Avoiding the Greater Condemnation - part three

Luke 5:31 And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.   32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

There are a lot of self righteous, conservative religious people who think they have no need of spiritual physician.   It is a common disease in conservative churches.    It can be contagious!  (Look at how the apostle Peter got sucked in, Galatians 2:11-16.)  Please examine your heart to make sure you don’t get caught up in that stuff!  Looking down on people who don’t go to church, or people who drink and smoke and cuss.  Those attitudes and behaviors stink in the nostrils of the Lord!

Or judging people who disagree with your political views!  I am a political conservative – you may like that or hate it.  But it is what I am.  But Jesus wasn’t a Republican.  He wasn’t a Democrat either.  GOP does NOT mean “God’s Own Party”!  Our gospel cannot be restricted to any one political party or political view.  Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Socialists and even Communists need to get saved!

            But self righteousness is not restricted to conservative religious people!  Anyone who thinks they are better than others is self righteous.   Secular folk and liberal folk are often self righteous too.  I hear and read them saying things that make it obvious they look down on us “poor ignorant Christians”!

What makes self righteousness so blame dangerous is the erroneous belief that we are all right and we don’t need anyone to fix us!  If you think you have all the answers and think you have it all together, you sure don’t need a Savior!  If you think you are exempt from the disease of sin, you fail to realize you need Doctor Jesus!  If you think you’ve got your act together, you think have no need to get saved!  - or, no need to grow, no need to become more like Christ!

In fact, in a sense, if you think YOU have all the answers, you’ve gone into the Savior business yourself!   In a way, you’ve gone into the god-business!  Only God has all the answers!  And God doesn’t take lightly to competition!  “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!”  This includes yourself!  Just ask Lucifer how God reacts to little phonies trying to take His place.  God is not insecure.  But He will not allow His glory to be mocked or His beloved people to be misled.   God will not share His glory with another!

If you run into Pharisees or Sadducees who think they have all the answers – YOU CANNOT ARGUE THEM OUT OF IT!   My advice is to speak the truth, then walk off and pray for the Holy Spirit to open their eyes!  Pray for them, and seek to honestly and humbly live the Christian life in front of them.  You can’t force them to change.  If you get angry and mean you only reinforce their prideful self righteousness.

Jesus said, 32 “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”Even Jesus could not fix the self righteous while they were entrenched in their self righteousness.

He came for those who know they are sinners, those who know they are a mess.   He came for people who have hit bottom and know they cannot fix themselves.  He came for the straight sinner and the gay sinner.  The church going sinner and the bar hopping sinner.  Rednecks, mentally ill, promiscuous, drug addicts, sex addicts, child abusers, house wives who gossip, Deacons who lust after their neighbor’s wife, financial advisors who steal from their clients.

John Calvin, “He came to quicken the dead, to justify the guilty and condemned, to wash those who were polluted and full of uncleanness, to rescue the lost from hell, to clothe with his glory those who were covered with shame, to renew to a blessed immortality those who were debased by disgusting vices.”

            But don’t miss He came to call us all to repentance!  To repentance! Just this week someone asked me what repentance is.  In NT “repentance” translates a Greek word, “metanoia”, meaning, ; “(1) religiously and morally, as a change of mind leading to change of behavior, repentance, conversion, turning about.” (Bibleworks)  

“a change of mind leading to change of behavior”.   Repentance means accepting God’s verdict on your behavior, your thinking, your values, and choosing to change them all with God’s empowering!  You can’t repent on your own.  You can’t change on your own.  You need the power of the Holy Spirit to change you from the inside out!

            You don’t get saved by just saying a prayer someone tells you to pray.  You get saved by repenting of your sin and believing that Christ is God become a man,  who died on the cross for everyone who will believe in Him and on the third day God raised Him from the dead!

This is the Gospel!  This is the good news!  Do you believe this?  Have you repented?  Have you turned from your sin and cried out for God to forgive you and change you?  If not, you need to do that right now!

            If you have believed, my question is, have you kept your heart open to Him?             Have you avoided self righteousness and pride and hypocrisy?   Is your heart broken by your own sin and failure?  If not, my beloved brother or sister, fall on your knees before Him and cry out for change!  Be ruthless with your sin and with any hint of self righteousness.  

May God grant that we can look at the people around us without self righteousness, without pride and have our hearts broken by the sad condition of our country.  I’m not talking about the economics or politics – they are in sad shape.  But it is the moral collapse and spiritual confusion in America I’m talking about.   I believe they are at the root of the other problems.

This week Billy Graham wrote, "My heart aches for America and its deceived people. The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance."

            I believe in Christians being involved in the political process.  But my friends, no election is going to fix what is ailing this once great nation.  No politician can fix the twisted hearts and minds of our people.  A mean spirited, self righteous church will not fix this nation. 

            America needs a humble, broken church that is on its face before God for her own sins.  You need to get down before God in repentance for your sins!  And I need to be right beside you in repentance for my sins! 

            Then, and only then we need to cry out for conviction and repentance to sweep through this land with a might move of God.  “The healthy do not need a doctor.”  But my friends, America needs Doctor Jesus!  We have hope because He came to call sinners to repentance, and we are a nation full of sinners.

They do not need a feel good “Gospel” that tells them Jesus loves like they are and will not judge any one. 

