bible

Time to Wake Up

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Romans 13:11 “Do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.”

The Bible often uses slumber or sleep as a metaphor for unbelief. Other times “sleep” is a picture of death. I think it’s clear that Paul is writing this letter to members of a Christian church, so he assumes that they are spiritually awake by faith. And obviously he wouldn’t write a book of the Bible to dead people. “Slumber” has to refer to something else.

Sometimes we Christians let our faith become lukewarm. We have very little fire in our belly for loving our neighbor or reaching the lost. Our prayers lack fervency and grow fewer and farther between. We aren’t much concerned about getting to know God better. We still go to church or Bible study, but mostly as a matter of habit. We don’t feel a particular need or desire to be there. Seeing the church grow produces no particular joy. Its struggles arouse no sense of alarm. We could always go somewhere else, or do something else, on Sunday.

Our problem is distraction. We have become too concerned with purely earthly circumstances. We pour our energy into having the things we want, achieving the lifestyle and experiences we desire. Not all of them are bad, maybe not most of them. They are simply items on our bucket lists. We want to check to check them off before we die.

What if you never earn that degree for which you study, or land the job on which you set your heart? What if your career goes nowhere? What if you never find love or raise a family? What if you never build the house you planned to make your home, or your retirement doesn’t turn out the way you dreamed?

All of these things may occupy a legitimate part of our time and attention. They are good and wholesome in and of themselves. But if they leave no place for God; if they move into a place ahead of God, we need Paul’s words to confront us. “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber.” Spiritually, we are asleep. That makes us useless for more important things.

At the present time, this presents two concerns: “our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” Many speak about “salvation” happening when we come to faith. Sometimes it refers to Jesus and his saving life and death. Simeon used the word this way when he took the baby Jesus in his arms: “…my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people” (Luke 2:30-31).

In this passage, Paul uses salvation to refer to God’s final rescue. God brings salvation when he puts a final end to all his enemies and takes us away to heaven’s safety.

That is nearer every day. “The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.” Jesus could return at any time. Our lives in this world could end at any time. Our days here are limited. There are people I know personally whose salvation is doubtful at best. The clock is running out on our time to win them.

The second concern regards our own faith. Physically, I would like to die in my sleep–no long, painful struggle; just drift off to sleep and never wake up. Spiritually, that would be a catastrophe. What if our casual neglect of word and worship, prayer and service, love and witness slowly bled our faith dry until there wasn’t any left? What if we got to the point where we felt no twinge of guilt over our sins, no urge to fight temptation, no comfort in God’s grace, no relief in forgiveness? We need to understand the present time. We need to wake up now, before we lose what little faith we have.

I No Longer Live

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Galatians 2:17-20 “If while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a law-breaker. For through the law I died to the law that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

If God freely forgives our sins, if he justifies us without requiring us to keep the law as a condition of saving us, doesn’t that promote sin?

The same question occurred to Paul. But just because Jesus has forgiven us and God has said we are not guilty doesn’t make them responsible if we go out and sin again. We are the ones rebuilding sin in our lives. We are the lawbreakers. In practice, forgiveness has the opposite effect upon us. It is not only the answer for sins committed. It is the answer for not committing sins. “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.”

Using God’s law alone to stop committing sin is an exercise in frustration. Some Christians believe you can use it like I use my daily planner. Every day I make a list of the things I hope to accomplish and check them off as I do them. When they are all checked off, I know I have accomplished my goal.

You can’t do that with the law of God. He requires more than the external acts. When you know the Ten Commandments well, you know they are just as concerned about your attitudes and motivations as behavior. The more I know the commandments, the more ways I can see that I am falling short. My check list keeps growing longer. So does the list of personal failures I can see. The Law shows me what to do. It never gives me the power to do it.

That is why Paul can say “through the law I died to the law.” The law does do something. But that something is not giving me faith, or life, or the power to stop sinning.

The law does me the favor of showing me how useless it is to prevent me from sinning. It makes me ever more aware how much I need my Lord, not just for sins I have committed, but also to stop committing sins. Only when I have died to the law can I live for God.

You see, God justifies us by faith. That means he takes our sins, forgives them, and so declares us his perfect, not-guilty children as a gift. That impacts our future as well as resolving our past. Paul continues, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” I have been crucified with Christ. Jesus death on the cross is my death. When Jesus died there, God counted that death for me. My sins are gone. My Father sees me only as his holy perfect child.

But he doesn’t leave me hanging on that cross, so to speak. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. When Jesus takes away my sins, he also puts to death my old, sinful self and makes my heart his own home. He lives his life in each one of us. Any life that Jesus is living looks exactly the way God says we are: not guilty, free from sin.

