Why don't I like what I see?

Jesus asked Peter, "Do you love me?" and Peter replied, "Yeah, sure, Lord. I like ya."

This comes to mind because our church is encouraging a Bible reading plan for this year. Now, I am all for Bible reading, but it is their motivation for the plan that concerns me. Here are their "8 good reasons to listen to God daily through His Word:

1. So my prayers will be answered. (Jn 15:7)
2. So my decisions will be wise. (Ps 32:8)
3. So I will not sin. (Ps 119:11)
4. So I can find comfort. (Ps 119:52)
5. So I can get the most out of life. (Josh 1:8)
6. So I can know what is true. (Acts 17:11)
7. So I can be close to God and learn from Him.(Heb 10:22)
8. So I will have hope. (Rom 15:4)

 On the surface, these all sound like great things. But why is it I keep hearing, "Yeah, sure, Lord, we like ya." 

Like I stated already, I am all for the reading of God's word, and I think it is powerful and can transform lives. But I also know that the scribes and pharisees were very devout in their knowledge and reading of God's Word, and that didn't work out so well for them.

Jesus question holds the answer. "Do you love me?" What is our motivation for reading the Word? Is it for what I will get out of it? Or is it because I love God and desperately want to draw closer to Him? Mere obedience does not bring about change. I (try to) obey the speed limit, but that does not make me love the police. I do it to not exact the consequence.

I guess that is why I think of this passage when I heard about the reading plan. I have contacted the pastor about some of the statements I hear from the pulpit. He puts me off for months. When he finally does talk to me, he promises to pray about it and get back with me. What he does is then send me a letter saying that if I do not have full confidence in his preaching, perhaps I should find another church. He follows that up with a meeting with myself and a couple of elders. No mention is made of my questions, just a meeting to say that we need to get along and start over. I left for a few weeks, but decided that I should not allow this bullying to chase me away from a church. I now attend again, but listen to my i-pod during sermons. Although many have seen this, no one questions anything. (What elephant in the room?)

"If you love me, feed my sheep."

"Yeah, sure, Lord, we like ya."

Pat Robertson and Love

I read a few days ago a few posts about Pat Robertson's comment regarding a man who wanted to divorce his wife because she had Alzheimer's. In case you did not hear, Pat Robertson (supposedly, I did not hear the comments myself) said that the man should go ahead and divorce her.

When his co-anchor asked if this broke his wedding vows, Pat responded that vows were "until death do us part, and this is a kind of death."

Does this bother anyone? While I am sure Pat took some heat for this, is this just a non-issue for most folks. Isn't Pat just stating what our itching ears want to hear? Isn't he just stating what most of us practice in some form or another? Isn't he just stating our truth. When the going gets tough, the tough find a loophole or a justification for their actions.

• We live in time of economic crisis. Will borrowing more money really get us out of this mess?
• We see the poor and afflicted. What do we do to help them in Jesus' name? Not even a cup of cold water?
• We make vows to our spouses. We tell them we love them. But when that beauty fades or they are no longer of service to us, we cast them aside. Was not the person we loved really ourselves? As long as we get what we want, we love and stay together. Was that the vow we took?

It is no wonder that non-Christians are not affected by us. We don't clothe ourselves in Christ, we just put on a t-shirt that says, "I love Jesus because saying so gets me into heaven." Problem is, we have never read the back of the shirt. It says, "I wanted to go to heaven, but all I got was this lousy t-shirt!"

Can you be righter than right?

Matthew 5:20

For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Let's begin by forgetting what we know of the scribes and Pharisees for a moment, and think about what the hearers of this might have thought.

Scribes and Pharisees were the religious cream of the crop. These were people who had devoted thier lives to the reading, understanding, and practice of the Torah. They not only knew the rules, they interpreted and enforced them too. Think of it as congress, the Supreme Court, and the President all rolled into one. Their religion was constantly on display, from the clothes they wore and the accessories on those clothes to the places they went to the people they associated with. Scribes and Pharisees were righteous dudes, all the way. They were able to devote all of their time to their pursuit of God. And Jesus just said, unless you can do it better, you won't even get into the kingdom.

So I see two options here. The first is that I have to be better, to spend more time than they spend, and to make my efforts greater than theirs. That does not sound possible, so option two: consider the fact that perhaps the scribes and the Pharisees were not as righteous as they seemed. But even that option does not seem to make a lot of sense. How could these men not be righteous?

