Month: March 2006 Page 1 of 3

What is more important: To stake your hope in some created thing, something that will eventually pass away, that you will not be taking with you to the grave; or to stake your hope in the Creator, who existed from eternity past, united His deity to humanity, died on a cross willingly, rose from the grave, and all in order that you would believe in Him and be raised to new life after you die, and thus live forever with Him?

As believer’s we must have the eternal perspective that before the Father, standing in Christ alone, we have perfect approval. We don’t need approval from anyone else or any other created thing, because if we are in Christ, we have all the approval that will ever matter: the approval and justification of the eternal God in Christ! How wonderful is that? There’s nothing better! It’s in this perspective we approach all situations in life … good and blessed times, awful rotten times, whatever the situation, we find our confidence, approval, self-esteem, guidance, love, patience, morality, everything, in Christ alone. Christ was morally perfect and fulfilled the law from our side, but He also gained the eternal justification of God for us as well. And in regard to the various events of life, whether it’s experiencing a death of a close friend or relative, or gaining a top position in a law firm, none of these things give you more or less of standing before God. Sure, if you gain a position in an awesome law firm, you will get approval before men, sinful men. But how does that in any way matter for all eternity?

The very fact of the matter is that if we place our hope and trust in anything within this world, whatever it may be, relationships, jobs, money, positions, power, popularity, intellectual abilities, etc, anything apart from Christ, it is idolatry. “You shall have no other gods before Me.” In Christ, because He fulfilled this law and all of God’s laws from our side, through faith in Him, He are now freed from running to make everyone think we’re all that, when really none of us are all that, even at our best; we’re all sinners, unrighteous and filthy, apart from Christ’s work on the cross, applied to our lives. So we don’t trust or hope for anything within this world, but we trust in and hope in Christ alone, that He has redeemed us and will raise us on the last day.

In studying and reading over the story of Jonah in preparation for D-Teams yesterday, it really struck me how amazing it is that God delivers people from wickedness despite the vessel He chooses to use and their weaknesses. In particular, God summoned Jonah, as a prophet, to go and declare to Nineveh they would indeed be destroyed. He disobeyed and then God brought him through trials to bring him to repentance. He repented, but his attitude didn’t totally change. He then went and preached destruction coming upon Nineveh. The people repented though, and God relented of the destruction He was going to bring upon them. God was extremely merciful, and Jonah hated it. He was so angry and bitter. The very initial reason He attempted to run from God was because He knew God was merciful and would show mercy to Nineveh if they repented. And so Jonah basically hated these people and wanted to see them destroyed. But God had different plans that thwarted Jonah’s.

This story is not about Jonah, but about God’s might and power to save, how unbelievably merciful He is. Most importantly, this story points to where God’s mercy and love climaxed; at the cross. There we see the ultimate display of all God’s attributes. In addition to this though, we see that God works to save and deliver people despite the instrument He chooses to use (namely sinners). Jonah was rotten, and had a terrible attitude. And yet despite that, God used him to deliver the people of Nineveh. Jonah was essentially a racist, a hardcore nationalist, and thought he was better than the people of Nineveh because he was in Israelite, one of God’s chosen people. He basically thought they did not deserve God’s mercy, which is true; but neither did Jonah! And that’s the point Jonah did not seem to get.

So how can this story apply to our lives? We see that God’s mercy toward Nineveh did not in any way depend on Jonah’s skills and techniques to convey the message of judgment and mercy. In fact, Jonah withheld all merciful information from them, and yet God still showed mercy! What does God’s mercy depend on? Him alone. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, what does that mean for our witness to unbelievers? It means that when we preach the Gospel, even if we do not have great arguments or clarity of speech (though we should definitely strive for those things), God can still use the few things we say to deliver people from their sin and His wrath through the cross of Christ. We must remember that it is by God’s grace alone that men are saved. Did Nineveh cooperate with God’s grace? Absolutely not. They were pursuing their own sinful ways, on the verge of total destruction, and yet God’s instrument, albeit an imperfect one, sovereignly came by the hand of God, and they turned from their ways. But why did they turn? Why is they turned while other nations refuse, including Israel at many points? God chose to show them mercy by removing their resistance to Him (their stubbornness of heart), in order that they would repent from their sin and believe in Him. And they did repent and God relented. By repenting, it proved their faith in Him to deliver them. And so God showed a Gentile people mercy through Jonah, despite Jonah. God’s mercy depends on Him alone, not on any human willing or running or faith.