And they do not need hypocritical, mean spirited self righteous judgment from a church dead in its own pride and sin. 

They need loving, broken servants of Jesus who plead with them to repent AFTER they have repented themselves and AFTER they have pled with God to turn the hearts of the lost to Himself.

Pray for America – for our children and Grandchildren, for churches and pastors,  For hard hearts to be broken and blind eyes to be opened by the Holy Spirit.

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.
Acts 3:19 NIV

Are You Ready for Radical Grace?

"Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."  (Romans 5:1, NIV 1984)  

     Recently it seems God has surrounded me with messages on His astounding, inconceivable grace; books, blogs, quotes on Facebook.  Tullian Tchividjian (Billy Graham's grandson, and successor to D. James Kennedy at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church) wrote a powerful, short blog titled, "Are You Afraid of Radical Grace?”  I fear the answer to his question for many of us is "You better bet I am!!" Pastors and deacons and Sunday School teachers often teach salvation by grace through faith and sanctification by sweat, blood and tears.  We burden people with man-made lists of rules and do's and don'ts.  Why?  We believe it is the only way to "keep them in line".  Read Romans 7:7-12 to get a Scriptural perspective on that!  It is a crazy maker and just messes people up!  (It helps keep me and other counselors in business!)

     But how do we keep our people from sinning?  We don't.  What makes us think it is OUR job to keep them from sinning?  Tullian Tchividjian says this, and I agree, "The irony of gospel-based sanctification is that those who end up obeying more are those who increasingly realize that their standing with God is not based on their obedience, but Christ’s. The people who actually end up performing better are those who understand that their relationship with God doesn’t depend on their performance for Jesus, but Jesus’ performance for us." 

     The power to live pleasing to God comes from relying on what Jesus did in His life, death and resurrection, the power of the Cross.  Human effort on its own can produce proud, self righteous Pharisees.  It does not produce disciples of Jesus Christ. 

     Jesus reveals the motivation for obedience in John 14:23, 24. “Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”  Do you want to help people live pleasing to God?  Hold forth Jesus in a way that the Holy Spirit draws them to love Jesus!  Love for Jesus, not guilt, is the motivating force.  Guilt manipulated by humans is a crazy maker!  Love generated by the Holy Spirit is a healing force!

     Be Gospel centered and Grace centered in all your preaching and teaching.  And the Holy Spirit will convict of sin - that is His job, not yours or mine! 

 

      Leaders, stay focused on preaching Christ, Grace, and the Cross.  Christians, let your witnessing be focused on the Cross of Christ and the Grace of God. Then you will be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.  (And you won't be causing people to need Christian counseling!)

A Personal Reflection on Approaching 60

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. “ Psalms 90:12, KJV

In a few weeks I will be turning 60 years old. Approaching this milestone has provoked some soul searching and reevaluation. I don’t know if God will give me 25 more years or 25 more seconds! I think I have usually done a fair job of investing my life for Him and redeeming opportunities, but only fair, I could have done better. I regret that. I seek to repent of the failures, the selfishness, the short sightedness. Grace to move ahead with better focus and more child like trust in God seems to be my number one need as I look ahead to how ever much time God grants.

Up to now, God has blessed me with excellent health and strength. I know that can be snuffed out in an instant – I’ve seen it happen to others. In such extremely uncertain economic times I figure if God continues to bless me with health I can work full-time another 10 – 15 years, if work stays available. Serving in small churches has not allowed building any retirement to speak of. But I am trusting God will somehow provide, as He always has. I fear we may be entering a time in which those who have built substantial retirements may be no better off than those of us who have not. The markets may continue to slide. The dollar could become virtually worthless. BUT WHATEVER HAPPEN GOD WILL STILL PROVIDE FOR HIS CHILDREN! Any suffering He allows (physical, emotional, economic) will be designed for our good to shape us more like Jesus (Romans 8:28 is still on the books!)

I had the privilege of preaching every Sunday for most of 30 years and off and on the past 10 years. (I still hope the Lord will choose to give me a full time pulpit again!) Looking back on many poor sermons and hopefully a few good ones, the core of the burden God laid on my heart is this: God’s children need to seek Him with all their hearts and stop the silly games we too often play! Open your heart to His love and grace in Christ Jesus. Take your sin more seriously than you take your neighbor’s sin. Beg for the grace to live in a way that honors and pleases the Father, Son , and Holy Spirit!

Doctrine and theology are important. The outward forms of how we worship are not insignificant. But what is essential is faith and relationship with God. That starts with trust in the simple Gospel: Our destiny will be determined by whether we are trusting in Jesus Christ or not. He is God who became man, lived a sinless life, died on the cross for all the sin of every person who will turn from their sin trust in Him and believe He is risen from the dead. Whether it is you or I, or the Pope or Billy Graham, all that will count at that moment is whether we are trusting that simple Gospel. (Turning from sin doesn’t mean being perfect or sinless. It means agreeing with God your sin IS sin, it ain’t acceptable, and you seek His help to stop it!)

But that is just the essential beginning! Our Father earnestly desires that we grow in worship, in heart knowledge of Him (see John 4:23, 24; Philippians 3:10).

When God takes me home I hope that the few who remember me and care will think something like this, “He tried to point others to Jesus.”

Peace!