Suddenly, option three comes into play. Maybe Jesus was talking about a different righteousness. Or a righteousness that comes from somewhere else. Or both. Philippians 3:9 sheds some light on this idea. "and being found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith." So it is not about the show. It is not about what I can do. It is all about Jesus, just trusting in Him to do what I cannot do no matter how much effort I put in.  This is not an excuse for laziness, but it shows that whatever is lacking in me, Christ can provide as I trust in him to do so. So I don't so much worry about pursing my righteousness as I do pursuing Christ himself.

To salt or not to salt...

Matthew 5:13

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

The job of salt is to be salty. Kind of makes sense, doesn't it. Now we could get into all of the properties and characteristics of salt if we  like. It flavors, it preserves, it melts ice and snow. But we could just sum it up and say, salt has a job to do, and that is to be salt-like. If salt is not salty, if it doesn't do its job, then it is not good for anything. You may as well just poor sand on your food. And for salt that is not doing its job, there is no hope. Assuming that it was salty at one point, if it has lost its saltiness, it will not get it back again.

Nice lesson on salt, right? Obviously not. Jesus was trying to convey a truth here in a way that the disciples might understand. He called them salt. They had a job to do. Salt brings the flavor out in food. His disciples were to salt the world with God. They were to show God to a world that either did not have him or misunderstood him.

Ever eat something with salt? Blah. With salt? Um, just right. Too much salt? Yuk! I'm just saying...

Question: What is the difference between the church and the Rotary Club? Well, if you don't know, maybe your church isn't being salty enough. Maybe it has lost its saltiness. Blah! I think of the social gospel here. Now I am all for reaching the lost, I believe that is a responsibility of the church. But we must do that as a seasoning, and not as a responsibility. If we are salt, we want to reach out, and not just to other parts of the world, but to our own world as well. To our neighbors and co-workers.

And that will not happen without the why. How many sermons have been preached over this text? People leaving the building being told they must be salt. Maybe even being handed out little packets of salt on their way out. But now what?

For salt to be effective, it must be salty. It must function in its fundamental purpose. Salt with saltiness on the right food just naturally does its job. So it should be with Christians. It is not being told to go out and be salt that makes us salty, it is naturally possessing the qualities of salt. It is knowing God, and loving Him because we understand and attach his greatness to everything.

I could put some sand in a salt shaker, but that wouldn't make it salt. I could tell it to do the job of salt, but that would not enable it to do the job of salt. As Christians, our responsibility is not to keep the world free from sin, or ask people to come to church. It is to glorify God in our lives. It is to know God and attach that knowledge to all that we do. It is to honor God when all is well with the world. It is to honor him when all is not well too.

Steak, even prime rib, misses something if not seasoned. So does the church and the Christian. Unless we are salty with God, full of an understanding of what His grace means to us, somethings is seriously missing.

Religiousity #2

Lamentations 2:14

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions;
they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes,
but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading.

Is this true today? Have not our prophets (preachers) seen false and deceptive visions? Haven't many of them seen a gospel that is different from the one proclaimed by Christ? Do they not preach a gospel that puts us at the center of God's desires instead of putting Him at the center of ours? Some even taking this to the extreme of saying that if we just trust in Him, He will bless us materially beyond our imagination. But it does not have to be taken to such an extreme to be a false gospel.

And what charge is laid against these preachers? "They have not exposed our iniquities to restore our fortunes."  They have not exposed our sins, in order that our former state of being may be returned to us. They may have exposed sin, but not in such a way that in impacts the hearer other than the hearer to nod in agreement and say, "Yes, when others do that it is wrong." The ESV uses the word fortunes, which we might interpret wealth. But the idea in the original language carries is more of the thought of restoing us to God's original intent, such as how things should have been in the garden.  The NIV states that section this way, "they did not expose you sin to ward off your captivity." Either way, the preachers did not preach about us as sinners. They sugar-coated their message so that it would taste better. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." (Prov. 14:12) The death that Proverbs speaks of here is eternal death, separation from God. Captivity. Cast out of the garden forever.

There is a big difference between preaching about sin and preaching about us as sinners. ONe places a burden of law on the hearer while the other brings glory to God for what He does as a result. Preaching about sin can lead to modification of actions. Don't go to R rated movies, don't drink or cuss, go to church, tithe, etc. And the neat thing about this kind of thinking is that we can do these things without repenting. Just do it, as the old Nike commercial says. But does that really work for anyone?

If we want life change, we must talk about the truth of life. We must present the gospel, which says that we are sinners in need of a Savior. This does not lead to mere modification of action, but to repentance. And true repentance will bring the type of modification of action that will last.

2 Cor. 7:10 states, "For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death." Godly grief breaks our hearts. It happens when we see that our actions have hurt the God that we worship and love. Godly grief brings regret for our actions to the point of repentance, because we do not want to continue such despicable behavior. Godly grief is when we see the full consequence of our action and are motivated by love to change.