So even though we don’t have the power to do what the law says, Jesus does. When Jesus makes our own hearts his home that means more than thinking of him a lot or loving him. It means that Jesus has a genuine presence in my heart and soul. And his life gives us power to stop committing sins and live a life of love. It isn’t dangerous for God to forgive our sins so freely. It is the only way he can make it less common in our lives.

Life Seen Through Two Different Lenses

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Philippians 3:18 “For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.”

Our worldview is the set of beliefs through which we interpret and understand reality. For the Christian, nothing influences our worldview more than the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross tells me that I’m a sinner. More than that, I am so lost and helpless in my sin that there is nothing I can do to make it up to God. Nothing I can do will win his approval or restore our broken relationship.

This sin infects everything I do so thoroughly that it taints all my behavior. I have an inbred selfishness so much a part of me that I am generally unaware of its place in my thinking and choosing. The same goes for everyone else as well.

The cross is God’s radical solution for this problem. If I could somehow pay for my own sins, if I could fix myself, I wouldn’t need the cross. But since I can’t, Jesus volunteered to die in my place. He fixed the broken relationship between me and God.

When God miraculously convinced me this was true, it changed me. My inbred sin and selfishness did not disappear. But now they have to compete with a new set of values and desires. These push me toward the same kind of love and sacrifice Jesus showed on the cross.

That’s quite a set of glasses through which to view ourselves, earth’s other residents, and our reality. It explains why social problems like war, poverty, crime, and prejudice don’t go away. You can become an activist and try to fight these social ills, but we will always have them. Jesus said so.

It explains why religious people, even sincere Christians, often behave as badly as everyone else. That’s not to say we defend the bad behavior. But we shouldn’t be shocked when it happens. It is the reason that faithful Christianity isn’t afraid to expose sin, and confront sin, or even use the word sin. Pretending it isn’t there only encourages more of it.

Most of all, the cross is the reason that faithful Christianity has more to say about forgiveness than anything else. The church is not the place where good people become better people. It is the place where deeply flawed and broken people find the forgiveness that makes them children of God and citizens of heaven.

Another worldview exists. Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. They have no time for such ideas about the human condition. They don’t care about Jesus’ standards of right and wrong. They see no need to be rescued, and aren’t interested in being forgiven, thank you. “Their god is their stomach.” Do they have an appetite? Well, then that is just a natural urge, no matter what it is. Don’t say it’s a perversion. Don’t say it hurts others to satisfy the desire. Their god is my stomach. They worship at the altar of their appetites.

“Their glory is in their shame.” It’s not enough for people to live this way in secret. They take pride in their shame and parade it around for all to see. Some men brag about their sexual conquests. Businessmen and women boast about the gullible people they took advantage of. Crowds take to the streets defending things as rights and choices that ought to make us blush with shame.

“Their mind is on earthly things,” not the cross of Christ. Note again, the issue is not that we are better. Paul, who wrote these things, referred to himself as the chief of sinners. I have my own mountain of impurity, greed, and sinful self-indulgences of which to be ashamed.

But by God’s grace I can now see it for the trash heap it is instead of praising it as a monument to my worth. It is a matter of God’s grace when he lets your sin look like sin to you. More than that, it is his grace when he lets a cross on which a man was tortured to death look like love, forgiveness, life, and salvation. When we see life from heaven’s vantage point, it completely changes our worldview.

Don’t Let Money Change You

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1 Timothy 6:17 “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

Some people are not changed very much by their wealth. You may know that billionaire investor Warren Buffet is among the wealthiest people in the world. Yet he lives in a $250,000 house. He drives a Cadillac, it’s true, but we all know that the label doesn’t communicate the same luxury it once did, and Buffet will keep driving the same car for 10 years before he trades it in on a new one. Money may be the root of all kinds of evil, but it doesn’t spoil everyone.

Then there are the train wrecks. Child stars on television evolve into brats. Money and fame corrupt them. By the time they reach young adulthood they are so arrogant and in love with themselves that they have respect for no one else. They are rude. They act inappropriately in public. Many lottery winners go so crazy with spending that tens of millions of dollars disappear in no time. In the end they are poorer than before they hit the jackpot.

The corrupting power of money is nothing new. Earlier in this chapter Paul had warned Timothy, “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.” Some, however, get to be rich rather innocently. Maybe they were born into it. Maybe it was the side-effect of hard work and ingenuity. Still, they need Paul’s warning.

The first thing the wealthy need to hear is, “Don’t let your wealth make you arrogant.” It may make you different, but it doesn’t make you better or more important than anyone else. The Greek word behind “arrogant” refers to an attitude of extremely high regard for oneself that the Greeks actually considered a virtue. They highly valued assertiveness, strong self-confidence. They wanted the brash self-promoter. They didn’t see much use in humility or gentleness. To them those were signs of weakness.

