who will respond positively to the message of Jesus will hear the message of Jesus. This means that there are no people out there that might have been saved if they only had the chance. God will always provide the opportunity for those people to hear that will respond. And one big way that he provides is through the work of those missionaries that are working tirelessly to bring the Word of God to far away places.

 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.


 

The magical healing power of coffee

This week has been an interesting one. I am preaching again this week and the scripture passage has me really excited. When I initially took a look at the two passages that I would be preaching on I figured that last week's sermon would be the "easier" to write. Leave it to God to really point out some cool things in this week's passage and I am really excited to share them on Sunday.

This morning I did a bit of catching up on my blog reading. Both of the blog posts from my good friend (and fellow seminary alumni) Brad were excellent. His first post was on the topic of healing. I was really interested in what he had to say seeing that I just covered the miraculous spiritual gifts. His life experiences also bring a unique perspective:

"Healing, and specifically God’s power in healing, floats through my mind every once and a while, and it has been on my mind again the past few days. I work in a hospital providing care to people recovering from serious injuries and illnesses. Some of my patients are in the hospital a few days, and I have worked with people who have stayed in the hospital for many months."

Brad goes on to say:

"As I stated in my beginning, I believe that God can heal absolutely anything and everything, but there is a qualifier to that, which is that God works healing according to his will. And this can be hard for us to grasp and accept."

The overall point that Brad is making is that sometimes God brings the healing that we desire and other times he does not. Unfortunately we don't always know the reasons why or why not. God's healing is not dependent upon us. It doesn't matter if we have "enough" faith. What matters is God's will. His will is that one day there will no longer be a need for healing but between now and that day comes we cannot fully know why God does or does not heal someone. I would highly recommend the post as it helps shed some light on the subject.

Brad's second post this week was on one of my favorite topics: Coffee. He picked up on a news story this week that had this headline:

"Two cups of coffee a day cuts overall risk of dying by 10 percent, research shows"

He goes on to point out the fatal flaw (pun intended) in the headline: it doesn't matter what we do–we cannot actually cut the risk of dying. The mortality rate in human beings is hovering right around 100%.

"So no matter how much coffee I drink, or how much I exercise, or the amount of broccoli I eat, or any other habit, good or bad, that I may practice, will have any bearing on the ultimate fact of my death. Death will indeed come for me one day. My habits may influence the length of life to a small degree, and they may also influence its quality, but they will not stave off death’s inevitable arrival."

Death on this earth is inevitable. It's coming and we cannot avoid it. But death her on this earth is not the end:

"Whenever it may come, I believe as a Christian that only one thing will really matter: my standing with God. In the parable of sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus is seen separating people into two groups, those who knew him truly, and those who didn’t. The ones who knew him as his own receive their inheritance, being joined with him forever, while those in the other group are cast out into the darkness."

And I have to give the punchline away. It really is the most important thing in life.

"This is truly the Good News. Earthly life will end but for the Christian it is merely the gateway to their eternal presence with God."

Both posts are really worth the read...especially with your next cup of life-prolonging coffee.

 

What is our only comfort in life and in death?

I have never considered myself to be very credal. At least I haven't held to any of the major creeds or confessions; at least in terms of how a "confessional" church would define it. I think that some of the creeds do a fine job of summarizing the Christian faith like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed. And it is also true that the creeds and confessions can serve as a useful educational piece within the church. One of the confessions that my current church–the Reformed Church of America (RCA)–holds to is the Heidelberg Catechism. The RCA says the following about creeds and confessions:

"The RCA is confessional, which means that together we have statements of belief, called creeds and confessions. These statements guide our understanding of faith and shape its practice."

The idea is to have a standard statement of faith across the whole denomination. It is not that different than other denominations or churches having a statement of faith that one needs to accept before becoming a member. In a certain sense these creeds and confessions are just really old statements of faith. And as long as a church does not elevate the confession above or contradict scripture–and I do not believe that this is what the RCA is doing–then I don't see any real problem with them. In fact if they are used properly, they can play an important teaching role in the life of the church. To that end our Wednesday night adult Bible study has just started to look at the Heidelberg Catechism. Last night we looked at Question 1:

"What is your only comfort in life and in death?"

Instead of simply reading the Heidelberg answer, we split into smaller groups and read the scripture passages that the original writers used to come up with their answer. And then we wrote our own answer based on those scripture passages. In my group we didn't end up getting to all of the scripture passages so our answer doesn't touch on all aspects of the Heidelberg answer. But we still ended up with our own answer. This is what we came up with:

"Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and is not our own. We were bought by God and need to honor God with our bodies. We belong to the Lord in both life and death. He purifies us through his sacrifice; Christ's blood washes away all of our sins. Because we are children of God we are ultimately free from sin. Those who put their hope in Christ–because the Father has given this authority to Christ–are in the Father's hands. God will protect us. And in the last day, God will bring us home to heaven. Fear not! God values us. We are important to him and he will protect us."