My dad had been a smoker most of his life. He had tried to quit on several occsions, but these attempts never brought success. He retired at age 62, and shortly after his retirement, he had a heart attack. He knew that a large part of the reason behind his heart attack was smoking. And it was in that stay in the hospital that he found godly grief. No longer was smoking an action that might have some bad consequences, but now it was the thing that was going to take him from his wife, retirement, children, future grandchildren, and so on. I think his greatest motivation of all was the love he had for his wife of 40+ years, and his not being ready to leave her because of his selfishness. He said that once he entered the hospital, and from that day forward, he never even desired another cigarette.

I am not sure where I heard this, but I like the idea. A small boy was asked to define repentance. He said, "Repentance is to be so sorry for doing something that you wouldn't do it again, even if you knew you wouldn't get caught. That is what I want, that is what I need. That is why I need to understand the Holiness of God, and the sinfulness of me.

Religiousity #1

Job 4:6  "Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?"

These words were spoken by Eliphaz, one of Job's friends, after 7 days of silence. Do they sound like words of comfort to you? I think to some they might, I think to some people this would be a compliment. But are they? I would hope that no one would think such things about me.

Now I think that the fear of God is a good thing. Proverbs 1:7 tells us that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." And I would hope that people who know me can see and understand that I do fear the Lord. But my fear of God is not my confidence. My confidence is in God and His attributes alone.

If my confidence is in my fear of God, then my confidence will waiver. I don't always fear God. Now that might sound like a strange statement, but I believe it is true. I believe in God. Always. But what about when I sin. Any sin. I could be a sin of disobedience, such as anything from speeding to murder. When I sin, I am not in fear of God. It could be a sin of omission. Perhaps someone gave me too much change, and I walk away and stick it in my pocket. Or I walk by someone in need, and do nothing. At these moments, do I fear God?

You see, I think Job's friend is saying here that Job's confidence is in his own righteousness. And I never want someone to tell me that my confidence is in my own righteousness. No matter how good I am or how good I might appear to be to others, I know that I am a sinner. I fall short. It is not just that I have fallen short, I continue to do so. If my confidence is in my fear of God, then I miss what God has for me.

The second part of that statement basically says the same thing. I would hope that no one would think that the integrity of my ways my hope. I am not 100% righteous. And isn't anything less then 100% failure? Now maybe not at school. At school we have a grading scale. 92% and above is still an A. But God's grading scale is not like that. It is pass or fail, it is 100% or nothing. If my hope is in my integrity, I am doomed to fail.

So what is my confidence in? God. Whatever I am, whatever I have, whatever happens, I put my confidence in God. It must be God who saves me, for I cannot save myself. There is no good thing that I can do to earn the favor of a God who can create and maintain such a universe as the one we live in.

Unfortunately, there are many in the church who don't get this. I think largely because we have stopped preaching about God, and have made religion about us again, much like the Israelites did over and over, all the way to the Pharisees and teachers of the law in Jesus time. There are those who, in the name of religion, teach that it is my behavior, my effort, my everything that determines my salvation.

Even at my church, where the current sermon series is "I'm All In" (with reference to Texas Hold-em poker, yes, really). I have to choose the right attitude, I have to go all in (as if that is even possible), I can't criticize, complain, or think of myself. Ironically, if I have this belief system, all I am really doing is thinking of myself.

Yes, Jesus told us to carry our cross daily. So in a sense, he calls us to go all in. But his was not a catch-phrase. It was a statement of the reality of following God. It was told to combat the idea of religiousity, not promote it. It was told to the disciples after Jesus had just told them he must suffer and die. On one occasion, Peter rebukes Jesus for saying he must die. Jesus instructs him rather harshly.

First, by calling him Satan.

I don't believe that Jesus was calling Peter names. I think at that moment, Jesus was literally addressing Satan, who was using Peter to tempt him. Satan wanted Jesus to agree, to say that such a thing should never happen to him, to the Messiah. He was appealing to Jesus' humanity, but his diety saw through it immediately.

Second, by explaining to Peter that carrying a cross is not a bad thing. Sure, the cross is an instrument of pain and suffering. But that is the price if you desire to save your soul. It is about obedience to whatever God lays out for you, and not about what you think He should lay out for you. Which do you prefer, Peter? To save your life but in the end to lose it, or to surrender your life in order to keep it.

It is not about me, my righteousness, my integrity, my anything. It is about God and Him alone. It is about me pushing into Him, not me pushing myself on Him. My confidence is Him.