How much does this story mirror what was to come though, after Jonah’s time, namely Jesus Christ’s earthly descent, death, resurrection, ascension, and the offering of God’s mercy, the Gospel, to the Gentile world? God’s mercy toward Nineveh was a foreshadowing of the mercy He would show to the nations in Christ. This story is most importantly a pointer to the cross of Christ. How glorious it is that God shows anyone mercy! And how wonderful it is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came and died upon a cross in order to bring about that mercy! And how wonderful it is that God uses weak instruments such as us weak, depraved sinners to deliver His message, in order that the Holy Spirit alone changes people!? What a wonderful God and Savior! So if anyone thinks he’s really something spiritually special when someone is saved by your witness, know that God did not have to use you but could have used someone like Jonah to accomplish His sovereign work, because it’s God’s power that saves, not yours. It is by God’s grace alone anyone is saved, and it is by God’s grace alone that He uses me or you or any sinner to accomplish any of His purposes.

The Lord has blessed me so much. I just can’t even begin to consider the ways in which He’s given me such fullness in life. Yes, I have had trials, yes some of them have been constant and overwhelming, humanly speaking. And many ask me during those times, “How do you find joy when all of these things seem to just keep pounding away at you?” Or a fellow believer, to my surprise, will say, “I just don’t see how you do it.” There’s a point here. I don’t do anything! I don’t take credit for any strength of my own in enduring the trial. I have no strength to endure the trial. It’s not by my strength that I’m able to endure and even find joy in the trial itself. It’s only by God’s strength alone, in Christ alone, through the cross, that I can find any joy, that I can obtain any strength at all. I must constantly look to the cross of Christ, where He bore my burden (my burden past, present, and future) and secured my eternal salvation. Enduring through a trial is not something I role up my sleeves and get done like I get computer work done at my job. Instead, God’s strength comes in power by the Holy Spirit, and gives me strength, appropriated through God’s grace alone, made possible through the cross. I obtain no strength on my own, but I only obtain strength through the cross of Christ. The cross is the central point of my entire life, where He not only obtained my salvation and bore my burden (eternally and temporally, right now), but the cross is also where I obtain my sanctification, healing, purification from sin.

So how do I find joy when my world is crumbling, or where does my strength come from? “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Nothing else is good when measured against the goodness of God. Only Christ is good. He is the highest standard, the highest treasure. If I do find joy in some created thing, that only gives temporal enjoyment, does it not point to the transcendent intelligence, wisdom, and pleasure that can be found only in the Creator who spoke that thing into existence, where never-ending satisaction can be found? I find joy in my relationship with Christ alone in the midst of my trials. In my times spent with Christ in Scripture, prayer, and in fellowship with other believer’s, the Holy Spirit comes in great power and upholds me by His omnipotent, mighty hand. I obtain strength from no external or internal force, but only obtain strength in the cross of Christ. Praise God for Jesus Christ, my Rock, my Savior, my Redeemer, the One who holds my head up high!

So many people see there are two ways to go through life: the moral way or the amoral way, the religious way or the pagan way. You are either a pious prude who has no fun and then self-righteously judge others who aren’t like you; or you live it up in debauchery, scoffing at the things religion says. However, Christianity (aside from what many think) is totally different. Catholicism is not any different, but true, God wrought, historic Christianity is totally different.

Religion (moralism) says, “Obey this law, do this good deed, fulfill your moral obligation, and you will obtain, as a result, a good outcome. If you don’t fulfill your moral obligation, you will get a bad outcome, and you must work your way back up with good moral deeds.” This is a very defeating thing for the human soul though because what is it that happens when a person tries with all his might to fulfill the law or his moral obligations? He fails over and over and eventually either gives up or is totally miserable trying over and over again to succeed, of his own strength. This is moralism.

Christianity, however, is totally backward from this thinking. Christianity says, “God demands absolute moral perfection. However, we cannot fulfill the law of God perfectly, and even if we try our hardest, we fall infinitely short of what is required of us. If we break even one law of God over the course of our lives, we have broken the whole law, because even one offense is a trampling on the glory of God. And all of us have broken at least one law over the course of our lives, actually thousands of times over. Therefore, by man’s own efforts and strength, he cannot fulfill the law of God and is therefore hopeless in himself to save himself from his plight in sin. But we already have the outcome in Christ alone! He fulfilled the law of God perfectly, without blemish. He did what we could not, fulfilled the moral obligation we could never live up to. He then offered Himself willingly as a sacrifice of atonement for sin, to turn away the wrath of God. He then died and rose from the grave, ascended into heaven, that anyone who places their faith in His finished work on the cross will be saved.”

So what does this tell us? We are morally unable to fulfill the law of God, but if we believe in Christ’s finished work on the cross, there is now no more need to work on your own strength to do something you’re already unable to do. Once you believe in Him, He then sends you the gift of His Holy Spirit that changes your desires to freely obey Him, and the law then turns from duty to delight. In Christ, because He has fulfilled the law from our side, there is no longer anything more we have to do! In Christ, we are done with trying to please the Father anymore than Christ Himself has pleased Him through His life and then death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. What a lovely Savior and what a great and wonderful God, that He would provide such a wonderful gift of salvation to rescue us from our self-righteous religious works that will only lead us to death!