Not a bad answer if you ask me.

Our answer was based on the following scripture passages:

1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 14:7-9; 1 Corinthians 3:23; Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7-9; 1 John 2:2; John 8:34-36; Hebrews 2:14-15; 1 John 3:1-11; John 6:39-40; John 10:27-30; 2 Thessalonians 3:3; 1 Peter 1:5; Matthew 10:29-31; and Luke 21:16-18.

 

John 14, Part 1

My friend Brad Kautz and I graduated from seminary together and now we are also fellow bloggers. Over the weekend we both shared our thoughts on Supreme Sacrifice Day. You can find his thoughts here and my thoughts here. I really enjoy reading his blog and wanted to share some of it here. I was particularly grabbed by his series on John 14. I hope you enjoy:

John 14, Part 1 – By Brad Kautz

This week I had the privilege of giving a lecture on John 14 for the local class of Community Bible Study (CBS). CBS is a non-denominational Bible study with this goal:

“To make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ in our communities through caring, in-depth Bible study, available to all.”

Our class meets weekly, roughly following the calendar for the school year. After a short devotional time we spend time in small groups, discussing a lesson that we have studied during the previous week. Then we gather as a class to hear a lecture on the week’s Bible passage. And as we leave we receive a written commentary on that same passage, along with questions to consider as we study the passage for the next week.

My history with CBS goes back about 10 years. I started in 2001 and for three years I was a member of a small group. Then for 5 years I was a small group leader. The leaders met together once a week as their own small group and those years in leadership were a time of much growth for me spiritually. Not only did we review the week’s lesson but we also spent time in devotion and prayer. As a part of the leadership I took advantage of the opportunity to lead the devotional time for our leader’s group study, and also about once a year I led the devotional time for the larger class.

I took two years off from CBS when we adopted Kat and this year I was able to return. We are studying the Gospel of John. There was a need for someone to substitute for the regular lead teacher and provide a lecture on John 14. I was asked to do so and now want to share, over several posts, some of the things that I think that are going on in that chapter and the meaning they have for us today.

The setting of John 14 is in the Upper Room. It is after the disciples have shared a meal and instituted what we now know as the Lord’s Supper in the accounts of Matthew, Markand Luke, and after the foot-washing of John’s Gospel. It is after Judas has been identified as Jesus’ betrayer, and he has left the room.

This is the time of Jesus last teaching opportunity with the disciples as a group, a teaching that is spread out over chapters 14, 15 and 16. Soon he will be leaving his disciples and the “teaching” that will occur then will be as they witness his arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. This chapter has 31 verses and includes many verses and ideas that are very familiar to many Christians. A preacher can draw deeply from the material here and one pastor whose work I admire, James Montgomery Boice, preached 17 sermons as he worked his way through the chapter.

I was provided with about 20 minutes for my lecture, so I gave an overview of what I felt to be six key ideas in the chapter, all of them collected around the theme that Jesus primary purpose is to prepare his disciples for his departure by giving them hope and assurance for their future, both in the short-term and eternally.

The first thing Jesus talks about, in verses 1 through 6, is heaven. Jesus doesn’t tell them specifically what heaven will look like. He doesn’t given them visual images. He does tell them that in order for them to go to heaven that he will have to leave them and go there first to “prepare a place,” saying in verse 3,

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

Jesus gives the disciples assurance that heaven exists, that he will prepare a place for them there, and that he will return to take them there. And that seems to be all that Jesus thinks the disciples need to know about heaven.

The Bible gives us other images of heaven, particularly in Revelation, and I love those descriptions, particularly the images of vast multitudes of people engaged in worship of God. But the relatively sparse information found in John 14 is really enough. Heaven exists, God prepares our place, and one day God will take us there.

The chapter then shifts to the topic of God the Father, in verses 7 through 11. While the disciples, particularly Philip, take Jesus’ talk of God the Father very literally, and ask to be able to see him, Jesus tells them something radically different. He tells his disciples that his identity and the identity of the Father are intertwined. In verses 10 and 11 he says,

“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

All the things Jesus has said and done are not on his authority as a human, or as the Son of Man, but are because he and the Father are ‘in each other,’ or as he said earlier in John 10:30,

“I and the Father are one.”

When I think about the culture that Jesus and his disciples lived I imagine that this claim of unity with the Father must have shocked their senses. They lived in a culture where the very name of God was considered too holy to speak aloud or write. It was only made known in their worship through allusion. They knew the circumstances where the word “Adonai” was being used because the more correct name for God, “Yahweh,” was too holy, too sacred, to even speak. For them to speak the name of God was considered a violation of the commandment to “Not take the name of the Lord God in vain.”

Yet here they were, in the very presence of one who bore that most holy name in his own person. The name that was too holy to speak was in a body and speaking to them. And he speaks to us today.