We don’t have to be that wealthy to be affected by the temptation to arrogance. Comedian Dave Barry once noted that the person who is nice to you, but is not nice to the waiter at the restaurant, is not a nice person. When we notice a little economic class distinction between ourselves and the people who serve us, somehow we get a big head.

A second temptation may change us for the worse. Paul warns the rich not “to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain…” It is a godly thing to use our money wisely. It makes sense to spend less than we make, to have something in savings, to invest for retirement. You can keep it in the bank, or invest it in the stock market, or bury it in the back yard if that makes you feel better.

But wealth is always uncertain. Banks fail, stock markets crash, and a sink hole could open up in the middle of the back yard and swallow the secret stash of cash in a single gulp. The point is that wealth makes a fine tool, but it makes a terrible god. No matter how careful you are, you can’t count on it to be there when you need it.

We all know that feeling of security when you have something left over at the end of the month, or your savings has grown a bit, or the latest statement for your retirement account reveals it is worth much more. And we all know that panicked feeling, maybe only slightly, when it looks like you are a little short for the month, or the stock market drops 500 points a couple of days in a row. “Don’t let your wealth change you,” Paul would say. “Don’t let it convince you that it is going to take care of you.”            

Or, as he teaches us here, “Command those who are rich…to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” The place to put our hope is in God. Is that so hard to understand? He has richly provided us with our lives. He has richly provided us with a Savior. He has richly provided us with the forgiveness of our sins. He has richly provided us with faith. He has richly provided us with everlasting life. And if he has provided us with all that, why should we not trust him to provide us with the little things we need to live each day? A word to the wealthy: Don’t let your wealth change you–how you see yourself, your neighbor, or your Lord.

Go! Preach! Do!

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Matthew 9:35 “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.”

There is something to learn from the first two words we run into: “Jesus went.” Sometimes pastors, churches, and those who serve follow an approach that might better be described as “Let them come.” Let’s sequester ourselves in our safe, comfortable building, put out a sign, do a little advertising, and hope that people come to us.

That’s not to imply that we are against people coming to us. We want them to come to our church, our programs, our activities. But the New Testament approach to ministry puts a big emphasis on the word “go.” Go and make disciples of all nations. Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Go out…into the streets and alleys…to the roads and country lanes (Luke 14:21,23).

This is not the time to play it safe, to sit on our hands, to stay inside and lazily let the world go by. Jesus sends us to our friends and family members, our neighbors and coworkers, those who are already Christian but are off wandering in their faith, and those who have never been Christians and need to know Jesus before it’s too late. Christian ministry happens here, in this building, it is true. But it needs to happen out there, where the people are, too. That’s how Jesus worked. “Jesus went.”

Where Jesus went, he had something to say, “teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom.” This was his work. This is the church’s work. The church without a message ceases to live and act as the church. It has forgotten its purpose. Teaching and preaching is always first.

If all the Christian churches were to disappear, there would still be people and organizations to feed the hungry, dig wells in third world countries, show up to help after natural catastrophes, help people pay their electric bills, and do all the charitable things that churches often do. But the fire department is not going to preach sermons. Local businesses are not going to organize Sunday schools. The mayor and city council aren’t going to go door to door on city time trying to teach people the way of salvation. That’s not what they’re there for. If the church won’t preach and teach the gospel, it loses the one activity that makes it what it is, the reason that Jesus leaves us here.

The message is the same one Jesus preached, “the good news of the kingdom.” It always comes back to this. We can teach people about right and wrong, too. Jesus did. We can tell them what it means to be a godly father or mother, son or daughter, husband or wife, employer or employee, citizen or soldier or public servant. The Bible teaches good stuff about all those things.

But no one can do those things right all the time. None of that information by itself ever saved anyone. The good news is that the King has returned to the world he made. Even though it was a world of rebels, he has put down the rebellion. He didn’t do it by slaughtering all the opposition. He has convinced many of the rebels to defect to his side. He invites them all to come over. He laid down his life to secure their pardons, and made it safe to join his forces. He doesn’t rule by fear or force (though the opposition often thinks that’s the way it is). His great sacrificial love makes his subjects willing. It gives them new hearts. It fills them with new freedoms. They serve out of gratefulness for the love that rescued them from their sins and led them from death to life.

Preaching this good news, teaching it, taking it to streets and homes and anyplace we can get an audience–that’s the work of Christian ministry. And people who love their neighbor’s souls enough to do this for them will also love their neighbor’s bodies enough to bring a little relief from life’s discomforts when they can–like Jesus “healing every disease and sickness.” Preaching the gospel and showing people love: that’s what Christians go to do.

Service the Lord Recognizes

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Isaiah 56: 6-7a “And to foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant–these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.”