And because he speaks to us we can know his presence and his love as deeply as the disciples who walked with him for three years. Like the disciples we feast with him at his table, in the Lord’s Supper. And as with his first disciples, we who follow in the footsteps of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, have the same assurance that he is who he says he is and that one day he will carry us to the place he has already prepared for us, our eternal home with him.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

Copyright Brad Kautz 2012. Used with permission.

 

How can God send good people to hell?

I came across an interesting tidbit from my favorite Christian apologist Greg Koukl last week. His brief blog post gets at a common objection to Christianity: "How can God send someone to hell that is basically a good person." Or it might be restated as: "How can God send someone to hell simply because they don't believe in Jesus." The objection seems to hold up because there are those people that we can easily understand how God would send them to hell and there are those where we simply cannot understand it. There are those people whom are nice people that live a charitable and loving life. They are people that we would consider to be good people.

Mr. Koukl frames his answer this way:

"If you sinned only ten times a day from your tenth birthday to your sixtieth--and keep in mind we're not just talking about rape, pillage, and murder, but the full range of human moral failing, including heart attitudes and motives--only, ten sins a day, what would your rap sheet look like? You would have amassed 182,500 infractions of the law. What judge in his right mind would turn you loose with a record like that?"

That is quite a criminal record. Fortunately for us we have an advocate on our side. Mr. Koukl concludes by saying:

"Whenever you're tempted to trust in your own ability, take a good look at the standard, God's Law, then look at your own score card. To use Paul's words, the law has each of us "shut up under sin" (Gal. 3:22), it's closed our mouths, and we all have become accountable to God (Romans 3:19). Saved by our own goodness? The Law gives us no hope. Only the Gospel and the righteousness of Jesus Christ can offer us hope of pleasing God."

This is the whole point the Lenten season. It is not just to focus on our need for a savior but also that God has provided that savior for us. God didn't just pile all of our sins on an innocent man. He took them all upon himself. All we need to do is to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is that Savior.

 

Does Matthew 25:31-46 teach us anything about salvation?

Does the parable of the Sheep and the Goats found in Matthew 25:31-46 teach that our salvation is based upon the good works that we do? It is one of those scripture passages that on its face value seems to be promoting either a works based salvation or a social justice gospel. In his article on this passage Kevin DeYoung notes that Dr. James Davidson Hunter claims that the passage is about how we treat strangers. Pastor DeYoung then sets out to refute Dr. Hunter's claim.

DeYoung's contention is that  the meaning of this passage hinges on verse 40 when Christ says, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." The term "brother" is a familial term and Christ is actually referring to how we treat fellow Christians. He concludes by saying:

Jesus says if we are too embarrassed, too lazy, or too cowardly to support our fellow Christians who depend on our assistance and are suffering for the sake of the gospel, we will go to hell.

Is it actually saying that?

I don't know Kevin DeYoung personally. All I know about him is what I have read on his blog and what I have heard anecdotally from others that do know him. (As a disclosure I attended to the same seminary that he went to and know people that were his classmates.)* Based on what I have read from DeYoung I am going to go out on a limb and say that this is not his nuanced view of salvation. 

And that leaves us with the question of whether or not Matthew 25:31-46 is saying that we will go to hell based upon how we treat others?

Yes and no.

On the one hand the passage is not saying our salvation is based upon anything that we can do. It doesn't matter how many good things that we do, we cannot earn our way into heaven. Paul makes it clear in Romans 4:4 that works–the things that we do–earn wages and are not considered a gift. It is not a gift when your boss gives you your paycheck at the end of the week. Throughout the book of Romans Paul makes the case that salvation is by faith and not by works. Paul states: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Clearly the Matthew passage is not teaching that we will go to heaven because we treated others well. Of course that isn't exactly the question that I posed above and it isn't exactly what Kevin DeYoung stated.

On the other hand the passage is saying that we will go to hell because of how we treat each other.

As I stated above, Paul makes it clear in Romans that the paycheck we earn when we sin is death. When we treat people poorly that is a sin and each sin that we commit earns us that paycheck. The problem is that we cannot ever "unearn" death. Once you are dead, you are dead. We cannot make ourselves undead by doing a bunch of good things. We are only made alive again by the free gift from God that comes when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ to save us from our sins. 

But putting our faith and trust in Jesus does not mean merely making some sort of statement to that fact. Rather it is more than that. It means that we will start to treat others as Christ has demanded we treat others. It means that we will start becoming more and more sensitive to the sin in our lives and wanting to change our behavior. The sheep in the parable are not saved because they treat others well. They treat others well because they are saved. This parable is a warning against the difference between claiming to be a Christian and actually acting in a way that is consistent with that claim.

This parable is not a prescription of how to be saved. It is descriptive of how the saved will act.

*My mistake. I assumed the people that I knew went to seminary with him but they were fellow undergrad students with him. Well you know what they say about when you assume...