Serving the Lord of heaven and earth isn’t dull, boring drudgery.  It isn’t the everyday, go-through-the-motions work of someone who simply wants to make a living or get the job done.  Isaiah’s words suggest several reasons why this is true.

First, the word translated “serve” doesn’t speak of any ordinary kind of service.  The task itself might not look different than work other people are doing, but this service takes on honor and privilege because of whom you are serving. I know many people who worked as cooks in a restaurant.  Many young people get their start at earning a paycheck by flipping hamburgers a few hours a week.  It’s usually not considered a glamorous job. I also have a relative who cooked meals for a living, but he did his cooking at the White House in Washington D.C. That job is considered very prestigious, all because of the people he served.

Janitors clean buildings all over the world. But Christians who clean their churches, clean their homes, or clean to make a living serve their Lord with this humble task. Teachers teach the “three Rs” to their students in thousands of languages in schools around the globe. But whether God’s faithful people are teaching Bible stories to their Sunday school classes, or algebra to a room full of bored teenagers, their efforts serve the One whose saving work is recorded on the sacred pages, and whose genius invented the math that orders our world. It is an honor to serve the one and only God, the Maker of all things, and the Savior of all the world, no matter the kind of activity that is involved.

A second special feature of this service is the force behind it.  Isaiah speaks of “foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him.” For believers, service to God is a labor of love.  What else could it be when we know how he first served and loved us?  Professor Siegbert Becker once wrote, “It is impossible to see ourselves as sinners deserving eternal damnation in hell and then to come to the conviction that the suffering and dying Christ has procured full and free forgiveness for us by taking our guilt upon himself and by giving his own righteousness to us as a free gift of his love, it is impossible to come to that conviction without coming to love him who gave himself into death that we might have everlasting life….To know him is to love him is more applicable to our Savior than to anyone else.” Love for the Lord who loves us sets a believer’s work and service apart.

To the prophet Isaiah’s original audience, perhaps the most shocking thing about the service mentioned was the people performing it. They were “foreigners,” Gentiles, non-Jews. These were not members of God’s chosen nation.

But they were people the Lord had chosen nonetheless. It turns out that good news about a God who dies to rescue lost souls, forgives sins, and gives his gifts for free works on human hearts regardless of race, culture, or nationality. It worked on our hearts, too. We have been given a place in God’s “house of prayer.”

May we find joy in serving him there.

Better than Hand-Made

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2 Corinthians 5:1 “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by hands.”

Tents are temporary shelters. Our family used its last tent for less than 50 evenings over a 10-year span. It’s not much use now. Along the way we had to replace polls, and zippers stopped working, and one seam looked like it could give way at any time.

Is the comparison with our earthly home hard to see? I don’t mean to complain about the generous accommodations God has given us. We are far better fed and sheltered than we deserve. But our lives in this world rarely feel deeply secure. We are no strangers to pain and discomfort. The world can be a cold place. It turns its back on us and leaves us helpless and alone. Relationships go bad. People just don’t care. It can also be a hot place. Problems and pressures press in around us. The “heat” we feel may be meeting the bills, the demands of our employers and deadlines at our work, people who persecute us, or fighting off temptation. Our earthly accommodations can become mighty uncomfortable.

Like a tent, our home in this world is temporary. It is constantly falling apart all around us all the time. My house needs maintenance. My car needs maintenance. Even my lawn is hard to keep alive. And to Paul’s point, my body needs more and more maintenance as it putters and sputters towards total collapse.

As a result, Paul said, “…while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened.” It’s hard. But why should our lives here be this way? We made our world this way with our sin. Every little body ache, family frustration, or office emergency is a reminder that we ourselves are sinners living in a world cursed by sin.

That is why we are longing to take the last step to a better home. “… we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by hands.” Paul describes our heavenly home as a house, a real building. It has all the climate-controlled comforts we desire. When we get there, we will at last know the feeling of safety and security we have always longed to have.

Because it is a solid structure, it isn’t falling apart all around us. It is eternal. Then Paul reveals something that may seem strange to us. The home we are longing for is better because it is “not built by hands.” It is not hand-made. All my life I have been accustomed to thinking that “hand-made” is the best. Hand-made automobiles, hand-made furniture, or hand-made clothing is the highest quality and far better than that stuff made by machine.

Handmade salvation, and handmade heaven, would be an unqualified disaster. Human hands make a mess of these things. But salvation comes with the hands of our Lord Jesus pinned to a cross. When those hands go limp and the life drains from his body, our sin drains away with his life. All is settled between us and heaven there.

Our house in heaven is better than hand-made. It is crafted by the power and perfect precision of God. It is untouched by sin, and untouched by sinners. It is an eternal home, the last one we will ever need.